This is told in the tales of the Troubadours.
Published, simultaneously, in Mr. Fox's "Monthly Repository." The song in "Pippa Passes" beginning "A king lived long ago," and the verses introduced in "James Lee's Wife," were also first published in this Magazine, edited by the generous and very earliest encourager of Mr. Browning's boyish attempts at poetry.
These verses were written when Mr. Browning was twenty-three.