It explains, for example, Browning's detailed and picturesque account of the glorious dust-bin of odds and ends for sale, out of which he picked the printed record of the trial, and his insistence on its cheapness, its dustiness, its yellow leaves, and its crabbed Latin.

The more soiled and dark and insignificant he can make the text appear, the better for his ample and gigantic sermon.

It explains again the strictness with which Browning adhered to the facts of the forgotten intrigue.

He was playing the game of seeing how much was really involved in one paltry fragment of fact.

To have introduced large quantities of fiction would not have been sportsmanlike.