This first inspiration was superb, visionary, romantic,--in keeping with "the beauty and fearfulness of that June night" upon the terrace at Florence, where it came to him.
"All was sure, Fire laid and cauldron set, the obscene ring traced, The victim stripped and prostrate: what of God?
The cleaving of a cloud, a cry, a crash, Quenched lay their cauldron, cowered i' the dust the crew, As, in a glory of armour like Saint George, Out again sprang the young good beauteous priest Bearing away the lady in his arms Saved for a splendid minute and no more."[52] [Footnote 49: Cf.II.Corkran, _Celebrities and I_ (R.Browning, senior), 1903.] [Footnote 50: It is perhaps not without significance that in the summer sojourn when _The Ring and the Book_ was planned, Euripides was, apart from that, his absorbing companion.

"I have got on," he writes to Miss Blagden, "by having a great read at Euripides,--the one book I brought with me."] [Footnote 51: _Ring and the Book_, i.

437.] [Footnote 52: _Ring and the Book_, i.

580-588.] Such a vision might have been rendered without change in the chiselled gold and agate of the _Idylls of the King_.

But Browning's hero could be no Sir Galahad; he had to be something less; and also something more.
The idealism of his nature had to force its way through perplexities and errors, beguiled by the distractions and baffled by the duties of his chosen career.