But the way in which they affected Browning is described very suggestively in a passage in the letters of his wife.

She describes herself as longing for her husband to write poems, beseeching him to write poems, but finding all her petitions useless because her husband was engaged all day in modelling busts in clay and breaking them as fast as he made them.

This is Browning's interest in art, the interest in a living thing, the interest in a growing thing, the insatiable interest in how things are done.

Every one who knows his admirable poems on painting--"Fra Lippo Lippi" and "Andrea del Sarto" and "Pictor Ignotus"-- will remember how fully they deal with technicalities, how they are concerned with canvas, with oil, with a mess of colours.

Sometimes they are so technical as to be mysterious to the casual reader.