He used to illustrate his glowing descriptions of its beauties, the palaces, the sunsets, the moonrises, by a most original kind of etching.

Taking up a bit of stray notepaper, he would hold it over a lighted candle, moving the paper about gently till it was cloudily smoked over, and then utilising the darker smears for clouds, shadows, water, or what not, would etch with a dry pen the forms of lights on cloud and palace, on bridge or gondola on the vague and dreamy surface he had produced." The anticipations of genius had already produced a finer etching than any of these, in those lines of marvellous swiftness and intensity in _Paracelsus_, which describe Constantinople at the hour of sunset.
[Illustration: MAIN STREET OF ASOLO, SHOWING BROWNING'S HOUSE.
_From a drawing by_ Miss D.NOYES.] The publication of _Sordello_ (1840) did not improve Browning's position with the public.

The poem was a challenge to the understanding of an aspirant reader, and the challenge met with no response.

An excuse for not reading a poem of five or six thousand lines is grateful to so infirm and shortlived a being as man.

And, indeed, a prophet, if prudent, may do well to postpone the privilege of being unintelligible until he has secured a considerable number of disciples of both sexes.
The reception of _Sordello_ might have disheartened a poet of less vigorous will than Browning; he merely marched breast forward, and let _Sordello_ lie inert, until a new generation of readers had arisen.