he becomes
“... the fated man of men
Whom the ages must obey.”
This was the undreamed destiny hovering over the young poet, luring him on like a guiding cloud which became a pillar of fire by night.
Among his London friends was the Chevalier George de Benkhausen, the Russian Consul-General, who, being suddenly summoned to Russia on some secret mission of state, invited Browning to accompany him. Browning went “nominally in the character of secretary,” Mrs. Orr says, and they fared forth on March 1, by steamer to Rotterdam, and then journeyed more than fifteen hundred miles by diligence, drawn by relays of galloping horses. The expedition was to Browning a rich mine of poetic material. The experience sank into the subconsciousness as seed to await fruition. In his “Ivan Ivanovitch,” where is seen
“This highway broad and straight e’en from the Neva’s mouth
To Moscow’s gates of gold,”
and in which the unending pine forests rising from the snow-covered ground are so vividly pictured; and in “Colombe’s Birthday,” where is seen the region of the heroine,—
“Castle Ravestein—
That sleeps out trustfully its extreme age
On the Meuse’ quiet bank, where she lived queen
Over the water-buds,...”
and the place
“... when he hid his child
Among the river-flowers at Ravestein,”
it can be seen how all this country impressed his imagination. Professor Hall Griffin finds in the fifth book of “Sordello” an unmistakable description of the most famous and oldest portrait of Charlemagne, which hangs in the Council Hall of the Rath-haus, in Aix, which Mr. Browning saw on this trip. During these three months he saw something of Russian society, and on the breaking up of the ice in the Neva in spring, witnessed the annual ceremony of the Czar’s drinking the first glass of water from it. Much of the gorgeous, barbaric splendor of Russian fairs and booths, “with droshkies and fish-pies” on the one hand, and stately palaces on the other, haunted him, and reflected themselves in several of his poems. Especially did the Russian music and strains of folk-song linger in his memory for all the after years.