_Abt Vogler_, _A Toccata of Galuppi’s_, _Master Hughes of Saxe-Gotha_, and _Charles Avison_, are all concerned with music as the principal subject. Each has minor references to Italy, and in the first two, the musician is an Italian one. _Abt Vogler_ is probably the finest poem on music in the English language. It contains a perfect idealized expression of the aims of the musician and a thorough knowledge of his technique. Like _A Toccata of Galuppi’s_ it is based on extemporization and the transitory quality of music; but it is unlike that poem in emphasizing the permanence of good. _Abt Vogler_ voices the musician’s own musings on the stately but vanishing castle he has built. _A Toccata_ probably refers to an improvization on the harpsichord, a frequent occurrence at the time concerned, and presents the poet as speaker, questioning the musician concerning the effect of his performance on the audience. Very different psychological states produced these two poems. _Abt Vogler_ was written in a mood of reverent optimism; _A Toccata_, in a mood of half careless, half earnest pessimism. Where _A Toccata_ closes with “dust and ashes” the other poem passes on to the “ineffable name,” and a belief in the future existence of “All we have willed, or hoped, or dreamed, of good.” The one closes hope in the grave; the other poem opens heaven. The transitory quality of human life in _A Toccata of Galuppi’s_ accords with the music being played, and many terms, such as “lesser thirds,” “sixths diminished,” “suspensions,” “solutions,” “commiserating sevenths,” express the different phases of the listener’s mood. No attempt will be made in this paper to consider Browning’s musical terms; for with the exception of “toccata”, meaning a light touch piece, an overture, they seem mostly non-Italianate. _Abt Vogler_, _A Toccata of Galuppi’s_, _Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha_, and _Parleyings with Charles Avison_, all contain a considerable number of musical terms; but beside the fact that they are non-Italianate, those in at least part of the poems have already been discussed somewhat extensively in various articles among the Browning Society papers. IV. LACK OF MODERN ITALIAN REFERENCES.--The number of references to Italian musicians is comparatively small, even though the treatment of music in a few poems is unexcelled. Especially when one considers that the great modern group of Italian opera composers was so near Browning in both time and place, his mention of them seems curiously insignificant. Verdi, the greatest of them, appears in the poems only once, and then in connection with his worst opera. That the Brownings heard at least one of Verdi’s operas produced, is established by a letter by Mrs. Browning dated in 1853. She speaks of their having heard _Il Trovatore_ a few nights previous, at the Pergola in Florence, and concludes with the peculiarly suggestive remark, “Very passionate and dramatic, surely.”