They ought to have understood that Browning would probably disapprove; but if he talked to them about it, as he did to others, and it is exceedingly probable that he did, they must have thought he was mad.

"What I suffer with the paws of these black-guards in my bowels you can fancy," he says.

Again he writes: "Think of this beast working away, not deeming my feelings, or those of her family, worthy of notice.

It shall not be done if I can stop the scamp's knavery along with his breath." Whether Browning actually resorted to this extreme course is unknown; nothing is known except that he wrote a letter to the ambitious biographer which reduced him to silence, probably from stupefaction.
The same peculiarity ought, as I have said, to have been apparent to any one who knew anything of Browning's literary work.

A great number of his poems are marked by a trait of which by its nature it is more or less impossible to give examples.