The story of the poor girl of Pornic, as Browning in a letter calls her, attracted him partly because it presented a psychological curiosity, partly because he cared to paint her hair in words,--gold in contrast with that pallid face--as much as his friend Rossetti might have wished to display a like splendour with the strokes of his brush: Hair such a wonder of flix and floss, Freshness and fragrance--floods of it too! Gold, did I say?
Nay, gold's mere dross.
The story, which might gratify a cynical observer of human nature, is treated by Browning without a touch of cynicism, except that ascribed to the priest--good easy man--who has lost a soul and gained an altar.

A saint _manque_, whose legend is gruesome enough, but more pathetic than gruesome, becomes for the poet an involuntary witness of the Christian faith, and a type of the mystery of moral evil; but the psychological contrasts of the ambiguous creature, saint-sinner, and the visual contrast of that face, like a silver wedge 'Mid the yellow wealth, are of more worth than the sermon which the writer preaches in exposition of his tale.

Had the form of the poem been Browning's favourite dramatic monologue, we can imagine that an ingenious apologia, convincing at least to Half-Pornic, could have been offered for the perversity of the dying girl's rifting every golden tress with gold.
No poem in the volume of _Dramatis Personae_ is connected with pictorial art, unless it be the few lines entitled _A Face_, lines of which Emily Patmore, the poet's wife, was the subject, and written, as Browning seldom wrote, for the mere record of beauty.

That "little head of hers" is transferred to Browning's panel in the manner of an early Tuscan piece of ideal loveliness; in purity of outline and of colour the delicate profile, the opening lips, the neck, the chin so naturally ally themselves to painting that nature is best comprehended through its imaginative transference to art.

As _Master Hugues_ of the earlier collection of poems converts a bewildering technique of music into poetry, and discovers in its intricate construction a certain interposing web spun by the brain between the soul and things divine, so _Abt Vogler_ interprets music on the other side--that of immediate inspiration, to which the constructive element--real though slight--is subordinate.