He had heard a lot about Browning. He had heard that he was a stylish poet and an inspiring thinker. But personally he did not find that he cared so much for Browning. There were so many lines that he had to read three or four times before they made sense, and there was so much stuff about Italy and all those Wop countries.
But Browning did give him a number of new words for the note-book of polysyllables and phrases which he was to keep for years, and which was to secrete material for some of his most rotund public utterances. There has been preserved a page from it:
incinerate—burn up
Merovingian—French tribe bout a. d. 500
rem Golgotha was scene crucifixn
Leigh Hunt—poet—1840—n. g.
lupin—blue flower
defeasance—making nix
chanson (pro. Shan-song)—French kind of song
Rem: Man worth while is m. who can smile when ev thing goes dead wrong