Thus while Browning is known, even to the general mind, as a poet who writes about musicians, his fame in this particular field is founded on a very few well-known poems. Suppose it were possible to eliminate _Abt Vogler_ from the text of Browning’s poetry and from the consciousness of the world. Would the cursory student then know him as the celebrator of music? Or at least, if one could filch from the human race both _Abt Vogler_ and _A Toccata of Galuppi’s_, their author might still be known in the popular mind as an admirer of the arts, but hardly as a devotee of music. Quality rather than quantity, then, is the measure of the element of music in the poems of Robert Browning. II. CATHOLIC HYMNS.--A by no means unusual introduction of music, nor one peculiar to Browning (see Byron and others) is found in the mention of Catholic hymns. However, they are not employed in any of the poems whose principal theme is music, nor are they introduced because he deliberately wished to write about that art. They form a part of the Italian consciousness; they are stages in daily life; and they mark the passing of time in a highly poetic way, and in a method characteristic of the Italian nation. _The Ring and the Book_, in five of the twelve sections, includes the names of Catholic hymns. In Part IV the _Magnificat_ signifies the triumphant spirit of Violante Comparini, the old woman who has completed the bargain by means of which she is to trick her husband into the belief that he is to have an heir. The same section gives an account of the plan of Pietro and Violante Comparini to find a titled husband for their so-called daughter, and illustrates the situation in these words--“And when such paragon was found and fixed, Why, they might chant their ‘_Nunc dimittis_’ straight.” Both of these passages, then, mark psychological states, in one or both of the parents of Pompilia. Section VI, the defense of Caponsacchi, contains two references which mark the time of day. The first, in a quotation from one of the forged letters purporting to be from Pompilia to Caponsacchi, suggests that he come to her window at the time of the _Ave_. The second, in the account of the flight of Pompilia and Caponsacchi to Rome, is phrased “At eve we heard the _angelus_,” indicating time and suggesting, also, a certain regret for the past on the part of Pompilia. In Section VII, Pompilia, yielding at last to her own desires for rescue and to the importunities of her treacherous maid, names the _Ave Maria_ to indicate the time when she will be standing on the terrace to talk with Caponsacchi. The Pope, in Section X, gives his opinion of what will be said of his leniency to the church, should he free Caponsacchi, and sarcastically observes “in the choir _Sanctus et Benedictus_, with a brush Of soft guitar strings that obey the thumb.” Section XII, in describing the death of Guido, the wife-murderer, gives his last words as a request for a _Pater_, an