book in creating a tangle and embroilment of evil and good, of truth and falsehood, in view of the fact that a shining moment is at last to spring forward and do its work of severing absolutely and finally right from wrong, and shame from a splendour of righteousness. Browning's readers longed at times, and not without cause, for the old directness and the old pervading presence of spiritual and impassioned truth.[102] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 93: Letter to Miss Blagden, Feb. 24, 1870, given by Mrs Orr, p. 287.] [Footnote 94: Vivid descriptions of Le Croisic at an earlier date may be found in one of Balzac's short stories.] [Footnote 95: _Life of Jowett_ by Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell, i. 400, 401.] [Footnote 96: A repeated invitation in 1877 was also declined. In 1875 Browning was nominated by the Independent Club to the office of Lord Rector of Glasgow University.] [Footnote 97: Such a book would naturally attract Browning, who, like his father, had an interest in celebrated criminal cases. In his _Memories_ (p. 338), Kegan Paul records his surprise at a dinner-party where the conversation turned on murder, to find Browning acquainted "to the minutest detail" with every _cause célèbre_ of that kind within living memory.] [Footnote 98: _An Artist's Reminiscences_, by R. Lehmann (1894), p. 224.] [Footnote 99: Rossetti Papers, p. 302.] [Footnote 100: So the story was told by Dante Rossetti, as recorded by Mrs Gilchrist; she says that she believed the story was told of himself by Carlyle.] [Footnote 101: The passage specially referred to is in Caponsacchi's monologue, II. 936-973, beginning with "Thought? nay, sirs, what shall follow was not thought."] [Footnote 102: I have used here some passages already printed in my _Studies in Literature_.] Chapter XIII Poems on Classical Subjects