ABSTRACT
In the capital – (if I dare so pronounce) – capital Hendecasyllabics (I keep, as my way is, seeing one word while writing or spelling another, and in this instance had before my mind’s eye the old edition of George Buchanan’s Poems I used to read when a boy – with its “Hendecasyllabon Liber,” – good reading it is or was) – well, in these I fi nd nothing but fi rst rate work . . . (17 Apr. 1883; Hood 218)
Browning’s curious comment about his own thinking performs what he describes, demonstrating his capacity for a kind of simultaneous, multi-dimensioned thinking which includes pictures as well as the words on the page. Browning begins the sentence he writes by commenting on Hendecasyllabic metre. He interrupts himself twice by asides in parentheses, in which we see represented the lightning speed of his thought as well as his tendency to think on two different levels at once. One could argue that he cannot continue his sentence without immediately describing what the previous word suggests, or that one idea makes him think of something related but tangential, which he notes before moving on. The metre he mentions reminds him instantly of another example of the same; then still within the same
sentence he makes that fascinating comment about seeing one word as he writes or spells another. I have quoted here only part of this long sentence.
