Scorn not the Sonnet.... With this key

Shakespeare unlocked his heart.

Browning in 1876 (thirty years after the “Sonnets from the Portuguese” were written) wrote in his poem called House:

“With this same key

Shakespeare unlocked his heart”....

Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!

Swinburne comments on these lines: “No whit the less like Shakespeare, but undoubtedly the less like Browning.”

... Come back with me to the first of all,