28.] [Footnote 18: Orr, _Handbook_, p.

55.] _Pippa Passes_, the most romantic in conception of all Browning's plays, thus first disclosed his genius for realism.

_Strafford_, _King Victor_, _The Druses_ are couched in the tempered ideality of blank verse; here we pass to and fro from the airiest lyric to the most massive and sinewy prose.

It counted for something, too, that Italy, and above all the little hill-town in which the scene was laid, was a vivid personal memory, not a vague region of fancy like his Sardinia or Lebanon.

Asolo, with its walls and turret, its bishop's palace and duomo, and girls sitting on the steps, its upland farms among the cherry orchards, its beetles sparkling along the dust, its "warm slow yellow moonlit nights" of May, and "glaring pomps" of June,--Asolo, with its legend of "Kate the queen" and her carolling page, lives as few other spots do for Browning's readers.