It marks the seriousness of his ambition that he actually applied for a post in the Persian Embassy.

This fancy of _Ferishtah_, like a similar one of ten years later, was not gratified, but the bent which was thus thwarted in practical life disported itself freely in poetry, and the marks of the diplomatist _in posse_ are pretty clearly legible in the subtle political webs which make up so much of the plots of _Strafford, King Victor_, and _Sordello_.
But much sharper rebuffs than this would have failed to disturb the immense buoyancy of Browning's temperament.

He was twenty-three, and in the first flush of conscious power.

His exuberant animal spirits flowed out in whimsical talk; he wrote letters of the gayest undergraduate _insouciance_ to Fox, and articles full of extravagant jesting for _The Trifler_, an amateur journal which received the lucubrations of his little circle.

He enjoyed life like a boy, and shared its diversions like a man about town.