He offered the story, "for prose treatment" to Miss Ogle, so we are informed by Mrs Orr, and, she adds, but with less assurance of statement, offered it "for poetic use to one of his leading contemporaries." We have seen that in a letter of 1862 from Biarritz, Browning speaks of the Roman murder case as being the subject of a new poem already clearly conceived though unwritten.

In the last section of _The Ring and the Book_, he refers to having been in close converse with his old quarto of the Piazza San Lorenzo during four years: How will it be, my four-years' intimate, When thou and I part company anon?
The publication of _Dramatis Personae_ in 1864 doubtless enabled Browning to give undivided attention to his vast design.

In October of that year he advanced to actual definition of his scheme.

When staying in the south of France he visited the mountain gorge which is connected with the adventure of the Roland of romance, and there he planned the whole poem precisely as it was carried out.

"He says," Mr W.M.