."S*f . * 

 
 APR i 5 1929 
 40N 7 
 
 SOUTHERN BRANCH I 
 
 UNIVERSITY of CAUFOKW* 
 
 LIBRARY* 
 
 LOS ANGEUB,
 
 LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM SHARP. 
 
 C HH6- 
 
 
 j i ... i . . 
 
 .. 
 
 » > 
 
 • . 
 
 . 
 
 LONDON: 
 WALTER SCOTT, 24 WARWICK LANE. 
 
 1890. 
 
 {All rights reserved.)
 
 • ■ ■ I - . < ' . ... 
 
 ■ * < 
 
 < i i 
 
 . ' ' . ' * * 
 
 . < < < , 
 
 C C C C C < t i
 
 \ ft 
 
 « S : 
 
 
 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 London, Robert Browning's birthplace ; his immediate pre- 
 decessors and contemporaries in literature, art, and music; 
 born May 7th, 1812 ; origin of the Browning family; 
 assertions as to its Semitic connection apparently ground- 
 less ; the poet a putative descendant of the Captain Micaiah 
 Browning mentioned by Macaulay; Robert Browning's 
 mother of Scottish and German origin ; his father a man 
 of exceptional powers, artist, poet, critic, student; Mr. 
 Browning's opinion of his son's writings ; the home in 
 Camberwell ; Robert Browning's childhood ; concerning 
 his optimism; his fondness for Carravaggio's "Andromeda 
 and Perseus "; his poetic precocity; origin of "The Flight 
 of the Duchess " ; writes Byronic verse ; is sent to school 
 at Peckham ; his holiday afternoons ; sees London by 
 night, from Heme Hill ; the significance of the spectacle 
 to him II 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 He wishes to be a poet; writes in the style of Byron and Pope; 
 the " Death of Harold " ; his poems, written when twelve 
 years old, shown to Miss Flower; the Rev. W. J. Fox's 
 criticisms on them; he comes across Shelley's "Djemon 
 of the World " ; Mrs. Browning procures Shelley's poems,
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 also those of Keats, for her son; the perusal of these 
 volumes proves an important event in his poetic develop- 
 ment ; he leaves school when fourteen years old, and 
 studies at home under a tutor ; attends a few lectures at 
 University College, 1829-30; chooses his career, at the 
 age of twenty; earliest record of his utterances concerning 
 his youthful life printed in Century Magazine, 1881 ; he 
 plans a series of monodramatic epics ; Browning's life- 
 work, collectively one monodramatic "epic"; Shak- 
 spere's and Browning's methods compared ; Browning 
 writes "Pauline" in 1832; his own criticism on it; his 
 parents' opinions ; his aunt's generous gift ; the poem 
 published in January 1833; description of the poem; 
 written under the inspiring stimulus of Shelley ; its auto- 
 psychical significance ; its importance to the student of 
 the poet's works ; quotations from "Pauline" . . 29 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The public reception of "Pauline"; criticisms thereupon; 
 Mr. Fox's notice in the Monthly Repository, and its 
 results; Dante Gabriel Rossetti reads "Pauline" and 
 writes to the author ; Browning's reference to Tennyson's 
 reading of " Maud" in 1855; Browning frequents literary 
 society; reads at the British Museum; makes the acquaint- 
 ance of Charles Dickens and " Ion " Talfourd; a volume 
 of poems by Tennyson published simultaneously with 
 "Pauline"; in 1833 he commences his travels; goes to 
 Russia y the sole record of his experiences there to be 
 found in the poem "Ivan Ivanovitch," published in 
 Dramatic Idyls, 1879; his acquaintance with Mazzini; 
 Browning goes to Italy; visits Asolo, whence he drew 
 hints for "Sordello" and " Pippa Passes"; in 1834 he 
 returns to Camber well; in autumn of 1834 and winter of 
 1835 commences "Sordello," writes "Paracelsus," and 
 one or two short poems ; his love for Venice ; a new voice 
 audible in "Johannes Agricola " and "Porphyria";
 
 CONTENTS. 5 
 
 PAGE 
 
 "Paracelsus," published in 1S35 ; his own explanation of 
 it; his love of walking in the dark; some of " Paracelsus" 
 and of "Strafford" composed in a wood nearDulwich; 
 concerning " Paracelsus " and Browning's sympathy with 
 the scientific spirit; description and scope of the poem; 
 quotations therefrom; estimate of the work, and its four 
 lyrics 49 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Criticisms upon "Paracelsus," important one written by John 
 Forster; Browning meets Macready at the house of Mr. 
 Fox ; personal description of the poet ; Macready's opinion 
 of the poem; Browning spends New Year's Day, 1836, 
 at the house of the tragedian and meets John Forster; 
 Macready urges him to write a play; his subsequent 
 interview with the tragedian; he plans a drama to be 
 entitled "Narses"; meets Wordsworth and Walter 
 Savage Landor at a supper party, when the young poet is 
 toasted, and Macready again proposes that Browning 
 should write a play, from which arose the idea of 
 "Strafford"; his acquaintance with Wordsworth and 
 Landor; MS. of "Strafford" accepted; its performance 
 at Covent Garden Theatre on the 26th May 1837; runs 
 for five nights; the author's comments; the drama issued 
 by Messrs. Longman & Co.; the performance in 1886; 
 estimate of " Strafford " ; Browning's dramas; comparison 
 between the Elizabethan and Victorian dramatic eras ; 
 Browning's soul-depictive faculty; his dramatic method; 
 estimate of his dramas; Landor's acknowledgment of the 
 dedication to him of " Luria " . . . . -73 
 
 CHAPTER V, 
 
 "Profundity" and "Simplicity"; the faculty of wonder; Brown- 
 ing's first conception of " Pippa Passes"; his residence in 
 London ; his country walks ; his ways and habits, and his
 
 6 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 heart-episodes; debates whether to become a clergyman; 
 is "Pippa Passes" a drama? estimate of the poem; 
 Browning's rambles on Wimbledon Common and in 
 Dulwich Wood, where he composed his lines upon 
 Shelley ; asserts there is romance in Camberwell as 
 well as in Italy; "Sordello"; the charge of obscurity 
 against "Sordello"; the nature and intention of the 
 poem; quotations therefrom; anecdote about Douglas 
 Jerrold; Tennyson's, Carlyle's, and M. Odysse Barot's 
 opinions on "Sordello"; "enigmatic" poetry; in 1863 
 Browning contemplated the re-writing of "Sordello"; 
 dedication to the French critic, Milsand . . . -93 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Browning's three great dramatic poems ; " The Ring and the 
 Book" his finest work; its uniqueness ; Carlyle's criticism 
 of it; Poetry versus Tour-de-Force; "The Ring and the 
 Book" begun in 1S66; analysis of the poem; kinship of 
 "The Ring and the Book" and "Aurora Leigh " ; explana- 
 tion of title; the idea taken from a parchment volume 
 Browning picked up in Florence ; the poem planned at 
 Casa Guidi ; "O Lyric Love," etc. ; description and 
 analysis of "The Ring and the Book," with quotations; 
 compared as a poem with " The Inn Album," "Pauline," 
 "Asolando," "Men and Women," etc. ; imaginary 
 volumes, to be entitled " Transcripts from Life " and 
 "Flowers o' the Vine"; Browning's greatest period; 
 Browning's primary importance 113 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Early life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning; born in 1820; 
 the chief sorrow of her life; the Barrett family settle 
 in London; "The Cry of the Children" and its 
 origin; Miss Barrett's friends; effect on her of Browning's 
 poetry; she makes Browning's acquaintance in 1846 ;
 
 CONTENTS. 7 
 
 PAGE 
 
 her early belief in him as a poet; her physical 
 delicacy and her sensitiveness of feeling ; personal appear- 
 ance of Robert Browning; his "electric" hand; Elizabeth 
 Barrett discerns his personal worth, and is susceptible 
 to the strong humanity of Browning's song; Mr. Barrett's 
 jealousy ; their engagement ; Miss Barrett's acquaintance 
 with Mrs. Jameson; quiet marriage in 1S46; Mr. Barrett's 
 resentment; the Brownings go to Paris; thence to Italy 
 with Mrs. Jameson; Wordsworth's comments; resi- 
 dence in Pisa; "Sonnets from the Portuguese"; in the 
 spring they go to Florence, thence to Ancona, where 
 " The Guardian Angel" was written; Casa Guidi; W. W. 
 Story's account of the rooms at Casa Guidi ; perfect union 135 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 March 1849, birth of Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning; 
 Browning writes his "Christmas Eve and Easter Day"; 
 " Casa Guidi Windows " commenced; 1850, they go to 
 Rome; "Two in the Campagna"; proposal to confer 
 poet-laureateship on Mrs. Browning; return to London; 
 winter in Paris; summer in London; Kenyon's friendship; 
 return in autumn to Casa Guidi ; Browning's Essay on 
 Shelley for the twenty-five spurious Shelley letters ; 
 midsummer at Baths of Lucca, where "In a Balcony" 
 was in part written; winter of 1853-4 in Rome; record 
 of work ; "Pen's" illness; "Ben Karshook's Wisdom"; 
 return to Florence; (1856) "Men and Women" 
 published ; the Brownings go to London ; in summer 
 "Aurora Leigh" issued; 1858, Mrs. Browning's waning 
 health; 1855-64 comparatively unproductive period with 
 R. Browning; record of work; July 1855, they travel 
 to Normandy; "Legend of Pornic"; Mrs. Browning's 
 ardent interest in the Italian struggle of 1859; winter 
 in Rome; "Poems before Congress"; her last poem, 
 " North and South " ; death of Mrs. Browning at Casa 
 Guidi, 28th June 1861 157
 
 8 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Browning's allusions to death of his wife ; Miss Browning 
 resides with her brother from 1866; 1S68, collected works 
 published; first part of "The Ring and the Book" pub- 
 lished in November 1866; " Herve Riel" written; Brown- 
 ing's growing popularity ; Tauchnitz editions of his poems 
 in 1872; also first book of selections; dedication to Lord 
 Tennyson; 1877, he goes to La Saisiaz, near Geneva; 
 "La Saisiaz" and "The Two Poets of Croisic" pub- 
 lished 1878; Browning's later poems; Browning Society 
 established 1881 ; Browning's letter thereupon to Mr. 
 Yates ; trips abroad ; his London residences ; his last letter 
 to Tennyson; revisits Asolo; Palazzo Rezzonico; his belief 
 in immortality; his death, Thursday, Dec. 1 2th, 1889; 
 funeral in Westminster Abbey ; Sonnet by George Mere- 
 dith; new star in Orion; R. Browning's place in literature; 
 Summary, etc. • .176 

 
 NOTE. 
 
 In all important respects I leave this volume to speak 
 for itself. For obvious reasons it does not pretend to be 
 more than a Memoire pour servir : in the nature of 
 things, the definitive biography cannot appear for many 
 years to come. None the less gratefully may I take the 
 present opportunity to express my indebtedness to Mr. 
 R. Barrett Browning, and to other relatives and intimate 
 friends of Robert Browning, who have given me serviceable 
 information, and otherwise rendered kindly aid. For some 
 of the hitherto unpublished details my thanks are, in 
 particular, due to Mrs. Fraser Corkran and Miss Alice 
 Corkran, and to other old friends of the poet and his family, 
 here, in Italy, and in America ; though in one or two 
 instances, I may add, I had them from Robert Browning 
 himself. It is with pleasure that I further acknowledge my 
 indebtedness to Dr. Furnivall, for the loan of the advance- 
 proofs of his privately-printed pamphlet on "Browning's 
 Ancestors"; and to the Browning Society's Publications — 
 particularly to Mrs. Sutherland Orr's and Dr. Furnivall's 
 biographical and bibliographical contributions thereto ; to 
 Mr. Gosse's biographical article in the Century Magazine
 
 10 NOTE. 
 
 for 1 88 1 ; to Mr. Ingram's Life of E. B. Browning ; and 
 to the Me?noirs of An?ia fameson, the Italian Note-Books 
 of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mr. G. S. Hillard's Six Months 
 in Italy (1853), and the Lives and Correspondence of 
 Macready, Miss Mitford, Leigh Hunt, and Walter Savage 
 Landor. I regret that the imperative need of concision has 
 prevented the insertion of many of the letters, anecdotes, 
 and reminiscences, so generously placed at my disposal ; 
 but possibly I may have succeeded in educing from them 
 some essential part of that light which they undoubtedly 
 cast upon the personality and genius of the poet.
 
 LIFE OF BROWNING. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IT must, to admirers of Browning's writings, appear 
 singularly appropriate that so cosmopolitan a poet 
 was born in London. It would seem as though 
 something of that mighty complex life, so confusedly 
 petty to the narrow vision, so grandiose and even 
 majestic to the larger ken, had blent with his being 
 from the first. What fitter birthplace for the poet whom 
 a comrade has called the "Subtlest Assertor of the Soul 
 in Song," the poet whose writings are indeed a mirror 
 of the age ? 
 
 A man may be in all things a Londoner and yet be a 
 provincial. The accident of birthplace does not neces- 
 sarily involve parochialism of the soul. It is not the 
 village which produces the Hampden, but the Hampden 
 who immortalises the village. It is a favourite jest of 
 Rusticus that his urban brother has the manner of 
 Omniscience and the knowledge of a parish beadle. 
 Nevertheless, though the strongest blood insurgent in 
 the metropolitan heart is not that which is native to it,
 
 12 LIFE OF 
 
 one might well be proud to have had one's atom-pulse 
 atune from the first with the large rhythm of the national 
 life at its turbulent, congested, but ever ebullient centre. 
 Certainly Browning was not the man to be ashamed of 
 his being a Londoner, much less to deny his natal 
 place. He was proud of it : through good sense, no 
 doubt, but possibly also through some instinctive appre- 
 hension of the fact that the great city was indeed the 
 fit mother of such a son. " Ashamed of having been 
 born in the greatest city of the world ! " he exclaimed 
 on one occasion; "what an extraordinary thing to 
 say ! It suggests a wavelet in a muddy shallow grimily 
 contorting itself because it had its birth out in the great 
 
 ocean." 
 
 On the day of the poet's funeral in Westminster Abbey, 
 
 one of the most eminent of his peers remarked to me that 
 Browning came to us as one coming into his own. 
 This is profoundly true. There was in good sooth a 
 mansion prepared against his advent. Long ago, we 
 should have surrendered as to a conqueror : now, how- 
 ever, we know that princes of the mind, though they 
 must be valorous and potent as of yore, can enter 
 upon no heritance save that which naturally awaits 
 them, and has been made theirs by long and intricate 
 processes. 
 
 The lustrum which saw the birth of Robert Browning, 
 
 that is the third in the nineteenth century, was a remark- 
 able one indeed. Thackeray came into the world some 
 months earlier than the great poet, Charles Dickens 
 within the same twelvemonth, and Tennyson three years 
 sooner, when also Elizabeth Barrett was born, and the 
 foremost naturalist of modern times first saw the light.
 
 BROWNING. 13 
 
 It is a matter of significance that the great wave of 
 scientific thought which ultimately bore forward on its 
 crest so many famous men, from Brewster and Faraday 
 to Charles Darwin, had just begun to rise with irresist- 
 ible impulsion. Lepsius's birth was in 1813, and that 
 of the great Flemish novelist, Henri Conscience, in 181 2: 
 about the same period were the births of Freiligrath, 
 Gutzkow, and Auerbach, respectively one of the most 
 lyricakpoets, the most potent dramatist, the most charming 
 romancer of Germany : and, also, in France, of Theophile 
 Gautier and Alfred de Musset. Among representatives of 
 the other arts— with two of which Browning must ever 
 be closely associated — Mendelssohn and Chopin were 
 born in 1809, and Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner within 
 the four succeeding years : within which space also came 
 Diaz and Meissonier and the great Millet. Other high 
 names there are upon the front of the century. Macaulay, 
 Cardinal Newman, John Stuart Mill (one of the earliest, 
 by the way, to recognise the genius of Browning), 
 Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Ampere, 
 Quinet, Prosper Merime'e, Sainte-Beuve, Strauss, Monta- 
 lembert, are among the laurel-bearers who came into 
 existence betwixt 1800 and 181 2. 
 
 When Robert Browning was born in London in 1812, 
 Sheridan had still four years to live ; Jeremy Bentham 
 was at the height of his contemporary reputation, and 
 Godwin was writing glibly of the virtues of humanity 
 and practising the opposite qualities, while Crabbe 
 was looked upon as one of the foremost of living 
 poets. Wordsworth was then forty, Sir Walter Scott 
 forty-one, Coleridge forty-two, Walter Savage Landor 
 and Charles Lamb each in his forty-fifth year. Byron
 
 14 LIFE OF 
 
 was four-and-twenty, Shelley not yet quite of age, two 
 radically different men, Keats and Carlyle, both youths 
 of seventeen. Abroad, Laplace was in his maturity, with 
 fifteen years more yet to live; Joubert with twelve; 
 Goethe, with twenty ; Lamarck, the' Schlegels, Cuvier, 
 Chateaubriand, Hegel, Niebiihr (to specify some leading 
 names only), had many years of work before them. 
 Schopenhauer was only four-and-twenty, while Beranger 
 was thirty-two. The Polish poet Mickiewicz was a boy of 
 fourteen, and Poushkin was but a twelvemonth older; 
 Heine, a lad of twelve, was already enamoured of the 
 great Napoleonic legend. The foremost literary critic of 
 the century was running about the sands of Boulogne, or 
 perhaps wandering often along the ramparts of the old 
 town, introspective even then, with something of that rare 
 and insatiable curiosity which we all now recognise as 
 so distinctive of Sainte-Beuve. Again, the greatest 
 creative literary artist of the century, in prose at any 
 rate, was leading an apparently somewhat indolent 
 schoolboy life at Tours, undreamful yet of enormous 
 debts, colossal undertakings, gigantic failures, and the 
 Comedie Humaine. In art, Sir Henry Raeburn, William 
 Blake, Flaxman, Canova, Thorwaldsen, Crome, Sir 
 Thomas Lawrence, Constable, Sir David Wilkie, and 
 Turner were in the exercise of their happiest faculties : as 
 were, in the usage of theirs, Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, 
 Spohr, Donizetti, and Bellini. 
 
 It is not inadvisedly that I make this specification of 
 great names, of men who were born coincidentally with, 
 or were in the broader sense contemporaries of Robert 
 Browning. There is no such thing as a fortuitous birth. 
 Creation does not occur spontaneously, as in that drawing
 
 BROWNING. 15 
 
 of David Scott's where from the footprint of the Omnipo- 
 tent spring human spirits and fiery stars. Literally indeed, 
 as a great French writer has indicated, a man is the 
 child of his time. It is a matter often commented 
 upon by students of literature, that great men do not 
 appear at the beginning, but rather at the acme of 
 a period. They are not the flying scud of the coming 
 wave, but the gleaming crown of that wave itself. 
 The epoch expends itself in preparation for these great 
 ones. 
 
 If Nature's first law were not a law of excess, the 
 economy of life would have meagre results. I think it 
 is Turgeniev who speaks somewhere of her as a 
 gigantic Titan, working in gloomy silence, with the 
 same savage intentness upon a subtler twist of a flea's 
 joints as upon the Destinies of Man. 
 
 If there be a more foolish cry than that poetry is 
 on the wane, it is that the great days had passed 
 away even before Robert Browning and Alfred Tenny- 
 son were born. The way was prepared for Browning, 
 as it was for Shakspere: as it is, beyond doubt, for 
 the next high peer of these. 
 
 There were ' Roberts ' among the sons of the Brown- 
 ing family for at least four generations. It has been 
 affirmed, on disputable authority, that the surname is 
 the English equivalent for Bruning, and that the family 
 is of Teutonic origin. Possibly : but this origin is too 
 remote to be of any practical concern. Browning him- 
 self, it may be added, told Mr. Moncure Conway that the 
 original name was De Bruni. It is not a matter of much 
 importance : the poet was, personally and to a great 
 extent in his genius, Anglo-Saxon. Though there are
 
 16 LIFE OF 
 
 plausible grounds for the assumption. I can find nothing 
 to substantiate the common assertion that, immediately, 
 or remotely, his people were Jews. 1 
 
 As to Browning's physiognomy and personal traits, 
 this much may be granted : if those who knew him were 
 told he was a Jew they would not be much surprised. 
 In his exuberant vitality, in his sensuous love of music 
 and the other arts, in his combined imaginativeness 
 and shrewdness of common sense, in his superficial 
 expansiveness and actual reticence, he would have been 
 typical enough of the potent and artistic race for whom 
 he has so often of late been claimed. 
 
 What, however, is most to the point is that neither to 
 curious acquaintances nor to intimate friends, neither to 
 Jews nor Gentiles, did he ever admit more than that he 
 was a good Protestant, and sprung of a Puritan stock. 
 He was tolerant of all religious forms, but with a natural 
 bias towards Anglican Evangelicalism. 
 
 In appearance there was, perhaps, something of the 
 Semite in Robert Browning : yet this is observable but 
 slightly in the portraits of him during the last twenty 
 years, and scarcely at all in those which represent him as a 
 young man. It is most marked in the drawing by Rudolf 
 Lehmann, representing Browning at the age of forty- 
 seven, where he looks out upon us with a physiognomy 
 which is, at least, as much distinctively Jewish as English. 
 
 1 Fairly conclusive evidence to the contrary, on the paternal side, 
 is afforded in the fact that, in 1757, the poet's great-grandfather 
 gave one of his sons the baptismal name of Christian. Dr. 
 Futnivall's latest researches prove that there is absolutely " no 
 ground for supposing the presence of any Jewish blood in the poet's 
 veins."
 
 S S 
 
 BROWNING. 17 
 
 Possibly the large dark eyes (so unlike both in colour 
 and shape what they were in later life) and curved nose 
 and full lips, with the oval face, may have been, as it 
 were, seen judaically by the artist. These characteristics, 
 again, are greatly modified in Mr. Lehmann's subsequent 
 portrait in oils. 
 
 The poet's paternal great-grandfather, who was owner 
 of the Woodyates Inn, in the parish of Pentridge, in 
 Dorsetshire, claimed to come of good west-country 
 stock. Browning believed, but always conscientiously 
 maintained there was no proof in support of the 
 assumption, that he was a descendant of the Captain 
 Micaiah Browning who, as Macaulay relates in his 
 History of Englatid, raised the siege of Derry in 
 1689 by springing the boom across Lough Foyle, and 
 perished in the act. The same ancestral line is said to 
 comprise the Captain Browning who commanded the 
 ship The Holy Ghost, which conveyed Henry V. to 
 France before he fought the Battle of Agincourt, and in 
 recognition of whose services two waves, said to represent 
 waves of the sea, were added to his coat of arms. It 
 is certainly a point of some importance in the evidence, 
 as has been indicated, that these arms were displayed 
 by the gallant Captain Micaiah, and are borne by the 
 present family. That the poet was a pure-bred English- 
 man in the strictest sense, however, as has commonly 
 been asserted, is not the case. His mother was 
 Scottish ^ through her mother and by birth, but her 
 father was the son of a German from Hamburg, named 
 Wiedemann, who, by the way, in connection with his 
 relationship as maternal grandfather to the poet, it is 
 interesting to note, was an accomplished draughtsman
 
 18 LIFE OF 
 
 and musician. 1 Browning's paternal grandmother, again, 
 was a Creole. As Mrs. Orr remarks, this pedigree 
 throws a valuable light on the vigour and variety of the 
 poet's genius. Possibly the main current of his ancestry 
 is as little strictly English as German. A friend sends 
 me the following paragraph from a Scottish paper: — 
 "What of the Scottish Brownings? I had it long ago 
 from one of the name that the Brownings came originally 
 from Ayrshire, and that several families of them emi- 
 grated to the North of Ireland during the times of the 
 Covenanters. There is, moreover, a small town or village 
 in the North of Ireland called Browningstown. Might 
 not the poet be related to these Scottish Brownings ?" 
 
 Browning's great-grandfather, as indicated above, was 
 a small proprietor in Dorsetshire. His son, whether per- 
 force or from choice, removed to London when he was a 
 youth, and speedily obtained a clerkship in the Bank of 
 England, where he remained for fifty years, till he was 
 pensioned off in 182 1 with over ^400 a year. He died 
 in 1833. His wife, to whom he was married in or about 
 1780, was one Margaret Morris Tittle, a Creole, born in 
 the West Indies. Her portrait, by Wright of Derby, used 
 to hang in the poet's dining-room. They resided, Mr. 
 R. Barrett Browning tells me, in Battersea, where his 
 grandfather was their first-born. The paternal grand- 
 father of the poet decided that his three sons, Robert, 
 William Shergold, and Reuben, should go into business, 
 
 1 It has frequently been stated that Browning's maternal grand- 
 father, Mr. Wiedemann, was a Jew. Mr. Wiedemann, the son of a 
 Hamburg merchant, was a small shipowner in Dundee. Had he, 
 or his father, been Semitic, he would not have baptised one of his 
 daughters ' Christiana.'
 
 BROWNING. 19 
 
 the two younger in London, the elder abroad. All three 
 became efficient financial clerks, and attained to good 
 positions and fair means. 1 The eldest, Robert, was a 
 man of exceptional powers. He was a poet, both in 
 sentiment and expression; and he understood, as well 
 as enjoyed, the excellent in art. He was a scholar, too, 
 in a reputable fashion: not indifferent to what he had 
 learnt in his youth, nor heedless of the high opinion 
 generally entertained for the greatest writers of anti- 
 quity, but with a particular care himself for Horace 
 and Anacreon. As his son once told a friend. "The 
 old gentleman's brain was a storehouse of literary and 
 philosophical antiquities. VHe was completely versed in 
 mediaeval legend, and seemed to have known Paracelsus, 
 Faustus, and even Talmudic personages, personally " — a 
 significant detail, by the way. He was fond of metrical 
 composition, and his ease and grace in the use of the 
 heroic couplet were the admiration, not only of his intel- 
 lectual associates, but, in later days, of his son, who was 
 wont to affirm, certainly in all seriousness, that expres- 
 sionally his father was a finer poetic artist than himself. 
 Some one has recorded of him that he was an authority 
 on the Letters of Junius : fortunately he had more 
 tangible claims than this to the esteem of his fellows. 
 It was his boast that, notwithstanding the exigencies 
 of his vocation, he knew as much of the history of art 
 as any professional critic. His extreme modesty is 
 deducible from this naive remark. He was an amateur 
 
 1 The three brothers were men of liberal education and literary 
 tastes. Mr. W. S. Browning, who died in 1874, was an author of 
 some repute. His History of the Huguenots is a standard book 
 on the subject.
 
 20 LIFE OF 
 
 artist, moreover, as well as poet, critic, and student. I 
 have seen several of his drawings which are praise- 
 worthy : his studies in portraiture, particularly, are ably 
 touched : and, as is well known, he had an active faculty 
 of pictorial caricature. In the intervals of leisure which 
 beset the best regulated clerk he was addicted to making 
 drawings of the habitual visitors to the Bank of England, 
 in which he had obtained a post on his return, in 1803, 
 from the West Indies, and in the enjoyment of which he 
 remained till 1853, when he retired on a small pension. 
 His son had an independent income, but whether from a 
 bequest, or in the form of an allowance from his then 
 unmarried Uncle Reuben, is uncertain. In the first 
 year of his marriage Mr. Browning resided in an old 
 house in Southampton Street, Peckham, and there the 
 poet was born. The house was long ago pulled down, 
 and another built on its site. Mr. Browning afterwards 
 removed to another domicile in the same Peckham 
 district. Many years later, he and his family left Camber- 
 well and resided at Hatcham, near New Cross, where his 
 brothers and sisters (by his father's second marriage) 
 lived. There was a stable attached to the Hatcham 
 house, and in it Mr. Reuben Browning kept his horse, 
 which he let his poet-nephew ride, while he himself was 
 at his desk in Rothschild's bank. No doubt this horse 
 was the 'York' alluded to by the poet in the letter 
 quoted, as a footnote, at page 189 of this book. Some 
 years after his wife's death, which occurred in 1849, 
 Mr. Browning left Hatcham and came to Paddington, 
 but finally went to reside in Paris, and lived there, in a 
 small street off the Champs Elysees, till his death in 
 1866. The Creole strain seems to have been distinctly
 
 BROWNING. 21 
 
 noticeable in Mr. Browning, so much so that it is possible 
 it had something to do with his unwillingness to remain 
 at St. Kitts, where he was certainly on one occasion 
 treated cavalierly enough. The poet's complexion in 
 youth, light and ivory-toned as it was in later life, has 
 been described as olive, and it is said that one of his 
 nephews, who met him in Paris in his early manhood, 
 took him for an Italian. It has been affirmed that it 
 was the emotional Creole strain in Browning which found 
 expression in his passion for music. 
 
 By old friends of the family I have been told that 
 Mr. Browning had a strong liking for children, with 
 whom his really remarkable faculty of impromptu 
 fiction made him a particular favourite. Sometimes 
 he would supplement his tales by illustrations with pencil 
 or brush. Miss Alice Corkran has shown me an illus- 
 trated coloured map, depictive of the main incidents and 
 scenery of the Pilgrim's Progress, which he genially made 
 for "the children." 1 
 
 He had three children himself — Robert, born May 
 7th, 1812, a daughter named Sarianna, after her mother, 
 and Clara. His wife was a woman of singular beauty 
 of nature, with a depth of religious feeling saved from 
 narrowness of scope only by a rare serenity and a 
 fathomless charity. Her son's loving admiration of 
 her was almost a passion : even late in life he rarely 
 
 1 Mrs. Fraser Corkran, who saw much of the poet's father durii\T[ 
 his residence in Paris, has spoken to me of his extraordinary 
 analytical faculty in the elucidation of complex criminal cases. It 
 was once said of him that his detective faculty amounted to genius. 
 This is a significant trait in the father of the author of " The Ring 
 and the Book." 

 
 22 LIFE OF 
 
 spoke of her without tears coming to his eyes. She was, 
 moreover, of an intellectual bent of mind, and with 
 an artistic bias having its readiest fulfilment in music, and, 
 to some extent, in poetry. In the latter she inclined to 
 the Romanticists : her husband always maintained the 
 supremacy of Pope. He looked with much dubiety 
 upon his son's early writings, "Pauline "and "Paracel- 
 sus"; "Sordello," though he found it beyond either his 
 artistic or his mental apprehension, he forgave, because 
 it was written in rhymed couplets ; the maturer works he 
 regarded with sympathy and pride, with a vague admira- 
 tion which passed into a clearer understanding only when 
 his long life was drawing near its close. 
 
 Of his children's company he never tired, even when 
 they were scarce out of babyhood. He was fond of 
 taking the little Robert in his arms, and walking to and 
 fro with him in the dusk in " the library," soothing the 
 child to sleep by singing to him snatches of Anacreon in 
 the original, to a favourite old tune of his, " A Cottage 
 in a Wood." Readers of " Asolando " will remember 
 the allusions in that volume to " my father who was a 
 scholar and knew Greek." A week or two before his 
 death Browning told an American friend, Mrs. Corson, 
 in reply to a statement of hers that no one could accuse 
 him of letting his talents lie idle : " It would have been 
 quite unpardonable in my case not to have done my 
 best. My dear father put me in a condition most 
 favourable for the best work I was capable of. When I 
 think of the many authors who have had to fight their 
 way through all sorts of difficulties, I have no reason to 
 be proud of my achievements. My good father sacrificed 
 a fortune to his convictions. He could not bear with
 
 BROWNING. 23 
 
 slavery, and left India and accepted a humble bank- 
 office in London. He secured for me all the ease 
 and comfort that a literary man needs to do good 
 work. It would have been shameful if I had not 
 done my best to realise his expectations of me." 1 
 
 The home of Mr. Browning was, as already stated, in 
 Camberwell, a suburb then of less easy access than 
 now, and where there were green trees, and groves, 
 and enticing rural perspectives into " real " country, 
 yet withal not without some suggestion of the metro- 
 politan air. 
 
 " The old trees 
 Which grew by our youth's home — the waving mass 
 Of climbing plants, heavy with bloom and dew — 
 The morning swallows with their songs like words — 
 All these seem clear. . . . 
 
 . . . most distinct amid 
 The fever and the stir of after years." 
 
 {Pauline.) 
 
 Another great writer of our time was born in the same 
 parish : and those who would know Heme Hill and the 
 neighbourhood as it was in Browning's youth will find 
 an enthusiastic guide in the author of Praeterita. 
 
 Browning's childhood was a happy one. Indeed, if the 
 poet had been able to teach in song only what he had 
 learnt in suffering, the larger part of his verse would be 
 singularly barren of interest. From first to last every- 
 thing went well with him, with the exception of a single 
 
 1 'India' is a slip on the part either of Browning or of Mrs. 
 Corson. The poet's father was never in India. He was quite a 
 youth when he went to his mother's sugar-plantation at St. Kitts, 
 in the West Indies.
 
 24 LIFE OF 
 
 profound grief. This must be borne in mind by those 
 who would estimate aright the genius of Robert Browning. 
 It would be affectation or folly to deny that his splendid 
 physique — a paternal inheritance, for his father died at 
 the age of eighty-four, without having ever endured a 
 day's illness — and the exceptionally fortunate circum- 
 stances which were his throughout life, had something to 
 do with that superb faith of his which finds concentrated 
 expression in the lines in Pippa's song — " God's in His 
 Heaven, All's right with the world ! " 
 
 It is difficult for a happy man with an imperturbable 
 digestion to be a pessimist. He is always inclined to 
 give Nature the benefit of the doubt. His favourite term 
 for this mental complaisance is "catholicity of faith," or, 
 it may be, " a divine hope." The less fortunate brethren 
 bewail the laws of Nature, and doubt a future re- 
 adjustment, because of stomachs chronically out of 
 order. An eminent author with a weak digestion 
 wrote to me recently animadverting on what he calls 
 Browning's insanity of optimism : it required no personal 
 acquaintanceship to discern the dyspeptic well-spring of 
 this utterance. All this may be admitted lightly without 
 carrying the physiological argument to extremes. A man 
 may have a liberal hope for himself and for humanity, 
 although his dinner be habitually a martyrdom. After 
 all, we are only dictated to by our bodies : we have not 
 perforce to obey them. A bitter wit once remarked 
 that the soul, if it were ever discovered, would be 
 found embodied in the gastric juice. He was not 
 altogether a fool, this man who had learnt in suffering 
 what he taught in epigram ; yet was he wide of the 
 mark.
 
 BROWNING. 25 
 
 As a very young child Browning was keenly suscep- 
 
 tible to music. One afternoon his mother was playing in 
 the twilight to herself. She was startled to hear a sound 
 behind her. Glancing round, she beheld a little white 
 figure distinct against an oak bookcase, and could 
 just discern two large wistful eyes looking earnestly at 
 her. The next moment the child had sprung into her 
 arms, sobbing passionately at he knew not what, but, as 
 his paroxysm of emotion subsided, whispering over and 
 over, with shy urgency, " Play ! play ! " 
 
 It is strange that among all his father's collection of 
 drawings and engravings nothing had such fascination 
 for him as an engraving of a picture of Andromeda and 
 Perseus by Caravaggio. The story of the innocent 
 victim and the divine deliverer was one of which in 
 his boyhood he never tired of hearing : and as he grew 
 older the charm of its pictorial presentment had for him 
 a deeper and more complex significance. We have it on 
 the~authority of a friend that Browning had this engrav- 
 ing always before his eyes as he wrote his earlier poems. 
 He has given beautiful commemoration to his feeling 
 
 for it in " Pauline " : — 
 
 "Andromeda ! 
 
 And she is with me — years roll, I shall change, 
 
 But change can touch her not — so beautiful 
 
 With her dark eyes, earnest and still, and hair 
 
 Lifted and spread by the salt-sweeping breeze ; 
 
 And one red beam, all the storm leaves in heaven, 
 
 Resting upon her eyes and face and hair, 
 
 As she awaits the snake on the wet beach, 
 
 By the dark rock, and the white wave just breaking 
 
 At her feet ; quite naked and alone, — a thing 
 
 You doubt not, nor fear for, secure that God 
 
 Will come in thunder from the stars to save her."
 
 26 LIFE OF 
 
 One of his own early recollections was that of sitting 
 on his father's knees in the library, and listening with 
 enthralled attention to the Tale of Troy, with marvellous 
 illustrations among the glowing coals in the fireplace ; 
 with, below all, the vaguely heard accompaniment — from 
 the neighbouring room where Mrs. Browning sat " in her 
 chief happiness, her hour of darkness and solitude and 
 music" — of a wild Gaelic lament, with its insistent falling 
 cadences. A story concerning his poetic precocity has 
 been circulated, but is not worth repeating. Most 
 children love jingling rhymes, and one need not be 
 a born genius to improvise a rhyming couplet on an 
 occasion. 
 
 It is quite certain that in nothing in these early 
 poemicules, in such at least as have been preserved 
 without the poet's knowledge and against his will, is 
 there anything of genuine promise. Hundreds of 
 youngsters have written as good, or better, Odes to 
 the Moon, Stanzas on a Favourite Canary, Lines on a 
 Butterfly. What is much more to the point is, that at 
 the age of eight he was able not only to read, but to 
 take delight in Pope's translation of Homer. He used 
 to go about declaiming certain couplets with an air of 
 intense earnestness highly diverting to those who over- 
 heard him. 
 
 About this time also he began to translate the simpler 
 odes of Horace. One of these (viii. Bk. II.) long 
 afterwards suggested to him the theme of his " Instans 
 Tyrannus." It has been put on record that his sister 
 remembers him, as a very little boy, walking round and 
 round the dining-room table, and spanning out the 
 scansion of his verses with his hand on the smooth
 
 BROWNING. 27 
 
 mahogany. He was scarce more than a child when, 
 one Guy Fawkes' day, he heard a woman singing an 
 unfamiliar song, whose burden was, " Following the 
 Queen of the Gipsies, O ! " This refrain haunted him 
 often in the after years. That beautiful fantastic 
 romance, "The Flight of the Duchess," was born out 
 of an insistent memory of this woman's snatch of song, 
 heard in childhood. He was ten when, after several 
 passions malheureuses, this precocious Lothario plunged 
 into a love affair whose intensity was only equalled by its 
 hopelessness. A trifle of fifteen years' seniority and a 
 husband complicated matters, but it was not till after 
 the reckless expenditure of a Horatian ode upon an 
 unclassical mistress that he gave up hope. The out- 
 come of this was what the elder Browning regarded as 
 a startling effusion of much Byronic verse. The young 
 Robert yearned for wastes of ocean and illimitable sands, 
 for dark eyes and burning caresses, for despair that 
 nothing could quench but the silent grave, and, in 
 particular, for hollow mocking laughter. His father 
 looked about for a suitable school, and decided to 
 entrust the boy's further education to Mr. Ready, of 
 Peckham. 
 
 Here he remained till he was fourteen. But already 
 he knew the dominion of dreams. His chief enjoy- 
 ment, on holiday afternoons, was to gain an un- 
 frequented spot, where three huge elms re-echoed 
 the tones of incoherent human music borne thither- 
 ward by the west winds across the wastes of London. 
 Here he loved to lie and dream. Alas, those elms, 
 that high remote coign, have long since passed to 
 the " hidden way " whither the snows of yester year
 
 28 LIFE OF BROWNING. 
 
 have vanished. He would lie for hours looking upon 
 distant London — a golden city of the west literally 
 enough, oftentimes, when the sunlight came streaming 
 in long shafts from behind the towers of Westminster 
 and flashed upon the gold cross of St. Paul's. The 
 coming and going of the cloud-shadows, the sweeping 
 of sudden rains, the dull silvern light emanating from 
 the haze of mist shrouding the vast city, with the 
 added transitory gleam of troubled waters, the drifting 
 of fogs, at that distance seeming like gigantic veils 
 constantly being moved forward and then slowly with- 
 drawn, as though some sinister creature of the atmo- 
 sphere were casting a net among all the dross and 
 ddbris of human life for fantastic sustenance of its 
 own — all this endless, ever-changing, always novel 
 phantasmagoria had for him an extraordinary fascination. 
 One of the memorable nights of his boyhood was an eve 
 when he found his way, not without perturbation of spirit 
 because of the unfamiliar solitary dark, to his loved 
 elms. There, for the first time, he beheld London by 
 night. It seemed to him then more wonderful and 
 appalling than all the host of stars. There was some- 
 thing ominous in that heavy pulsating breath : visible, in 
 a waning and waxing of the tremulous, ruddy glow above 
 the black enmassed leagues of masonry ; audible, in the 
 low inarticulate moaning borne eastward across the 
 crests of Norwood. It was then and there that the 
 tragic significance of life first dimly awed and appealed 
 to his questioning spirit : that the rhythm of humanity 
 first touched deeply in him a corresponding chord.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IT was certainly about this time, as he admitted once 
 in one of his rare reminiscent moods, that Browning 
 felt the artistic impulse stirring within him, like the 
 rising of the sap in a tree. He remembered his mother's 
 music, and hoped to be a musician : he recollected his 
 father's drawings, and certain seductive landscapes and 
 seascapes by painters whom he had heard called " the 
 Norwich men," and he wished to be an artist : then 
 reminiscences of the Homeric lines he loved, of haunting 
 verse-melodies, moved him most of all. 
 
 " I shall never, in the years remaining, 
 Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, 
 Make you music that should all-express me : 
 . . . verse alone, one life allows me." 
 
 He now gave way to the compulsive Byronic vogue, 
 with an occasional relapse to the polished artificialism 
 of his father's idol among British poets. There were 
 several ballads written at this time : if I remember 
 aright, the poet specified the " Death of Harold " as 
 the theme of one. Long afterwards he read these 
 boyish forerunners of " Over the sea our galleys 
 went," and " How they Brought the Good News from 
 Ghent to Aix," and was amused by their derivative if 
 delicate melodies. Mrs. Browning was very proud of
 
 30 LIFE OF 
 
 these early blooms of song, and when her twelve-year-old 
 son, tired of vain efforts to seduce a publisher from the 
 wary ways of business, surrendered in disgust his neatly 
 copied out and carefully stitched MSS., she lost no 
 opportunity — when Mr. Browning was absent — to expa- 
 tiate upon their merits. Among the people to whom 
 she showed them was a Miss Flower. This lady 
 took them home, perused them, discerned dormant 
 genius lurking behind the boyish handwriting, read 
 them to her sister (afterwards to become known 
 as Sarah Flower Adams), copied them out before 
 returning them, and persuaded the celebrated Rev. 
 William Johnson Fox to read the transcripts. Mr. Fox 
 agreed with Miss Flower as to the promise, but not 
 altogether as to the actual accomplishment, nor at all as 
 to the advisability of publication. The originals are 
 supposed to have been destroyed by the poet during the 
 eventful period when, owing to a fortunate gift, poetry 
 became a new thing for him : from a dream, vague, if 
 seductive, as summer-lightning, transformed to a dom- 
 inating reality. Passing a bookstall one day, he 
 saw, in a box of second-hand volumes, a little book 
 advertised as " Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poem : very 
 scarce." He had never heard of Shelley, nor did 
 he learn for a long time that the " Daemon of the 
 World," and the miscellaneous poems appended thereto, 
 constituted a literary piracy. Badly printed, shamefully 
 mutilated, these discarded blossoms touched him to a 
 new emotion. Pope became further removed than ever : 
 Byron, even, lost his magnetic supremacy. From vague 
 remarks in reply to his inquiries, and from one or two 
 casual allusions, he learned that there really was a poet
 
 BROWNING. 31 
 
 called Shelley; that he had written several volumes; 
 that he was dead. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, Browning declared once that 
 the news of this unknown singer's death affected him 
 more poignantly than did, a year or less earlier, the 
 tidings of Byron's heroic end at Missolonghi. He 
 begged his mother to procure him Shelley's works, a 
 request not easily complied with, for the excellent reason 
 that not one of the local booksellers had even heard of 
 the poet's name. Ultimately, however, Mrs. Browning 
 learned that what she sought was procurable at the 
 Olliers' in Vere Street, London. 
 
 She was very pleased with the result of her visit. The 
 books, it is true, seemed unattractive : but they would 
 please Robert, no doubt. If that packet had been lost 
 we should not have had " Pauline " : we might have had 
 a different Browning. It contained most of Shelley's 
 writings, all in their first edition, with the exception of 
 "The Cenci": in addition, there were three volumes by 
 an even less known poet, John Keats, which kindly Mrs. 
 Browning had been persuaded to include in her purchase 
 on Mr. Ollier's assurance that they were the poetic 
 kindred of Shelley's writings, and that Mr. Keats was 
 the subject of the elegiac poem in the purple paper 
 cover, with the foreign-looking type and the imprint 
 "Pisa" at the foot of the title-page, entitled " Adonais." 
 What an evening for the young poet that must have been. 
 He told a friend it was a May night, and that in a 
 laburnum, "heavy with its weight of gold," and in 
 a great copper-beech at the end of a neighbour's 
 garden, two nightingales strove one against the other. 
 For a moment it is a pleasant fancy to imagine that
 
 32 LIFE OF 
 
 there the souls of Keats and Shelley uttered their en- 
 franchised music, not in rivalry but in welcome. We 
 can realise, perhaps, something of the startled delight, of 
 the sudden electric tremors, of the young poet when, with 
 eager eyes, he turned over the pages of " Epipsychidion " 
 or " Prometheus Unbound," " Alastor " or "Endymion," 
 or the Odes to a Nightingale, on Melancholy, on a 
 Grecian Urn. 
 
 More than once Browning alluded to this experience 
 as his first pervasive joy, his first free happiness in 
 outlook. Often in after life he was fain, like his "wise 
 thrush," to "recapture that first fine careless rapture." 
 It was an eventful eve. 
 
 " And suddenly, without heart-wreck, I awoke 
 As from a dream." 
 
 Thenceforth his poetic development was rapid, and con- 
 tinuous. Shelley enthralled him most. The fire and 
 spirit of the great poet's verse, wild and strange often, 
 but ever with an exquisiteness of music which seemed to 
 his admirer, then and later, supreme, thrilled him to a 
 very passion of delight. Something of the more richly 
 coloured, the more human rhythm of Keats affected 
 him also. Indeed, a line from the Ode to a Nightin- 
 gale, in common with one of the loveliest passages in 
 " Epipsychidion," haunted him above all others : and 
 again and again in his poems we may encounter vague 
 echoes of those "remote isles "and "perilous seas" — 
 as, for example, in " the dim clustered isles of the blue 
 sea" of "Pauline," and the "some isle, with the sea's 
 silence on it — some unsuspected isle in the far seas ! " of 
 " Pippa Passes."
 
 BROWNING. 33 
 
 But of course he had other matters for mental occu- 
 pation besides poetry. His education at Mr. Ready's 
 private academy seems to have been excellent so far as 
 it went. He remained there till he was fourteen. 
 Perhaps because of the few boarders at the school, 
 possibly from his own reticence in self-disclosure, he 
 does not seem to have impressed any school-mate 
 deeply. We hear of no one who "knew Browning at 
 school." His best education, after all, was at home. 
 His father and mother incidentally taught him as much 
 as Mr. Ready : his love of painting and music was 
 fostered, indirectly : and in the ' dovecot ' bookshelf 
 above the fireplace in his bedroom, were the precious 
 volumes within whose sway and magic was his truest 
 life. 
 
 His father, for some reason which has not been made 
 public, but was doubtless excellent, and is, in the light 
 in which we now regard it, a matter for which to be 
 thankful, decided to send his son neither to a large pub- 
 lic school, nor, later, to Oxford or Cambridge. A more 
 stimulative and wider training was awaiting him else- 
 where. 
 
 For a time Robert's education was superintended by 
 a tutor, who came to the house in Camberwell for 
 several hours daily. The afternoons were mainly 
 devoted to music, to exercise, and occasionally to various 
 experimental studies in technical science. In the even- 
 ings, after his preparatory tasks were over, when he 
 was not in the entertaining company of his father, he 
 read and assiduously wrote. After poetry, he cared most 
 for history: but as a matter of fact, little came amiss 
 
 to his eager intellectual appetite. It was a period of 
 
 3
 
 LIFE OF 
 
 growth, with, it may be, a vague consciousness that his 
 mind was expanding towards compulsive expression. 
 
 " So as I grew, I rudely shaped my life 
 To my immediate wants, yet strong beneath 
 Was a vague sense of powers folded up — 
 A sense that though those shadowy times were past, 
 Their spirit dwelt in me, and I should rule." 
 
 When Mr. Browning was satisfied that the tutor had 
 fulfilled his duty he sent his son to attend a few 
 lectures at University College, in Gower Street, then just 
 founded. Robert Browning's name is on the registrar's 
 books for the opening session, 1829-30. "I attended 
 with him the Greek class of Professor Long" (wrote 
 a friend, in the Times, Dec. 14 : '89), " and I well 
 recollect the esteem and regard in which he was held 
 by his fellow-students. He was then a bright, handsome 
 youth, with long black hair falling over his shoulders." 
 So short was his period of attendance, however, and so 
 unimportant the instruction he there derived, that to all 
 intents it may be said Browning had no University 
 training. 
 
 Notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Browning but 
 slightly appreciated his son's poetic idols and already 
 found himself in an opposite literary camp, he had a 
 profound sympathy with the boy's ideals and no little 
 confidence in his powers. When the test came he acted 
 wisely as well as with affectionate complaisance. In a 
 word, he practically left the decision as to his course of 
 life to Robert himself. The latter was helped thereto by 
 the knowledge that his sister would be provided for, and 
 that, if need be, there was sufficient for himself also.
 
 BROWNING. 
 
 There was of course but one way open to him. He 
 would not have been a true poet, an artist, if he 
 had hesitated. With a strange misconception of the 
 artistic spirit, some one has awarded the poet great credit 
 for his choice, because he had " the singular courage to 
 decline to be rich." Browning himself had nothing of 
 this bourgeois spirit : he was the last man to speak of an 
 inevitable artistic decision as " singular courage." There 
 are no doubt people who estimate his resolve as Mr. 
 Barrett, so his daughter declared, regarded Home when 
 he heard of that poet having published " Orion " at a 
 farthing : " Perhaps he is going to shoot the Queen, and 
 is preparing evidence of monomania." 
 
 With Browning there never could have been two sides 
 to the question : it were excusable, it were natural even, 
 had his father wavered. The outcome of their delibera- 
 tions was that Robert's further education should be 
 obtained from travel, and intercourse with men and 
 foreign literatures. 
 
 By this time the poet was twenty. His youth had 
 been uneventful ; in a sense, more so than his boyhood. 
 His mind, however, was rapidly unfolding, and great 
 projects were casting a glory about the coming days. It 
 was in his nineteenth year, I have been told on good 
 authority, that he became ardently in love with a girl of 
 rare beauty, a year or two older than himself, but other- 
 wise, possibly, no inappropriate lover for this wooer. 
 Why and when this early passion came to a close, or 
 was rudely interrupted, is not known. What is certain 
 is that it made a deep impression on the poet's mind. 
 It may be that it, of itself, or wrought to a higher emotion 
 by his hunger after ideal beauty, was the source of
 
 36 LIFE OF 
 
 "Pauline," that very unequal but yet beautiful first fruit 
 of Browning's genius. 
 
 It was not till within the last few years that the 
 poet spoke at all freely of his youthful life. Perhaps 
 the earliest record of these utterances is that which 
 appeared in the Century Magazine in 1881. From 
 this source, and from what the poet himself said at 
 various times and in various ways, we know that just 
 about the time Balzac, after years of apparently waste 
 labour, was beginning to forecast the Titanic range of 
 the Comedie LLumaine, Browning planned " a series of 
 monodramatic epics, narratives of the life of typical souls 
 — a gigantic scheme at which a Victor Hugo or a Lope 
 de Vega would start back aghast." 
 
 Already he had set himself to the analysis of the 
 human soul in its manifold aspects, already he had 
 recognised that for him at least there was no other 
 study worthy of a lifelong devotion. In a sense he has 
 fulfilled this early dream : at any rate we have a 
 unique series of monodramatic poems, illustrative of 
 typical souls. In another sense, the major portion of 
 Browning's life-work is, collectively, one monodramatic 
 "epic." He is himself a type of the subtle, restless, 
 curious, searching modern age of which he is the pro- 
 foundest interpreter. Through a multitude of masks 
 he, the typical soul, speaks, and delivers himself of a 
 message which could not be presented emphatically 
 enough as the utterance of a single individual. He is a 
 true dramatic poet, though not in the sense in which 
 Shakspere is. Shakspere and his kindred project them- 
 selves into the lives of their imaginary personages : 
 Browning pays little heed to external life, or to the
 
 BRO WN1NG. 37 
 
 
 exigencies of action, and projects himself into the minds 
 of his characters. 
 
 In a word, Shakspere's method is to depict a human 
 soul in action, with all the pertinent play of circumstance, 
 while Browning's is to portray the processes of its mental 
 and spiritual development : as he said in his dedicatory 
 preface to "Sordello," "little else is worth study." The 
 one electrifies us with the outer and dominant actu- 
 alities; the other flashes upon our mental vision the 
 inner, complex, shaping potentialities. The one deals 
 with life dynamically, the other with life as Thought. 
 Both methods are compassed by art. Browning, who "A 
 'is above all modern writers the poet of dramatic L 
 situations, is surpassed by many of inferior power J 
 in continuity of dramatic sequence. His finest 
 work is in his dramatic poems, rather than in his 
 dramas. He realised intensely the value of quintes- 
 sential moments, as when the Prefect in "The Return 
 of the Druses " thrusts aside the arras, muttering that 
 for the first time he enters without a sense of imminent 
 doom, " no draught coming as from a sepulchre " saluting 
 him, while that moment the dagger of the assassin 
 plunges to his heart : or, further in the same poem, 
 when Anael, coming to denounce Djabal as an im- 
 postor, is overmastered by her tyrannic love, and falls 
 dead with the too bitter freight of her emotion, though 
 not till she has proclaimed him the God by her single 
 worshipping cry, Hakeem! — or, once more, in "The Ring 
 and the Book," where, with the superbest close of any 
 dramatic poem in our literature, the wretched Guido, 
 at the point of death, cries out in the last extremity 
 not upon God or the Virgin, but upon his innocent and 
 
 /
 
 38 LIFE OF 
 
 murdered wife — " Abate, — Cardinal, — Christ, — Maria, 
 — God, . . . Pompilia, will you let them murder me ? " 
 Thus we can imagine Browning, with his character- 
 istic perception of the profound significance of a 
 circumstance or a single word even, having written of 
 the knocking at the door in "Macbeth," or having 
 used, with all its marvellous cumulative effect, the word 
 'wrought' towards the close of "Othello," when the Moor 
 cries in his bitterness of soul, " But being wrought, 
 perplext in the extreme": we can imagine this, and yet 
 could not credit the suggestion that even the author 
 of " The Ring and the Book " could by any possibility 
 have composed the two most moving tragedies writ in 
 our tongue. 
 
 In the late autumn of 1832 Browning wrote a poem of 
 singular promise and beauty, though immature in thought 
 and crude in expression. 1 Thirty- four years later he 
 included "Pauline" in his "Poetical Works" with 
 reluctance, and in a note explained the reason of his 
 decision — namely, to forestall piratical reprints abroad.' 
 "The thing was my earliest attempt at 'poetry always 
 dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so 
 many imaginary persons, not mine,' which I have 
 since written according to a scheme less extrava- 
 gant, and scale less impracticable, than were ventured 
 upon in this crude preliminary sketch — a sketch that, on 
 
 1 Probably from the fact of" Richmond " having been added to 
 the date at the end of the preface to " Pauline," have arisen the 
 frequent misstatements as to the Browning family having moved 
 west from Camberwell in or shortly before 1832. Mr. R. Barrett 
 Browning tells me that his father " never lived at Richmond, and 
 that that place was connected with ' Pauline,' when first printed, 
 as a mystification."
 
 BROWNING. 39 
 
 reviewal, appears not altogether wide of some hint of the 
 characteristic features of that particular dramatis perso?ia 
 it would fain have reproduced : good draughtsmanship, 
 however, and right handling were far beyond the artist 
 at that time." These be hard words. No critic will 
 ever adventure upon so severe a censure of " Pauline " : 
 most capable judges agree that, with all its shortcom- 
 ings, it is a work of genius, and therefore ever to be held 
 treasurable for its own sake as well as for its significance. 
 
 On the fly-leaf of a copy of this initial work, the poet, 
 six years after its publication, wrote : " Written in 
 pursuance of a foolish plan I forget, or have no wish to 
 remember ; the world was never to guess that such an 
 opera, such a comedy, such a speech proceeded from the 
 same notable person. . . . Only this crab remains of the 
 shapely Tree of Life in my fool's Paradise." It was in 
 conformity with this plan that he not only issued 
 " Pauline " anonymously, but enjoined secrecy upon 
 those to whom he communicated the fact of his author- 
 ship. 
 
 When he read the poem . to his parents, upon its 
 conclusion, both were much impressed by it, though 
 his father made severe strictures upon its lack of polish, 
 its terminal inconcision, and its vagueness of thought. 
 That he was not more severe was accepted by his son as 
 high praise. The author had, however, little hope of 
 seeing it in print. Mr. Browning was not anxious to pro- 
 vide a publisher with a present. So one day the poet was 
 gratified when his aunt, handing him the requisite sum, 
 remarked that she had heard he had written a fine 
 poem, and that she wished to have the pleasure of seeing 
 it in print.
 
 40 LIFE OF 
 
 To this kindly act much was due. Browning, of 
 course, could not now have been dissuaded from the 
 career he had forecast for himself, but his progress 
 might have been retarded or thwarted to less fortunate 
 grooves, had it not been for the circumstances resultant 
 from his aunt's timely gift. 
 
 The MS. was forthwith taken to Saunders & Otley, 
 of Conduit Street, and the little volume of seventy pages 
 of blank verse, comprising only a thousand and thirty 
 lines, was issued by them in January 1833. It seems 
 to us, who read it now, so manifestly a work of excep- 
 tional promise, and, to a certain extent, of high 
 accomplishment, that were it not for the fact that the 
 public auditory for a new poet is ever extraordinarily 
 limited, it would be difficult to understand how it could 
 have been overlooked. 
 
 " Pauline " has a unique significance because of its 
 autopsychical hints. The Browning whom we all know, 
 as well as the youthful dreamer, is here revealed ; here 
 too, as well as the disciple of Shelley, we have the 
 author of "The Ring and the Book." In it the long 
 series culminating in " Asolando " is foreshadowed, as 
 the oak is observable in the sapling. The poem is 
 prefaced by a Latin motto from the Occult Philosophy 
 of Cornelius Agrippa, and has also a note in French, set 
 forth as being by Pauline, and appended to her lover's 
 manuscript after his death. Probably Browning placed it 
 in the mouth of Pauline from his rooted determination 
 to speak dramatically and impersonally : and in French, 
 so as to heighten the effect of verisimilitude. 1 
 
 "I much fear that my poor friend will not be always perfectly 
 understood in what remains to be read of this strange fragment,
 
 BROWNING. 41^ 
 
 "Pauline" is a confession, fragmentary in detail but 
 synthetic in range, of a young man of high impulses but 
 weak determination. In its over-emphasis upon errors 
 of judgment, as well as upon real if exaggerated mis- 
 deeds, it has all the crudeness of youth. An almost 
 fantastic self-consciousness is the central motive : it is a 
 matter of question if this be absolutely vicarious. To 
 me it seems that the author himself was at the time con- 
 fused by the complicated flashing of the lights of life. 
 
 The autobiographical and autopsychical lines and 
 passages scattered through the poem are of immediate 
 interest. Generously the poet repays his debt to Shelley, 
 whom he apostrophises as " Sun-treader," and invokes in 
 strains of lofty emotion — " Sun-treader — life and light 
 
 but it is less calculated than any other part to explain what of its 
 nature can never be anything but dream and confusion. I do not 
 know, moreover, whether in striving at a better connection of cer- 
 tain parts, one would not run the risk of detracting from the only 
 merit to which so singular a production can pretend — that of giving 
 a tolerably precise idea of the manner {genre) which it can merely 
 indicate. This unpretending opening, this stir of passion, which 
 first increases, and then gradually subsides, these transports of the 
 soul, this sudden return upon himself, and above all, my friend's 
 quite peculiar turn of mind, have made alterations almost impos- 
 sible. The reasons which he elsewhere asserts, and others still 
 more cogent, have secured my indulgence for this paper, which 
 otherwise I should have advised him to throw into the fire. I 
 believe none the less in the great principle of all composition — in that 
 principle of Shakespeare, of Raphael, and of Beethoven, according 
 to which concentration of ideas is due much more to their con- 
 ception than to their execution ; I have every reason to fear that the 
 first of these qualities is still foreign to my friend, and I much doubt 
 whether redoubled labour would enable him to acquire the second. 
 It would be best to burn this, but what can I do?" — {Mrs. Orr.)
 
 42 LIFE OF 
 
 be thine for ever." The music of "Alastor," indeed, is 
 audible ever and again throughout "Pauline." None 
 the less is there a new music, a new poetic voice, in 
 
 " Thou wilt remember one warm morn, when Winter 
 Crept aged from the earth, and Spring's first breath 
 Blew soft from the moist hills — the black-thorn boughs, 
 So dark in the bare wood, when glistening 
 In the sunshine were white with coming buds, 
 Like the bright side of a sorrow — and the banks 
 Had violets opening from sleep like eyes." 
 
 If we' have an imaginary Browning, a Shelleyan phan- 
 tasm, in 
 
 " I seemed the fate from which I fled; I felt 
 
 A strange delight in causing my decay; 
 
 I was a fiend, in darkness chained for ever 
 
 Within some ocean-wave:" 
 
 we have the real Browning in 
 
 " So I will sing.on — fast as fancies come 
 
 Rudely — the verse being as the mood it paints. 
 
 • • • • • • 
 
 I am made up of an intensest life," 
 
 and all the succeeding lines down to "Their spirit 
 dwelt in me, and I should rule." 
 
 Even then the poet's inner life was animated by his 
 love of the beautiful Greek literature. Telling how in 
 "the first dawn of life," "which passed alone with 
 wisest ancient books," Pauline's lover incorporated 
 himself in whatsoever he read — was the god wander- 
 ing after beauty, the giant standing vast against the 
 sunset-light, the high-crested chief sailing with troops 
 of friends to Tenedos — his second-self cries, " I 
 tell you, nought has ever been so clear as the
 
 BROWNING. 43 
 
 place, the time, the fashion of those lives." Never for him, 
 then, had there been that alchemy of the soul which turns 
 the inchoate drift of the world into golden ore, not then 
 had come to him the electric awakening flash from 
 "work of lofty art, nor woman's beauty, nor sweet 
 nature's face" — 
 
 " Yet, I say, never morn broke clear as those 
 On the dim clustered isles in the blue sea: 
 The deep groves, and white temples, and wet caves — 
 And nothing ever will surprise me now— 
 Who stood beside the naked Swift-footed, 
 Who bound my forehead with Proserpine's hair." 
 
 Further, the allusion to Plato, and the more remote one 
 to Agamemnon, the 
 
 ' ' old lore 
 Loved for itself, and all it shows — the King 
 Treading the purple calmly to his death," 
 
 and the beautiful Andromeda passage, afford ample indi- 
 cation of how deeply Browning had drunk of that vital 
 stream whose waters are the surest conserver of the ideal 
 loveliness which we all of us, in some degree, cherish in 
 various guises. 
 
 Yet, as in every long poem that he has written (and, 
 it must be admitted, in too many of the shorter pieces 
 of his later period) there is an alloy of prose, of some- 
 thing that is not poetry, so in " Pauline," written though 
 it was in the first flush of his genius and under the 
 inspiring stimulus of Shelley, the reader encounters 
 prosaic passages, decasyllabically arranged. "'Twas in 
 my plan to look on real life, which was all new to me ; 
 my theories were firm, so I left them, to look upon men,
 
 1 I LIFE OF 
 
 and their cares, and hopes, and fears, and joys ; and, as 
 I pondered on them all, I sought how best life's end 
 might be attained, an end comprising every joy." 
 Again : " Then came a pause, and long restraint 
 chained down my soul, till it was changed. I lost 
 myself, and were it not that I so loathe that time, I 
 could recall how first I learned to turn my mind against 
 itself ... at length I was restored, yet long the influence 
 remained ; and nought but the still life I led, apart from 
 all, which left my soul to seek its old delights, could e'er 
 have brought me thus far back to peace." No reader, 
 alert to the subtle and haunting music of rarefied blank 
 verse (and unless it be rarefied it should not be put 
 forward as poetry), could possibly accept these lines as 
 expressionally poetical. It would seem as though, from 
 the first, Browning's ear was keener for the apprehension 
 than for the sustained evocation of the music of verse. 
 Some flaw there was, somewhere. His heart, so to say, 
 beat too fast, and the singing in his ears from the o'er- 
 fevered blood confused the serene rhythm haunting the 
 far perspectives of the brain, "as Arab birds float sleep- 
 ing in the wind." 
 
 I have dwelt at this length upon "Pauline" partly 
 because of its inherent beauty and autopsychical signifi- 
 cance, and partly because it is the least familiar of 
 Browning's poems, long overshadowed as it has been 
 by his own too severe strictures : mainly, however, 
 because of its radical importance to the student who 
 would arrive at a broad and true estimate of the power 
 and scope and shaping constituents of its author's genius. 
 Almost every quality of his after-verse may be found here, 
 in germ or outline. It is, in a word, more physiognomic
 
 BROWNING. 45 
 
 than any other single poem by Browning, and so must 
 ever possess a peculiar interest quite apart from its many 
 passages of haunting beauty. 
 
 To these the lover of poetry will always turn with 
 delight. Some will even regard them retrospectively 
 with alien emotion to that wherewith they strive to 
 possess their souls in patience over some one or other 
 of the barbarisms, the Titanic excesses, the poetic 
 banalities recurrent in the later volumes. 
 
 How many and how haunting these delicate oases are! 
 Those who know and love " Pauline " will remember 
 the passage where the poet, with that pantheistic ecstasy 
 which was possibly inspired by the singer he most 
 loved, tells how he can live the life of plants, content to 
 watch the wild bees flitting to and fro, or to lie absorbent 
 of the ardours of the sun, or, like the night-flowering 
 columbine, to trail up the tree-trunk and through its 
 rustling foliage " look for the dim stars ;" or, again, can 
 live the life of the bird, " leaping airily his pyramid of 
 leaves and twisted boughs of some tall mountain-tree ; " 
 or be a fish, breathing the morning air in the misty sun- 
 warm water. Close following this is another memorable 
 passage, that beginning "Night, and one single ridge of 
 narrow path ; " which has a particular interest for two 
 notes of a deeper and broader music to be evolved long 
 afterwards. For, as it seems to me, in 
 
 " Thou art so close by me, the roughest swell 
 Of wind in the tree-tops hides not the panting 
 Of thy soft breasts " 
 
 (where, by the way, should be noticed the subtle corre- 
 spondence between the conceptive and the expressional
 
 46 LIFE OF 
 
 rhythm) we have a hint of that superb scene in " Pippa 
 Passes," where, on a sinister night of July, a night of 
 spiritual storm as well as of aerial tempest, Ottima and 
 Sebald lie amid the lightning-searcht forest, with "the 
 thunder like a whole sea overhead." Again, in the 
 lovely Turneresque, or rather Shelleyan picture of morn- 
 ing, over " the rocks, and valleys, and old woods," with 
 the high boughs swinging in the wind above the sun- 
 brightened mists, and the golden-coloured spray of the 
 cataract amid the broken rocks, whereover the wild hawks 
 fly to and fro, there is at least a suggestion, an outline, 
 of the truly magnificent burst of morning music in the 
 poet's penultimate volume, beginning — 
 
 " But morning's laugh sets all the crags alight 
 Above the baffled tempest : tree and tree 
 Stir themselves from the stupor of the night, 
 And every strangled branch resumes its right 
 To breathe, shakes loose dark's clinging dregs, waves free 
 In dripping glory. Prone the runnels plunge, 
 While earth, distent with moisture like a sponge, 
 Smokes up, and leaves each plant its gem to see, 
 Each grass-blade's glory-glitter," etc. 
 
 Who that has ever read " Pauline " will forget the 
 masterful poetry descriptive of the lover's wild-wood 
 retreat, the exquisite lines beginning "Walled in with 
 a sloped mound of matted shrubs, tangled, old and 
 green " ? There is indeed a new, an unmistakable voice 
 here. 
 
 " And tongues of bank go shelving in the waters, 
 Where the pale-throated snake reclines his head, 
 And old grey stones lie making eddies there; 
 The wild mice cross them dry-shod " . . . .
 
 BROWNING. 47 
 
 What lovelier image in modern poetry than that 
 depictive of the forest-pool in depths of savage wood- 
 lands, unvisited but by the shadows of passing clouds, — 
 
 "the trees bend 
 O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl." 
 
 How the passionate sexual emotion, always deep and 
 true in Browning, finds lovely utterance in the lines 
 where Pauline's lover speaks of the blood in her lips 
 pulsing like a living thing, while her neck is as "marble 
 misted o'er with love-breath," and 
 
 "... her delicious eyes as clear as heaven, 
 When rain in a quick shower has beat down mist, 
 And clouds float white in the sun like broods of swans." 
 
 In the quotations I have made, and in others that 
 might be selected (e.g., " Her fresh eyes, and soft hair, 
 and lips which bleed like a mountain berry "), it is easy to 
 note how intimate an observer of nature the youthful 
 poet was, and with what conscious but not obtrusive art 
 he brings forward his new and striking imagery. Brown- 
 ing, indeed, is the poet of new symbols. 
 
 "Pauline" concludes with lines which must have been 
 in the minds of many on that sad day when the tidings 
 from Venice sent a thrill of startled, half-incredulous, 
 bewildered pain throughout the English nations — 
 
 " Sun-treader, I believe in God, and truth, 
 And love ; . . . 
 
 . . . but chiefly when I die . . . 
 All in whom this wakes pleasant thoughts of me, 
 Know my last state is happy — free from doubt, 
 Or touch of fear."
 
 48 LIFE OF BROWNING. 
 
 Never again was Browning to write a poem with such 
 conceptive crudeness, never again to tread the byways of 
 thought so falteringly or so negligently : but never again, 
 perhaps, was he to show so much over-rapturing joy in 
 the worlds loveliness, such Bacchic abandon to the 
 ideal beauty which the true poet sees glowing upon the 
 forlornest height and brooding in the shadow-haunted 
 hollows of the hills. The Browning who might have 
 been is here : henceforth the Browning we know and 
 love stands unique among all the lords of song. But 
 sometimes do we not turn longingly, wonderingly at 
 least, to the young Dionysos upon whose forehead was 
 the light of another destiny than that which descended 
 upon him ? The Icelanders say there is a land where 
 all the rainbows that have ever been, or are yet to be, 
 forever drift to and fro, evanishing and reappearing, like 
 immortal flowers of vapour. In that far country, it may 
 be, are also the unfulfilled dreams, the visions too 
 perfect to be fashioned into song, of the young poets 
 who have gained the laurel. 
 
 We close the little book lovingly : 
 
 " And I had dimly shaped my first attempt, 
 And many a thought did I build up on thought, 
 As the wild bee hangs cell to cell — in vain; 
 For I must still go on : my mind rests not."
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 IT has been commonly asserted that "Pauline" was 
 almost wholly disregarded, and swiftly lapsed into 
 oblivion. 
 
 This must be accepted with ^qualification. It is like 
 the other general assertion, that Browning had to live 
 fifty years before he gained recognition — a statement as 
 ludicrous when examined as it is unjust to the many 
 discreet judges who awarded, publicly and privately, 
 that intelligent sympathy which is the best sunshine 
 for the flower of a poet's genius. If by " before he 
 gained recognition " is meant a general and indiscrimi- 
 nate acclaim, no doubt Browning had, still has indeed, 
 longer to wait than many other eminent writers have 
 had to do : but it is absurd to assert that from the 
 very outset of his poetic career he was met by nothing 
 but neglect, if not scornful derision. None who knows 
 the true artistic temperament will fall into any such 
 mistake. 
 
 It is quite certain that neither Shakspere nor Milton 
 ever met with such enthusiastic praise and welcome as 
 Browning encountered on the publication of "Pauline" 
 and " Paracelsus." Shelley, as far above Browning 
 in poetic music as the author of so many parlcyings 
 with other people's souls is the superior in psychic 
 
 4
 
 50 LIFE OF 
 
 insight and intellectual strength, had throughout his too 
 brief life not one such review of praiseful welcome 
 as the Rev. W. J. Fox wrote on the publication of 
 " Pauline " (or, it may be added, as Allan Cunningham's 
 equally kindly but less able review in the Athenczum), 
 or as John Forster wrote in The Examiner concerning 
 "Paracelsus," and later in the New Monthly Magazine, 
 where he had the courage to say of the young and 
 quite unknown poet, " without the slightest hesitation 
 we name Mr. Robert Browning at once with Shelley, 
 Coleridge, Wordsworth." His plays even (which are 
 commonly said to have " fallen flat ") were certainly not 
 failures. There is something effeminate, undignified, 
 and certainly uncritical, in this confusion as to what is 
 and what is not failure in literature. So enthusiastic 
 was the applause he encountered, indeed, that had his 
 not been too strong a nature to be thwarted by adula- 
 tion any more than by contemptuous neglect, he might 
 well have become spoilt — so enthusiastic, that were it 
 not for the heavy and prolonged counterbalancing dead 
 weight of public indifference, a huge amorphous mass 
 only of late years moulded into harmony with the 
 keenest minds of the century, we might well be 
 suspicious of so much and long-continued eulogium, 
 and fear the same reversal of judgment towards him 
 on the part of those who come after us as we our- 
 selves have meted to many an one among the high 
 gods of our fathers. 
 
 Fortunately the deep humanity of his work in the 
 mass conserves it against the mere veerings of taste. A 
 reaction against it will inevitably come ; but this will 
 pass : what, in the future, when the unborn readers of
 
 BROWNING. 51 
 
 Browning will look back with clear eyes untroubled by 
 the dust of our footsteps, not to subside till long after 
 we too are dust, will be the place given to this poet, we 
 know not, nor can more than speculatively estimate. 
 That it will, however, be a high one, so far as his 
 weightiest (in bulk, it may possibly be but a relatively 
 slender) accomplishment is concerned, we may rest well 
 assured : for indeed " It lives, If precious be the soul of 
 man to man." 
 
 So far as has been ascertained there were only three 
 reviews or notices of " Pauline " : the very favourable 
 article by Mr. Fox in the Monthly Repository, the kindly 
 paper by Allan Cunningham in the Athenccum, and, in 
 Taifs Edinburgh Magazine, the succinctly expressed 
 impression of either an indolent or an incapable re- 
 viewer : " Pauline ; a Fragment of a Confession ; a 
 piece of pure bewilderment" — a "criticism" which 
 anticipated and thus prevented the insertion of a highly 
 favourable review which John Stuart Mill voluntarily 
 wrote. 
 
 Browning must have regarded his first book with 
 mingled feelings. It was a bid for literary fortune, in 
 one sense, but a bid so handicapped by the circum- 
 stances of its publication as to be almost certainly of no 
 avail. Probably, however, he was well content that it 
 should have mere existence. Already the fever of an 
 abnormal intellectual curiosity was upon him : already he 
 had schemed more potent and more vital poems : 
 already, even, he had developed towards a more indi- 
 vidualistic method. So indifferent was he to an easily 
 gained reputation that he seems to have been really 
 urgent upon his relatives and intimate acquaintances
 
 52 LIFE OF 
 
 not to betray his authorship. The Miss Flower, how- 
 ever, to whom allusion has already been made, could 
 not repress her admiration to the extent of depriving her 
 friend, Mr. Fox, of a pleasure similar to that she had 
 herself enjoyed. The result was the generous notice in 
 the Monthly Repository. The poet never forgot his 
 indebtedness to Mr. Fox, to whose sympathy and kind- 
 ness much direct and indirect good is traceable. The 
 friendship then begun was lifelong, and was continued 
 with the distinguished Unitarian's family when Mr. Fox 
 himself ended his active and beneficent career. 
 
 But after a time the few admirers of " Pauline" forgot 
 to speak about it : the poet himself never alluded to it : 
 and in a year or two it was almost as though it had 
 never been written. Many years after, when articles 
 upon Robert Browning were as numerous as they once 
 had been scarce, never a word betrayed that their 
 authors knew of the existence of " Pauline." There 
 was, however, yet another friendship to come out of 
 this book, though not until long after it was practically 
 forgotten by its author. 
 
 One day a young poet-painter came upon a copy of 
 the book in the British Museum Library, and was at 
 once captivated by its beauty. One of the earliest 
 admirers of Browning's poetry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti — 
 for it was he — felt certain that " Pauline " could be by 
 none other than the author of " Paracelsus." He him- 
 self informed me that he had never heard this author- 
 ship suggested, though some one had spoken to him of 
 a poem of remarkable promise, called " Pauline," which 
 he ought to read. If I remember aright, Rossetti told 
 me that it was on the forenoon of the day when the
 
 BROWNING. 53 
 
 " Burden of Nineveh " was begun, conceived rather, that 
 he read this story of a soul by the soul's ablest historian. 
 So delighted was he with it, and so strong his opinion it 
 was by Browning, that he wrote to the poet, then in 
 Florence, for confirmation, stating at the same time that 
 his admiration for " Pauline " had led him to transcribe 
 the whole of it. 
 
 Concerning this episode, Robert Browning wrote to 
 me, some seven years ago, as follows : — 
 
 " St. Pierre de Chartreuse, 
 
 Isere, France. 
 
 " Rossetti's 'Pauline' letter was addressed to me at Florence 
 more than thirty years ago. I have preserved it, but, even were 
 I at home, should be unable to find it without troublesome search- 
 ing. It was to the effect that the writer, personally and altogether 
 unknown to me, had come upon a poem in the British Museum, 
 which he copied the whole of, from its being not otherwise pro- 
 curable — that he judged it to be mine, but could not be sure, and 
 wished me to pronounce in the matter — which I did. A year or 
 two after, I had a visit in London from Mr. (William) Allingham 
 and a friend — who proved to be Rossetti. When I heard he was a 
 painter I insisted on calling on him, though he declared he had 
 nothing to show me — which was far enough from the case. 
 Subsequently, on another of my returns to London, he painted my 
 portrait, not, I fancy, in oils, but water-colours, and finished it in 
 Paris shortly after. This must have been in the year when 
 Tennyson published ' Maud,' for I remember Tennyson reading 
 the poem one evening while Rossetti made a rapid pen-and-ink 
 sketch of him, very good, from one obscure corner of vantage, 
 which I still possess, and duly value. This was before Rossetti's 
 marriage." 1 
 
 1 The highly interesting and excellent portrait of Browning here 
 alluded to has never been exhibited.
 
 54 LIFE OF 
 
 As a matter of fact, as recorded on the back of the 
 original drawing, the eventful reading took place at 
 13 Dorset Street, Portman Square, on the 27th of 
 September 1855, and those present, besides the Poet- 
 Laureate, Browning, and Rossetti, were Mrs. E. Barrett 
 Browning and Miss Arabella Barrett. 
 
 When, a year or two ago, the poet learned that a copy 
 of his first work, which in 1833 could not find a dozen 
 purchasers at a few shillings, went at a public sale for 
 . twenty-five guineas, he remarked that had his dear old 
 aunt been living he could have returned to her, much 
 to her incredulous astonishment, no doubt, he smilingly 
 averred, the cost of the book's publication, less £1 15s. 
 It was about the time of the publication of "Pauline" 
 that Browning began to see something of the literary and 
 artistic life for which he had such an inborn taste. For 
 a brief period he went often to the British Museum, 
 particularly the Library, and to the National Gallery. 
 At the British Museum Reading Room he perused with 
 great industry and research those works in philosophy 
 and medical history which are the bases of " Paracelsus," 
 and those Italian Records bearing upon the story of 
 Sordello. Residence in Camberwell, in 1833, rendered 
 night engagements often impracticable : but nevertheless 
 he managed to mix a good deal in congenial society. It 
 is not commonly known that he was familiar to these 
 early associates as a musician and artist rather than as 
 a poet. Among them, and they comprised many well- 
 known workers in the several arts, were Charles Dickens 
 and "Ion" Talfourd. Mr. Fox, whom Browning had 
 met once or twice in his early youth, after the former 
 had been shown the Byronic verses which had in one 

 
 BROWNING. 55 
 
 way gratified and in another way perturbed the 
 poet's father, saw something more of his young friend 
 after the publication of " Pauline." He very kindly 
 offered to print in his magazine any short poems 
 the author of that book should see fit to send— an 
 offer, however, which was not put to the test for some 
 
 time. 
 
 Practically simultaneously with the publication of 
 "Pauline" appeared another small volume, containing 
 the " Palace of Art," " CEnone," " Mariana," etc. Those 
 early books of Tennyson and Browning have frequently, 
 and somewhat uncritically, been contrasted. Unquestion- 
 ably, however, the elder poet showed a consummate and 
 continuous mastery of his art altogether beyond the 
 intermittent expressional power of Browning in his 
 most rhythmic emotion at any time of his life. To 
 affirm that there is more intellectual fibre, what Rossetti 
 called fundamental brain-work, in the product of the 
 younger poet, would be beside the mark. The insistence 
 on the supremacy of Browning over all poets since 
 Shakspere because he has the highest "message" to 
 deliver, because his intellect is the most subtle and 
 comprehensive, because his poems have this or that 
 dynamic effect upon dormant or sluggish or other 
 active minds, is to be seriously and energetically 
 deprecated. It is with presentment that the artist 
 has, fundamentally, to concern himself. If he cannot 
 present poetically then he is not, in effect, a poet, 
 though he may be a poetic thinker, or a great writer. 
 Browning's eminence is not because of his detachment 
 from what some one has foolishly called "the mere 
 handiwork, the furnisher's business, of the poet." It is
 
 56 LIFE OF 
 
 the delight of the true artist that the product of his 
 talent should be wrought to a high technique equally by 
 the shaping brain and the dexterous hand. Browning is 
 great because of his formative energy : because, despite 
 the excess of burning and compulsive thought — 
 
 " Thoughts swarming thro' the myriad-chambered brain 
 Like multitudes of bees i' the innumerous cells, 
 Each staggering 'neath the undelivered freight " 
 
 he strikes from Vie furor of words an electric flash so 
 transcendently ruminative that what is commonplace 
 becomes radiant with that light which dwells not in 
 nature, but only in the visionary eye of man. Form 
 for the mere beauty of form, is a playing with the wind, 
 the acceptance of a shadow for the substance. If 
 nothing animate it, it may possibly be fair of aspect, 
 but only as the frozen smile upon a dead face. 
 
 We know little of Browning's inner or outer life in 
 1833 and 1834. It was a secretive, not a productive 
 period. One by one certain pinnacles of his fair snow- 
 mountain of Titanic aim melted away. He began to 
 realise the first disenchantment of the artist : the sense 
 of dreams never to be accomplished. That land of the 
 great unwritten poems, the great unpainted pictures: 
 what a heritance there for the enfranchised spirits of 
 great dreamers ! 
 
 In the autumn of 1833 ne wen t forth to his University, 
 that of the world of men and women. It was ever a 
 favourite answer of his, when asked if he had been 
 at either Oxford or Cambridge, — " Italy was my 
 University."
 
 BROWNING. 57 
 
 But first he went to Russia, and spent some time in 
 St. Petersburg, attracted thither by the invitation of a 
 friend. The country interested him, but does not seem 
 to have deeply or permanently engaged his attention. 
 That, however, his Russian experiences were not fruitless 
 is manifest from the remarkably picturesque and techni- 
 cally very interesting poem, "Ivan Ivanovitch" (the 
 fourth of the Dramatic Idyls, 1879). Of a truth, 
 after his own race and country — readers will at once 
 think of "Home Thoughts from the Sea," or the 
 thrilling lines in " Home Thoughts from Abroad," be- 
 ginning— 
 
 " Oh, to be in England, 
 Now that April's there ! "— 
 
 or perhaps, those lines in his earliest work — 
 
 " I cherish most 
 My love of England — how, her name, a word 
 Of hers in a strange tongue makes my heart beat ! " 
 
 — it w as of the mystic Orient or o f the glowing South 
 that he oftenest thought and dreamed. With Heine he 
 might have cried: "O Firdusi ! O Ischami ! O Saadi ! 
 How do I long after the roses of Schiraz ! " As for 
 Italy, who of all our truest poets has not loved her : but 
 who has worshipped her with so manly a passion, so 
 loyal a love, as Browning ? One alone indeed may be 
 mated with him here, she who had his heart of 
 hearts, and who lies at rest in the old Florentine 
 cemetery within sound of the loved waters of Arno. 
 Who can forget his lines in " De Gustibus,"
 
 58 LIFE OF 
 
 " Open my heart and you will see, graved inside of it, 
 Italy." 
 
 It would be no difficult task to devote a volume 
 larger than the present one to the descriptive analysis 
 of none but the poems inspired by Italy, Italian 
 personages and history, Italian Painting, Sculpture, 
 Architecture, and Music. From Porphyria and her 
 lover to Pompilia and all the direful Roman tragedy 
 wherein she is as a moon of beauty above conflicting 
 savage tides of passion, what an unparalleled gallery 
 of portraits, what a brilliant phantasmagoria, what a 
 movement of intensest life ! 
 
 It is pleasant to know of one of them, " The Italian 
 in England," that Browning was proud, because Mazzini 
 told him he had read this poem to certain of his fellow- 
 exiles in England to show how an Englishman could 
 sympathise with them. 
 
 After leaving Russia the young poet spent the rest 
 of his Wanderjahr in Italy. Among other places he 
 visited was Asolo, that white little hill-town of the 
 Veneto, whence he drew hints for " Sordello " and 
 "Pippa Passes," and whither he returned in the last 
 year of his life, as with unconscious significance he 
 himself said, "on his way homeward." 
 
 In the summer of 1834, that is, when he was in his 
 twenty-second year, he returned to Camberwell. " Sor- 
 dello " he had in some fashion begun, but had set aside 
 for a poem which occupied him throughout the autumn 
 of 1834 and winter of 1835, "Paracelsus." In this 
 period, also, he wrote some short poems, two of them 
 of particular significance. The first of the series was a 
 sonnet, which appeared above the signature ' Z ' in the
 
 BROWNING. 59 
 
 August number of the Monthly Repository for 1834. It 
 was never reprinted by the author, whose judgment it 
 is impossible not to approve as well as to respect. 
 I .Browning never wrote a good sonnet, and this earliest 
 effort is not the most fortunate. It was in the Repository 
 also, in 1835 and 1836, that the other poems appeared, 
 four in all. 
 
 The song in " Pippa Passes," beginning " A King lived 
 long ago," was one of these; and the lyric, "Still ailing, 
 wind ? Wilt be appeased or no ? " afterwards revised and 
 incorporated in "James Lee," was another. But the 
 two which are much the most noteworthy are " Johannes 
 Agricola" and "Porphyria." Even more distinctively 
 than in " Pauline," in their novel sentiment, new method, 
 and generally unique quality, is a new voice audible 
 in these two poems. They are very remarkable as the 
 work of so young a poet, and are interesting as showing 
 how rapidly he had outgrown the influence of any 
 other of his poetic kindred. " Johannes Agricola" is 
 significant as being the first of those dramatic studies of 
 warped religiosity, of strange self-sophistication, which have 
 afforded so much matter for thought. In its dramatic 
 concision, its complex psychological significance, and 
 its unique, if to unaccustomed ears somewhat barbaric, 
 poetic beauty, " Porphyria " is still more remarkable. 
 
 It may be of this time, though possibly some years 
 later, that Mrs. Bridell-Fox writes : — " I remember him 
 as looking in often in the evenings, having just returned 
 from his first visit to Venice. I cannot tell the date 
 for certain. He was full of enthusiasm for that Queer 
 of Cities. He used to illustrate his glowing descrip- 
 tions of its beauties, the palaces, the sunsets, the anoon- 
 
 JWk \
 
 GO LIFE OF 
 
 rises, by a most original kind of etching. Taking 
 up a bit of stray notepaper, he would hold it over 
 a lighted candle, moving the paper about gently till 
 it was cloudily smoked over, and then utilising the 
 darker smears for clouds, shadows, water, or what not, 
 would etch with a dry pen the forms of lights on cloud 
 and palace, on bridge or gondola on the vague and 
 dreamy surface he had produced. My own passionate 
 longing to see Venice dates from those delightful, well- 
 remembered evenings of my childhood." 
 
 "Paracelsus," begun about the close of October or 
 early in November 1834, was published in the summer 
 of the following year. It is a poem in blank verse, about 
 four times the length of "Pauline," with interspersed 
 songs. The author divided it into five sections of 
 unequal length, of which the third is the most extensive : 
 " Paracelsus Aspires " ; " Paracelsus Attains " ; " Paracel- 
 sus"; "Paracelsus Aspires"; "Paracelsus Attains." 
 In an interesting note, which was not reprinted in 
 later editions of his first acknowledged poem, the 
 author dissuades the reader from mistaking his per- 
 formance for one of a class with which it has nothing in 
 common, from judging it by principles on which it was 
 not moulded, and from subjecting it to a standard to 
 which it was never meant to conform. He then explains 
 that he has composed a dramatic poem, and not a drama 
 in the accepted sense; that he has not set forth the 
 phenomena of the mind or the passions by the operation 
 of persons and events, or by recourse to an external 
 machinery of incidents to create and evolve the crisis 
 sought to be produced. Instead of this, he remarks, 
 "I have ventured to display somewhat minutely the
 
 BROWNING. 61 
 
 mood itself in its rise and progress, and have suffered 
 the agency, by which it is influenced and determined, to 
 be generally discernible in its effects alone, and subor- 
 dinate throughout, if not altogether excluded: and this 
 for a reason. I have endeavoured to write a poem, not 
 a drama." A little further, he states that a work like 
 " Paracelsus " depends, for its success, immediately upon 
 the intelligence and sympathy of the reader: "Indeed, 
 were my scenes stars, it must be his co-operating fancy 
 which, supplying all chasms, shall connect the scattered 
 lights into one constellation — a Lyre or a Crown." 
 
 In the concluding paragraph of this note there is a 
 point of interest — the statement of the author's hope 
 that the readers of "Paracelsus" will not "be prejudiced 
 against other productions which may follow in a more 
 popular, and perhaps less difficult form." From this 
 it might fairly be inferred that Browning had not 
 definitively adopted his characteristic method : that he 
 was far from unwilling to gain the general ear : and that 
 he was alert to the difficulties of popularisation of poetry 
 written on lines similar to those of " Paracelsus." Nor 
 would this inference be wrong : for, as a matter of fact, 
 the poet, immediately upon the publication of "Para- 
 celsus," determined to devote himself to poetic work 
 which should have so direct a contact with actual life 
 that its appeal should reach even to the most uninitiate 
 in the mysteries and delights of verse. 
 
 In his early years Browning had always a great liking 
 for walking in the dark. At Camberwell he was wont to 
 carry this love to the point of losing many a night's rest. 
 There was, in particular, a wood near Dulwich, whither 
 he was wont to go. There he would walk swiftly and
 
 62 LIFE OF 
 
 eagerly along the solitary and lightless byways, finding 
 a potent stimulus to imaginative thought in the happy 
 isolation thus enjoyed, with all the concurrent delights of 
 natural things, the wind moving like a spirit through the 
 tree-branches, the drifting of poignant fragrances, even 
 in winter-tide, from herb and sappy bark, imperceptible 
 almost by the alertest sense in the day's manifold 
 detachments. At this time, too, he composed much 
 in the open air. This he rarely, if ever, did in later life. 
 Not only many portions of "Paracelsus," but several 
 scenes in " Strafford," were enacted first in these mid- 
 night silences of the Dulwich woodland. Here, too, as 
 the poet once declared, he came to know the serene 
 beauty of dawn : for every now and again, after having 
 read late, or written long, he would steal quietly from 
 the house, and walk till the morning twilight graded to 
 the pearl and amber of the new day. 
 
 As in childhood the glow of distant London had 
 affected him to a pleasure that was not without pain, 
 perhaps to a pain rather that was a fine delirium, so in 
 his early manhood the neighbourhood of the huge city, 
 felt in those midnight walks of his, and apprehended 
 more by the transmutive shudder of reflected glare 
 thrown fadingly upward against the stars, than by any 
 more direct vision or even far-borne indeterminate hum, 
 dominated his imagination. At that distance, in those 
 circumstances, humanity became more human. And 
 with the thought, the consciousness of this imperative 
 kinship, arose the vague desire, the high resolve to be no 
 curious dilettante in novel literary experiments, but to 
 compel an interpretative understanding of this complex 
 human environment.
 
 BROWNING. 63 
 
 Those who knew the poet intimately are aware of 
 the loving regard he always had for those nocturnal ex- 
 periences : but perhaps few recognise how much we owe 
 to the subtle influences of that congenial isolation he was 
 wont to enjoy on fortunate occasions. 
 
 It is not my intention — it would, obviously, be a 
 futile one, if entertained — to attempt an analysis or 
 elaborate criticism of the many poems, long and short, 
 produced by Robert Browning. Not one volume, but 
 several, of this size, would have to be allotted to the 
 adequate performance of that end. Moreover, if readers 
 are unable or unwilling to be their own expositors, 
 there are several trustworthy hand-books which are 
 easily procurable. Some one, I believe, has even, with 
 unselfish consideration for the weaker brethren, turned 
 " Sordello " into prose — a superfluous task, some scoffers 
 may exclaim. Personally, I cannot but think this craze 
 for the exposition of poetry, this passion for " dissecting 
 a rainbow," is harmful to the individual as well as humili- 
 ating to the high office of Poetry itself, and not infre- 
 quently it is ludicrous. 
 
 I must be content with a few words anent the more 
 important or significant poems, and in due course 
 attempt an estimate by a broad synthesis, and not by 
 cumulative critical analyses. 
 
 In the selection of Paracelsus as the hero of his first 
 mature poem, Browning was guided first of all by his 
 keen sympathy with the scientific spirit — the spirit of 
 dauntless inquiry, of quenchless curiosity, of a searching 
 enthusiasm. Pietro of Abano, Giordano Bruno, Galileo, 
 were heroes whom he regarded with an admiration which 
 would have been boundless but for the wise sympathy
 
 64 LIFE OF 
 
 which enabled him to apprehend and understand their 
 weaknesses as well as their lofty qualities. Once having 
 come to the conclusion that Paracelsus was a great and 
 much maligned man, it was natural for him to wish to 
 portray aright the features he saw looming through 
 the mists of legend and history. But over and 
 above this, he half unwittingly, half consciously, felt the 
 fascination of that mysticism associated with the name 
 of the celebrated German scientist — a mysticism, in all 
 its various phases, of which he is now acknowledged to 
 be the subtlest poetic interpreter in our language, though, 
 profound as its attraction always was for him, never 
 was poet with a more exquisite balance of intellectual 
 sanity. 
 
 Latest research has proved that whatsoever of a pre- 
 tender Paracelsus may have been in certain respects, he 
 was unquestionably a man of extraordinary powers : and, 
 as a pioneer in a science of the first magnitude of 
 importance, deserving of high honour. If ever the 
 famous German attain a high place in the history of 
 the modern intellectual movement in Europe, it will be 
 primarily due to Browning's championship. 
 
 But of course the extent or shallowness of Paracelsus' 
 claim is a matter of quite secondary interest. We are 
 concerned with the poet's presentment of the man — of 
 that strange soul whom he conceived of as having 
 anticipated so far, and as having focussed all the vagrant 
 speculations of the day into one startling beam of light, 
 now lambently pure, now lurid with gross constituents. 1 
 
 1 Paracelsus has two particular claims upon our regard. He 
 gave us laudanum, a discovery of incalculable blessing to man- 
 kind. And from his fourth baptismal name, which he inherited
 
 BROWNING. 65 
 
 Paracelsus, his friends Festus and his wife Michal, and 
 Aprile, an Italian poet, are the characters who are the 
 personal media through which Browning's already power- 
 ful genius found expression. The poem is, of a kind, 
 an epic : the epic of a brave soul striving against baffling 
 circumstance. It is full of passages of rare technical 
 excellence, as well as of conceptive beauty : so full, 
 indeed, that the sympathetic reader of it as a drama will 
 be too apt to overlook its radical shortcomings, cast as 
 it is in the dramatic mould. But it must not be for- 
 gotten that Browning himself distinctly stated he had 
 attempted to write " a poem, not a drama": and in the 
 light of this simple statement half the objections that 
 have been made fall to the ground. 
 
 Paracelsus is the protagonist : the others are merely 
 incidental. The poem is the soul-history of the great 
 medical student who began life so brave of aspect and 
 died so miserably at Salzburg : but it is also the history 
 of a typical human soul, which can be read without any 
 knowledge of actual particulars. 
 
 Aprile is a projection of the poet's own poetical ideal. 
 He speaks, but he does not live as Festus lives, or even 
 as Michal, who, by the way, is interesting as being the 
 first in the long gallery of Browning's women — a gallery 
 
 from his father, we have our familiar term, 'bombast.' Readers 
 interested in the known facts concerning the " master-mind, the 
 thinker, the explorer, the creator," the forerunner of Mesmer and 
 even of Darwin and Wallace, who began life with the sounding 
 appellation "Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus ab 
 Hohenheim," should consult Browning's own learned appendical 
 note, and Mr. Berdoe's interesting essay in the Browning Society- 
 Papers, No. xlix. 
 
 5
 
 66 LIFE OF 
 
 of superbly-drawn portraits, of noble and striking and 
 always intensely human women, unparalleled except in 
 Shakspere. Pauline, of course, exists only as an ab- 
 straction, and Porphyria is in no exact sense a portrait 
 from the life. Yet Michal can be revealed only to the 
 sympathetic eye, for she is not drawn, but again and 
 again suddenly silhouetted. We see her in profile always: 
 but when she exclaims at the last, " I ever did believe," 
 we feel that she has withdrawn the veil partially hiding 
 her fair and generous spirit. 
 
 To the lover of poetry " Paracelsus " will always be 
 a^Golconda. It has lines and passages of extraordinary 
 power, of a haunting beauty, and of a unique and 
 exquisite charm. It may be noted, in exemplification of 
 Browning's artistic range, that in the descriptive passages 
 he paints as well in the elaborate Pre-Raphaelite method 
 as with a broad synthetic touch : as in 
 
 " One old populous green wall 
 Tenanted by the ever-busy flies, 
 Grey crickets and shy lizards and quick spiders, 
 Each family of the silver-threaded moss — 
 Which, look through near, this way, and it appears 
 A stubble-field or a cane-brake, a marsh 
 Of bulrush whitening in the sun. . . ." 
 
 But oftener he prefers the more succinct method of 
 landscape-painting, the broadest impressionism : as in 
 
 " Past the high rocks the haunts of doves, the mounds 
 Of red earth from whose sides strange trees grow out, 
 Past tracks of milk-white minute blinding sand." 
 
 And where in modern poetry is there a superber union 
 of the scientific and the poetic vision than in this
 
 BROWNING. 67 
 
 magnificent passage — the quintessence of the poet's con- 
 ception of the rapture of life : — 
 
 " The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth, 
 And the earth changes like a human face; 
 The molten ore bursts up among the rocks, 
 Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright 
 In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds, 
 Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask — 
 God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged 
 With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate, 
 When in the solitary waste, strange groups 
 Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like, 
 Staring together with their eyes on flame — 
 God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. 
 Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: 
 But Spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes 
 Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure 
 Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between 
 The withered tree-rests and the cracks of frost, 
 Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face ; 
 The grass grows bright, the boughs are swoln with blooms 
 Like chrysalids impatient for the air, 
 The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run 
 Along the furrows, ants make their ado ; 
 Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark 
 Soars up and up, shivering for very joy ; 
 Afar the ocean sleeps ; white fishing gulls 
 Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe 
 Of nested limpets ; savage creatures seek 
 Their loves in wood and plain — and God renews 
 His ancient rapture." 
 
 In these lines, particularly in their close, is manifest 
 thefinfluence of the noble Hebraic poetry. It must 
 have been at this period that Browning conned over and 
 over with an exultant delight the simple but lordly 
 diction of Isaiah and the other prophets, preferring this
 
 68 LIFE OF 
 
 Biblical poetry to that even of his beloved Greeks. 
 There is an anecdote of his walking across a public park 
 (I am told Richmond, but more probably it was Wimble- 
 don Common) with his hat in his left hand and his right 
 waving to and fro declamatorily, while the wind blew 
 his hair around his head like a nimbus : so rapt in his 
 ecstasy over the solemn sweep of the Biblical music 
 that he did not observe a small following consisting 
 of several eager children, expectant of thrilling stump- 
 oratory. He was just the man, however, to accept an 
 anti-climax genially, and to dismiss his disappointed 
 mditory with something more tangible than an address. 
 
 The poet-precursor of scientific knowledge is again 
 and again manifest : as, for example, in 
 
 " Hints and previsions of which faculties 
 Are strewn confusedly everywhere about 
 The inferior natures, and all lead up higher, 
 All shape out dimly the superior race, 
 The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false, 
 And man appears at last." 1 
 
 There are lines, again, which have a magic that cannot 
 be defined. If it be not felt, no sense of it can be 
 conveyed through another's words. 
 
 " Whose memories were a solace to me oft, 
 As mountain-baths to wild fowls in their flight." 
 
 1 Readers interested in Browning's inspiration from, and treat- 
 ment of, Science, should consult the excellent essay on him as "A 
 Scientific Poet " by Mr. Edward Berdoe, F.R.C.S., and, in par- 
 ticular, compare with the originals the references given by Mr. 
 Berdoe to the numerous passages bearing upon Evolution and the 
 several sciences, from Astronomy to Physiology.
 
 BROWNING. 69 
 
 " Ask the gier-eagle why she stoops at once 
 Into the vast and unexplored abyss, 
 What full-grown power informs her from the first, 
 Why she not marvels, strenuously beating 
 The silent boundless regions of the sky." 
 
 There is one passage, beautiful in itself, which has 
 a pathetic significance henceforth. Gordon, our most 
 revered hero, was wont to declare that nothing in all 
 nonscriptural literature was so dear to him, nothing had 
 sojDften inspired him in moments of gloom : — 
 
 " I go to prove my soul ! 
 I see my way as birds their trackless way. 
 I shall arrive ! What time, what circuit first, 
 I ask not : but unless God send His hail 
 Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow, 
 In some time, His good time, I shall arrive : 
 He guides me and the bird. In his good time." 
 
 As for the much misused ' Shaksperian ' comparison, 
 
 so often mistakenly applied to Browning, there is nothing 
 
 in " Paracelsus " in the least way derivative. Because 
 
 Shakspere is the greatest genius evolved from our race, 
 
 it does not follow that every lofty intellect, every great 
 
 objective poet, should be labelled " Shaksperian." But 
 
 there is a certain quality in poetic expression which 
 
 we so specify, because the intense humanity throbbing in 
 
 it finds highest utterance in the greatest of our poets : 
 
 and there is at least one instance of such poignant speech 
 
 in " Paracelsus," worthy almost to be ranked with the 
 
 last despairing cry of Guido calling upon murdered 
 
 Pompilia : — 
 
 " Festus, strange secrets are let out by death 
 Who blabs so oft the follies of this world :
 
 70 LIFE OF 
 
 And I am death's familiar, as you know. 
 I helped a man to die, some few weeks since, 
 Warped even from his go-cart to one end — 
 The living on princes' smiles, reflected from 
 A mighty herd of favourites. No mean trick 
 He left untried, and truly well-nigh wormed 
 All traces of God's finger out of him : 
 Then died, grown old. And just an hour before, 
 Having lain long with blank and soulless eyes, 
 He sat up suddenly, and with natural voice 
 Said that in spite of thick air and closed doors 
 God told him it was June ; and he knew well 
 Without such telling, harebells grew in June; 
 And all that kings could ever give or take 
 Would not be precious as those blooms to him." 
 
 Technically, I doubt if Browning ever produced any- 
 finer long poem, except " Pippa Passes," which is a 
 lyrical drama, and neither exactly a 'play' nor exactly 
 a 'poem' in the conventional usage of the terms. 
 Artistically, "Paracelsus" is disproportionate, and has 
 faults, obtrusive enough to any sensitive ear : but in the 
 main it has a beauty without harshness, a swiftness of 
 thought and speech without tumultuous pressure of ideas 
 or stammering. It has not, in like degree, the intense 
 human insight of, say, "The Inn Album," but it has 
 that charm of sequent excellence too rarely to be 
 found in many of Browning's later writings. It glides 
 onward like a stead ast stream, the thought moving 
 with the current it animates and controls, and throb- 
 bing eagerly beneath. When we read certain portions of 
 " Paracelsus," and the lovely lyrics interspersed in it, it 
 is difficult not to think of the poet as sometimes, in 
 later life, stooping like the mariner in Roscoe's beautiful 
 sonnet, striving to reclaim "some loved lost echo from
 
 BRO WNING. 
 
 71 
 
 the fleeting strand." But it is the fleeting shore of 
 exquisite art, not of the far-reaching shadowy capes and 
 promontories of " the poetic land." 
 
 Of the four interlusive lyrics the freer music is in the 
 unique chant, "Over the sea our galleys went: " a song 
 full of melody and blithe lilt. It is marvellously pictorial, 
 and yet has a freedom that places it among the most 
 delightful of spontaneous lyrics : — 
 
 " We shouted, every man of us, 
 And steered right into the harbour thus, 
 With pomp and pasan glorious." 
 
 It is, however, too long for present quotation, and as an 
 example of Browning's early lyrics I select rather the 
 rich and delicate second of these "Paracelsus" songs, 
 one wherein the influence of Keats is so marked, and 
 yet where all is the poet's own : — 
 
 " Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes 
 
 Of labdanum, and aloe-balls, 
 Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes 
 
 From out her hair : such balsam falls 
 
 Down sea-side mountain pedestals, 
 From tree-tops where tired winds are fain, 
 Spent with the vast and howling main, 
 To treasure half their island-gain. 
 
 " And strew faint sweetness from some old 
 
 Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud 
 Which breaks to dust when once unrolled ; 
 
 Or shredded perfume, like a cloud 
 
 From closet long to quiet vowed, 
 With mothed and dropping arras hung, 
 Mouldering her lute and books among, 
 As when a queen, long dead, was young." 
 
 —>
 
 72 LIFE OF BROWNING. 
 
 With this music in our ears we can well forgive some 
 of the prosaic commonplaces which deface " Paracelsus " 
 — some of those lapses from rhythmic energy to which 
 the poet became less and less sensitive, till he could be 
 so deaf to the vanishing " echo of the fleeting strand " 
 as to sink to the level of doggerel such as that which 
 closes the poem called " Popularity." 
 
 " Paracelsus " is not a great, but it is a memorable 
 poem : a notable achievement, indeed, for an author of 
 Browning's years. Well may we exclaim with Festus, 
 when we regard the poet in all the greatness of his 
 maturity — 
 
 '* The sunrise 
 Well warranted our faith in this full noon ! "
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE Athenaum dismissed "Paracelsus" with a half 
 contemptuous line or two. On the other hand, 
 the Exa?niner acknowledged it to be a work of 
 unequivocal power, and predicted for its author a 
 brilliant career. The same critic who wrote this review 
 contributed an article of about twenty pages upon 
 "Paracelsus" to the New Monthly Magazine, under 
 the heading, " Evidences of a New Dramatic Poetry." 
 This article is ably written, and remarkable for its 
 sympathetic insight. " Mr. Browning," the critic writes, 
 " is a man of genius, he has in himself all the elements 
 of a great poet, philosophical as well as dramatic." 
 
 The author of this enthusiastic and important critique 
 was John Forster. When the Examiner review ap- 
 peared the two young men had not met : but the 
 encounter, which was to be the seed of so fine a flower 
 of friendship, occurred before the publication of the 
 New Monthly article. Before this, however, Browning 
 had already made one of the most momentous 
 acquaintanceships of his life. 
 
 His good friend and early critic, Mr. Fox, asked him 
 to his house one evening in November, a few months 
 after the publication of " Paracelsus." The chief 
 guest of the occasion was Macready, then at the
 
 74 LIFE OF 
 
 height of his great reputation. Mr. Fox had paved the 
 way for the young poet, but the moment he entered 
 he carried with him his best recommendation. Every 
 one who met Browning in those early years of his 
 buoyant manhood seems to have been struck by his 
 comeliness and simple grace of manner. Macready 
 stated that he looked more like a poet than any man 
 he had ever met. As a young man he appears to have 
 had a certain ivory delicacy of colouring, what an old 
 friend perhaps somewhat exaggeratedly described to me 
 as an almost flower-like beauty, which passed ere long 
 into a less girlish and more robust complexion. He 
 appeared taller than he was, for he was not above 
 medium height, partly because of his rare grace of 
 movement, and partly from a characteristic high poise 
 of the head when listening intently to music or con- 
 versation. Even then he had that expressive wave o' 
 the hand, which in later years was as full of various 
 meanings as the Ecco of an Italian. A swift alert- 
 ness pervaded him, noticeable as much in the rapid 
 change of expression, in the deepening and illuming 
 colours of his singularly expressive eyes, and in his 
 sensitive mouth, with the upper lip ever so swift to 
 curve or droop in response to the most fluctuant 
 emotion, as in his greyhound-like apprehension, which 
 so often grasped the subject in its entirety before its 
 propounder himself realised its significance. A lady, 
 who remembers Browning at that time, has told me 
 that his hair — then of a brown so dark as to appear 
 black — was so beautiful in its heavy sculpturesque waves 
 as to attract frequent notice. Another, and more subtle, 
 personal charm was his voice, then with a rare flute-like
 
 BROWNING. 75 
 
 tone, clear, sweet, and resonant. Afterwards, though 
 always with precise clarity, it became merely strong and 
 hearty, a little too loud sometimes, and not infrequently 
 as that of one simulating keen immediate interest while 
 the attention was almost wholly detached. 
 
 Macready, in his Journal, 1 about a week later 
 than the date of his first meeting with the poet, 
 wrote — " Read ' Paracelsus,' a work of great daring, 
 starred with poetry of thought, feeling, and diction, 
 but occasionally obscure : the writer can scarcely fail 
 to be a leading spirit of his time." The tragedian's house, 
 whither he went at week-ends and on holidays, was at 
 Elstree, a short distance to the northward of Hampstead : 
 and there he invited Browning, among other friends, to 
 come on the last day of December and spend New Year's 
 Day (1836). 2 When alluding, in after years, to this visit, 
 Browning always spoke of it as one of the red-letter days 
 
 1 For many interesting particulars concerning Macready and 
 Browning, and the production of "Strafford," etc., vide the 
 Reminiscences, vol. i. 
 
 2 It was for Macready's eldest boy, William Charles, that 
 Browning wrote one of the most widely popular of his poems, " The 
 Pied Piper of Hamelin." It is said to have been an impromptu 
 performance, and to have been so little valued by the author that 
 he hesitated about its inclusion in "Bells and Pomegranates." It 
 was inserted at the last moment, in the third number, which was 
 short of "copy." Some one (anonymous, but whom I take to be 
 Mr. Nettleship) has publicly alluded to his possession of a rival 
 poem (entitled, simply, " Hamelin ") by Robert Browning the 
 elder, and of a letter which he had sent to a friend along with the 
 verses, in which he writes: "Before I knew that Robert had 
 begun the story of the ' Rats ' I had contemplated a tale on the 
 same subject, and proceeded with it as far as you see, but, on 
 hearing that Robert had a similar one on hand, I desisted." This
 
 76 LIFE OF 
 
 of his life. It was here he first met Forster, with whom 
 he at once formed what proved to be an enduring 
 friendship ; and on this occasion, also, that he was urged 
 by his host to write a poetic play. 
 
 Browning promised to consider the suggestion. Six 
 weeks later, in company with Forster, with whom he had 
 become intimate, he called upon Macready, to discuss 
 the plot of a tragedy which he had pondered. He told 
 the tragedian how deeply he had been impressed by his 
 performance of "Othello," and how this had deflected 
 his intention from a modern and European to an 
 Oriental and ancient theme. " Browning said that I 
 had bit him by my performance of ' Othello,' and I told 
 him I hoped I should make the blood come." The 
 " blood" had come in the guise of a drama-motive based 
 on the crucial period in the career of Narses, the eunuch- 
 general of Justinian. Macready liked the suggestion, 
 though he demurred to one or two points in the outline : 
 and before Browning left he eagerly pressed him to "go 
 on with 'Narses.'" But whether Browning mistrusted 
 his own interest in the theme, or was dubious as to the 
 success with which Macready would realise his con- 
 ception, or as to the reception a play of such a nature 
 would win from an auditory no longer reverent of high 
 dramatic ideals, he gave up the idea. Some three 
 
 must have been in 1842, for it was in that year that the third part 
 of Bells and Pomegranates was published. In 1843, however, he 
 finished it. Browning's "Pied Piper" has been translated into 
 French, Russian, Italian, and German. The latter (or one German) 
 version is in prose. It was made in 1880, for a special purpose, 
 and occupied the whole of one number of the local paper of 
 Hameln, which is a quaint townlet in Hanover.
 
 BRO WNING. 77 
 
 months later (May 26th) he enjoyed another eventful 
 evening. It was the night of the first perform- 
 ance of Talfourd's " Ion," and he was among the 
 personal friends of Macready who were invited to 
 the supper at Talfourd's rooms. After the fall of the 
 curtain, Browning, Forster, and other friends sought the 
 tragedian and congratulated him upon the success both 
 of the play and of his impersonation of the chief 
 character. They then adjourned to the house of the 
 author of " Ion." To his surprise and gratification 
 Browning found himself placed next but one to his 
 host, and immediately opposite Macready, who sat 
 between two gentlemen, one calm as a summer evening, 
 and the other with a tempestuous youth dominating his 
 sixty years, whom the young poet at once recognised as 
 Wordsworth and Walter Savage Landor. Every one was 
 in good spirits : the host perhaps most of all, who was 
 celebrating his birthday as well as the success of " Ion." 
 Possibly Macready was the only person who felt at all 
 bored — unless it was Landor — for Wordsworth was not, at 
 such a function, an entertaining conversationalist. There 
 is much significance in the succinct entry in Macready's 
 journal concerning the Lake-poet — "Wordsworth, who 
 pinned me." . . . When Talfourd rose to propose the 
 toast of "The Poets of England" every one probably 
 expected that Wordsworth would be named to respond. 
 But with a kindly grace the host, after flattering remarks 
 upon the two great men then honouring him by sitting 
 at his table, coupled his toast with the name of the 
 youngest of the poets of England — " Mr. Robert Brown- 
 ing, the author of 'Paracelsus.'" It was a very proud 
 moment for Browning, singled out among that brilliant
 
 78 LIFE OF 
 
 company : and it is pleasant to know, on the authority 
 of Miss Mitford, who was present, that "he performed 
 his task with grace and modesty," looking, the amiable 
 lady adds, even younger than he was. Perhaps, how- 
 ever, he was prouder still when Wordsworth leaned 
 across the table, and with stately affability said, "lam 
 proud to drink your health, Mr. Browning : " when 
 Landor, also, with a superbly indifferent and yet kindly 
 smile, also raised his glass to his lips in courteous 
 greeting. 
 
 Of Wordsworth Browning saw not a little in the 
 ensuing few years, for on the rare visits the elderly poet 
 paid to London, Talfourd never failed to ask the author 
 of " Paracelsus," for whom he had a sincere admiration, 
 to meet the great man. It was not in the nature of things 
 that the two poets could become friends, but though 
 the younger was sometimes annoyed by the elder's 
 pooh-poohing his republican sympathies, and contemptu- 
 ously waiving aside as a mere nobody no less an indi- 
 vidual than Shelley, he never failed of respect and even 
 reverence. With what tenderness and dignity he has 
 commemorated the great poet's falling away from his 
 early ideals, may be seen in " The Lost Leader," one of 
 the most popular of Browning's short poems, and likely 
 to remain so. "For several reasons, however, it is best 
 as well as right that Wordsworth should not be more 
 than merely nominally identified with the Lost Leader. 
 Browning was always imperative upon this point. 
 
 Towards Landor, on the other hand, he entertained a 
 sentiment of genuine affection, coupled with a profound 
 sympathy and admiration : a sentiment duly recipro- 
 cated. The care of the younger for the elder, in the old
 
 BROWNING. 79 
 
 age of the latter, is one of the most beautiful incidents 
 in a beautiful life. 
 
 But the evening was not to pass without another 
 memorable incident, one to which we owe "Strafford," 
 and probably "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon." Just as the 
 young poet, flushed with the triumphant pleasure of the 
 evening, was about to leave, Macready arrested him by 
 a friendly grip of the arm. In unmistakable earnestness 
 he asked Browning to write him a play. With a sim- 
 plicity equal to the occasion, the poet contented himself 
 with replying, "Shall it be historical and English? 
 What do you say to a drama on Strafford ? " 
 
 Macready was pleased with the idea, and hopeful that 
 his friend would be more successful with the English 
 statesman than with the eunuch Narses. 
 
 A few months elapsed before the poet, who had set . 
 aside the long work upon which he was engaged 
 ("Sordello "), called upon Macready with the manuscript 
 of "Strafford." The latter hoped much from it. In 
 March the MS. was ready. About the end of the 
 month Macready took it to Covent Garden Theatre, and 
 read it to Mr. Osbaldiston, "who caught at it with avidity, 
 and agreed to produce it without delay." 
 
 It was an eventful first of May — an eventful twelve- 
 month, indeed, for it was the initial year of the Victorian 
 era, notable, too, as that wherein the Electric Tele- 
 graph was established, and, in letters, wherein a new 
 dramatic literature had its origin. For " Strafford," 
 already significant of a novel movement, and destined, 
 it seems to me, to be still more significant in that 
 great dramatic period towards which we are fast con- 
 verging, was not less important to the Drama in
 
 80 LIFE OF 
 
 England, as a new departure in method and radically 
 indicative of a fresh standpoint, than "Hernani" was 
 in France. But in literary history the day itself is 
 doubly memorable, for in the forenoon Carlyle gave the 
 first of his lectures in London. The play was a success, 
 despite the shamefully inadequate acting of some of 
 those entrusted with important parts. There was once, 
 perhaps there were more occasions than one, where 
 success poised like the soul of a Mohammedan on 
 the invisible thread leading to Paradise, but on either 
 side of which lies perdition. There was none to cry 
 Timbul save Macready, except Miss Helen Faucit, 
 who gained a brilliant triumph as Lady Carlisle. 
 The part of Charles I. was enacted so execrably that 
 damnation for all was again and again within measur- 
 able distance. " The Younger Vane " ranted so that a 
 hiss, like an embodied scorn, vibrated on vagrant wings 
 throughout the house. There was not even any extra- 
 neous aid to a fortunate impression. The house was in 
 ill repair : the seats dusty, the " scenery " commonplace 
 and sometimes noticeably inappropriate, the costumes 
 and accessories almost sordid. But in the face of 
 all this, a triumph was secured. For a brief while 
 Macready believed that the star of regeneration had 
 arisen. Unfortunately 'twas, in the words of a con- 
 temporary dramatic poet, "a rising sorrow splendidly 
 forlorn." The financial condition of Covent Garden 
 Theatre was so ruinous that not even the most successful 
 play could have restored its doomed fortunes. 
 
 After the fifth night one of the leading actors, hav- 
 ing received a better offer elsewhere, suddenly with- 
 drew.
 
 BROWNING. 81 
 
 This was the last straw. A collapse forthwith occurred. 
 In the scramble for shares in the few remaining funds 
 every one gained something, except the author, who 
 was to have received jQ\2 for each performance for the 
 first twenty-five nights, and £\o each for ten nights 
 further. This disaster was a deep disappointment to 
 Browning, and a by no means transitory one, for three or 
 four years later he wrote (Advt. of "Bells and Pome- 
 granates") : "Two or three years ago I wrote a play, about 
 which the chief matter I much care to recollect at present 
 is, that a pitful of good-natured people applauded it. 
 Ever since, I have been desirous of doing something in 
 the same way that should better reward their attention." 
 But, except in so far as its abrupt declension from the 
 stage hurt its author in the eyes of the critics, and 
 possibly in those of theatrical managers, " Strafford " 
 was certainly no failure. It has the elements of a 
 great acting play. Everything, even the language (and 
 here was a stumbling-block with most of the critics and 
 criticasters), was subordinated to dramatic exigencies : 
 though the subordination was in conformity with a novel 
 shaping method. " Strafford " was not, however, allowed 
 to remain unknown to those who had been unable to 
 visit Covent Garden Theatre. 1 Browning's name had 
 
 1 ; ' It is time to deny a statement that has been repeated ad 
 
 nauseam in every notice that professes to give an account of Mr. 
 
 Browning's career. Whatever is said or not said, it is always that 
 
 his plays have ' failed ' on the stage. In point of fact, the three 
 
 plays which he has brought out have all succeeded, and have owed 
 
 it to fortuitous circumstances that their tenure on the boards has 
 
 been comparatively short." — E. W. Gosse, in article in The Century 
 
 Magazine. 
 
 G
 
 82 LIFE OF 
 
 quite sufficient literary repute to justify a publisher in 
 risking the issue of a drama by him, one, at any rate, that 
 had the advantage of association with Macready's name. 
 The Longmans issued it, and the author had the pleasure 
 of knowing that his third poetic work was not produced 
 at the expense of a relative, but at that of the publishers. 
 It had but an indifferent reception, however. 
 
 Most people who saw the performance of " Strafford " 
 given in 18S6, under the auspices of the Browning 
 Society, were surprised as well as impressed : for few, 
 apparently, had realised from perusal the power of the 
 play as made manifest when acted. The secret of this 
 is that the drama, when privily read, seems hard if not 
 heavy in its diction, and to be so inornate, though by no 
 means correspondingly simple, as to render any com- 
 parison between it and the dramatic work of Shakspere 
 out of the question. But when acted, the artistry of the 
 play is revealed. Its intense naturalness is due in great 
 part to the stern concision of the lines, where no word is 
 wasted, where every sentence is fraught with the utmost 
 it can convey. The outlines which disturbed us by 
 their vagueness become more clear : in a word, we all 
 see in enactment what only a few of us can discern in 
 perusal. The play has its faults, but scarcely those of 
 language, where the diction is noble and rhythmic, 
 because it is, so to speak, the genuine rind of the fruit 
 it envelops. But there are dramatic faults — primarily, 
 in the extreme economy of the author in the present- 
 ment of his dramatis personcB, who are embodied abstrac- 
 tions — monomaniacs of ideas, as some one has said 
 of Hugo's personages — rather than men as we are, 
 with manifold complexities in endless friction or fusion.
 
 BROWNING. S3 
 
 One cardinal fault is the lack of humour, which to 
 my mind is the paramount objection to its popular 
 acceptance. Another, is the misproportionate length 
 of some of the speeches. Once again, there is, as in 
 the greater portion of Browning's longer poems and 
 dramas, a baneful equality of emphasis. The con- 
 ception of Charles I. is not only obviously weak, but 
 strangely prejudiced adversely for so keen an analyst of 
 the soul as Browning. For what a fellow-dramatist calls 
 this " Sunset Shadow of a King," no man or woman could 
 abase every hope and energy. Shakspere would never 
 have committed the crucial mistake of making Charles 
 the despicable deformity he is in Browning's drama. 
 Strafford himself disappears too soon : in the fourth act 
 there is the vacuum abhorred of dramatic propriety. 
 
 When he again comes on the scene, the charm is 
 partly broken. But withal the play is one of remarkable 
 vigour and beauty. It seems to me that too much has 
 been written against it on the score of its metrical rude- 
 ness. The lines are beat out by a hammer, but in the 
 process they are wrought clear of all needless alloy. To 
 urge, as has been lately urged, that it lacks all human 
 touch and is a mere intellectual fanfaronade, and that 
 there is not once a line of poignant insight, is altogether 
 uncritical. Readers of this mind must have forgotten or 
 be indifferent to those lines, for example, where the 
 wretched Charles stammeringly excuses himself to his 
 loyal minister for his death-warrant, crying out that it 
 was wrung from him, and begging Strafford not to curse 
 him : or, again, that wonderfully significant line, so full 
 of a too tardy knowledge and of concentrated scorn, 
 where Strafford first begs the king to "be good to his
 
 84 LIFE OF 
 
 children," and then, with a contempt that is almost 
 sublime, implores, " Stay, sir, do not promise, do not 
 swear ! " The whole of the second scene in the fifth act 
 is pure genius. The reader, or spectator, knows by this 
 time that all hope is over : that Strafford, though all 
 unaware, is betrayed and undone. It is a subtle dramatic 
 ruse, that of Browning's representing him sitting in his 
 apartment in the Tower with his young children, William 
 and Anne, blithely singing. 
 
 Can one read and ever forget the lines giving the gay 
 Italian rhyme, with the boy's picturesquely childish 
 prose-accompaniment? Strafford is seated, weary and 
 
 distraught : — 
 
 " belVandare 
 Per barca in mare, 
 Verso la sera 
 Di P}-imavera ! 
 William. The boat's in the broad moonlight all this while — 
 
 Verso la sera 
 Di Primavera ! 
 And the boat shoots from underneath the moon 
 Into the shadowy distance ; only still 
 You hear the dipping oar — 
 Verso la sera, 
 And faint, and fainter, and then all's quite gone, 
 Music and light and all, like a lost star. 
 Anne. But you should sleep, father : you were to sleep. 
 Strafford. I do sleep, Anne ; or if not — you must know 
 
 There's such a thing as . . . 
 William. You're too tired to sleep. 
 
 Strafford. It will come by-and-by and all day long, 
 In that old quiet house I told you of: ■ 
 We sleep safe there. 
 Anne. Why not in Ireland ? 
 
 Strafford. No ! 
 
 Too many dreams ! — "
 
 BROWNING. 85 
 
 To me this children's-song and the fleeting and now 
 plaintive echo of it, as " Voices from Within " — " Verso 
 la sera, Di Primavera" — in the terrible scene where 
 Strafford learns his doom, is only to be paralleled by the 
 song of Mariana in " Measure for Measure," wherein, 
 likewise, is abduced in one thrilling poignant strain the 
 quintessential part of the tense life of the whole play. 
 
 So much has been written concerning the dramas of 
 Robert Browning — though indeed there is still room for 
 a volume of careful criticism, dealing solely with this 
 theme — that I have the less regret in having so in- 
 adequately to pass in review works of such poetic 
 magnitude as those enumerated above. 
 
 But it would be impossible, in so small a book as this, 
 to examine them in detail without incurring a just charge 
 of misproportion. The greatness and the shortcomings 
 of the dramas and dramatic poems must be noted as 
 succinctly as practicable ; and I have dwelt more liber- 
 ally upon " Pauline," " Paracelsus," and " Strafford," 
 partly because (certainly without more than one excep- 
 tion, " Sordello ") these are the three least read of 
 Browning's poems, partly because they indicate the 
 sweep and reach of his first orient eagle-flight through 
 new morning-skies, and mainly because in them we 
 already find Browning at his best and at his weakest, 
 because in them we hear not only the rush of his sunlit 
 pinions, but also the low earthward surge of dullard wings. 
 
 Browning is foreshadowed in his earliest writings, as 
 perhaps no other poet has been to like extent. In 
 the "Venus and Adonis," and the "Rape of Lucrece," 
 we have but the dimmest foreview of the author of 
 "Hamlet," "Othello," and "Macbeth"; had Shak-
 
 86 LIFE OF 
 
 spere died prematurely none could have predicted, from 
 the exquisite blossoms of his adolescence, the immortal 
 fruit of his maturity. But, in Browning's three earliest 
 works, we clearly discern him, as the sculptor of Mel os 
 previsioned his Venus in the rough-hewn block. 
 
 Thenceforth, to change the imagery, he developed 
 rapidly upon the same lines, or doubled upon himself 
 in intricate revolutions ; but already his line of life, his 
 poetic parallel, was definitely established. 
 
 In the consideration of Browning's dramas it is need- 
 ful to be sure of one's vantage for judgment. The 
 first step towards this assurance is the ablation of 
 the chronic Shaksperian comparison. Primarily, the 
 shaping spirit of the time wrought Shakspere and 
 Browning to radically divergent methods of expression, 
 but each to a method in profound harmony with the 
 dominant sentiment of the age in which he lived. 
 Above all others, the Elizabethan era was rich in 
 romantic adventure, of the mind as well as of the body, 
 and above all others, save that of the Renaissance in 
 Italy, animated by a passionate curiosity. So, too, 
 supremely, the Victorian era has been prolific of novel 
 and vast Titanic struggles of the human spirit to reach 
 those Gates of Truth whose lowest steps are the scarce 
 discernible stars and furthest suns we scan, by piling 
 Ossas of searching speculation upon Pelions of hardly- 
 won positive knowledge. The highest exemplar of the 
 former is Shakspere, Browning the profoundest inter- 
 preter of the latter. To achieve supremacy the one had 
 to create a throbbing actuality, a world of keenest living, 
 of acts and intervolved situations and episodes : the 
 other to fashion a mentality so passionately alive that
 
 BR O WN1NG. 87 
 
 its manifold phases should have all the reality of con- 
 crete individualities. The one reveals individual life to 
 us by the play of circumstance, the interaction of 
 events, the correlative eduction of personal character- 
 istics : the other by his apprehension of that quint- 
 essential movement or mood or phase wherein the soul 
 is transitorily visible on its lonely pinnacle of light. The 
 elder poet reveals life to us by the sheer vividness of his 
 own vision : the younger, by a newer, a less picturesque 
 but more scientific abduction, compels the complex 
 rayings of each soul-star to a singular simplicity, as 
 by the spectrum analysis. The one, again, fulfils his 
 aim by a broad synthesis based upon the vivid observ- 
 ance and selection of vital details : the other by an 
 extraordinary acute psychic analysis. In a word, 
 Shakspere works as with the clay of human action : 
 Browning as with the clay of human thought. 
 
 As for the difference in value of the two methods 
 it is useless to dogmatise. The psychic portraiture 
 produced by either is valuable only so far as it is 
 convincingly true. 
 
 The profoundest insight cannot reach deeper than its 
 own possibilities of depth. The physiognomy of the 
 soul is never visible in its entirety, barely ever even its 
 profile. The utmost we can expect to reproduce, per- 
 haps even to perceive in the most quintessential moment, 
 is a partially faithful, partially deceptive silhouette. As 
 no human being has ever seen his or her own soul, 
 in all its rounded completeness of good and evil, of 
 strength and weakness, of what is temporal and perishable 
 and what is germinal and essential, how can we expect 
 even the subtlest analyst to adequately depict other souls
 
 88 LIFE OF 
 
 than his own. It is Browning's high distinction that he 
 has this soul-depictive faculty — restricted as even in his 
 instance it perforce is — to an extent unsurpassed by any 
 other poet, ancient or modern. As a sympathetic critic 
 has remarked, " His stage is not the visible phenomenal 
 England (or elsewhere) of history ; it is a point in the 
 spiritual universe, where naked souls meet and wrestle, 
 as they play the great game of life, for counters, the true 
 value of which can only be realised in the bullion of a 
 higher life than this." No doubt there is "a certain 
 crudeness in the manner in which these naked souls are 
 presented," not only in "Strafford" but elsewhere in 
 the plays. Browning markedly has the defects of his 
 qualities. 
 
 As part of his method, it should be noted that his real 
 trust is upon monologue rather than upon dialogue. 
 To one who works from within outward — in contra- 
 distinction to the Shaksperian method of striving to 
 win from outward forms " the passion and the life whose 
 fountains are within " — the propriety of this dramatic 
 means can scarce be gainsaid. The swift complicated 
 mental machinery can thus be exhibited infinitely more 
 coherently and comprehensibly than by the most 
 electric succinct dialogue. Again and again Brown- 
 ing has nigh foundered in the morass of monologue, 
 but, broadly speaking, he transcends in this dramatic 
 method. 
 
 At the same time, none must take it for granted that 
 the author of the " Blot on the 'Scutcheon," " Luria," 
 " In a Balcony," is not dramatic in even the most 
 conventional sense. Above all, indeed — as Mr. Walter 
 Pater has said — his is the poetry of situations. In each
 
 BRO WNING. 89 
 
 of the dramatis persona, one of the leading characteristics 
 is loyalty to a dominant ideal. In Strafford's case it is 
 that of unswerving devotion to the King : in Mildred's 
 and in Thorold's, in the " Blot on the 'Scutcheon," it is 
 that of subservience respectively to conventional morality 
 and family pride (Lord Tresham, it may be added, is the 
 most hopelessly monomaniacal of all Browning's " mono- 
 maniacs"): in Valence's, in " Colombe's Birthday," to 
 chivalric love : in Charles, in " King Victor and King 
 Charles," to kingly and filial duty : in Anael's and 
 Djabal's, in " The Return of the Druses," respectively 
 to religion and unscrupulous ambition modified by 
 patriotism : in Chiappino's, in " A Soul's Tragedy," to 
 purely sordid ambition: in Luria's, to noble steadfastness: 
 and in Constance's, in " In a Balcony," to self-denial. Of 
 these plays, " The Return of the Druses " seems to me 
 the most picturesque, " Luria " the most noble and 
 dignified, and " In a Balcony " the most potentially a 
 great dramatic success. The last is in a sense a 
 fragment, but, though the integer of a great un- 
 accomplished drama, is as complete in itself as the 
 Funeral March in Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. The 
 "Blot on the 'Scutcheon" has the radical fault char- 
 acteristic of writers of sensational fiction, a too pro- 
 miscuous "clearing the ground" by syncope and suicide. 
 Another is the juvenility of Mildred : — a serious 
 infraction of dramatic law, where the mere tampering 
 with history, as in the circumstances of King Victor's 
 death in the earlier play, is at least excusable by high 
 precedent. More disastrous, poetically, is the ruinous 
 banality of Mildred's anticlimax when, after her brother 
 reveals himself as her lover's murderer, she, like the
 
 90 LIFE OF 
 
 typical young Miss Anglaise of certain French novelists, 
 betrays her incapacity for true passion by exclaiming, 
 in effect, " What, you've murdered my lover ! Well, tell 
 me all. Pardon ? Oh, well, I pardon you : at least 
 I think I do. Thorold, my dear brother, how very 
 wretched you must be ! " 
 
 I am unaware if this anticlimax has been pointed out 
 by any one, but surely it is one of the most appalling 
 lapses of genius which could be indicated. Even the 
 beautiful song in the third scene of the first act, " There's 
 a woman like a dew-drop, she's so purer than the purest," 
 is, in the circumstances, nearly over the verge which 
 divides the sublime from the ridiculous. No wonder 
 that, on the night the play was first acted, Mertoun's 
 song, as he clambered to his mistress's window, caused 
 a sceptical laugh to ripple lightly among the tolerant 
 auditory. It is with diffidence I take so radically 
 distinct a standpoint from that of Dickens, who declared 
 he knew no love like that of Mildred and Mertoun, no 
 passion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its 
 conception, like it ; who, further, at a later date, affirmed 
 that he would rather have written this play than any 
 work of modern times : nor with less reluctance, that I 
 find myself at variance with Mr. Skelton, who speaks 
 of the drama as " one of the most perfectly conceived 
 and perfectly executed tragedies in the language." In 
 the instance of Luria, that second Othello, suicide has 
 all the impressiveness of a plenary act of absolution : 
 the death of Anael seems as inevitable as the flash of 
 lightning after the concussion of thunder-clouds. But 
 Thorold's suicide is mere weakness, scarce a perverted 
 courage ; and Mildred's broken heart was an ill not
 
 BROWNING. 91 
 
 beyond the healing of a morally robust physician. 
 "Colombe's Birthday" has a certain remoteness of 
 interest, really due to the reader's more or less acute per- 
 ception of the radical divergence, for all Valence's great- 
 ness of mind and spirit, between the fair young Duchess 
 and her chosen lover : a circumstance which must surely 
 stand in the way of its popularity. Though " A Soul's 
 Tragedy" has the saving quality of humour, it is of 
 too grim a kind to be provocative of laughter. 
 
 In each of these plays 1 the lover of Browning will 
 recall passage after passage of superbly dramatic effect. 
 But supreme in his remembrance will be the wonderful 
 scene in " The Return of the Druses," where the Prefect, 
 drawing a breath of relief, is almost simultaneously 
 assassinated ; and that where Anael, with every nerve at 
 tension in her fierce religious resolve, with a poignant, 
 life-surrendering cry, hails Djabal as Hakeem — as Divine 
 — and therewith falls dead at his feet. Nor will he for- 
 get that where, in the " Blot on the 'Scutcheon," Mildred, 
 with a dry sob in her throat, stammeringly utters — 
 
 " I — I — was so young ! 
 Besides I loved him, Thorold— and I had 
 No mother ; God forgot me : so I fell " 
 
 or that where, "at end of the disastrous day," Luria 
 takes the phial of poison from his breast, muttering — 
 
 " Strange ! This is all I brought from my own land 
 To help me." 
 
 1 " Strafford," 1837 ; " King Victor and King Charles," 1S42 ; 
 "The Return of the Druses," and "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon," 
 1843; "Colombe's Birthday," 1844; "Luria," and "A Soul's 
 Tragedy," 1845.
 
 92 LIFE OF BROWNING. 
 
 Before passing on from these eight plays to Brown- 
 ing's most imperishable because most nearly immacu- 
 late dramatic poem, " Pippa Passes," and to "Sordello," 
 that colossal derelict upon the ocean of poetry, I should 
 like — out of an embarrassing quantity of alluring details 
 — to remind the reader of two secondary matters of 
 interest, pertinent to the present theme. One is that 
 the song in "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon," "There's a 
 woman like a dew-drop," written several years before 
 the author's meeting with Elizabeth Barrett, is so closely 
 in the style of " Lady Geraldine's Courtship," and other 
 ballads by the sweet singer who afterwards became a 
 partner in the loveliest marriage of which we have record 
 in literary history, that, even were there nothing to 
 substantiate the fact, it were fair to infer that Mer- 
 toun's song to Mildred was the electric touch which 
 compelled to its metric shape one of Mrs. Browning's 
 best-known poems. 
 
 The further interest lies in the lordly acknowledg- 
 ment of the dedication to him of " Luria," which Landor 
 sent to Browning — lines pregnant with the stateliest 
 music of his old age : — 
 
 " Shakespeare is not our poet but the world's, 
 Therefore on him no speech ! and brief for thee, 
 Browning ! Since Chaucer was alive and hale 
 No man has walked along our roads with step 
 So active, so enquiring eye, or tongue 
 So varied in discourse. But warmer climes 
 Give brighter plumage, stronger wing : the breeze 
 Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on 
 Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where 
 The Siren waits thee, singing song for song."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IN my allusion to " Pippa Passes," towards the close 
 of the preceding chapter, as the most imperishable 
 because the most nearly immaculate of Browning's 
 dramatic poems, I would not have it understood that 
 its pre-eminence is considered from the standpoint of 
 technical achievement, of art, merely. It seems to me, 
 like all simple and beautiful things, profound enough for 
 the searching plummet of the most curious explorer of 
 the depths of life. It can be read, re-read, learned by 
 heart, and the more it is known the wider and more 
 alluring are the avenues of imaginative thought which it 
 discloses. It has, more than any other long com- 
 position by its author, that quality of symmetry, that 
 symmetria prisca recorded of Leonardo da Vinci in the 
 Latin epitaph of Platino Piatto; and, as might be 
 expected, its mental basis, what Rossetti called funda- 
 mental brain-work, is as luminous, depth within depth, 
 as the morning air. By its side, the more obviously 
 " profound " poems, Bishop Blougram and the rest, arc 
 mere skilled dialectics. 
 
 The art that is most profound and most touching 
 must ever be the simplest. Whenever /Lschylus, Dante, 
 Shakspere, Milton, are at white heat they require no 
 
 
 \^
 
 94 LIFE OF 
 
 exposition, but meditation only — the meditation akin to 
 the sentiment of little children who listen, intent upon 
 every syllable, and passionately eager of soul, to hearth- 
 side tragedies. The play of genius is like the movement 
 of the sea. It has its solemn rhythm : its joy, irradiate 
 of the sun ; its melancholy, in the patient moonlight : its 
 surge and turbulence under passing tempests : below all, 
 the deep oceanic music. There are, of course, many to 
 whom the sea is but a waste of water, at best useful as a 
 highway and as the nursery of the winds and rains. For 
 them there is no hint " of the incommunicable dream " in 
 the curve of the rising wave, no murmur of the oceanic 
 undertone in the short leaping sounds, invisible things 
 that laugh and clap their hands for joy and are no more. 
 To them it is but a desert : obscure, imponderable, a 
 weariness. The "profundity" of Browning, so dear a 
 claim in the eyes of the poet's fanatical admirers, exists, 
 in their sense, only in his inferior work. There is 
 more profound insight in Blake's Song of Innocence, 
 "Piping down the valleys wild," or in Wordsworth's line, 
 " Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," or in 
 Keats' single verse, "There is a budding morrow in 
 midnight, 1 ' or in this quatrain on Poetry, by a young 
 living poet — 
 
 " She comes like the husht beauty of the night, 
 But sees too deep for laughter; 
 Her touch is a vibration and a light 
 From worlds before and after " 
 
 there is more "profundity" in any of these than in 
 libraries of " Sludge the Medium " literature. Mere 
 hard thinking does not involve profundity, any more
 
 BROWNING. 95 
 
 than neurotic excitation involves spiritual ecstasy. JDe 
 prqfundis, indeed, must the poet come : there must 
 the deep rhythm of life have electrified his " volatile 
 essence " to a living rhythmic joy. In this deep sense, 
 and this only, the poet is born, not made. He may 
 learn to fashion anew that which he hath seen : the 
 depth of his insight depends upon the depth of his 
 spiritual heritage. If wonder dwell not in his eyes and 
 soul there can be no " far ken " for him. Here it seems 
 apt to point out that Browning was the first writer of 
 our day to indicate this transmutive, this inspired and 
 inspiring wonder-spirit, which is the deepest motor in 
 the evolution of our modern poetry. Characteristically, 
 he puts his utterance into the mouth of a dreamy 
 German student, the shadowy Schramm who is but 
 metaphysics embodied, metaphysics finding apt expression 
 in tobacco-smoke : " Keep but ever looking, whether 
 with the body's eye or the mind's, and you will soon find 
 something to look on ! Has a man done wondering at 
 women ? — there follow men, dead and alive, to wonder 
 at. Has he done wondering at men ? — there's God to 
 wonder at : and the faculty of wonder may be, at the 
 same time, old and tired enough with respect to its 
 first object, and yet young and fresh sufficiently, so far 
 as concerns its novel one." 
 
 This wonder is akin to that 'insanity' of the poet 
 which is but impassioned sanity. Plato sums the matter 
 when he says, " He who, having no touch of the Muse's 
 madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he 
 will get into the temple by the help of Art — he, I say, 
 and his poetry, are not admitted." 
 
 In that same wood beyond Duhvich to which allusion
 
 ; 
 
 96 LIFE OF 
 
 has already been made, the germinal motive of " Pippa 
 Passes " flashed upon the poet. No wonder this resort 
 was for long one of his sacred places, and that he 
 lamented its disappearance as fervently as Ruskin 
 bewailed the encroachment of the ocean of bricks 
 and mortar upon the wooded privacies of Denmark 
 
 Hill. 
 
 Save for a couple of brief visits abroad, Browning spent 
 .the years, between his first appearance as a dramatic 
 writer and his marriage, in London and the neighbour- 
 hood. Occasionally he took long walks into the country. 
 One particular pleasure was to lie beside a hedge, 
 or deep in meadow-grasses, or under a tree, as circum- 
 stances and the mood concurred, and there to give 
 himself up so absolutely to the life of the moment 
 that even the shy birds would alight close by, and 
 sometimes venturesomely poise themselves on suspicious 
 wings for a brief space upon his recumbent body. I 
 have heard him say that his faculty of observation at that 
 time would not have appeared despicable to a Seminole 
 or an Iroquois : he saw and watched everything, the bird 
 on the wing, the snail dragging its shell up the pendulous 
 woodbine, the bee adding to his golden treasure as he 
 swung in the bells of the campanula, the green fly 
 darting hither and thither like an animated seedling, the 
 spider weaving her gossamer from twig to twig, the wood- 
 pecker heedfully scrutinising the lichen on the gnarled 
 oak-bole, the passage of the wind through leaves or 
 across grass, the motions and shadows of the clouds, and 
 so forth. These were his golden holidays. Much of 
 the rest of his time, when not passed in his room 
 in his father's house, where he wrote his dramas and
 
 BROWNING. 97 
 
 early poems, and studied for hours daily, was spent in 
 the Library of the British Museum, in an endless 
 curiosity into the more or less unbeaten tracks of litera- 
 ture. These London experiences were varied by whole 
 days spent at the National Gallery, and in communion 
 with kindred spirits. At one time he had rooms, or 
 rather a room, in the immediate neighbourhood of the 
 Strand, whither he could go when he wished to be in 
 town continuously for a time, or when he had any social 
 or theatrical engagement. 
 
 Browning's life at this period was distraught by more 
 than one episode of the heart. It would be strange 
 were ii otherwise. He had in no ordinary degree a rich 
 and sensuous nature, and his responsiveness was so quick 
 that the barriers of prudence were apt to be as shadowy 
 to him as to the author of " The Witch of Atlas." But 
 he was the earnest student for the most part, and, above 
 all, the poet. His other pleasure, in his happy vagrant 
 days, was to join company with any tramps, gipsies, or 
 other wayfarers, and in good fellowship gain much know- 
 ledge of life that was useful at a later time. Rustic 
 entertainments, particularly peripatetic " Theatres Royal," 
 had a singular fascination for him, as for that matter had 
 rustic oratory, whether of the alehouse or the pulpit. 
 At one period he took the keenest interest in sectaries 
 of all kinds : and often he incurred a gentle reproof 
 from his mother because of his nomad propensities 
 in search of "pastors new." There was even a time 
 when he seriously deliberated whether he should not 
 combine literature and religious ministry, as Faraday 
 combined evangelical fervour with scientific enthusiasm. 
 "'Twas a girl with eyes like two dreams of night" that
 
 98 LIFE OF 
 
 saved him from himself, and defrauded the Church Inde- 
 pendent of a stalwart orator. 
 
 [t was, as already stated, while he strolled through 
 Dulwich Wood one day that the thought occurred to him 
 which was to find development and expression in "Pippa 
 Passes." "The image flashed upon him," writes his 
 intimate friend, Mrs. Sutherland Orr, "of some one 
 walking thus alone through life ; one apparently too 
 obscure to leave a trace of his or her passage, yet exer- 
 cising a lasting though unconscious influence at every 
 step of it; and the image shaped itself into the little 
 silk-winder of Asolo, Felippa or Pippa." 
 
 It has always seemed to me a radical mistake to 
 include "Pippa Passes" among Browning's dramas. 
 Not only is it absolutely unactable, but essentially 
 undramatic in the conventional sense. True dramatic 
 writing concerns itself fundamentally with the apt 
 conjunction of events, and the more nearly it approxi- 
 mates to the verity of life the more likely is it 
 to be of immediate appeal. There is a vraie verite 
 which only the poet, evolving from dramatic concepts 
 rather than attempting to concentrate these in a quick, 
 moving verisimilitude, can attempt. The passing hither 
 and thither of Pippa, like a beneficent Fate, a wandering 
 chorus from a higher amid the discordant medley of a 
 lower world, changing the circumstances and even the 
 natures of certain more or less heedless listeners by the 
 wild free lilt of her happy song of innocence, is of this 
 vraie verile. It is so obviously true, spiritually, that it is 
 unreal in the commonplace of ordinary life. Its very 
 effectiveness is too apt for the dramatist, who can ill 
 afford to tamper further with the indifferent banalities
 
 BR O WNING. 99 
 
 of actual existence. The poet, unhampered by the 
 exigencies of dramatic realism, can safely, and artistically, 
 achieve an equally exact, even a higher verisimilitude, 
 by means which are, or should be, beyond adoption by 
 the dramatist proper. 
 
 But over and above any ' nice discrimination,' 
 " Pippa Passes " is simply a poem, a lyrical masque 
 with interspersed dramatic episodes, and subsidiary 
 interludes in prose. The suggestion recently made that 
 it should be acted is a wholly errant one. The finest 
 part of it is unrepresentable. The rest would consist 
 merely of a series of tableaux, with conversational 
 accompaniment. 
 
 The opening scene, "the large mean airy chamber," 
 where Pippa, the little silk-winder from the mills at 
 Asolo, springs from bed, on her New Year's Day festa, 
 and soliloquises as she dresses, is as true as it is lovely 
 when viewed through the rainbow glow of the poetic 
 atmosphere : but how could it succeed on the stage I 
 It is not merely that the monologue is too long : it is 
 too inapt, in its poetic richness, for its purpose. It is 
 the poet, not Pippa, who evokes this sweet sunrise - 
 music, this strain of the "long blue solemn hours 
 serenely flowing." The dramatic poet may occupy him- 
 self with that deeper insight, and the wider expression of 
 it, which is properly altogether beyond the scope of the 
 playwright. In a word, he may irradiate his theme 
 with the light that never was on sea or land, nor will he 
 thereby sacrifice aught of essential truth : but his com- 
 rade must see to it that he is content with the wide 
 liberal air of the common day. The poetic alchemist 
 may turn a sword into pure gold: the playwright will
 
 100 LIFE OF 
 
 concern himself with the due usage of the weapon as we 
 know it, and attribute to it no transcendent value, no 
 miraculous properties. What is permissible to Blake, 
 painting Adam and Eve among embowering roses and 
 lilies, while the sun, moon, and stars simultaneously 
 shine, is impermissible to the portrait-painter or the 
 landscapist, who has to idealise actuality to the point 
 only of artistic realism, and not to transmute it at the 
 outset from happily-perceived concrete facts to a glori- 
 fied abstract concept. 
 
 In this opening monologue the much-admired song, 
 "All service ranks the same with God," is no song 
 at all, properly, but simply a beautiful short poem. 
 From the dramatist's point of view, could anything be 
 more shaped for disaster than the second of the two 
 stanzas ? — 
 
 " Say not ' a small event ! ' Why ' small ' ? 
 Costs it more pain than this, ye call 
 A ' great event,' should come to pass, 
 Than that ? Untwine me From the mass 
 Of deeds which make up life, one deed 
 Power shall fall short in or exceed ! " 
 
 The whole of this lovely prologue is the production of a 
 dramatic poet, not of a poet writing a drama. On the 
 other hand, I cannot agree with what I read somewhere 
 recently— that Sebald's song, at the opening of the most 
 superb dramatic writing in the whole range of Victorian 
 literature, is, in the circumstances, wholly inappropriate. 
 It seems to me entirely consistent with the character 
 of Ottima's reckless lover. He is akin to the gallant in 
 one of Dumas' romances, who lingered atop of the wall 
 of the prison whence he was escaping in order to whistle
 
 BROWNING. 101 
 
 the concluding bar of a blithe chanson of freedom. 
 What is, dramatically, disastrous in the instance of 
 Mertoun singing "There's a woman like a dewdrop," 
 when he ought to be seeking Mildred's presence in pro- 
 found stealth and silence, is, dramatically, electrically 
 startling in the mouth of Sebald, among the geraniums 
 of the shattered shrub-house, where he has passed the 
 night with Ottima, while her murdered husband lies stark 
 in the adjoining room. 
 
 It must, however, be borne in mind that this thrilling 
 dramatic effect is fully experienced only in retrospection, 
 or when there is knowledge of what is to follow. 
 
 A conclusive objection to the drama as an actable play 
 is that three of the four main episodes are fragmentary. 
 We know nothing of the fate of Luigi : we can but 
 surmise the future of Jules and Phene : we know not 
 how or when Monsignor will see Pippa righted. Ottima 
 and Sebald reach a higher level in voluntary death than 
 they ever could have done in life. 
 
 It is quite unnecessary, here, to dwell upon this 
 exquisite flower of genius in detail. Every one who 
 knows Browning at all knows "Pippa Passes." Its 
 lyrics have been unsurpassed, for birdlike spontaneity 
 and a rare high music, by no other Victorian poet: 
 its poetic insight is such as no other poet than the 
 author of "The Ring and the Book" and "The Inn 
 Album " can equal. Its technique, moreover, is superb. 
 From the outset of the tremendous episode of Ottima 
 and Sebald, there is a note of tragic power which is 
 almost overwhelming. Who has not known what Jakob 
 Boehme calls "the shudder of a divine excitement" 
 when Luca's murderer replies to his paramour,
 
 102 LIFE OF 
 
 "morning ? 
 It seems to me a night with a sun added." 
 
 How deep a note, again, is touched when Sebald 
 exclaims, in allusion to his murder of Luca, that he 
 was so " wrought upon," though here, it may be, there 
 is an unconscious reminiscence of the tenser and more 
 culminative cry of Othello, "but being wrought, per- 
 plext in the extreme." Still more profound a touch 
 is that where Ottima, daring her lover to the " one 
 thing that must be done ; you know what thing : Come 
 in and help to carry," says, with affected lightsomeness, 
 "This dusty pane might serve for looking-glass," and 
 simultaneously exclaims, as she throws them rejectingly 
 from her nervous fingers, "Three, four — four grey 
 hairs ! " then with an almost sublime coquetry of horror 
 turns abruptly to Sebald, saying with a voice striving 
 vainly to be blithe — 
 
 "Is it so you said 
 A plait of hair should wave across my neck ? 
 No — this way." 
 
 Who has not been moved by the tragic grandeur of 
 the verse, as well as by the dramatic intensity of the 
 episode of the lovers' "crowning night "? 
 
 " Ottima. The day of it too, Sebald ! 
 
 When heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with heat, 
 Its black-blue canopy suffered descend 
 Close on us both, to weigh down each to each, 
 And smother up all life except our life. 
 So lay we till the storm came. 
 
 Sebald. How it came ! 
 
 Ottima. Buried in woods we lay, you recollect ; 
 Swift ran the searching tempest overhead;
 
 BROWNING. 103 
 
 And ever and anon some bright white shaft 
 
 Burned thro' the pine-tree roof, here burned and there, 
 
 As if God's messenger thro' the close wood screen 
 
 Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture, 
 
 Feeling for guilty thee and me : then broke 
 
 The thunder like a whole sea overhead " 
 
 Surely there is nothing in all our literature more 
 poignantly dramatic than this first part of " Pippa 
 Passes." The strains which Pippa sings here and 
 throughout are as pathetically fresh and free as a thrush's 
 song in the heart of a beleaguered city, and as with the 
 same unconsidered magic. There is something of the 
 mavis-note, liquid falling tones, caught up in a moment 
 in joyous caprice, in 
 
 " Give her but a least excuse to love me ! 
 When — where " 
 
 No one of these songs, all acutely apt to the time and 
 the occasion, has a more overwhelming effect than that 
 which interrupts Ottima and Sebald at the perilous 
 summit of their sin, beyond which lies utter darkness, 
 behind which is the narrow twilit backward way. 
 
 " Ottima. Bind it thrice about my brow ; 
 
 Crown me your queen, your spirit's arbitress, 
 
 Magnificent in sin. Say that ! 
 Sebald. I crown you 
 
 My great white queen, my spirit's arbitress, 
 
 Magnificent . . . 
 
 [From without is heard the voice ofPii'VA singing — ] 
 
 The year's at the spring, 
 y And day's at the morn; 
 
 Morning's at seven; 
 The hill-side's dew-pearled ;
 
 104 LIFE OF 
 
 The lark's on the wing; 
 The snail's on the thorn : 
 God's in his heaven — 
 All's right with the world ! 
 
 [PlPPA passes. 
 Sebald. God's in his heaven ! Do you hear that ? 
 
 Who spoke?" 
 
 This sweet voice of Pippa reaches the guilty lovers, 
 reaches Luigi in his tower, hesitating between love and 
 patriotic duty, reaches Jules and Phene when all the 
 happiness of their unborn years trembles in the balance, 
 reaches the Prince of the Church just when his con- 
 science is sore beset by a seductive temptation, reaches 
 one and all at a crucial moment in the life of each. 
 The ethical lesson of the whole poem is summed up in 
 
 " All service ranks the same with God — 
 "With God, whose puppets, hest and worst, 
 Are we: there is no last nor first," 
 
 and in 
 
 " God's in his heaven — 
 All's right with the world ! : 
 
 "With God there is no lust of Godhood," says Rossetti 
 in "Hand and Soul" : Und so ist der blaue Himmel 
 grosser als jedes Gewolk darin, und dauerhajler dazu> 
 meditates Jean Paul : " There can be nothing good, as 
 we know it, nor anything evil, as we know it, in the eye 
 of the Omnipresent and the Omniscient," utters the 
 Oriental mystic. 
 
 It is interesting to know that many of the nature touches 
 were indirectly due to the poet's solitary rambles, by 
 dawn, sundown, and " dewy eve," in the wooded districts 
 south of Dulwich, at Hatcham, and upon Wimbledon 
 Common, whither he was often wont to wander and to
 
 BROWNING. 105 
 
 ramble for hours, and where he composed one day the 
 well-known lines upon Shelley, with many another unre- 
 corded impulse of song. Here, too, it was, that Carlyle, 
 riding for exercise, was stopped by ' a beautiful youth,' 
 who introduced himself as one of the philosopher's 
 profoundest admirers. 
 
 It was from the Dulwich wood that, one afternoon in 
 March, he saw a storm glorified by a double rainbow 
 of extraordinary beauty; a memorable vision, recorded 
 in an utterance of Luigi to his mother : here too that, 
 in autumnal dusks, he saw many a crescent moon with 
 " notched and burning rim." He never forgot the bygone 
 " sunsets and great stars " he saw in those days of 
 his fervid youth. Browning remarked once that the 
 romance of his life was in his own soul ; and on another 
 occasion I heard him smilingly add, to some one's vague 
 assertion that in Italy only was there any romance left, 
 " Ah, well, I should like to include poor old Camber- 
 well ! " Perhaps he was thinking of his lines in " Pippa 
 Passes," of the days when that masterpiece came ebullient 
 from the fount of his genius — 
 
 " May's warm slow yellow moonlit summer nights — 
 Gone are they, but I have them in my soul ! " 
 
 There is all the distinction between " Pippa Passes" and 
 " Sordello" that there is between the Venus of Milos and 
 a gigantic Theban Sphinx. The latter is, it is true, pro- 
 portionate in its vastness ; but the symmetry of mere bulk 
 is not the symmetria firisca of ideal sculpture. I have 
 already alluded to it as a derelict upon the ocean of 
 poetry. This, indeed, it still seems to me, notwithstand- 
 ing the well-meaning suasion of certain admirers of the
 
 106 LIFE OF 
 
 poem who have hoped " I should do it justice," thereby 
 meaning that I should eulogise it as a masterpiece. It 
 is a gigantic effort, of a kind ; so is the sustained throe 
 of a wrestling Titan. That the poem contains much 
 which is beautiful is undeniable, also that it is surcharged 
 with winsome and profound thoughts and a multitude of 
 will-o'-the-wisp-like fancies which all shape towards high 
 thinking. 
 
 But it is monotonous as one of the enormous 
 American inland seas to a lover of the ocean, to whom 
 the salt brine is as the breath of delight. The fatal 
 facility of the heroic couplet to lapse into diffuseness, 
 has, coupled with a warped anxiety for irreducible 
 concision, been Browning's ruin here. 
 
 There is one charge even yet too frequently made 
 against "Sordello," that of "obscurity." Its interest 
 may be found remote, its treatment verbose, its intricacies 
 puzzling to those unaccustomed to excursions from the 
 familiar highways of old usage, but its motive thought is 
 not obscure. It is a moonlit plain compared with the 
 " silva oscura " of the " Divina Commedia." 
 
 Surely this question of Browning's obscurity was 
 expelled to the Limbo of Dead Stupidities when Mr. 
 Swinburne, in periods as resplendent as the whirling 
 wheels of Phoebus Apollo's chariot, wrote his famous 
 incidental passage in his " Essay on Chapman." 
 
 Too probably, in the dim disintegrating future which 
 will reduce all our o'ertoppling extremes, " Sordello " will 
 be as little read as "The Faerie Queene," and, similarly, 
 only for the gleam of the quenchless lamps amid its long 
 deserted alleys and stately avenues. Sadly enough, for 
 to poets it will always be an unforgotten land — a continent
 
 BROWNING. 107 
 
 with amaranth-haunted Vales of Tempe, where, as Spenser 
 says in one of the Aeclogues of " The Shepherd's 
 Calendar," they will there oftentimes " sitten as drouned 
 in dreme." 
 
 It has, for those who are not repelled, a charm all 
 its own. I know of no other poem in the language 
 which is at once so wearisome and so seductive. 
 How can one explain paradoxes? There is a charm, 
 or there is none : that is what it amounts to, for each 
 individual. Tutti ga i so gitsti, e mi go i mil — " every- 
 body follows his taste, and I follow mine," as the 
 Venetian saying, quoted by Browning at the head of 
 his Rawdon Brown sonnet, has it. 
 
 All that need be known concerning the framework 
 of " Sordello," and of the real Sordello himself, will 
 be found in the various Browning hand-books, in Mr. 
 Nettleship's and other dissertations, and, particularly, 
 in Mrs. Dall's most circumspect and able historical 
 essay. It is sufficient here to say that while the 
 Sordello and Palma of the poet are traceable in the 
 Cunizza and the strange comet-like Sordello of the 
 Italian and Provengal Chronicles (who has his secure 
 immortality, by Dante set forth in leonine guise — a 
 guisa di leon qnando si posa — in the " Purgatorio "), 
 both these are the most shadowy of prototypes. The 
 Sordello of Browning is a typical poetic soul: the narrative 
 of the incidents in the development of this soul is 
 adapted to the historical setting furnished by the aforesaid 
 Chronicles. Sordello is a far more profound study than 
 Aprile in " Paracelsus," in whom, however, he is 
 obviously foreshadowed. The radical flaw in his nature 
 is that indicated by Goethe of Heine, that " he had no
 
 108 LIFE OF 
 
 heart." The poem is the narrative of his transcendent 
 aspirations, and more or less futile accomplishment. 
 
 It would be vain to attempt here any adequate excerp- 
 tion of lines of singular beauty. Readers familiar with 
 the poem will recall passage after passage — among which 
 there is probably none more widely known than the 
 grandiose sunset lines : — 
 
 " That autumn eve was stilled: 
 A last remains of sunset dimly burned 
 O'er the far forests, — like a torch-flame turned 
 By the wind back upon its bearer's hand 
 In one long flare of crimson ; as a brand, 
 The woods beneath lay black." . . . 
 
 What haunting lines there are, every here and there — 
 such as those of Palma, with her golden hair like spilt 
 sunbeams, or those on Elys, with her 
 
 " Few fine locks 
 Coloured like honey oozed from topmost rocks 
 Sun-blanched the livelong summer," . . . 
 
 or these, 
 
 " Day by day 
 New pollen on the lily-petal grows, 
 And still more labyrinthine buds the rose- 
 
 or, once more, 
 
 " A touch divine — 
 And the sealed eyeball owns the mystic rod ; 
 Visibly through his garden walketh God " 
 
 But, though sorely tempted, I must not quote further, 
 save only the concluding lines of the unparalleled and 
 impassioned address to Dante : —
 
 BROWNING. 109 
 
 " Dante, pacer of the shore 
 Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom, 
 Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume, 
 Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope 
 Into a darkness quieted by hope ; 
 Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye 
 In gracious twilights where his chosen lie " 
 
 It is a fair land, for those who have lingered in its 
 byways : but, alas, a troubled tide of strange metres, of 
 desperate rhythms, of wild conjunctions, of panic-stricken 
 collocations, oftentimes overwhelms it. " Sordello " grew 
 under the poet's fashioning till, like the magic vapour 
 of the Arabian wizard, it passed beyond his control, 
 " voluminously vast." 
 
 It is not the truest admirers of what is good in it 
 who will refuse to smile at the miseries of conscientious 
 but baffled readers. Who can fail to sympathise 
 with Douglas Jerrold when, slowly convalescent from 
 a serious illness, he found among some new books 
 sent him by a friend a copy of "Sordello." Thomas 
 Powell, writing in 1849, has chronicled the episode. A 
 few lines, he says, put Jerrold in a state of alarm. 
 Sentence after sentence brought no consecutive thought 
 to his brain. At last the idea occurred to him that in 
 his illness his mental faculties had been wrecked. 
 The perspiration rolled from his forehead, and smiting 
 his head he sank back on the sofa, crying, " O God, 
 I am an idiot ! " A little later, adds Powell, when 
 Jerrold's wife and sister entered, he thrust "Sordello" 
 into their hands, demanding what they thought of it. 
 He watched them intently while they read. When at 
 last Mrs. Jerrold remarked, " I don't understand what
 
 110 LIFE OF 
 
 this man means ; it is gibberish," her delighted husband 
 gave a sigh of relief and exclaimed, " Thank God, I 
 am not an idiot ! " 
 
 Many friends of Browning will remember his recount- 
 ing this incident almost in these very words, and his 
 enjoyment therein : though he would never admit 
 justification for such puzzlement. 
 
 But more illustrious personages than Douglas Jerrold 
 were puzzled by the poem. Lord Tennyson manfully 
 tackled it, but he is reported to have admitted in bitter- 
 ness of spirit : " There were only two lines in it that I 
 understood, and they were both lies ; they were the 
 opening and closing lines, ' Who will may hear Sordello's 
 story told,' and ' Who would has heard Sordello's story 
 told!'" Carlyle was equally candid: "My wife," he 
 writes, " has read through ' Sordello ' without being able 
 to make out whether ' Sordello ' was a man, or a city, or 
 a book." 
 
 In an article on this poem, in a French magazine, 
 M. Odysse Barot quotes a passage where the poet says 
 " God gave man two faculties " — and adds, " I wish 
 while He was about it (pendant qtfil etait en tram) 
 God had supplied another — viz., the power of under- 
 standing Mr. Browning." 
 
 And who does not remember the sad experience of 
 generous and delightful Gilead P. Beck, in " The Golden 
 Butterfly " : how, after " Fifine at the Fair," frightful 
 symptoms set in, till in despair he took up " Red Cotton 
 Nightcap Country," and fell for hours into a dull 
 comatose misery. " His eyes were bloodshot, his hair 
 was pushed in disorder about his head, his cheeks were 
 flushed, his hands were trembling, the nerves in his face
 
 BROWNING. Ill 
 
 were twitching. Then he arose, and solemnly cursed 
 Robert Browning. And then he took all his volumes, 
 and, disposing them carefully in the fireplace, set light to 
 them. ' I wish,' he said, ' that I could put the poet 
 there too.' " One other anecdote of the kind was often, 
 with evident humorous appreciation, recounted by the 
 poet. On his introduction to the Chinese Ambassador, as 
 a " brother-poet," he asked that dignitary what kind of 
 poetic expression he particularly affected. The great 
 man deliberated, and then replied that his poetry 
 might be defined as "enigmatic." Browning at once 
 admitted his fraternal kinship. 
 
 That he was himself aware of the shortcomings of 
 "Sordello" as a work of art is not disputable. In 
 1863, Mrs. Orr says, he considered the advisability of 
 "rewriting it in a more transparent manner, but 
 concluded that the labour would be disproportionate 
 to the result, and contented himself with summaris- 
 ing the contents of each 'book' in a continuous 
 heading, which represents the main thread of the 
 story." 
 
 The essential manliness of Browning is evident in 
 the famous dedication to the French critic Milsand, 
 who was among his early admirers. " My own faults 
 of expression were many ; but with care for a man 
 or book such would be surmounted, and without it 
 what avails the faultlessness of either ? I blame 
 nobody, least of all myself, who did my best then and 
 since." 
 
 Whatever be the fate of "Sordello," one thing per- 
 tinent to it shall survive :• the memorable sentence 
 in the dedicatory preface — " My stress lay on the
 
 112 LIFE OF BROWNING. 
 
 incidents in the development of a soul : little else is 
 worth study." 
 
 The poem has disastrous faults, but is a magnificent 
 failure. " Vast as night," to borrow a simile from Victor 
 Hugo, but, like night, innumerously starred.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PIPPA PASSES," "The Ring and the Book," 
 " The Inn Album," these are Browning's three 
 great dramatic poems, as distinct from his 
 poetic plays. All are dramas in the exact sense, though 
 the three I have named are dramas for mental and not 
 for positive presentation. Each reader must embody 
 for himself the images projected on his brain by the 
 electric quality of the poet's genius : within the ken of 
 his imagination he may perceive scenes not less moving, 
 incidents not less thrilling, complexities of motive and 
 action not less intricately involved, than upon the 
 conventional stage. 
 
 The first is a drama of an idea, the second of the 
 immediate and remote consequences of a single act, the 
 third of the tyranny of the passions. 
 
 I understand the general opinion among lovers and 
 earnest students of Browning's poetry to be that 
 the highest peaks of his genius tower from the vast 
 tableland of "The Ring and the Book"; that thence- 
 forth there was declension. But Browning is not to be 
 measured by common estimates. It is easy to indicate, 
 in the instances of many poets, just where the music 
 reached its sweetest, its noblest, just where the extreme 
 
 glow wanes, just where the first shadows come leaping 
 
 8
 
 114 LIFE OF 
 
 like greyhounds, or steal almost imperceptibly from 
 slow-closing horizons. 
 
 But with Browning, as with Shakspere, as with Victor 
 Hugo, it is difficult for our vision to penetrate the 
 glow irradiating the supreme heights of accomplishment. 
 Like Balzac, like Shakspere again, he has revealed to 
 us a territory so vast, that while we bow down before the 
 sun westering athwart distant Andes, the gold of sunrise 
 is already flashing behind us, upon the shoulder of Atlas. 
 
 It is certain that "The Ring and the Book "is unique. 
 Even Goethe's masterpiece had its forerunners, as in 
 Marlowe's " Faustus," and its ambitious offspring, as 
 in Bailey's " Festus." But is it a work of art ? Here 
 is the only vital question which at present concerns us. 
 
 It is altogether useless to urge, as so many admirers of 
 Browning do, that " The Ring and the Book " is as full 
 of beauties as the sea is of waves. Undeniably it is, 
 having been written in the poet's maturity. But, to 
 keep to the simile, has this epical poem the unity of 
 ocean ? Does it consist of separate seas, or is it really 
 one, as the wastes which wash from Arctic to Antarctic, 
 through zones temperate and equatorial, are yet one 
 and indivisible ? If it have not this unity it is still a 
 stupendous accomplishment, but it is not a work of 
 art. And though art is but the handmaiden of genius, 
 what student of Comparative Literature will deny that 
 nothing has survived the ruining breath of Time — not 
 any intellectual greatness nor any spiritual beauty, that 
 is not clad in perfection, be it absolute or relative — 
 for relative perfection there is, despite the apparent 
 paradox. 
 
 The mere bulk of " The Ring and the Book " is, in
 
 BROWNING. 115 
 
 point of art, nothing. One day, after the publication of 
 this poem, Carlyle hailed the author with enthusiastic 
 praise in which lurked damning irony : " What a wonder- 
 ful fellow you are, Browning : you have written a whole 
 series of 'books' about what could be summed up in 
 a newspaper paragraph ! " Here, Carlyle was at once 
 right and wrong. The theme, looked at dispassionately, 
 is unworthy of the monument in which it is entombed for 
 eternity. But the poet looked upon the central incident 
 as the inventive mechanician regards the tiny pivot re- 
 mote amid the intricate maze of his machinery. Here, 
 as elsewhere, Browning's real subject is too often con- 
 founded with the accidents of the subject. His triumph 
 is not that he has created so huge a literary monument, 
 but rather that, notwithstanding its bulk, he has made 
 it shapely and impressive. Stress has frequently been 
 laid on the greatness of the achievement in the writing 
 of twelve long poems in the exposition of one theme. 
 Again, in point of art, what significance has this? 
 None. There is no reason why it should not have been 
 in nine or eleven parts ; no reason why, having been 
 demonstrated in twelve, it should not have been 
 expanded through fifteen or twenty. Poetry ever looks 
 askance at that gipsy-cousin of hers, " Tour-de-force." 
 
 Of the twelve parts — occupying in all about twenty- 
 one thousand lines — the most notable as poetry are 
 those which deal with the plea of the implicated priest, 
 Caponsacchi, with the meditation of the Pope, and with 
 the pathetic utterance of Pompilia. It is not a dramatic 
 poem in the sense that " Pippa Passes" is, for its ten 
 Books (the first and twelfth are respectively introductory 
 and appendical) are monologues. "The Ring and the
 
 116 LIFE OF 
 
 Book," in a word, consists, besides the two extraneous 
 parts, of ten monodramas, which are as ten huge facets 
 to a poetic Koh-i-Noor. 
 
 The square little Italian volume, in its yellow parch- 
 ment and with its heavy type, which has now found a 
 haven in Oxford, was picked up by Browning for a lira 
 (about eightpence), on a second-hand bookstall in the 
 Piazza San Lorenzo at Florence, one June day, 1865. 
 Therein is set forth, in full detail, all the particulars of 
 the murder of his wife Pompilia, for her supposed 
 adultery, by a certain Count Guido Franceschini ; and 
 of that noble's trial, sentence, and doom. It is much 
 the same subject matter as underlies the dramas of 
 Webster, Ford, and other Elizabethan poets, but subtlety 
 6f insight rather than intensity of emotion and situation 
 distinguishes the Victorian dramatist from his prede- 
 cessors. The story fascinated Browning, who, having 
 in this book and elsewhere mastered all the details, 
 conceived the idea of writing the history of the crime 
 in a series of monodramatic revelations on the part of 
 the individuals more or less directly concerned. The 
 more he considered the plan the more it shaped itself 
 to a great accomplishment, and early iri 1866 he began 
 the most ambitious work of his life. 
 
 An enthusiastic admirer has spoken of the poem as 
 " one of the most extraordinary feats of which we have 
 any record in literature." But poetry is not mental 
 gymnastics. All this insistence upon "extraordinary 
 feats" is to be deprecated: it presents the poet as Her- 
 cules, not as Apollo : in a word, it is not criticism. The 
 story is one of vulgar fraud and crime, romantic to us 
 only because the incidents occurred in Italy, in the
 
 BROWNING. 117 
 
 picturesque Rome and Arezzo of two centuries ago. The 
 old bourgeois couple, Pietro and Violante Comparing 
 manage to wed their thirteen-year-old putative daughter 
 to a middle-aged noble of Arezzo. They expect the 
 exquisite repute of an aristocratic connection, and other 
 tangible advantages. He, impoverished as he is, looks 
 for a splendid dowry. No one thinks of the child-wife, 
 Pompilia. She becomes the scapegoat, when the gross 
 selfishness of the contracting parties stands revealed. 
 Count Guido has a genius for domestic tyranny. Pompilia 
 suffers. When she is about to become a mother she 
 determines to leave her husband, whom she now dreads 
 as well as dislikes. Since the child is to be the inheritor 
 of her parents' wealth, she will not leave it to the tender 
 mercies of Count Guido. A young priest, a canon of 
 Arezzo, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, helps her to escape. In 
 due course she gives birth to a son. She has scarce time 
 to learn the full sweetness of her maternity ere she is 
 done to death like a trampled flower. Guido, who has 
 held himself thrall to an imperative patience, till his 
 hold upon the child's dowry should be secure, hires four 
 assassins, and in the darkness of night betakes himself to 
 Rome. He and his accomplices enter the house of Pietro 
 Comparini and his wife, and, not content with slaying 
 them, also murders Pompilia. But they are discovered, 
 and Guido is caught red-handed. Pompilia's evidence 
 alone is damnatory, for she was not slain outright, and 
 lingers long enough to tell her story. Franceschini is 
 not foiled yet, however. His plea is that he simply 
 avenged the wrong done to him by his wife's adulterous 
 connection with the priest Caponsacchi. But even in 
 the Rome of that evil day justice was not extinct.
 
 118 LIFE OF 
 
 Guido's motive is proved to be false ; he himself is 
 condemned to death. An appeal to the Pope is futile. 
 Finally, the wretched man pays the too merciful penalty 
 of his villainy. 
 
 There is nothing grand, nothing noble here : at most 
 only a tragic pathos in the fate of the innocent child- 
 wife Pompilia. It is clear, therefore, that the greatness 
 of " The Ring and the Book " must depend even less 
 upon its subject, its motive, than upon its being "an 
 extraordinary feat " in the gymnastics of verse. 
 
 In a sense, Browning's longest work is akin to that of 
 his wife. Both " The Ring and the Book " and " Aurora 
 Leigh" are metrical novels. The one is discursive in 
 episodes and spiritual experiences : the other in intricacies 
 of evidence. But there the parallel ends. If "The 
 Ring and the Book " were deflowered of its blooms of 
 poetry and rendered into a prose narrative, it might 
 interest a barrister "getting up" a criminal case, but it 
 would be much inferior to, say, " The Moonstone " ; its 
 author would be insignificant beside the ingenious M. 
 Gaboriau. The extraordinariness of the feat would 
 then be but indifferently commented upon. 
 
 As neither its subject, nor its extraordinariness as a 
 feat, nor its method, will withstand a searching exami- 
 nation, we must endeavour to discern if transcendent 
 poetic merit be discoverable in the treatment. To 
 arrive at a just estimate it is needful to free the mind 
 not merely from preconceptions, but from that niggard- 
 liness of insight which can perceive only the minor flaws 
 and shortcomings almost inevitable to any vast literary 
 achievement, and be blind to the superb merits. One 
 must prepare oneself to listen to a new musician, with
 
 BROWNING. 119 
 
 mind and body alert to the novel harmonies, and 
 oblivious of what other musicians have done or refrained 
 from doing. 
 
 " The Ring and the Book," as I have said, was not 
 begun in the year of its imagining. 1 It is necessary to 
 anticipate the biographical narrative, and state that the 
 finding of the parchment-booklet happened in the fourth 
 year of the poet's widowerhood, for his happy married 
 period of less than fifteen years came to a close in 
 1861. 
 
 On the afternoon of the day on which he made his 
 purchase he read the book from end to end. "A 
 Spirit laughed and leapt through every limb." The 
 midsummer heats had caused thunder-clouds to con- 
 
 1 The title is explained as follows : — " The story of the 
 Franceschini case, as Mr. Browning relates it, forms a circle of 
 evidence to its one central truth ; and this circle was constructed 
 in the manner in which the worker in Etruscan gold prepares 
 the ornamental circlet which will be worn as a ring. The pure 
 metal is too soft to bear hammer or file; it must be mixed with 
 alloy to gain the necessary power of resistance. The ring once 
 formed and embossed, the alloy is disengaged, and a pure gold 
 ornament remains. Mr. Browning's material was also inadequate 
 to his purpose, though from a different cause. It was too hard. 
 It was ' pure crude fact,' secreted from the fluid being of the 
 men and women whose experience it had formed. In its existing 
 state it would have broken up under the artistic attempt to weld 
 and round it. He supplied an alloy, the alloy of fancy, or— as 
 he also calls it — of one fact more : this fact being the echo of 
 those past existences awakened within his own. He breathed into 
 the dead record the breath of his own life ; and when his ring of 
 evidence had re-formed, first in clastic then in solid strength, here 
 delicately incised, there broadly stamped with human thought and 
 passion, he could cast fancy aside, and bid his readers recognise in 
 what he set before them unadulterated human truth." — Mrs. Orr.
 
 120 LIFE OF 
 
 gregate above Vallombrosa and the whole valley of 
 Arno : and the air in Florence was painfully sultry. 
 The poet stood by himself on his terrace at Casa Guidi, 
 and as he watched the fireflies wandering from the 
 enclosed gardens, and the sheet-lightnings quivering 
 through the heated atmosphere, his mind was busy in 
 refashioning the old tale of loveless marriage and crime. 
 
 " Beneath 
 I' the street, quick shown by openings of the sky 
 When flame fell silently from cloud to cloud, 
 Richer than that gold snow Jove rained on Rhodes, 
 The townsmen walked by twos and threes, and talked, 
 Drinking the blackness in default of air — 
 A busy human sense beneath my feet : 
 While in and out the terrace-plants, and round 
 One branch of tall datura, waxed and waned 
 The lamp-fly lured there, wanting the white flower." 
 
 Scene by scene was re-enacted, though of course only 
 in certain essential details. The final food for the 
 imagination was found in a pamphlet of which he came 
 into possession of in London, where several important 
 matters were given which had no place in the volume 
 he had picked up in Florence. 
 
 Much, far the greater part, of the first " book " is 
 — interesting ! It is mere verse. As verse, even, it is 
 often so involved, so musicless occasionally, so banal 
 now and again, so inartistic in colour as well as in form, 
 that one would, having apprehended its explanatory 
 interest, pass on without regret, were it not for the noble 
 close — the passionate, out-welling lines to " the truest 
 poet I have ever known," the beautiful soul who had 
 given her all to him, whom, but four years before he
 
 BROWNING. 121 
 
 wrote these words, he had laid to rest among the 
 cypresses and ilexes of the old Florentine garden of the 
 dead. 
 
 "O lyric Love, half angel and half bird 
 And all a wonder and a wild desire, — 
 Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, 
 Took sanctuary within the holier blue, 
 And sang a kindred soul out to his face, — 
 Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart — 
 When the fust summons from the darkling earth 
 Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, 
 And bared them of the glory — to drop down, 
 To toil for man, to suffer or to die, — 
 This is the same voice : can thy soul know change ? 
 Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help ! 
 Never may I commence my song, my due 
 To God who best taught song by gift of thee, 
 Except with bent head and beseeching hand — 
 That still, despite the distance and the dark, 
 What was, again may be; some interchange 
 Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought, 
 Some benediction anciently thy smile: 
 — Never conclude, but raising hand and head 
 Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn 
 For all hope, all sustainment, all reward, 
 Their utmost up and on, — so blessing back 
 In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home, 
 Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud, 
 Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall ! " 
 
 Thereafter, for close upon five thousand words, the 
 poem descends again to the level of a versified tale. It 
 is saved from ruin by subtlety of intellect, striking dra- 
 matic verisimilitude, an extraordinary vigour, and occa- 
 sional lines of real poetry. Retrospectively, apart from 
 the interest, often strained to the utmost, most readers,
 
 122 LIFE OF 
 
 I fancy, will recall with lingering pleasure only the 
 opening of -"The Other Half Rome," the description of 
 Pompilia, " with the patient brow and lamentable smile," 
 with flower-like body, in white hospital array — a child 
 with eyes of infinite pathos, " whether a flower or weed, 
 ruined : who did it shall account to Christ." 
 
 In these three introductory books we have the view 
 of the matter taken by those who side with Count Guido, 
 of those who are all for Pompilia, and of the " superior 
 person," impartial because superciliously indifferent, 
 though sufficiently interested to " opine." 
 
 In the ensuing three books a much higher poetic level 
 is reached. In the first, Guido speaks ; in the second, 
 Caponsacchi ; the third, that lustrous opal set midway 
 in the " Ring," is Pompilia's narrative. Here the three 
 protagonists live and move before our eyes. The sixth 
 book may be said to be the heart of the whole poem. 
 The extreme intellectual subtlety of Guido's plea stands 
 quite unrivalled in poetic literature. In comparing it, 
 for its poetic beauty, with other sections, the reader 
 must bear in mind that in a poem of a dramatic nature 
 the dramatic proprieties must be dominant. It would 
 be obviously inappropriate to make Count Guido Fran- 
 ceschini speak with the dignity of the Pope, with the 
 exquisite pathos of Pompilia, with the ardour, like sup- 
 pressed molten lava, of Caponsacchi. The self-defence 
 of the latter is a superb piece of dramatic writing. 
 Once or twice the flaming volcano of his heart bursts 
 upward uncontrollably, as when he cries — 
 
 No, sirs, I cannot have the lady dead ! 
 
 That erect form, flashing brow, fulgurant eye,
 
 BROWNING. 123 
 
 That voice immortal (oh, that voice of hers !) — 
 
 That vision of the pale electric sword 
 
 Angels go armed with — that was not the last 
 
 O' the lady. Come, I see through it, you find, 
 
 Know the manoeuvre ! Also herself said 
 
 I had saved her : do you dare say she spoke false ? 
 
 Let me see for myself if it be so ! " 
 
 Than the poignant pathos and beauty of " Pompilia," 
 there is nothing more exquisite in our literature. It 
 stands alone. Here at last we have the poet who is 
 the Lancelot to Shakspere's Arthur. It takes a supreme 
 effort of genius to be as simple as a child. How 
 marvellously, after the almost sublime hypocrisy of the 
 end of Guido's defence, after the beautiful dignity of 
 Caponsacchi's closing words, culminating abruptly in the 
 heart-wrung cry, "O great, just, good God! miserable 
 me ! " — how marvellously comes upon the reader the 
 delicate, tearful tenderness of the innocent child-wife — 
 
 " I am just seventeen years and five months old, 
 And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks ; 
 'Tis writ so in the church's register, 
 Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names 
 At length, so many names for one poor child, 
 — Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela 
 Pompilia Comparini — laughable ! " 
 
 Only two writers of our age have depicted women with 
 tliaT imaginative insight which is at once more com- 
 prehensive and more illuminative than women's own 
 invisibh of themselves — Robert Browning and George 
 Meredith, but not even the latter, most subtle and 
 delicate of all analysts of the tragi-comedy of human life, 
 has surpassed " Pompilia." The meeting and the swift
 
 124 LIFE OF 
 
 uprising of love between Lucy and Richard, in "The 
 Ordeal of Richard Feveral," is, it is true, within the 
 highest reach of prose romance : but between even the 
 loftiest height of prose romance and the altitudes of 
 poetry, there is an impassable gulf. 
 
 And as it is with simplicity so it is with tenderness. 
 Only the sternly strong can be supremely tender. And 
 infinitely tender is the poetry of " Pompilia " — 
 
 " Oh, how good God is that my babe was born, 
 — Better than born, baptised and hid away 
 Before this happened, safe from being hurt ! 
 That had been sin God could not well forgive : 
 He was too young to smile and save himself " 
 
 or the lines which tell how as a little girl she gave her 
 roses not to the spick and span Madonna of the Church, 
 but to the poor, dilapidated Virgin, " at our street-corner 
 in a lonely niche," with the babe that had sat upon her 
 knees broken off: or that passage, with its exquisite 
 naivete', where Pompilia relates why she called her boy 
 Gaetano, because she wished " no old name for sorrow's 
 sake," so chose the latest addition to the saints, elected 
 only twenty-five years before — 
 
 " So, caremller, perhaps, 
 To guard a namesake than those old saints grow, 
 Tired out by this time, — see my own five saints ! " 
 
 or these — 
 
 " Thus, all my life, 
 I touch a fairy thing that fades and fades. 
 — Even to my babe ! I thought, when he was born, 
 Something began for once that would not end, 
 Nor change into a laugh at me, but stay 
 For evermore, eternally quite mine "
 
 BROWNING. 125 
 
 once more — 
 
 " One cannot judge 
 Of what has been the ill or well of life 
 The day that one is dying. . . . 
 Now it is over, and no danger more . . . 
 To me at least was never evening yet 
 But seemed far beautifuller than its day, 
 For past is past " 
 
 Lovely, again, are the lines in which she speaks of the 
 first "thrill of dawn's suffusion through her dark," the 
 " light of the unborn face sent long before : " or those 
 unique lines of the starved soul's Spring (11. 1512-27) : or 
 those, of the birth of her little one — 
 
 " A whole long fortnight ; in a life like mine 
 A fortnight filled with bliss is long and much. 
 All women are not mothers of a boy. . . . 
 I never realised God's birth before — 
 How he grew likest God in being born. 
 This time I felt like Mary, had my babe 
 Lying a little on my breast like hers." 
 
 When she has weariedly, yet with surpassing triumph, 
 sighed out her last words — 
 
 " God stooping shows sufficient of His light 
 For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise 
 
 who does not realise that to life's end he shall not 
 forget that plaintive voice, so poignantly sweet, that 
 ineffable dying smile, those wistful eyes with so much 
 less of earth than heaven ? 
 
 But the two succeeding " books " are more tiresome 
 and more unnecessary than the most inferior of the
 
 126 LIFE OF 
 
 three opening sections — the first of the two, indeed, is 
 intolerably wearisome, a desolate boulder-strewn gorge 
 after the sweet air and sunlit summits of " Caponsacchi " 
 and "Pompilia." In the next "book" Innocent XII. 
 is revealed. All this section has a lofty serenity, 
 unsurpassed in its kind. It must be read from first to 
 last for its full effect, but I may excerpt one passage, the 
 high-water mark of modern blank-verse : — 
 
 " For the main criminal I have no hope 
 Except in such a suddenness of fate. 
 I stood at Naples once, a night so dark 
 I could have scarce conjectured there was earth 
 Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all: 
 
 But the night's black was burst through by a blaze 
 
 Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore, 
 Through her whole length of mountain visible: 
 There lay the city thick and plain with spires, 
 And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea. 
 So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, 
 And Guido see, one instant, and be saved." 
 
 Finally comes that throbbing, terrible last "book" 
 where the murderer finds himself brought to bay and 
 knows that all is lost. Who can forget its unparalleled 
 close, when the wolf-like Guido suddenly, in his supreme 
 agony, transcends his lost manhood in one despairing 
 cry — 
 
 "Abate, — Cardinal, — Christ, — Maria, — God, . . . 
 Pompilia, will you let them murder me?" 
 
 Lastly, the Epilogue rounds off the tale. But is this 
 Epilogue necessary ? Surely the close should have come 
 with the words just quoted ?
 
 BROWNING. 127 
 
 It will not be after a first perusal that the reader will 
 be able to arrive at a definite conviction. No individual 
 or collective estimate of to-day can be accepted as final. 
 Those who come after us, perhaps not the next genera- 
 tion, nor the next again, will see "The Ring and the 
 Book" free of all the manifold and complex considerations 
 which confuse our judgment. Meanwhile, each can only 
 speak for himself. To me it seems that " The Ring and 
 the Book" is, regarded as an artistic whole, the most 
 magnificent failure in our literature. It enshrines poetry 
 which no other than our greatest could have written ; it 
 has depths to which many of far inferior power have not 
 descended. Surely the poem must be judged by the 
 balance of its success and failure ? It is in no pre- 
 sumptuous spirit, but out of my profound admiration of 
 this long-loved and often -read, this superb poem, that I, 
 for one, wish it comprised but the Prologue, the Plea of 
 Guido, " Caponsacchi," " Pompilia," "The Pope," and 
 Guido's last Defence. I cannot help thinking that 
 this is the form in which it will be read in the years to 
 come. Thus circumscribed, it seems to me to be 
 rounded and complete, a great work of art void of the 
 dross, the mere debris which the true artist discards. 
 But as it is, in all its lordly poetic strength and flagging 
 impulse, is it not, after all, the true climacteric of 
 Browning's genius ? 
 
 " The Inn Album," a dramatic poem of extraordinary 
 power, has so much more markedly the defects of 
 his qualities that I take it to be, at the utmost, the 
 poise of the first gradual refluence. This analogy 
 of the tidal ebb and flow may be observed with 
 singular aptness in Browning's life-work — the tide that
 
 128 LIFE OF 
 
 first moved shoreward in the loveliness of " Pauline," 
 and, with " long withdrawing roar," ebbed in slow, just 
 perceptible lapse to the poet's penultimate volume. As 
 for " Asolando," I would rather regard it as the gather- 
 ing of a new wave — nay, again rather, as the deep 
 sound of ocean which the outward surge has reached. 
 
 But for myself I do not accept " The Inn Album " as 
 the first hesitant swing of the tide. I seem to hear the 
 resilient undertone all through the long slow poise of 
 "The Ring and the Book." Where then is the full 
 splendour and rush of the tide, where its culminating 
 reach and power ? 
 
 I should say in "Men and Women"; and by "Men 
 and Women" I mean not merely the poems comprised 
 in the collection so entitled, but all in the " Dramatic 
 Romances," " Lyrics," and the " Dramatis Persona?," all 
 the short pieces of a certain intensity of note and quality 
 of power, to be found in the later volumes, from 
 " Pacchiarotto " to "Asolando." 
 
 And this because, in the words of the poet himself 
 when speaking of Shelley, I prefer to look for the 
 highest attainment, not simply the high — and, seeing it, 
 to hold by it. Yet I am not oblivious of the mass of 
 Browning's lofty achievement, " to be known enduringly 
 among men," — an achievement, even on its secondary 
 level, so high, that around its imperfect proportions, 
 "the most elaborated productions of ordinary art must 
 arrange themselves as inferior illustrations." 
 
 How am I to convey concisely that which it would 
 take a volume to do adequately — an idea of the richest 
 efflorescence of Browning's genius in these unfading 
 blooms which we will agree to include in " Men and
 
 BROWNING. 129 
 
 Women"? How better — certainly it would be im- 
 possible to be more succinct — than by the enumeration 
 of the contents of an imagined volume, to be called, say 
 "Transcripts from Life "? 
 
 It would be to some extent, but not rigidly, arranged 
 chronologically. It would begin with that masterpiece 
 of poetic concision, where a whole tragedy is burned in 
 upon the brain in fifty-six lines, " My Last Duchess." 
 Then would follow "In a Gondola," that haunting lyrical 
 drama in petto, whefe^The lover is stabbed to death 
 as his heart is beating against that of his mistress ; 
 ""Cristina," with its keen introspection; those delight- 
 fully stirring pieces, the " Cavalier-Tunes," " Through 
 the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr," and "The Pied Piper of 
 Hamelin"; "The Flower's Name"; "The Flight of the 
 Duchess"; "The Tomb at St. Praxed's," the poem 
 which educed Ruskin's enthusiastic praise for its 
 marvellous apprehension of the spirit of the Middle 
 Ages; "Pictor Ignotus," and "The Lost Leader." 
 But as there is not space for individual detail, and 
 as many of the more important are spoken' of else- 
 where in this volume, I must take the reader's 
 acquaintance with the poems for granted. So, follow- 
 ing those first mentioned, there would come " Home 
 Thoughts from Abroad " ; " Home Thoughts from 
 the Sea"; "The Confessional"; "The Heretic's 
 Tragedy " ; " Earth's Immortalities " ; " Meeting at 
 Night: Parting at Morning"; "Saul"; "Karshish"; 
 "A Death in the Desert"; "Rabbi Ben Ezra"; "A 
 Grammarian's Funeral " ; " Love Among the Ruins " ; 
 Song, "Nay but you"; " A Lover's Quarrel " ; "Evelyn 
 Hope"; "A Woman's Last Word"; "Fra Lippo
 
 130 LIFE OF 
 
 Lippi"; "By the Fireside"; "Any Wife to Any 
 Husband " ; "A Serenade at the ViUa^j " My 
 Star"; "A Pretty Woman"; "A Light Woman"; 
 "Love in a Life"; "Life in a Love"; "The Last 
 Ride Together"; "A Toccata of Galuppi's"; "Master 
 Hugues of Saxe Gotha"; "Abt Vogler"; "Memora- 
 bilia" ; " Andrea Del Sarto " ; " Before " ; " After " ; " In 
 Three Days " ; " In a Year"; "Old Pictures in Florence"; 
 " De Gustibus " ; "Women and Roses " ; " The Guardian 
 Angel"; "Cleon"; "Two in theCampagna"; "One Way 
 of Love " ; " Another Way of Love " ; " Misconceptions " ; 
 " May and Death " ; " James Lee's Wife " ; " Dis Aliter 
 Visum " ; " Too Late " ; " Confessions " ; " Prospice " ; 
 "Youth and Art"; "A Face"; "A Likeness"; 
 "Apparent Failure." Epilogue to Part I. — "O Lyric 
 Voice," etc., from end of First Part of " The Ring and the 
 Book." Part II.— "Herve Riel"; "Amphibian"; "Epi- 
 logue toFifine"; " Pisgah Sights " ; "Natural Magic"; 
 " Magical Nature " ; " Bifurcation " ; " Numpholeptos " ; 
 " Appearances " ; " St. Martin's Summer " ; "A Forgive- 
 ness"; Epilogue to Pacchiarotto volume; Prologue to 
 " La Saisiaz " ; Prologue to " Two Poets of Croisic " ; 
 "Epilogue"; " Pheidippides " ; " Halbert and Hob"; 
 " Ivan Ivanovitch " ; " Echetlos " ; " Muleykeh " ; " Pan 
 and Luna"; " Touch him ne'er so lightly " ; Prologue to 
 "Jocoseria"; "Cristina and Monaldeschi " ; "Mary 
 Wollstonecraft and Fuseli " ; " Ixion " ; " Never the 
 Time and the Place " ; Song, " Round us the wild 
 creatures"; Song, "Wish no word unspoken " ; Song, 
 "You groped your way"; Song, "Man I am"; Song, 
 "Once I saw"; "Verse-making"; " Not with my Soul 
 Love " ; " Ask not one least word of praise " ; " Why
 
 BROWNING. 131 
 
 from the world"; "The Round of Day" (Pts. 9, io, 
 11, 1 2 of Gerard de Lairesse) ; Prologue to " Asolando "; 
 " Rosny " ; " Now " ; " Poetics " ; " Summum Bonum " ; 
 " A Pearl " ; " Speculative " ; " Inapprehensiveness " ; 
 "The Lady and the Painter;" "Beatrice Signorini"; 
 " Imperante Augusto " ; " Rephan " ; " Reverie " ; Epi- 
 logue to "Asolando" (in all, 122). 
 
 But having drawn up this imaginary anthology, 
 possibly with faults of commission and probably with 
 worse errors of omission, I should like to take the reader 
 into my confidence concerning a certain volume, origin- 
 ally compiled for my own pleasure, though not without 
 thought of one or two dear kinsmen of a scattered 
 Brotherhood — a volume half the size of the projected 
 Transcripts, and rare as that star in the tip of the moon's 
 horn of which Coleridge speaks. 
 
 Flower <?' the Vine, so it is called, has for double- 
 motto these two lines from the Epilogue to the Pacchi- 
 arotto volume — 
 
 " Man's thoughts and loves and hates ! 
 Earth is my vineyard, these grew there " 
 
 and these words, already quoted, from the Shelley Essay, 
 " I prefer to look for the highest attainment, not simply 
 the high." 
 
 1. From "Pauline" 1 — 1. " Sun-treader, life and light 
 be thine for ever ! " 2. The Dawn of Beauty ; 3. Andro- 
 meda; 4. Morning. 11. "Heap Cassia, Sandal-buds," 
 
 1 The first, from the line quoted, extends through 55 lines — " To 
 see thee for a moment as thou art." No. 2 consists of the xviii 
 11. beginning, " They came to me in my first dawn of life." No. 
 3, the xi 11. of the Andromeda picture. No. 4, the lix 11. begin- 
 ning, " Night, and one single ridge of narrow path" (to "delight").
 
 132 LIFE OF 
 
 etc. (song from "Paracelsus"), in. "Over the Sea our 
 Galleys went " (song from "Paracelsus"), iv. The Joy 
 of the World ("Paracelsus"). 1 v. From "Sordello"— 
 i. Sunset; 2 2. The Fugitive Ethiop; 3 3. Dante. 4 vi. 
 Ottima and Sebald (Pt. i., " Pippa Passes"), vn. Jules 
 and Phene (Pt. ii., "Pippa Passes"), vm. My Last 
 Duchess, ix. In a Gondola, x. Home Thoughts from 
 Abroad (i. and ii.). xi. Meeting at Night: Parting at 
 Morning, xn. A Grammarian's Funeral, xm. Saul, 
 xiv. Rabbi_Ben Ezra. xv. Love among the Ruins, 
 xvi. Evelyn Hope. xvn. My Star. xvm. A Toccata 
 of Galuppi's. xix. Abt Vogler. xx. Memorabilia, xxi. 
 Andrea del Sarto. xxi. Two in the Campagna. xxn. 
 James Lee's Wife. xxm. Prospice. xxiv. From " The 
 Ring and the Book" — 1. O Lyric Love (The Invoca- 
 tion: 26 lines); 2. Caponsacchi (11. 2069 to 2103); 3. 
 Pompilia (11. 181 to 205); 4. Pompilia (11. 1771 to 
 1845); 5. The Pope (11. 2017 to 2228) ; 6. Count Guido 
 (Book XL, 11. 2407 to 2427). xxv. Prologue to "La 
 Saisiaz." xxvi. Prologue to "Two Poets of Croisic." 
 xxvii. Epilogue to "Two Poets of Croisic." xxvm. 
 Never the Time and Place, xxix. " Round us the 
 Wild Creatures," etc. (song from " Ferishtah's Fancies"). 
 xxx. "The Walk" (Pts. ix., x., xi., xii., of "Gerard de 
 Lairesse." xxxi. "One word more" (To E. B. B.). 5 
 
 1 No. iv. comprises the xxix 11. beginning, "The centre fire 
 heaves underneath the earth," down to "ancient rapture." 
 
 2 No. v. The vi. 11. beginning, "That autumn ere has stilled." 
 
 3 The xxiill. beginning, "As, shall I say, some Ethiop." 
 
 4 The xxix 11. beginning, " For he, — for he." 
 
 5 To these XXXI selections there must now be added " Now," 
 "Summum Bonum," "Reverie," and the "Epilogue," from 
 " Asolando."
 
 BROWNING. 133 
 
 It is here — I will not say in Flower d the Vine, nor 
 even venture to restrictively affirm it of that larger and 
 fuller compilation we have agreed, for the moment, to 
 call " Transcripts from Life " — it is here, in the worthiest 
 poems of Browning's most poetic period, that, it seems to 
 me, his highest greatness is to be sought. In these " Men 
 and Women" he is, in modern times, an unparalleled 
 dramatic poet. The influence he exercises through 
 these, and the incalculably cumulative influence which 
 will leaven many generations to come, is not to be 
 looked for in individuals only, but in the whole thought 
 of the age, which he has moulded to new form, animated 
 anew, and to which he has imparted a fresh stimulus. 
 For this a deep debt is due to Robert Browning. But 
 over and above this shaping force, this manipulative 
 power upon character and thought, he has enriched our 
 language, our literature, with a new wealth of poetic 
 diction, has added to it new symbols, has enabled us to 
 inhale a more liberal if an unfamiliar air, has, above all, 
 raised us to a fresh standpoint, a standpoint involving 
 our construction of a new definition. 
 
 Here, at least, we are on assured ground: here, at 
 any rate, we realise the scope and quality of his genius. 
 But, let me hasten to add, he, at his highest, not being 
 of those who would make Imagination the handmaid of 
 the Understanding, has given us also a Dorado of pure 
 poetry, of priceless worth. Tried by the severest tests, 
 not merely of substance, but of form, not merely of the 
 melody of high thinking, but of rare and potent verbal 
 music, the larger number of his " Men and Women " 
 poems are as treasurable acquisitions, in kind, to our 
 literature, as the shorter poems of Milton, of Shelley,
 
 134 LIFE OF BROWNING. 
 
 of Keats, and of Tennyson. But once again, and finally, 
 let me repeat that his primary importance — not greatness, 
 but importance — is in having forced us to take up a 
 novel standpoint, involving our construction of a new 
 definition.
 
 BROWNING. 137 
 
 The removal of the Barrett household to Gloucester 
 Place, in Western London, was a great event. Here, 
 invalid though she was, she could see friends occasionally 
 and get new books constantly. Her name was well 
 known and became widely familiar when her "Cry of 
 the Children" rang like a clarion throughout the country. 
 The poem was founded upon an official report by 
 Richard Hengist Home, the friend whom some years 
 previously she had won in correspondence, and with 
 whom she had become so intimate, though without 
 personal acquaintance, that she had agreed to write a 
 drama in collaboration with him, to be called " Psyche 
 Apocalypte," and to be modelled on "Greek instead 
 of modern tragedy." 
 
 Home — a poet of genius, and a dramatist of remark- 
 able power — was one of the truest friends she ever 
 had, and, so far as her literary life is concerned, came 
 next in influence only to her poet-husband. Among the 
 friends she saw much of in the early forties was a 
 distant "cousin," John Kenyon — a jovial, genial, 
 gracious, and altogether delightful man, who acted the 
 part of Providence to many troubled souls, and, in 
 particular, was " a fairy godfather " to Elizabeth Barrett 
 and to " the other poet," as he used to call Browning. 
 It was to Mr. Kenyon — " Kenyon, with the face of a 
 Bendectine monk, but the most jovial of good fellows," 
 as a friend has recorded of him ; "Kenyon the Magni- 
 ficent," as he was called by Browning — that Miss Barrett 
 owed her first introduction to the poetry of her future 
 husband. 
 
 Browning's poetry had for her an immediate appeal. 
 With sure insight she discerned the special quality of the
 
 138 LIFE OF 
 
 poetic wealth of the " Belis and Pomegranates," among 
 which she then and always cared most for the penulti- 
 mate volume, the " Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 
 Two years before she met the author she had written, 
 in " Lady Geraldine's Courtship " — 
 
 " Or from Browning some ' Pomegranate' which, if cut deep down 
 the middle, 
 Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity." 
 
 A little earlier she had even, unwittingly on either side, 
 been a collaborateur with "the author of ' Paracelsus.' " 
 She gave Home much aid in the preparation of his 
 " New Spirit of the Age," and he has himself told us 
 "that the mottoes, which are singularly happy and 
 appropriate, were for the most part supplied by Miss 
 Barrett and Robert Browning, then unknown to each 
 other." One thing and another drew them nearer and 
 nearer. Now it was a poem, now a novel expression, 
 now a rare sympathy. 
 
 An intermittent correspondence ensued, and both 
 poets became anxious to know each other. " We artists 
 — how well praise agrees with us," as Balzac says. 
 
 A few months later, in 1846, they came to know one 
 another personally. The story of their first meeting, 
 which has received a wide acceptance, is apocryphal. 
 The meeting was brought about by Kenyon. This 
 common friend had been a schoolfellow of Browning's 
 father, and so it was natural that he took a more than 
 ordinary interest in the brilliant young poet, perhaps all 
 the more so that the reluctant tide of popularity which 
 had promised to set in with such unparalleled sweep and 
 weight had since experienced a steady ebb.
 
 BROWNING. 139 
 
 And so the fates brought these two together. The 
 younger was already far the stronger, but he had an 
 unbounded admiration for Miss Barrett. To her, he 
 was even then the chief living poet. She perceived his 
 ultimate greatness; as early as 1845 had "a full faith in 
 him as poet and prophet." 
 
 As Browning admitted to a friend, the love between 
 them was almost instantaneous, a thing of the eyes, 
 mind, and heart — each striving for supremacy, till all 
 were gratified equally in a common joy. They had one 
 bond of sterling union : passion for the art to which both 
 had devoted their lives. 
 
 To those who love love for love's sake, who se passio?i- 
 nent pour la passion, as Prosper Merimde says, there 
 could scarce be a more sacred spot in London than that 
 fiftieth house in unattractive Wimpole Street, where 
 these two poets first met each other ; and where, in the 
 darkened room, "Love quivered, an invisible flame." 
 Elizabeth Barrett was indeed, in her own words, "as 
 sweet as Spring, as Ocean deep." She, too, was always, 
 as she wrote of Harriet Martineau, in a hopeless anguish 
 of body and serene triumph of spirit. As George Sand 
 says of one of her fictitious personages, she was an 
 "artist to the backbone; that is, one who feels life with 
 frightful intensity." To this too keen intensity of feeling 
 must be attributed something of that longing for repose, 
 that deep craving for rest from what is too exciting from 
 within, which made her affirm the exquisite appeal to 
 her of such Biblical passages as " The Lord of 
 peace Himself give you peace," and " He giveth His 
 Beloved Sleep," which, as she says in one of her 
 numerous letters to Miss Mitford, "strike upon the
 
 HO LIFE OF 
 
 disquieted earth with such a foreignness of heavenly 
 music." 
 
 Nor was he whom she loved as a man, as well as 
 revered as a poet, unworthy of her. His was the 
 robustest poetic intellect of the century ; his the serenest 
 outlook ; his, almost the sole unfaltering footsteps along 
 the perilous ways of speculative thought. A fair life, 
 irradiate with fairer ideals, conserved his native integrity 
 from that incongruity between practice and precept so 
 commonly exemplified. Comely in all respects, with his 
 black-brown wavy hair, finely-cut features, ready and 
 winsome smile, alert luminous eyes, quick, spontaneous, 
 expressive gestures — an inclination of the head, a lift of 
 the eyebrows, a modulation of the lips, an assertive or 
 deprecatory wave of the hand, conveying so much — and 
 a voice at that time of a singular penetrating sweetness, 
 he was, even without that light of the future upon his 
 forehead which she was so swift to discern, a man to 
 captivate any woman of kindred nature and sympathies. 
 Over and above these advantages, he possessed a rare 
 quality of physical magnetism. By virtue of this he 
 could either attract irresistibly or strongly repel. 
 
 I have several times heard people state that a hand- 
 shake from Browning was like an electric shock. Truly 
 enough, it did seem as though his sterling nature rang 
 in his genially dominant voice, and, again, as though 
 his voice transmitted instantaneous waves of an electric 
 current through every nerve of what, for want of a better 
 phrase, I must perforce call his intensely alive hand. I 
 remember once how a lady, afflicted with nerves, in the 
 dubious enjoyment of her first experience of a "literary 
 afternoon," rose hurriedly and, in reply to her hostess'
 
 BROWNING. 141 
 
 inquiry as to her motive, explained that she could not 
 sit any longer beside the elderly gentleman who was 
 talking to Mrs. So-and-so, as his near presence made 
 her quiver all over, " like a mild attack of pins-and- 
 needles," as she phrased it. She was chagrined to learn 
 that she had been discomposed not by ' a too exuberant 
 financier,' as she had surmised, but by, as "Waring " called 
 Browning, the "subtlest assertor of the Soul in song." 
 
 With the same quick insight as she had perceived 
 Robert Browning's poetic greatness, Elizabeth Barrett 
 discerned his personal worth. He was essentially manly 
 in all respects : so manly, that many frail souls of either 
 sex philandered about his over-robustness. From the 
 twilight gloom of an aesthetic clique came a small voice 
 belittling the great man as "quite too 'loud,' painfully 
 excessive." Browning was manly enough to laugh at all 
 ghoulish cries of any kind whatsoever. Once in a way 
 the lion would look round and by a raised breath make 
 the jackals wriggle ; as when the poet wrote to a corre- 
 spondent, who had drawn his attention to certain abusive 
 personalities in some review or newspaper : " Dear 
 Sir — I am sure you mean very kindly, but I have 
 had too long an experience of the inability of the 
 human goose to do other than cackle when benevo- 
 lent and hiss when malicious, and no amount of goose 
 criticism shall make me lift a heel against what 
 waddles behind it." 
 
 Herself one whose happiest experiences were in dream- 
 land, Miss Barrett was keenly susceptible to the strong 
 humanity of Browning's song, nor less keenly attracted 
 by his strenuous and fearless outlook, his poetic prac- 
 ticality, and even by his bluntness of insight in certain
 
 142 LIFE OF 
 
 matters. It was no slight thing to her that she could, 
 in Mr. Lowell's words, say of herself and of him — 
 
 " We, who believe life's bases rest 
 Beyond the probe of chemic test." 
 
 She rejoiced, despite her own love for remote im- 
 aginings, to know that he was of those who (to quote 
 again from the same fine poet) 
 
 "... wasted not their breath in schemes 
 Of what man might be in some bubble-sphere, 
 As if he must be other than he seems 
 Because he was not what he should be here, 
 Postponing Time's slow proof to petulant dreams ; " 
 
 that, in a word, while c he could believe the promise of 
 to-morrow,' he was at the same time supremely conscious 
 of ' the wondrous meaning of to-day.' 
 
 Both, from their youth onward, had travelled ' on 
 trails divine of unimagined laws/ It was sufficient for 
 her that he kept his eyes fixed on the goal beyond the 
 way he followed : it did not matter that he was blind 
 to the dim adumbrations of novel byways, of strange 
 Calvarys by the wayside, so often visible to her. 
 
 Their first meeting was speedily followed by a second 
 — by a third — and then? When we know not, but 
 ere long, each found that happiness was in the bestowal 
 of the other. 
 
 The secret was for some time kept absolutely private. 
 From the first Mr. Barrett had been jealous of his 
 beloved daughter's new friend. He did not care much 
 for the man, he with all the prejudices and baneful 
 conservatism of the slave-owning planter, the other
 
 BROWNING. 143 
 
 with ardent democratic sentiments and a detestation 
 of all forms of iniquity. Nor did he understand the 
 poet. He could read his daughter's flowing verse with 
 pleasure, but there was to his ear a mere jumble of 
 sound and sense in much of the work of the author of 
 " The Tomb at St. Praxed's " and " Sibrandus Schafna- 
 burgensis." Of a selfishly genial but also of a violent 
 and often sullen nature, he resented more and more 
 any friendship which threatened to loosen the chain 
 of affection and association binding his daughter to 
 himself. 
 
 Both the lovers believed that an immediate marriage 
 would, from every point of view, be best. It was not 
 advisable that it should be long delayed, if to happen 
 at all, for the health of Miss Barrett was so poor that 
 another winter in London might, probably would, mean 
 irretrievable harm. 
 
 Some time before this she had become acquainted 
 with Mrs. Jameson, the eminent art-writer. The regard, 
 which quickly developed to an affectionate esteem, was 
 mutual. One September morning Mrs. Jameson called, 
 and after having dwelt on the gloom and peril of another 
 - winter in London, dwelt on the magic of Italy, and 
 concluded by inviting Miss Barrett to accompany her in 
 her own imminent departure for abroad. The poet was 
 touched and grateful, but, pointing to her invalid sofa, 
 and gently emphasising her enfeebled health and other 
 difficult circumstances, excused herself from acceptance 
 of Mrs. Jameson's generous offer. 
 
 In the " Memoirs of Mrs. Jameson " that lady's niece, 
 Mrs. Macpherson, relates how on the eve of her and her 
 aunt's departure, a little note of farewell arrived from
 
 144 LIFE OF 
 
 Miss Barrett, " deploring the writer's inability to come 
 in person and bid her friend good-bye, as she was 
 c forced to be satisfied with the sofa and silence.' ' 
 
 It is easy to understand, therefore, with what amaze- 
 ment Mrs. Jameson, shortly after her arrival in Paris, 
 received a letter from Robert Browning to the effect 
 that he and his wife had just come from London, on 
 their way to Italy. " My aunt's surprise was something 
 almost comical," writes Mrs. Macpherson, " so startling 
 and entirely unexpected was the news." And duly 
 married indeed the two poets had been ! 
 
 From the moment the matter was mooted to Mr. 
 Barrett, he evinced his repugnance to the idea. To him 
 even the most foolish assertion of his own was a sacred 
 pledge. He called it "pride in his word": others 
 recognised it as the very arrogance of obstinacy. He 
 refused to countenance the marriage in any way, refused 
 to have Browning's name mentioned in his presence, 
 and even when his daughter told him that she had 
 definitely made up her mind, he flatly declined to 
 acknowledge as even possible what was indeed very 
 imminent. 
 
 Nor did he ever step down from his ridiculous pin- 
 nacle of wounded self-love. Favourite daughter though 
 she had been, Mr. Barrett never forgave her, held no 
 communication with her even when she became a mother, 
 and did not mention her in his will. It is needless 
 to say anything more upon this subject. What Mr. 
 and Mrs. Browning were invariably reticent upon can 
 well be passed over with mere mention of the facts. 
 
 At the last moment there had been great hurry and 
 confusion. But nevertheless, on the forenoon of the
 
 BROWNING. 145 
 
 1 2th of September 1846, Robert Browning and Eliza- 
 beth Barrett had unceremoniously stepped into St. Mary- 
 le-bone Church and there been married. So secret had 
 the matter been kept that even such old friends as 
 Richard Hengist Home and Mr. Kenyon were in 
 ignorance of the event for some time after it had actually 
 occurred. 
 
 Mrs. Jameson made all haste to the hotel where the 
 Brownings were, and ultimately persuaded them to leave 
 the hotel for the quieter pension in the Rue Ville 
 d'Eveque, where she and Mrs. Macpherson were stay- 
 ing. Thereafter it was agreed that, as soon as a fortnight 
 had gone by, they should journey to Italy together. 
 
 Truly enough, as Mrs. Macpherson says, the journey 
 must have been " enchanting, made in such companion- 
 ship." Before departing from Paris, Mrs. Jameson, in 
 writing to a friend, alluded to her unexpected com- 
 panions, and added, " Both excellent : but God help 
 them ! for I know not how the two poet heads and 
 poet hearts will get on through this prosaic world." 
 This kindly friend was not the only person who experi- 
 enced similar doubts. One acquaintance, no other than 
 the Poet-Laureate, JVordswqrth, added : " So, Robert 
 Browning and Elizabeth Barrett have gone off together ! 
 Well, I hope they may understand each other — nobody 
 else could ! " 
 
 As a matter of fact they did, and to such good intent 
 that they seem never to have had one hour of dissatis- 
 faction, never one jar in the music of their lives. 
 
 What a happy wayfaring through France that must 
 
 have been ! The travelling had to be slow, and with 
 
 frequent interruptions, on account of Mrs. Browning's 
 
 10
 
 146 LIFE OF 
 
 health : yet she steadily improved, and was almost from 
 the start able to take more exercise, and to be longer in 
 the open air than had for long been her wont. They 
 passed southward, and after some novel experiences in 
 diligences, reached Avignon, where they rested for a 
 couple of days. Thence a little expedition, a poetical 
 pilgrimage, was made to Vaucluse, sacred to the memory 
 of Petrarch and Laura. There, as Mrs. Macpherson has 
 told us, at the very source of the " chiare, fresche e dolce 
 acque," Browning took his wife up in his arms, and, 
 carrying her across through the shallow curling waters, 
 seated her on a rock that rose throne-like in the middle 
 of the stream. Thus, indeed, did love and poetry take a 
 new possession of the spot immortalised by Petrarch's 
 loving fancy. 
 
 Three weeks passed happily before Pisa, the 
 Brownings' destination, was reached. But even then the 
 friends were unwilling to part, and Mrs. Jameson and 
 her niece remained in the deserted old city for a 
 score of days longer. So wonderful was the change 
 wrought in Mrs. Browning by happiness, and by all the 
 enfranchisement her marriage meant for her, that, as her 
 friend wrote to Miss Mitford, "she is not merely im- 
 proved but transformed." In the new sunshine which 
 had come into her life, she blossomed like a flower-bud 
 long delayed by gloom and chill. Her heart, in truth, 
 was like a lark when wafted skyward by the first spring- 
 wind. 
 
 At last to her there had come something of that peace 
 she had longed for, and though, in the joy of her new 
 life, her genius " like an Arab bird slept floating in the 
 wind," it was with that restful hush which precedes the
 
 BROWNING. 147 
 
 creative storm. There is something deeply pathetic in 
 her conscious joy. So little actual experience of life 
 had been hers that in many respects she was as a child : 
 and she had all the child's yearning for those unsullied 
 hours that never come when once they are missed. But 
 it was not till love unfastened the inner chambers of her 
 heart and brain that she realised to the full, what she 
 had often doubted, how supreme a thing mere life is. 
 It was in some such mood that she wrote the lovely 
 forty-second of the "Sonnets from the Portuguese," 
 closing thus — 
 
 " Let us stay 
 Rather on earth, Beloved, — where the unfit 
 Contrarious moods of men recoil away 
 And isolate pure spirits, and permit 
 A place to stand and love in for a day, 
 With darkness and the death-hour rounding it." 
 
 As for Browning's love towards his wife, nothing more 
 tender and chivalrous has ever been told of ideal lovers 
 in an ideal romance. It is so beautiful a story that one 
 often prefers it to the sweetest or loftiest poem that 
 came from the lips of either. That love knew no soilure 
 in the passage of the years. Like the flame of oriental 
 legend, it was perennially incandescent though fed not 
 otherwise than by sunlight and moonshine. If it alone 
 survive, it may resolve the poetic fame of either into one 
 imperishable, luminous ray of white light : as the uttered 
 song fused in the deathless passion of Sappho gleams star- 
 like down the centuries from the high steep of Leucadoe. 
 
 It was here, in Pisa, I have been told on indubitable 
 authority, that Browning first saw in manuscript those 
 "Sonnets from the Portuguese" which no poet of
 
 148 LIFE OF 
 
 Portugal had ever written, which no man could have 
 written, which no other woman than his wife could 
 have composed. From the time when it had first 
 dawned upon her that love was to be hers, and that the 
 laurel of poetry was not to be her sole coronal, she had 
 found expression for her exquisite trouble in these short 
 poems, which she thinly disguised from ' inner publicity ' 
 when she issued them as " from the Portuguese." 
 
 It is pleasant to think of the shy delight with which 
 the delicate, flower-like, almost ethereal poet-wife, in 
 those memorable Pisan evenings — with the wind blowing 
 soundingly from the hills of Carrara, or quiescent in a 
 deep autumnal calm broken only by the slow wash of 
 Arno along the sea-mossed long-deserted quays — showed 
 her love-poems to her husband. With what love and 
 pride he must have read those outpourings of the most 
 sensitive and beautiful nature he had ever met, vials of 
 lovely thought and lovelier emotion, all stored against 
 the coming of a golden day. 
 
 / 
 
 '• How do I love thee ? Let me count the ways. 
 I love thee to the depth and breadth and height 
 My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight 
 For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. 
 I love thee to the level of every day's 
 Most quiet need, by sun and candle light. 
 I love thee freely, as men strive for Right ; 
 I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. 
 I love thee with the passion put to use 
 In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. 
 I love thee with a love I seemed to lose 
 With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath, 
 Smiles, tears, of all my life ! — and, if God choose, 
 I shall but love thee better after Death ! "
 
 BROWNING. 149 
 
 Even such heart-music as this cannot have thrilled 
 him more than these two exquisite lines, with their truth 
 almost too poignant to permit of serene joy — 
 
 " I yield the grave for thy sake, and exchange 
 My near sweet view of heaven for earth with thee ! " 
 
 Their Pisan home was amid sacred associations. It 
 was situate in an old palazzo built by Vasari, within sight 
 of the Leaning Tower and the Duomo. There, in 
 absolute seclusion, they wrote and planned. Once and 
 again they made a pilgrimage to the Lanfranchi Palace 
 "to walk in the footsteps of Byron and Shelley": 
 occasionally they went to Vespers in the Duomo, and 
 listened, rapt, to the music wandering spirally through 
 the vast solitary building : once they were fortunate in 
 hearing the impressive musical mass for the dead, in the 
 Campo Santo. They were even reminded often of their 
 distant friend Home, for every time they crossed one of 
 the chief piazzas they saw the statue of Cosimo de 
 Medici looking down upon them. 
 
 In this beautiful old city, so full of repose as it lies 
 "asleep in the sun," Mrs. Browning's health almost 
 leapt, so swift was her advance towards vigour. " She is 
 getting better every day," wrote her husband, " stronger, 
 better wonderfully, and beyond all our hopes." 
 
 That happy first winter they passed "in the most 
 secluded manner, reading Vasari, and dreaming dreams 
 of seeing Venice in the summer." But early in April, 
 when the swallows had flown inland above the pines of 
 Viareggio, and Shelley's favourite little Aziola was 
 hooting silverly among the hollow vales of Carrara, the
 
 150 LIFE OF 
 
 two poets prepared to leave what the frailer of them 
 called "this perch of Pisa." 
 
 But with all its charm and happy associations, the 
 little city was dull. " Even human faces divine are 
 quite rococo with me," Mrs. Browning wrote to a friend. 
 The change to Florence was a welcome one to both. 
 Browning had already been there, but to his wife it was 
 as the fulfilment of a dream. They did not at first go to 
 that romantic old palace which will be for ever sociate 
 with the author of "Casa Guidi Windows," but found 
 accommodation in a more central locality. 
 
 When the June heats came, husband and wife both 
 declared for Ancona, the picturesque little town which 
 dreams out upon the Adriatic. But though so close to the 
 sea, Ancona is in summer time almost insufferably hot. 
 Instead of finding it cooler than Florence, it was as 
 though they had leapt right into a cauldron. Alluding 
 to it months later, Mrs. Browning wrote to Home, " The 
 heat was just the fiercest fire of your imagination, and I 
 seethe to think of it at this distance. 
 
 It was a memorable journey all the same. They went 
 to Ravenna, and at four o'clock one morning stood by 
 Dante's tomb, moved deeply by the pathetic inscription 
 and by all the associations it evoked. All along the 
 coast from Ravenna to Loretto was new ground to both, 
 and endlessly fascinating ; in the passing and repassing 
 of the Apennines they had ' wonderful visions of beauty 
 and glory.' At Ancona itself, notwithstanding the heat, 
 they spent a happy season. Here Browning wrote one 
 of the loveliest of his short poems, "The Guardian 
 Angel," which had its origin in Guercino's picture in the 
 chapel at Fano. By the allusions in the sixth and
 
 BROWNING. 151 
 
 eighth stanzas it is clear that the poem was inscribed to 
 Alfred Domett, the poet's well-loved friend immortalised 
 as " Waring." Doubtless it was written for no other 
 reason than the urgency of song, for in it are the loving 
 allusions to his wife, " my angel with me too," and " my 
 love is here." Three times they went to the chapel, he 
 tells us in the seventh stanza, to drink in to their souls' 
 content the beauty of " dear Guercino's " picture. 
 Browning has rarely uttered the purely personal note 
 of his inner life. It is this that affords a peculiar value 
 to " The Guardian Angel," over and above its technical 
 beauty. In the concluding lines of the stanzas I am 
 about to quote he gives the supreme expression to what 
 was his deepest faith, his profoundest song-motive. 
 
 " I would not look up thither past thy head 
 
 Because the door opes, like that child, I know, 
 
 For I should have thy gracious face instead, 
 
 Thou bird of God ! And wilt thou bend me low 
 
 Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together, 
 
 And lift them up to pray, and gently tether 
 
 Me, as thy lamb there, with thy garment's spread? 
 
 " How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired ! 
 
 I think how I should view the earth and skies 
 And sea, when once again my brow was bared 
 
 After thy healing, with such different eyes. 
 O world, as God has made it ! All is beauty: 
 And knowing this, is love, and love is duty. 
 
 What further may be sought for or declared ? " 
 
 After the Adriatic coast was left, they hesitated as to 
 returning to Florence, the doctors having laid such 
 stress on the climatic suitability of Pisa for Mrs.
 
 152 LIFE OF 
 
 Browning. But she felt so sure of herself in her new 
 strength that it was decided to adventure upon at least 
 one winter in the queen-city. They were fortunate in 
 obtaining a residence in the old palace called Casa 
 Guidi, in the Via Maggiore, over against the church of 
 San Felice, and here, with a few brief intervals, they 
 lived till death separated them. 
 
 On the little terrace outside there was more noble 
 verse fashioned in the artist's creative silence than we 
 can ever be aware of: but what a sacred place it 
 must ever be for the lover of poetry ! There, one 
 ominous sultry eve, Browning, brooding over the 
 story of a bygone Roman crime, foreshadowed " The 
 Ring and the Book," and there, in the many years 
 he dwelt in Casa Guidi, he wrote some of his finer 
 shorter poems. There, also, "Aurora Leigh" was born, 
 and many a lyric fresh with the dew of genius. Who has 
 not looked at the old sunworn house and failed to think 
 of that night when each square window of San Felice 
 was aglow with festival lights, and when the summer 
 lightnings fell silently in broad flame from cloud to 
 cloud : or has failed to hear, down the narrow street, a 
 little child go singing, 'neath Casa Guidi windows by the 
 church, O bella libertd, O bella I 
 
 Better even than these, for happy dwelling upon, is the 
 poem the two poets lived. Morning and day were full 
 of work, study, or that pleasurable idleness which for 
 the artist is so often his best inspiration. Here, on the 
 little terrace, they used to sit together, or walk slowly to 
 and fro, in conversation that was only less eloquent than 
 silence. Here one day they received a letter from Home. 
 There is nothing of particular note in Mrs. Browning's
 
 BROWNING. 153 
 
 reply, and yet there are not a few of her poems we 
 would miss rather than these chance words — delicate 
 outlines left for the reader to fill in : " We were reading 
 your letter, together, on our little terrace — walking up and 
 down reading it — I mean the letter to Robert — and then, 
 at the end, suddenly turning, lo, just at the edge of the 
 stones, just between the balustrades, and already flutter- 
 ing in a breath of wind and about to fly away over San 
 Felice's church, we caught a glimpse of the feather of a 
 note to E. B. B. How near we were to the loss of it, to 
 be sure ! " 
 
 Happier still must have been the quiet evenings in 
 late spring and summer, when, the one shrouded against 
 possible chills, the other bare-headed and with loosened 
 coat, walked slowly to and fro in the dark, conscious 
 of "a busy human sense" below, but solitary on their 
 balcony beyond the lamplit room. 
 
 " While in and out the terrace-plants, and round 
 One branch of tall datura, waxed and waned 
 The lamp-fly lured there, wanting the white flower." 
 
 An American friend has put on record his impressions 
 of the two poets, and their home at this time. He had 
 been called upon by Browning, and by him invited to 
 take tea at Casa Guidi the same evening. There the 
 visitor saw, " seated at the tea-table of the great room 
 of the palace in which they were living, a very small, 
 very slight woman, with very long curls drooping forward, 
 almost across the eyes, hanging to the bosom, and quite 
 concealing the pale, small face, from which the piercing 
 inquiring eyes looked out sensitively at the stranger. 
 Rising from her chair, she put out cordially the thin
 
 154 LIFE OF 
 
 white hand of an invalid, and in a few moments they 
 were pleasantly chatting, while the husband strode up 
 and down the room, joining in the conversation with a 
 vigour, humour, eagerness, and affluence of curious 
 lore which, with his trenchant thought and subtle sym- 
 pathy, make him one of the most charming and inspiring 
 of companions." 
 
 In the autumn the same friend, joined by one or two 
 other acquaintances, went with the Brownings to Vallom- 
 brosa for a couple of days, greatly to Mrs. Browning's 
 delight, for whom the name had had a peculiar fascina- 
 tion ever since she had first encountered it in Milton. 
 
 She was conveyed up the steep way towards the 
 monastery in a great basket, without wheels, drawn by 
 two oxen : though, as she tells Miss Mitford, she did 
 not get into the monastery after all, she and her maid 
 being turned away by the monks " for the sin of woman- 
 hood." She was too much of an invalid to climb the 
 steeper heights, but loved to lie under the great chest- 
 nuts upon the hill-slopes near the convent. At twilight 
 they went to the little convent-chapel, and there Browning 
 sat down at the organ and played some of those older 
 melodies he loved so well. 
 
 It is, strangely enough, from Americans that we 
 have the best account of the Brownings in their life at 
 Casa Guidi : from R. H. Stoddart, Bayard Taylor, 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Stillman Hillard, and 
 W. W. Story. I can find room, however, for but one 
 excerpt : — 
 
 "Those who have known Casa Guidi as it was, could hardly 
 enter the loved rooms now, and speak above a whisper. They who 
 have been so favoured, can never forget the square anteroom, with
 
 BROWNING. 155 
 
 its great picture and pianoforte, at which the boy Browning passed 
 many an hour — the little dining-room covered with tapestry, and 
 where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning 
 — the long room filled with plaster-casts and studies, which was 
 Mrs. Browning's retreat — and, dearest of all, the large drawing- 
 room where she always sat. It opens upon a balcony filled with 
 plants, and looks out upon the iron-grey church of Santa Felice. 
 There was something about this room that seemed to make it a 
 proper and especial haunt for poets. The dark shadows and sub- 
 dued light gave it a dreary look, which was enhanced by the 
 tapestry-covered walls, and the old pictures of saints that looked 
 out sadly from their carved frames of black wood. Large book- 
 cases constructed of specimens of Florentine carving selected by 
 Mr. Browning were brimming over with wise - looking books. 
 Tables were covered with more gaily-bound volumes, the gifts of 
 brother authors. Dante's grave profile, a cast of Keats's face and 
 brow taken after death, a pen-and-ink sketch of Tennyson, the 
 genial face of John Kenyon, Mrs. Browning's good friend and 
 relative, little paintings of the boy Browning, all attracted the eye 
 in turn, and gave rise to a thousand musings. A quaint mirror, 
 easy-chairs and sofas, and a hundred nothings that always add an 
 indescribable charm, were all massed in this room. But the glory of 
 all, and that which sanctified all, was seated in a low arm-chair near 
 the door. A small table, strewn with writing-materials, books, and 
 newspapers, was always by her side. . . . After her death, her 
 husband had a careful water-colour drawing made of this room, 
 which has been engraved more than once. It still hangs in his 
 drawing-room, where the mirror and one of the quaint chairs 
 above named still are. The low arm-chair and small table are in 
 Browning's study — with his father's desk, on which he has written 
 all his poems."— ( IV. W. Story.) 
 
 To Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne, Mr. Hillard, and Mr. 
 Story, in particular, we are indebted for several delight- 
 ful glimpses into the home-life of the two poets. We 
 can see Mrs. Browning in her " ideal chamber," neither 
 a library nor a sitting-room, but a happy blending of
 
 156 LIFE OF BROWNING. 
 
 both, with the numerous old paintings in antique Floren- 
 tine frames, easy-chairs and lounges, carved bookcases 
 crammed with books in many languages, bric-a-brac in 
 any quantity, but always artistic, flowers everywhere, and 
 herself the frailest flower of all. 
 
 Mr. Hillard speaks of the happiness of the Brownings' 
 home and their union as perfect : he, full of manly power, 
 she, the type of the most sensitive and delicate woman- 
 hood. This much-esteemed friend was fascinated by 
 Mrs. Browning. Again and again he alludes to her 
 exceeding spirituality : " She is a soul of fire enclosed 
 in a shell of pearl:" her frame "the transparent veil 
 for a celestial and mortal spirit : " and those fine words 
 which prove that he too was of the brotherhood of the 
 poets, "Her tremulous voice often flutters over her 
 words like the flame of a dying candle over the wick."
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WITH the flower-tide of spring in 1849 came a 
 new happiness to the two poets : the son 
 who was born on the 9th of March. The boy 
 was called Robert Wiedemann Barrett, the second name, 
 in remembrance of Browning's much-loved mother, hav- 
 ing been substituted for the " Sarianna " wherewith the 
 child, if a girl, was to have been christened. Thereafter 
 their " own young Florentine " was an endless joy and 
 pride to both : and he was doubly loved by his father for 
 his having brought a renewal of life to her who bore him. 
 That autumn they went to the country, to the neigh- 
 bourhood of Vallombrosa, and then to the Bagni di 
 Lucca. There they wandered content in chestnut- 
 forests, and gathered grapes at the vintage. 
 
 Early in the year Browning's "Poetical Works" were 
 published in two volumes. Some of the most beautiful 
 of his shorter poems are to be found therein. What a 
 new note is struck throughout, what range of subject 
 there is ! Among them all, are there any more treasur- 
 able than two of the simplest, " Home Thoughts from 
 Abroad " and " Night and Morning " ? 
 
 " Oh, to be in England 
 Now that April's there, 
 And whoever wakes in England 
 Sees, some morning, unaware,
 
 158 LIFE OF 
 
 That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf 
 Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, 
 While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough 
 In England — now ! 
 
 And after April, when May follows, 
 And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows ! 
 Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge 
 Leans to the field and scatters on the clover 
 Blossoms and dewdrops— at the bent spray's edge — 
 That's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice over, 
 Lest you should think he never could recapture 
 The first fine careless rapture ! " 
 
 A more significant note is struck in "Meeting at 
 Night" and "Parting at Morning." 
 
 MEETING. 
 I. 
 
 The grey sea and the long black land ; 
 And the yellow half-moon large and low ; 
 And the startled little waves that leap 
 In fiery ringlets from their sleep, 
 As I gain the cove with pushing prow, 
 And quench its speed i' the slushy sand. 
 
 II. 
 
 Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach ; 
 
 Three fields to cross till a farm appears ; 
 
 A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch 
 
 And blue spurt of a lighted match, 
 
 And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears, 
 
 Than the two hearts beating each to each ! 
 
 TARTING. 
 
 Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, 
 And the sun looked over the mountain's rim : 
 And straight was a path of gold for him, 
 And the need of a world of men for me.
 
 BROWNING. 159 
 
 The following winter, when they were again at their 
 Florentine home, Browning wrote his " Christmas 
 Eve and Easter Da)'," that remarkable apologia for 
 Christianity, and close-reasoned presentation of the 
 religious thought of the time. It is, however, for this 
 reason that it is so widely known and admired : for it is 
 ever easier to attract readers by dogma than by beauty, 
 by intellectual argument than by the seduction of art. 
 Coincidently, Mrs. Browning wrote the first portion of 
 " Casa Guidi Windows." 
 
 In the spring of 1850 husband and wife spent a short 
 stay in Rome. I have been told that the poem entitled 
 'Two in the Campagna' was as actually personal as 
 the already quoted "Guardian Angel." But I do not 
 think stress should be laid on this and kindred localis- 
 ations. Exact or not, they have no literary value. To 
 the poet, the dramatic poet above all, locality and 
 actuality of experience are, so to say, merely fortunate 
 coigns of outlook, for the winged genius to tempor- 
 ally inhabit. To the imaginative mind, truth is not 
 simply actuality. As for ' Two in the Campagna ' : it is 
 too universally true to be merely personal. There is a 
 gtrlf which not the profoundest search can fathom, which 
 not the strongest-winged love can overreach : the gulf 
 of individuality. It is those who have loved most 
 deeply who recognise most acutely this always pathetic 
 and often terrifying isolation of the soul. None save 
 the weak can believe in the absolute union of two 
 spirits. If this were demonstratable, immortality would 
 be a palpable fiction. The moment individuality 
 can lapse to fusion, that moment the tide has ebbed, 
 the wind has fallen, the dream has been dreamed. So
 
 1G0 LIFE OF 
 
 long as the soul remains inviolate amid all shock of 
 time and change, so long is it immortal. No man, no 
 poet assuredly, could love as Browning loved, and fail 
 to be aware, often with vague anger and bitterness, no 
 doubt, of this insuperable isolation even when spirit 
 seemed to leap to spirit, in the touch of a kiss, in the 
 evanishing sigh of some one or other exquisite moment. 
 The poem tells us how the lovers, straying hand in 
 hand one May day across the Campagna, sat down 
 among the seeding grasses, content at first in the idle 
 watching of a spider spinning her gossamer threads from 
 yellowing fennel to other vagrant weeds. All around 
 them 
 
 "The champaign with its endless fleece 
 Of feathery grasses everywhere ! 
 Silence and passion, joy and peace, 
 An everlasting wash of air — . . . 
 
 "Such life here, through such length of hours, 
 Such miracles performed in play, 
 Such primal naked forms of flowers, 
 
 Such letting nature have her way." . . . 
 
 Let us too be unashamed of soul, the poet-lovef "says, 
 even as earth lies bare to heaven. Nothing is to be 
 overlooked. But all in vain : in vain " I drink my fill at 
 your soul's springs." 
 
 "Just when I seemed about to learn ! 
 Where is the thread now ? off again ! 
 The old trick ! Only I discern — 
 
 Infinite passion, and the pain 
 Of finite hearts that yearn." 
 
 It was during this visit to Rome that both were
 
 BROWNING. 161 
 
 gratified by the proposal in the leading English literary 
 weekly, that the Poet-Laureateship, vacant by the death 
 of Wordsworth, should be conferred upon Mrs. Brown- 
 ing: though both rejoiced when they learned that the 
 honour had devolved upon one whom each so ardently 
 admired as Alfred Tennyson. In 1851 a visit was paid 
 to England, not one very much looked forward to by 
 Mrs. Browning, who had never had cause to yearn for 
 her old home in Wimpole Street, and who could 
 anticipate no reconciliation with her father, who had 
 persistently refused even to open her letters to him, and 
 had forbidden the mention of her name in his home 
 circle. 
 
 Bayard Taylor, in his travel-sketches published under 
 the title "At Home and Abroad," has put on record 
 how he called upon the Brownings one afternoon in 
 September, at their rooms in Devonshire Street, and 
 found them on the eve of their return to Italy. 
 
 In his cheerful alertness, self-possession, and genial 
 suavity Browning impressed him as an American rather 
 than as an Englishman, though there can be no question 
 but that no more thorough Englishman than the poet 
 ever lived. It is a mistake, of course, to speak of him 
 as a typical Englishman : for typical he was not, except in 
 a very exclusive sense. Bayard Taylor describes him in 
 reportorial fashion as being apparently about seven-and- 
 thirty (a fairly close guess), with his dark hair already 
 streaked with grey about the temples : with a fair com- 
 plexion, just tinged with faintest olive : eyes large, clear, 
 and grey, and nose strong and well-cut, mouth full and 
 rather broad, and chin pointed, though not prominent : 
 
 about the medium height, strong in the shoulders, but 
 
 11
 
 162 LIFE OF 
 
 slender at the waist, with movements expressive of a 
 combination of vigour and elasticity. With due allow- 
 ance for the passage of five-and-thirty years, this descrip- 
 tion would not be inaccurate of Browning the septua- 
 genarian. 
 
 They did not return direct to Italy after all, but 
 wintered in Paris with Robert Browning the elder, who 
 had retired to a small house in a street leading off the 
 Champs Elysees. The pension he drew from the Bank 
 of England was a small one, but, with what he otherwise 
 had, was sufficient for him to live in comfort. The 
 old gentleman's health was superb to the last, for he 
 died in 1866 without ever having known a day's illness. 
 
 Spring came out and found them still in Paris, Mrs. 
 Browning enthusiastic about Napoleon III. and interested 
 in spiritualism : her husband serenely sceptical concerning 
 both. In the summer they again went to London : but 
 they appear to have seen more of Kenyon and other 
 intimate friends than to have led a busy social life. 
 Kenyon's friendship and good company never ceased to 
 have a charm for both poets. Mrs. Browning loved him 
 almost as a brother : her husband told Bayard Taylor, 
 on the day when that good poet and charming man called 
 upon them, and after another visitor had departed — a 
 man with a large rosy face and rotund body, as Taylor 
 describes him — "there goes one of the most splendid 
 men living — a man so noble in his friendship, so lavish 
 in his hospitality, so large-hearted and benevolent, that 
 he deserves to be known all over the world as Kenyon 
 the Magnificent." 
 
 In the early autumn a sudden move towards Italy was 
 again made, and after a few weeks in Paris and on the 

 
 BROWNING. 163 
 
 way the Brownings found themselves at home once more 
 in Casa Guidi. 
 
 But before this, probably indeed before they had left 
 Paris for London, Mr. Moxon had published the now 
 notorious Shelley forgeries. These were twenty-five 
 spurious letters, but so cleverly manufactured that they 
 at first deceived many people. In the preceding 
 November Browning had been asked to write an 
 introduction to them. This he had gladly agreed to 
 do, eager as he was for a suitable opportunity of 
 expressing his admiration for Shelley. When the letters 
 reached him, he found that, genuine or not, though he 
 never suspected they were forgeries, they contained 
 nothing of particular import, nothing that afforded a 
 just basis for what he had intended to say. Pledged as 
 he was, however, to write something for Mr. Moxon's 
 edition of the Letters, he set about the composition of 
 an Essay, of a general as much as of an individual 
 nature. This he wrote in Paris, and finished by the 
 beginning of December. It dealt with the objective and 
 subjective poet; on the relation of the latter's life to his 
 work ; and upon Shelley in the light of his nature, art, 
 and character. Apart from the circumstance that it is 
 the only independent prose writing of any length from 
 Browning's pen, this is an exceptionally able and 
 interesting production. 
 
 Dr. Furnivall deserves general gratitude for his 
 obtaining the author's leave to re-issue it, and for 
 having published it as one of the papers of the 
 Browning Society. As that enthusiastic student and 
 good friend of the poet says in his " foretalk " to the 
 reprint, the essay is noteworthy, not merely as a signal
 
 1G4 LIFE OF 
 
 service to Shelley's fame and memory, but for Brown- 
 ing's statement of his own aim in his own work, both 
 as objective and subjective poet. The same clear- 
 sightedness and impartial sympathy, which are such 
 distinguishing characteristics of his dramatic studies of 
 human thought and emotion, are obvious in Brown- 
 ing's Shelley essay. " It would be idle to enquire," 
 he writes, "of these two kinds of poetic faculty in 
 operation, which is the higher or even rarer endow- 
 ment. If the subjective might seem to be the ultimate 
 requirement of every age, the objective in the strictest 
 state must still retain its original value. For it is with 
 this world, as starting-point and basis alike, that we shall 
 always have to concern ourselves; the world is not 
 to be learned and thrown aside, but reverted to and 
 reclaimed." 
 
 Of its critical subtlety — the more remarkable as by a 
 poet-critic who revered Shelley the poet and loved and 
 believed in Shelley the man — the best example, perhaps, 
 is in those passages where he alludes to the charge against 
 the poet's moral nature — "charges which, if substantiated 
 to their wide breadth, would materially disturb, I do not 
 deny, our reception and enjoyment of his works, however 
 wonderful the artistic qualities of these. For we are not 
 sufficiently supplied with instances of genius of his order 
 to be able to pronounce certainly how many of its con- 
 stituent parts have been tasked and strained to the 
 production of a given lie, and how high and pure a 
 mood of the creative mind may be dramatically simulated 
 as the poet's habitual and exclusive one." 
 
 The large charity, the liberal human sympathy, the 
 keen critical acumen of this essay, make one wish that
 
 BROWNING. 165 
 
 the author had spared us a "Sludge the Medium" or 
 a "Pacchiarotto," or even a "Prince Hohenstiel- 
 Schwangau," and given us more of such honourable 
 work in "the other harmony." 
 
 Glad as the Brownings were to be home again at 
 Casa Guidi, they could not enjoy the midsummer heats 
 of Florence, and so went to the Baths of Lucca. It 
 was a delight for them to ramble among the chestnut- 
 woods of the high Tuscan forests, and to go among 
 the grape-vines where the sunburnt vintagers were busy. 
 Once Browning paid a visit to that remote hill-stream 
 and waterfall, high up in a precipitous glen, where, more 
 than three-score years earlier, Shelley had been wont 
 to amuse himself by sitting naked on a rock in the 
 sunlight, reading Herodotus while he cooled, and 
 then plunging into the deep pool beneath him — 
 to emerge, further up stream, and then climb 
 through the spray of the waterfall till he was like 
 a glittering human wraith in the middle of a dissolving 
 rainbow. 
 
 Those Tuscan forests, that high crown of Lucca, 
 must always have special associations for lovers of 
 poetry. Here Shelley lived, rapt in his beautiful 
 dreams, and translated the Symposium so that his wife 
 might share something of his delight in Plato. Here, 
 ten years later, Heine sneered, and laughed and wept, 
 and sneered again — drank tea with "la belle Irlandaise," 
 flirted with Francesca "la ballerina," and wrote alter- 
 nately with a feathered quill from the breast of a 
 nightingale and with a lancet steeped in aquafortis : 
 and here, a quarter of a century afterward, Robert and 
 Elizabeth Browning also laughed and wept and "joyed
 
 166 LIFE OF 
 
 i' the sun," dreamed many dreams, and touched chords 
 of beauty whose vibration has become incorporated with 
 the larger rhythm of all that is high and enduring in 
 our literature. 
 
 On returning to Florence (Browning with the MS. 
 of the greater part of his splendid fragmentary tragedy, 
 "In a Balcony," composed mainly while walking alone 
 through the forest glades), Mrs. Browning found that 
 the chill breath of the tramontana was affecting her 
 lungs, so a move was made to Rome, for the passing 
 of the winter (1853-4). In the spring their little boy, 
 their beloved "Pen," 1 became ill with malaria. This 
 delayed their return to Florence till well on in the 
 summer. During this stay in Rome Mrs. Browning 
 rapidly proceeded with "Aurora Leigh," and Browning 
 wrote several of his " Men and Women," including the 
 exquisite 'Love among the Ruins,' with its novel metrical 
 music; 'Fra Lippo Lippi,' where the painter, already im- 
 mortalised by Landor, has his third warrant of perpetuity; 
 the 'Epistle of Karshish' (in part); 'Memorabilia' (com- 
 posed on the Campagna) ; ' Saul,' a portion of which had 
 been written and published ten years previously, that 
 noble and lofty utterance, with its trumpet-like note of the 
 
 1 So-called, it is asserted, from his childish effort to pronounce 
 a difficult name (Wiedemann). Eut despite the good authority 
 for this statement, it is impossible not to credit rather the explan- 
 ation given by Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, moreover, affords the 
 practically definite proof that the boy was at first, as a term of 
 endearment, called " Pennini," which was later abbreviated to 
 "Pen." The cognomen, Hawthorne states, was a diminutive of 
 " Apennino," which was bestowed upon the boy in babyhood 
 because he was very small, there being a statue in Florence of 
 colossal size called "Apennino."
 
 . 
 
 BROWNING. 167 
 
 regnant spirit ; the concluding part of " In a Balcony ; " 
 and 'Holy Cross Day' — besides, probably, one or two 
 others. In the late spring (April 27th) also, he wrote the 
 short dactylic lyric, 'Ben Karshook's Wisdom.' This 
 little poem was given to a friend for appearance in one of 
 the then popular Keepsakes — literally given, for Browning 
 never contributed to magazines. The very few excep- 
 tions to this rule were the result of a kindliness stronger 
 than scruple: as when (1844), at request of Lord 
 Houghton (then Mr. Monckton Milnes), he sent 
 1 Tokay,' the ' Flower's Name,' and ' Sibrandus Schafna- 
 burgensis,' to " help in making up some magazine 
 numbers for poor Hood, then at the point of death 
 from hemorrhage of the lungs, occasioned by the 
 enlargement of the heart, which had been brought 
 on by the wearing excitement of ceaseless and excessive 
 literary toil." As ' Ben Karshook's Wisdom,' though it 
 has been reprinted in several quarters, will not be found 
 in any volume of Brownings works, and was omitted 
 from " Men and Women " by accident, and from further 
 collections by forgetfulness, it may be fitly quoted here. 
 Karshook, it may be added, is the Hebraic word for 
 a thistle. 
 
 1. 
 
 " ' Would a man 'scape the rod ' ? — 
 Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, 
 • See that he turns to God 
 The day before his death.' 
 
 ' Ay, could a man inquire 
 
 When it shall come ! ' I say. 
 The Rabbi's eye shoots fire — 
 
 ' Then let him turn to-day!'
 
 168 LIFE OF 
 
 ii. 
 
 Quoth a young Sadducee, — 
 
 ' Reader of many rolls, 
 Is it so certain we 
 
 Have, as they tell us, souls? ' — 
 
 ' Son, there is no reply ! ' 
 
 The Rabbi bit his beard : 
 ' Certain, a soul have / 
 
 IVe may have none,' he sneer'd. 
 
 Thus Karshook, the Hiram's-Hammer, 
 The Right-Hand Temple column, 
 
 Taught babes their grace in grammar, 
 And struck the simple, solemn." 
 
 It was in this year (1855) that "Men and Women" 
 was published. It is difficult to understand how a 
 collection comprising poems such as " Love among the 
 Ruins," " Evelyn Hope," " Fra Lippo Lippi," " A 
 Toccata of Galuppi's," "Any Wife to any Husband," 
 "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha," "Andrea del Sarto," 
 " In a Balcony," " Saul," " A Grammarian's Funeral," to 
 mention only ten now almost universally known, did not 
 at once obtain a national popularity for the author. But 
 lovers of literature were simply enthralled : and the two 
 volumes had a welcome from them which was perhaps 
 all the more ardent because of their disproportionate 
 numbers. Ears alert to novel poetic music must have 
 thrilled to the new strain which sounded first — " Love 
 among the Ruins," with its Millet-like opening — 
 
 " Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles, 
 Miles and miles 
 On the solitary pastures where our sheep 
 Half asleep 

 
 BROWNING. 
 
 169 
 
 
 Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop 
 
 As they crop — 
 Was the site once of a city great and gay . . ." 
 
 Soon after the return to Florence, which, hot as it was, 
 was preferable in July to Rome, Mrs. Browning wrote to 
 her frequent correspondent Miss Mitford, and mentioned 
 that about four thousand lines of " Aurora Leigh " had 
 been written. She added a significant passage : that her 
 husband had not seen a single line of it up to that time 
 — significant, as one of the several indications that the 
 union of Browning and his wife was indeed a marriage 
 of true minds, wherein nothing of the common bane 
 of matrimonial life found existence. Moreover, both 
 were artists, and, therefore, too full of respect for them- 
 selves and their art to bring in any way the undue 
 influence of each other into play. 
 
 By the spring of 1856, however, the first six " books" 
 were concluded : and these, at once with humility and 
 pride, Mrs. Browning placed in her husband's hands. 
 The remaining three books were written, in the summer, 
 in John Kenyon's London house. 
 
 It was her best, her fullest answer to the beautiful 
 dedicatory poem, " One Word More," wherewith her 
 husband, a few months earlier, sent forth his " Men and 
 Women," to be for ever associated with " E. B. B." 
 
 " There they are, my fifty men and women 
 Naming me the fifty poems finished ! 
 Take them, Love, the book and me together: 
 Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.
 
 170 LIFE OF 
 
 XVIII. 
 This I say of me, but think of you, Love! 
 This to you — yourself my moon of poets ! 
 Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder, 
 Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you ! 
 There, in turn I stand with them and praise you — 
 Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it. 
 But the best is when I glide from out them, 
 Cross a step or two of dubious twilight, 
 Come out on the other side, the novel 
 Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, 
 Where I hush and bless myself with silence." 
 
 The transference from Florence to London was made 
 in May. In the summer " Aurora Leigh " was published, 
 and met with an almost unparalleled success : even 
 Landor, most exigent of critics, declared that he was 
 " half drunk with it," that it had an imagination germane 
 to that of Shakspere, and so forth. 
 
 The poem was dedicated to Kenyon, and on their 
 homeward way the Brownings were startled and shocked 
 to hear of his sudden death. By the time they had 
 arrived at Casa Guidi again they learned that their good 
 friend had not forgotten them in the disposition of his 
 large fortune. To Browning he bequeathed six thou- 
 sand, to Mrs. Browning four thousand guineas. This 
 loss was followed early in the ensuing year (1857) by 
 the death of Mr. Barrett, steadfast to the last in his 
 refusal of reconciliation with his daughter. 
 
 Winters and summers passed happily in Italy — with 
 one period of feverish anxiety, when the little boy lay 
 for six weeks dangerously ill, nursed day and night by 
 his father and mother alternately — with pleasant occa- 
 sionings, as the companionship for a season of Nathaniel
 
 BROWNING. 171 
 
 Hawthorne and his family, or of weeks spent at Siena 
 with valued and lifelong friends, W. W. Story, the poet- 
 sculptor, and his wife. 
 
 So early as 1S58 Mrs. Hawthorne believed she saw 
 the heralds of death in Mrs. Browning's excessive pallor 
 and the hectic flush upon the cheeks, in her extreme 
 fragility and weakness, and in her catching, fluttering 
 breath. Even the motion of a visitor's fan perturbed 
 her. But " her soul was mighty, and a great love kept 
 her on earth a season longer. She was a seraph in her 
 flaming worship of heart." " She lives so ardently," adds 
 Mrs. Hawthorne, "that her delicate earthly vesture must 
 soon be burnt up and destroyed by her soul of pure fire." 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding, she still sailed the seas of life, 
 like one of those fragile argonauts in their shells of 
 foam and rainbow-mist which will withstand the rude 
 surge of winds and waves. But slowly, gradually, the 
 spirit was o'erfretting its tenement. With the waning 
 of her strength came back the old passionate longing 
 for rest, for quiescence from that '"'excitement from 
 within," which had been almost over vehement for her 
 in the calm days of her unmarried life. 
 
 It is significant that at this time Browning's genius 
 was relatively dormant. Its wings were resting for the 
 long-sustained flight of "The Ring and the Book," and 
 for earlier and shorter though not less royal aerial 
 journeyings. But also, no doubt, the prolonged com- 
 paratively unproductive period of eight or nine years 
 (1855-1864), between the publication of "Men and 
 Women " and " Dramatis Persona?," was due in some 
 measure to the poet's incessant and anxious care for his 
 wife, to the deep sorrow of witnessing her slow but
 
 172 LIFE OF 
 
 visible passing away, and to the profound grief occa- 
 sioned by her death. However, barrenness of im- 
 aginative creative activity can be ' only very relatively 
 affirmed, even of so long a period, of years wherein 
 were written such memorable and treasurable poems 
 as 'James Lee's Wife,' among Browning's writings 
 what ' Maud ' is among Lord Tennyson's ; ' Gold Hair : 
 a Legend of Pornic;' ' Dis Aliter Visum ;' ' Abt Vogler,' 
 the most notable production of its kind in the language ; 
 ' A Death in the Desert,' that singular and impressive 
 study; 'Caliban upon Setebos,' in its strange potency 
 of interest and stranger poetic note, absolutely unique ; 
 'Youth and Art;' 'Apparent Failure;' 'Prospice,' that 
 noble lyrical defiance of death; and the supremely 
 lofty and significant series of weighty stanzas, 'Rabbi 
 Ben Ezra,' the most quintessential of all the distinctively 
 psychical monologues which Browning has written. It 
 seems to me that if these two poems only, " Prospice " 
 and "Rabbi Ben Ezra," were to survive to the day of 
 Macaulay's New Zealander, the contemporaries of that 
 meditative traveller would have sufficient to enable them 
 to understand the great fame of the poet of "dim 
 ancestral days," as the more acute among them could 
 discern something of the real Shelley, though time had 
 preserved but the three lines — 
 
 " Yet now despair itself is mild, 
 Even as the winds and waters are ; 
 I could lie down like a tired child "... 
 
 something of the real Catullus, through the mists of 
 remote antiquity, if there had not perished the single 
 passionate cry —
 
 BROWNING. 173 
 
 " Lesbia ilia, 
 Ilia Lesbia, quam Catullus unam 
 Plus quam se, atque suos amavit omnes ! " 
 
 At the beginning of July (1858), the Brownings left 
 Florence for the summer and autumn, and by easy 
 stages travelled to Normandy. Here the invalid 
 benefited considerably at first : and here, I may add, 
 Browning wrote his ' Legend of Pornic,' ' Gold-Hair.' 
 This poem of twenty-seven five-line stanzas (which 
 differs only from that in more recent " Collected Works," 
 and " Selections," in its lack of the three stanzas now 
 numbered xxi., xxii., and xxiii.) was printed for limited 
 private circulation, though primarily for the purpose of 
 securing American copyright. Browning several times 
 printed single poems thus, and for the same reasons — 
 that is, either for transatlantic copyright, or when 
 the verses were not likely to be included in any 
 volume for a prolonged period. These leaflets or half- 
 sheetlets of ' Gold Hair ' and ' Prospice,' of ' Cleon ' 
 and ' The Statue and the Bust ' — together with the 
 "Two Poems by Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning," 
 published, for benefit of a charity, in 1854 — are among 
 the rarest "finds" for the collector, and are literally 
 worth a good deal more than their weight in gold. 
 
 In the tumultuous year of 1859 all Italy was in a 
 ferment. No patriot among the Nationalists was more 
 ardent in her hopes than the delicate, too fragile, dying 
 poetess, whose flame of life burned anew with the great 
 hopes that animated her for her adopted country. Well 
 indeed did she deserve, among the lines which the poet 
 Tommaseo wrote and the Florence municipality caused 
 to be engraved in gold upon a white marble slab, to be
 
 174 LIFE OF 
 
 placed upon Casa Guidi, the words fece del suo verso 
 aureo anello fra Italia e Inghilterra — " who of her Verse 
 made a golden link connecting England and Italy." 
 
 The victories of Solferino and San Martino made the 
 bitterness of the disgraceful Treaty of Villafranca the 
 more hard to bear. Even had we not Mr. Story's 
 evidence, it would be a natural conclusion that this 
 disastrous ending to the high hopes of the Italian 
 patriots accelerated Mrs. Browning's death. The with- 
 drawal of hope is often worse in its physical effects than 
 any direct bodily ill. 
 
 It was a miserable summer for both husband and wife, 
 for more private sorrows also pressed upon them. Not 
 even the sweet autumnal winds blowing upon Siena 
 wafted away the shadow that had settled upon the 
 invalid : nor was there medicine for her in the air of 
 Rome, where the winter was spent. A temporary relief, 
 however, was afforded by the more genial climate, and in 
 the spring of i860 she was able, with Browning's help, 
 to see her Italian patriotic poems through the press. It 
 goes without saying that these " Poems before Congress " 
 had a grudging reception from the critics, because they 
 dared to hint that all was not roseate-hued in England. 
 The true patriots are those who love despite blemishes, 
 not those who cherish the blemishes along with the 
 virtues. To hint at a flaw is " not to be an Englishman." 
 
 The autumn brought a new sadness in the death of 
 Miss Arabella Barrett — a dearly loved sister, the 
 "Arabel" of so many affectionate letters. Once more 
 a winter in Rome proved temporally restorative. But at 
 last the day came when she wrote her last poem — "North 
 and South," a gracious welcome to Hans Christian
 
 BROWNING. 175 
 
 Andersen on the occasion of his first visit to the Eternal 
 City. 
 
 Early in June of 1861 the Brownings were once more 
 at Casa Guidi. But soon after their return the invalid 
 caught a chill. For a few days she hovered like a tired 
 bird — though her friends saw only the seemingly 
 unquenchable light in the starry eyes, and did not 
 anticipate the silence that was soon to be. 
 
 By the evening of the 28th day of the month she was 
 in sore peril of failing breath. All night her husband sat 
 by her, holding her hand. Two hours before dawn she 
 realised that her last breath would ere long fall upon his 
 tear-wet face. Then, as a friend has told us, she passed 
 into a state of ecstasy : yet not so rapt therein but that 
 she could whisper many words of hope, even of joy. 
 With the first light of the new day, she leaned against 
 her lover. Awhile she lay thus in silence, and then, 
 softly sighing "ft is beautiful!" passed like the windy 
 fragrance of a flower.
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 T is needless to dwell upon what followed. The 
 
 world has all that need be known. To Browning 
 
 himself it was the abrupt, the too deeply pathetic, 
 
 yet not wholly unhappy ending of a lovelier poem than 
 
 any he or another should ever write, the poem of their 
 
 married life. 
 
 There is a rare serenity in the thought of death when 
 it is known to be the gate of life. This conviction 
 Browning had, and so his grief was rather that of one 
 whose joy has westered earlier. The sweetest music of 
 his life had withdrawn : but there was still music for one 
 to whom life in itself was a happiness. He had his son, 
 and was not void of other solace : but even had it been 
 otherwise he was of the strenuous natures who never 
 succumb, nor wish to die — whatever accident of mortality 
 overcome the will and the power. 
 
 It was in the autumn following his wife's death that he 
 wrote the noble poem to which allusion has already 
 been made : " Prospice." Who does not thrill to its 
 close, when all of gloom or terror 
 
 •' Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, 
 Then a light, then thy breast, 
 O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again, 
 And with God be the rest."
 
 LIFE OF BROWNING. 17Vj 
 
 There are few direct allusions to his wife in Brown- 
 ing's poems. Of those prior to her death the most 
 beautiful is " One Word More," which has been already 
 alluded to : of the two or three subsequent to that event 
 none surpasses the magic close of the first part of 
 " The Ring and the Book." / 
 
 Thereafter the details of his life are public property. 
 He all along lived in the light, partly from his posses- 
 sion of that serenity which made Goethe glad to be 
 alive and to be able to make others share in that glad- 
 ness. No poet has been more revered and more loved. 
 His personality will long be a stirring tradition. In the 
 presence of his simple manliness and wealth of all 
 generous qualities one is inclined to pass by as valueless, 
 as the mere flying spray of the welcome shower, the 
 many honours and gratifications that befell him. Even 
 if these things mattered, concerning one by whose genius 
 we are fascinated, while undazzled by the mere accidents 
 pertinent thereto, their recital would be wearisome — of 
 how he was asked to be Lord Rector of this University, 
 or made a doctor of laws at that : of how letters and 
 tributes of all kinds came to him from every district in 
 our Empire, from every country in the world : and so 
 forth. All these things are implied in the circumstance 
 that his life was throughout "a noble music with a 
 golden ending." 
 
 In 1866 his father died in Paris, strenuous in life 
 until the very end. After this event Miss Sarianna 
 Browning went to reside with her brother, and from 
 that time onward was his inseparable companion, and 
 ever one of the dearest and most helpful of friends. 
 
 In latter years brother and sister were constantly seen 
 
 12
 
 <8 LIFE OF 
 
 together, and so regular attendants were they at such 
 functions as the " Private Views " at the Royal Academy 
 and Grosvenor Gallery, that these never seemed complete 
 without them. A Private View, a first appearance of 
 Joachim or Sarasate, a first concert of Richter or 
 Henschel or Halle, at each of these, almost to a certainty, 
 the poet was sure to appear. The chief personal happi- 
 ness of his later life was in his son. Mr. R. Barrett 
 Browning is so well known as a painter and sculptor 
 that it would be superfluous for me to add anything 
 further here, except to state that his successes were his 
 father's keenest pleasures. 
 
 Two years after his father's death, that is in 1868, the 
 "Poetical Works of Robert Browning, M.A., Honorary 
 Fellow of Baliol College, Oxford," were issued in six 
 volumes. Here the equator of Browning's genius may 
 be drawn. On the further side lie the "Men and 
 Women" of the period anterior to "The Ring and the 
 Book " : midway is the transitional zone itself : on the 
 hither side are the "Men and Women" of a more 
 temperate if not colder clime. 
 
 The first part of " The Ring and the Book " was not 
 published till November. In September the poet was 
 staying with his sister and son at Le Croisic, a picturesque 
 village at the mouth of the Loire, at the end of the great 
 salt plains which stretch down from Gue'rande to the 
 Bay of Biscay. No doubt, in lying on the sand-dunes 
 in the golden September glow, in looking upon the there 
 somewhat turbid current of the Loire, the poet brooded 
 on those days when' he saw its inland waters with her 
 who was with him no longer save in dreams and 
 memories. Here he wrote that stirring poem, "Hervd
 
 BROWNING. 179 
 
 RieV founded upon the valorous action of a French 
 sailor who frustrated the naval might of England, and 
 claimed nothing as a reward save permission to have a 
 holiday on land to spend a few hours with his wife, "la 
 belle Aurore." " Herve Riel" (which has been trans- 
 lated into French, and is often recited, particularly in 
 the maritime towns, and is always evocative of enthusi- 
 astic applause) is one of Browning's finest action-lyrics, 
 and is assured of the same immortality as " How they 
 brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," or the 
 " Pied Piper " himself. 
 
 In 1872 there was practical proof of the poet's growing 
 popularity. Baron Tauchnitz issued two volumes of 
 excellently selected poems, comprising some of the best 
 of " Men and Women," " Dramatis Personam, " and 
 "Dramatic Romances," besides the longer "Soul's 
 Tragedy," "Luria," "In a Balcony," and "Christmas 
 Eve and Easter Day " — the most Christian poem of the 
 century, according to one eminent cleric, the heterodox 
 self-sophistication of a free-thinker, according to another: 
 really, the reflex of a great crisis, that of the first move- 
 ment of the tide of religious thought to a practically 
 limitless freedom. This edition also contained "Bishop 
 Blougram," then much discussed, apart from its poetic 
 and intellectual worth, on account of its supposed veri- 
 similitude in portraiture of Cardinal Wiseman. This 
 composition, one of Browning's most characteristic, is so 
 clever that it is scarcely a poem. Poetry and Cleverness 
 do not well agree, the muse being already united 
 in perfect marriage to Imagination. In his Essay 
 on Truth, Bacon says that one of the Fathers 
 called poetry Vinum Dcemomim, because it filleth the
 
 < r 
 
 180 LIFE OF 
 
 imagination. Certainly if it be not vinum damonum it 
 is not Poetry. 
 
 In this year also appeared the first series of "Selections" 
 by the poet's latest publishers : " Dedicated to Alfred 
 Tennyson. In Poetry — illustrious and consummate : In 
 Friendship — noble and sincere." It was in his preface 
 to this selection that he wrote the often-quoted words : 
 " Nor do I apprehend any more charges of being wilfully 
 obscure, unconscientiously careless, or perversely harsh." 
 At or about the date of these " Selections " the poet 
 wrote to a friend, on this very point of obscurity, " I can 
 have little doubt that my writing has been in the main too 
 hard for many I should have been pleased to communi- 
 cate with ; but I never designedly tried to puzzle people, 
 as some of my critics have supposed. On the other 
 hand, I never pretended to offer such literature as should 
 be a substitute for a cigar or a game at dominoes to an 
 idle man. So perhaps, on the whole, I get my deserts, and 
 something over — not a crowd, but a few I value more." 
 
 In 1877 Browning, ever restless for pastures new, 
 went with his sister to spend the autumn at La Saisiaz 
 (Savoyard for " the sun "), a villa among the mountains 
 near Geneva; this time with the additional company 
 of Miss Anne Egerton Smith, an intimate and valued 
 friend. But there was an unhappy close to the holiday. 
 Miss Smith died on the night of the fourteenth of 
 September, from heart complaint. "La Saisiaz "is the 
 direct outcome of this incident, and is one of the most 
 beautiful of Browning's later poems. Its trochaics move 
 with a tide-like sound. 
 
 At the close, there is a line which might stand as 
 epitaph for the poet —
 
 BROWNING. 181 
 
 " He, at least, believed in Soul, was very sure of God." 
 
 In the following year "La Saisiaz" was published 
 along with " The Two Poets of Croisic," which was 
 begun and partly written at the little French village ten 
 years previously. There is nothing of the eight-score 
 stanzas of the "Two Poets" to equal its delightful 
 epilogue, or the exquisite prefatory lyric, beginning 
 
 " Such a starved bank of moss 
 Till that May-morn 
 Blue ran the flash across : 
 Violets were born." 
 
 Extremely interesting — and for myself I cannot find 
 " The Two Poets of Croisic " to be anything more than 
 "interesting" — it is as a poem distinctly inferior to "La 
 Saisiaz." Although detached lines are often far from 
 truly indicative of the real poetic status of a long poem, 
 where proportion and harmony are of more importance 
 than casual exfoliations of beauty, yet to a certain extent 
 they do serve as musical keys that give the fundamental 
 tone. One certainly would have to search in vain to 
 find in the Croisic poem such lines as 
 
 " Five short days, scarce enough to 
 Bronze the clustered wilding apple, redden ripe the mountain ash." 
 
 Or these of Mont Blanc, seen at sunset, towering over 
 icy pinnacles and teeth-like peaks, 
 
 " Blanc, supreme above his earth-brood, needles red and white and 
 green, 
 Horns of silver, fangs of crystal set on edge in his demesne." 
 
 Or, again, this of the sun swinging himself above the 
 dark shoulder of Jura —
 
 182 LIFE OF 
 
 " Gay he hails her, and magnific, thrilled her black length burns to 
 gold." 
 
 Or, finally, this sounding verse — 
 
 " Past the city's congregated peace of homes and pomp of spires." 
 
 The other poems later than "The Ring and the 
 Book" are, broadly speaking, of two kinds. On the 
 one side may be ranged the groups which really cohere 
 with " Men and Women." These are "The Inn Album," 
 the miscellaneous poems of the " Pacchiarotto " volume, 
 the "Dramatic Idyls," some of " Jocoseria," and some of 
 "Asolando." "Ferishtah's Fancies" and "Parleyings " 
 are not, collectively, dramatic poems, but poems of 
 illuminative insight guided by a dramatic imagination. 1 
 They, and the classical poems and translations (render- 
 ings, rather, by one whose own individuality dominates 
 them to the exclusion of that nearness of the original 
 author, which it should be the primary aim of the 
 translator to evoke), the beautiful " Balaustion's Adven- 
 ture," "Aristophanes' Apology," and "The Agamemnon 
 of ^Eschylus," and the third group, which comprises 
 " Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau," " Red Cotton Nightcap 
 
 1 In a letter to a friend, Browning wrote : — " I hope and believe 
 that one or two careful readings of the Poem [Ferishtah's Fancies] 
 will make its sense clear enough. Above all, pray allow for the 
 Poet's inventiveness in any case, and do not suppose there is more 
 than a thin disguise of a few Persian names and allusions. There 
 was no such person as Ferishtah — the stories are all inventions. 
 . . . The Hebrew quotations are put in for a purpose, as a 
 direct acknowledgment that certain doctrines may be found in the 
 Old Book, which the Concocters of Novel Schemes of Morality 
 put forth as discoveries of their own. "
 
 BROWNING. 183 
 
 Country," and " Fifine at the Fair " — these three groups 
 are of the second kind. 
 
 Remarkable as are the three last-named productions; 
 it is extremely doubtful if the first and second will be 
 read for pleasure by readers born after the close of this 
 century. As it is impossible, in my narrow limits, to 
 go into any detail about poems which personally I do 
 not regard as essential to the truest understanding of 
 Browning, the truest because on the highest level, that of 
 poetry — as distinct from dogma, or intellectual suasion 
 of any kind that might, for all its aesthetic charm, 
 be in prose — it would be presumptuous to assert any- 
 thing derogatory of them without attempting adequate 
 substantiation. I can, therefore, merely state my own 
 opinion. To reiterate, it is that, for different reasons, 
 these three long poems are foredoomed to oblivion — 
 not, of course, to be lost to the student of our literature 
 and of our age, a more wonderful one even than that 
 of the Renaissance, but to lapse from the general 
 regard. That each will for a long time find appreciative 
 readers is certain. They have a fascination for alert 
 minds, and they have not infrequent ramifications 
 which are worth pursuing for the glimpses afforded 
 into an always evanishing Promised Land. "Prince 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau " (the name, by the way, is not 
 purely fanciful, being formed from Hohen Schwangau, 
 one of the castles of the late King of Bavaria) is 
 Browning's complement to his wife's " Ode to Napoleon 
 III." "Red Cotton Nightcap Country " is a true story, 
 the narrative of the circumstances pertinent to the tragic 
 death of one Antonio Mellerio, a Paris jeweller, which 
 occurred in 1870 at St. Aubin in Normandy, where,
 
 184 LIFE OF 
 
 indeed, the poet first heard of it in all its details. It is 
 a story which, if the method of poetry and the method 
 of prose could for a moment be accepted as equivalent, 
 might be said to be of the school of a light and 
 humorously grotesque Zola. It has the fundamental 
 weakness of " The Ring and the Book " — the weakness 
 of an inadequate ethical basis. It is, indeed, to that 
 great work what a second-rate novelette is to a master- 
 piece of fiction. 
 
 "Fifine at the Fair," on the other hand, is so powerful 
 and often so beautiful a poem that one would be rash 
 indeed were he, with the blithe critical assurance which 
 is so generally snuffed out like a useless candle by a later 
 generation, to prognosticate its inevitable seclusion from 
 the high place it at present occupies in the estimate of 
 the poet's most uncompromising admirers. But surely 
 equally rash is the assertion that it will be the "poem of 
 the future." However, our concern is not with problem- 
 atical estimates, but with the poem as it appears to us. 
 It is one of the most characteristic of Browning's pro- 
 ductions. It would be impossible for the most indolent 
 reader or critic to attribute it, even if anonymous, to 
 another parentage. Coleridge alludes somewhere to 
 certain verses of Wordsworth's, with the declaration that 
 if he had met them howling in the desert he would have 
 recognised their authorship. "Fifine" would not even 
 have to howl. 
 
 Browning was visiting Pornic one autumn, when he 
 saw the gipsy who was the original of " Fifine." In the 
 words of Mrs. Orr, " his fancy was evidently set roaming 
 by the gipsy's audacity, her strength — the contrast which 
 she presented to the more spiritual types of womanhood ;
 
 BROWNING. 185 
 
 and this contrast eventually found expression in a pathetic 
 theory of life, in which these opposite types and their cor- 
 responding modes of attraction became the necessary 
 complement of each other. As he laid down the theory, 
 Mr. Browning would be speaking in his own person. 
 But he would turn into some one else in the act of 
 working it out — for it insensibly carried with it a plea for 
 yielding to those opposite attractions, not only suc- 
 cessively, but at the same time; and a modified Don 
 Juan would grow up under his pen." 
 
 One drawback to an unconditional enjoyment of 
 Balzac is that every now and again the student of the 
 Com'edie Humaine resents the too obvious display of 
 the forces that propel the effect — a lesser phase of the 
 weariness which ensues upon much reading of the mere 
 "human documents" of the Goncourt school of novelists. 
 In the same way, we too often see Browning working up 
 the electrical qualities, so that, when the fulmination 
 comes, we understand "just how it was produced," and, 
 as illogically as children before a too elaborate conjurer, 
 conclude that there is not so much in this particular 
 poetic feat as in others which, like Herrick's maids, 
 continually do deceive. To me this is affirmable of 
 "Fifine at the Fair." The poet seems to know so very 
 well what he is doing. If he did not take the reader so 
 much into his confidence, if he would rely more upon 
 the liberal grace of his earlier verse and less upon the 
 trained subtlety of his athletic intellect, the charm would 
 be the greater. The poem would have a surer duration 
 as one of the author's greater achievements, if there were 
 more frequent and more prolonged insistence on the 
 note struck in the lines (§ lxxiii.) about the hill-stream,
 
 186 LIFE OF 
 
 infant of mist and dew, falling over the ledge of the 
 fissured cliff to find its fate in smoke below, as it dis- 
 appears into the deep, "embittered evermore, to make 
 the sea one drop more big thereby : " or in the cloudy 
 splendour of the description of nightfall (§ cvi.) : or in 
 the windy spring freshness of 
 
 " Hence, when the earth began afresh its life in May, 
 
 And fruit-trees bloomed, and waves would wanton, and the bay 
 Ruffle its wealth of weed, and stranger-birds arrive, 
 And beasts take each a mate." . . . 
 
 But its chief fault seems to me to be its lack of 
 that transmutive glow of rhythmic emotion without 
 which no poem can endure. This rhythmic energy is, 
 inherently, a distinct thing from intellectual emotion. 
 Metric music may be alien to the adequate expression of 
 the latter, whereas rhythmic emotion can have no other 
 appropriate issue. Of course, in a sense, all creative art 
 is rhythmic in kind : but here I am speaking only of 
 that creative energy which evolves the germinal idea 
 through the medium of language. The energy of the 
 intellect under creative stimulus may produce lordly 
 issues in prose : but poetry of a high intellectual order 
 can be the outcome only of an intellect fused to white 
 heat, of intellectual emotion on fire — as, in the fine 
 saying of George Meredith, passion is noble strength 
 on fire. Innumerable examples could be taken from 
 any part of the poem, but as it would not be just to 
 select the most obviously defective passages, here are 
 two which are certainly fairly representative of the 
 general level — 
 
 "And I became aware, scarcely the word escaped my lips, that 
 swift ensued in silence and by stealth, and yet with certitude, a
 
 BROWNING. 187 
 
 formidable change of the amphitheatre which held the Carnival; 
 although the human stir continued just the same amid that shift of 
 scene." (No. cv.) 
 
 " And where i' the world is all this wonder, you detail so 
 trippingly, espied? My mirror would reflect a tall, thin, pale, 
 deep-eyed personage, pretty once, it may be, doubtless still loving — 
 a certain grace yet lingers if you will — but all this wonder, where?" 
 (No. XL.) 
 
 Here, and in a hundred other such passages, we have 
 the rhythm, if not of the best prose, at least not that of 
 poetry. Will "Fifine" and poems of its kind stand 
 re-reading, re-perusal over and over? That is one of 
 the most definite tests. In the pressure of life can we 
 afford much time to anything but the very best — nay, to 
 the vast mass even of that which closely impinges there- 
 upon? 
 
 For myself, in the instance of " Fifine," I admit that 
 if re-perusal be controlled by pleasure I am content 
 (always excepting a few scattered noble passages) with 
 the Prologue and Epilogue. A little volume of those 
 Summaries of Browning's — how stimulating a companion 
 it would be in those hours when the mind would fain 
 breathe a more liberal air ! 
 
 As for "Jocoseria," 1 it seems to me the poorest of 
 Browning's works, and I cannot help thinking that 
 
 1 In a letter to a friend, along with an early copy of this 
 book, Browning stated that "the title is taken from the work of 
 Melander (Schzuartzmann), reviewed, by a curious coincidence, 
 in the Blackwood of this month. I referred to it in a note to 
 ' Paracelsus.' The two Hebrew quotations (put in to give a grave 
 look to what is mere fun and invention) being translated amount 
 to (i) 'A Collection of Many Lies': and (2), an old saying, ' From 
 Moses to Moses arose none like Moses ' "
 
 188 LIFE OF 
 
 ultimately the only gold grain discoverable therein will 
 be " Ixion," the beautiful penultimate poem beginning — 
 
 " Never the time and the place 
 
 And the loved one altogether ; " 
 
 and the thrush-like overture, closing — 
 
 "What of the leafage, what of the flower? 
 Roses embowering with nought they embower ! 
 Come then ! complete incompletion, O comer, 
 Pant through the blueness, perfect the summer ! 
 Breathe but one breath 
 Rose-beauty above, 
 And all that was death 
 Grows life, grows love, 
 Grows love ! " 
 
 In 1881 the "Browning Society" was established. It 
 is easy to ridicule any institution of the kind — much 
 easier than to be considerate of other people's earnest 
 convictions and aims, or to be helpful to their object. 
 There is always a ridiculous side to excessive enthusiasm, 
 particularly obvious to persons incapable of enthusiasm 
 of any kind. With some mistakes, and not a few 
 more or less grotesque absurdities, the members of the 
 various English and American Browning Societies are 
 yet to be congratulated on the good work they have, col- 
 lectively, accomplished. Their publications are most 
 interesting and suggestive : ultimately they will be 
 invaluable. The members have also done a good work 
 in causing some of Browning's plays to be produced 
 again on the stage, and in Miss Alma Murray and others 
 have found sympathetic and able exponents of some of 
 the poet's most attractive dramatis fiersontz. There can
 
 BROWNING. 189 
 
 be no question as to the powerful impetus given by 
 the Society to Browning's steadily-increasing popularity. 
 Nothing shows his judicious good sense more than the 
 letter he wrote, privately, to Mr. Edmund Yates, at the 
 time of the Society's foundation. 
 
 " The Browning Society, I need not say, as well as Browning 
 himself, are fair game for criticism. I had no more to do with the 
 founding it than the babe unborn ; and, as Wilkes was no Wilkeite, 
 I am quite other than a Browningite. But I cannot wish harm to 
 a society of, with a few exceptions, names unknown to me, who are 
 busied about my books so disinterestedly. The exaggerations 
 probably come of the fifty-years'-long charge of unintelligibility 
 against my books ; such reactions are possible, though I never 
 looked for the beginning of one so soon. That there is a grotesque 
 side to the thing is certain; but I have been surprised and touched 
 by what cannot but have been well intentioned, I think. Anyhow, 
 as I never felt inconvenienced by hard words, you will not expect 
 me to wax bumptious because of undue compliment: so enough 
 of ' Browning,' — except that he is yours very truly, • while this 
 machine is to him.' " 
 
 The latter years of the poet were full of varied interest 
 for himself, but present little of particular significance for 
 specification in a monograph so concise as this must 
 perforce be. Every year he went abroad, to France or 
 to Italy, and once or twice on a yachting trip in the 
 Mediterranean. 1 At home — for many years, at 19 
 
 1 It was on his first experience of this kind, more than a quarter of 
 a century earlier, that he wrote the nobly patriotic lines of " Home 
 Thoughts from the Sea," and that flawless strain of bird-music, 
 "Home Thoughts from Abroad:" then, also, that he composed 
 "How they brought the Good News." Concerning the last, he 
 wrote, in 1881 {vide 7he Academy, April 2nd), "There is no sort 
 of historical foundation about [this poem]. I wrote it under the
 
 190 LIFE OF 
 
 Warwick Crescent, in what some one has called 
 the dreary Mesopotamia of Paddington, and for the 
 last three or four years of his life at 29 De Vere 
 Gardens, Kensington Gore — his avocations were so 
 manifold that it is difficult to understand where he 
 had leisure for his vocation. Everybody wished him to 
 come to dine ; and he did his utmost to gratify Every- 
 body. He saw everything ; read all the notable books ; 
 kept himself acquainted with the leading contents of the 
 journals and magazines; conducted a large correspond- 
 ence ; read new French, German, and Italian books of 
 mark ; read and translated Euripides and ^Eschylus ; 
 knew all the gossip of the literary clubs, salons, and 
 the studios ; was a frequenter of afternoon-tea parties ; 
 and then, over and above it, he was Browning : the 
 most profoundly subtle mind that has exercised itself 
 in poetry since Shakspere. His personal grace and 
 charm of manner never failed. Whether he was 
 dedicating " Balaustion's Adventure " in terms of 
 gracious courtesy, or handing a flower from some jar of 
 roses, or lilies, or his favourite daffodils, with a bright 
 smile or merry glance, to the lady of his regard, or when 
 sending a copy of a new book of poetry with an accom- 
 panying letter expressed with rare felicity, or when 
 generously prophesying for a young poet the only true 
 success if he will but listen and act upon "the inner 
 voice," — he was in all these, and in all things, the ideal 
 gentleman. There is so charming and characteristic a 
 
 bulwark of a vessel off the African coast, after I had been at it long 
 enough to appreciate even the fancy of a gallop on the back of a 
 certain good horse, 'York,' then in my stable at home. It was 
 written in pencil on the fly-leaf of Bartoli's Simloli, I remember."
 
 BROWNING. 191 
 
 touch in the following note to a girl-friend, that I must 
 
 find room for it : — 
 
 29 De Vere Gardens, W., 
 6th- July 1889. 
 
 My beloved Alma, — I had the honour yesterday of dining 
 with the Shah, whereupon the following dialogue: — 
 
 "Vous etes poete?" 
 
 " On s'est permis de me le dire quelquefois." 
 
 " Et vous avez fait des livres ? " 
 
 "Trop de livres." 
 
 " Voulez-vous m'en donner un, afin que je puisse me ressouvenir 
 de vous? " 
 
 "Avec plaisir." 
 
 I have been accordingly this morning to town, where the thing is 
 procurable, and as I chose a volume of which I judged the binding 
 might take the imperial eye, I said to myself, " Here do I present 
 my poetry to a personage for whom I do not care three straws; why 
 should I not venture to do as much for a young lady I love dearly, 
 who, for the author's sake, will not impossibly care rather for the 
 inside than the outside of the volume ? " So I was bold enough to 
 take one and offer it for your kind acceptance, begging you to 
 remember in days to come that the author, whether a good poet 
 or no, was always, my Alma, your affectionate friend, 
 
 Rof.ert Browning. 
 
 His look was a continual and serene gleam. Lamar- 
 tine, who remarks this of Bossuet in his youth, adds 
 a phrase which, as observant acquaintances of the poet 
 will agree, might be written of Browning — " His lips 
 quivered often without utterance, as if with the wind 
 of an internal speech." 
 
 Except for the touching and beautiful letter which 
 he wrote from Asolo about two months before his 
 death, to Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, about a young writer 
 to whom the latter wished to draw the poet's kindly 
 attention — a letter which has a peculiar pathos in the
 
 192 LIFE OF 
 
 words, " I shall soon depart for Venice, on my way 
 homeward " — except for this letter there is none so well 
 worth repetition here as his last word to the Poet- 
 Laureate. The friendship between these two great poets 
 has in itself the fragrance of genius. The letter was 
 written just before Browning left London. 
 
 29 De Vere Gardens, W., 
 August $th, 1889. 
 
 My dear Tennyson, — To-morrow is your birthday — indeed, a 
 memorable one. Let me say I associate myself with the universal 
 pride of our country in your glory, and in its hope that for many 
 and many a year we may have your very self among us — secure 
 that your poetry will be a wonder and delight to all those appointed 
 to come after. And for my own part, let me further say, I have 
 loved you dearly. May God bless you and yours. 
 
 At no moment from first to last of my acquaintance with your 
 works, or friendship with yourself, have I had any other feeling, 
 expressed or kept silent, than this which an opportunity allows 
 me to utter — that I am and ever shall be, my dear Tennyson, 
 admiringly and affectionately yours, 
 
 Robert Browning. 
 
 Shortly after this he was at Asolo once more, the 
 
 little hill-town in the Veneto, which he had visited in his 
 
 youth, and where he heard again the echo of Pippa's 
 
 song — 
 
 " God's in His heaven, 
 
 All's right with the world ! " 
 
 Mr. W. W. Story writes to me that he spent three days 
 with the poet at this time, and that the latter seemed, 
 except for a slight asthma, to be as vigorous in mind and 
 body as ever. Thence, later in the autumn, he went to 
 Venice, to join his son and daughter-in-law at the home 
 where he was "to have a corner for his old age," the 
 beautiful Palazzo Rezzonico, on the Grand Canal. He
 
 
 BROWNING. ]93 
 
 was never happier, more sanguine, more joyous, than 
 here. He worked for three or four hours each morning, 
 walked daily for about two hours, crossed occasionally to 
 the Lido with his sister, and in the evenings visited 
 friends or went to the opera. But for some time past, 
 his heart — always phenomenally slow in its action, and 
 of late ominously intermittent — had been noticeably 
 weaker. As he suffered no pain and little inconvenience, 
 he paid no particular attention to the matter. Browning 
 had as little fear of death as doubt in God. In a 
 controlling Providence he did indeed profoundly believe. 
 He felt, with Joubert, that " it is not difficult to believe 
 in God, if one does not worry oneself to define Him." 1 
 
 "How should externals satisfy my soul?" was his cry 
 in "Sordello," and it was the fundamental strain of all 
 his poetry, as the fundamental motive is expressible in 
 
 " — a loving worm within its sod 
 Were diviner than a loveless god 
 Amid his worlds " — 
 
 love being with him the golden key wherewith to 
 unlock the world of the universe, of the soul, of all 
 
 1 " Browning's 'orthodoxy' brought him into many a combat with 
 his rationalistic friends, some of whom could hardly believe that he 
 took his doctrine seriously. Such was the fact, however ; indeed, 
 I have heard that he once stopped near an open-air assembly which 
 an atheist was haranguing, and, in the freedom of his incognito, 
 gave strenuous battle to the opinions uttered. To one who had 
 spoken of an expected 'Judgment Day ' as a superstition, I heard 
 hirn say : ' I don't see that. Why should there not be a settling 
 day in the universe, as when a master settles with his workmen at the 
 end of the week? ' There was something in his tone and manner 
 which suggested his dramatic conception of religious ideas and 
 ideals." — Moncure D. Conway. 
 
 13
 
 194 LIFE OF 
 
 nature. He is as convinced of the two absolute facts 
 of God and Soul as Cardinal Newman in writing of 
 " Two and two only, supreme and luminously self- 
 evident beings, myself and my Creator." Most fervently 
 he believes that 
 
 " Haply for us the ideal dawn shall break . . . 
 And set our pulse in tune with moods divine " — 
 
 though, co-equally, in the necessity of "making man sole 
 sponsor of himself." Ever and again, of course, he was 
 betrayed by the bewildering and defiant puzzle of life : 
 seeing in the face of the child the seed of sorrow, "in 
 the green tree an ambushed flame, in Phosphor a 
 vaunt-guard of Night." Yet never of him could be 
 written that thrilling saying which Sainte-Beuve uttered 
 of Pascal, " That lost traveller who yearns for home, 
 who, strayed without a guide in a dark forest, takes many 
 times the wrong road, goes, returns upon his steps, is 
 discouraged, sits down at a crossing of the roads, utters 
 cries to which no one responds, resumes his march with 
 frenzy and pain, throws himself upon the ground and 
 wants to die, and reaches home at last only after all 
 sorts of anxieties and after sweating blood." No dark- 
 ness, no tempest, no gloom, long confused his vision of 
 ' the ideal dawn.' As the carrier-dove is often baffled, 
 yet ere long surely finds her way through smoke and 
 fog and din to her far country home, so he too, how- 
 ever distraught, soon or late soared to untroubled ether. 
 He had that profound inquietude, which the great French 
 critic says ' attests a moral nature of a high rank, and a 
 mental nature stamped with the seal of the archangel.' 
 But, unlike Pascal — who in Sainte-Beuve's words exposes
 
 BROWNING. 195 
 
 in the human mind itself two abysses, "on one side an 
 elevation toward God, toward the morally beautiful, a 
 return movement toward an illustrious origin, and on the 
 other side an abasement in the direction of evil" — 
 Browning sees, believes in, holds to nothing short of the 
 return movement, for one and all, toward an illustrious 
 origin. 
 
 The crowning happiness of a happy life was his death 
 in the city he loved so well, in the arms of his dear 
 ones, in the light of a world-wide fame. The silence 
 to which the most eloquent of us must all one day 
 lapse came upon him like the sudden seductive twilight 
 of the Tropics, and just when he had bequeathed to us 
 one of his finest utterances. 
 
 It seems but a day or two ago that the present writer 
 heard from the lips of the dead poet a mockery of 
 death's vanity — a brave assertion of the glory of life. 
 " Death, death ! It is this harping on death I despise 
 so much,' ; he remarked with emphasis of gesture as well 
 as of speech — the inclined head and body, the right 
 hand lightly placed upon the listener's knee, the 
 abrupt change in the inflection of the voice, all so 
 characteristic of him — "this idle and often cowardly as 
 well as ignorant harping ! Why should we not change 
 like everything else ? In fiction, in poetry, in so much 
 of both, French as well as English, and, I am told, in 
 American art and literature, the shadow of death — call 
 it what you will, despair, negation, indifference — is upon 
 us. But what fools who talk thus ! Why, amico mio, 
 you know as well as I that death is life, just as our daily, 
 our momentarily dying body is none the less alive and 
 ever recruiting new forces of existence. Without death,
 
 196 
 
 LIFE OF 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 which is our crapelike churchyardy word for change, for 
 growth, there could be no prolongation of that which we 
 call life. Pshaw ! it is foolish to argue upon such a 
 thing even. For myself, I deny death as an end of 
 everything. Never say of me that I am dead ! " 
 
 On the evening of Thursday, the 12th of December 
 (1889), he was in bed, with exceeding weakness. In the 
 centre of the lofty ceiling of the room in which he lay, and 
 where it had been his wont to work, there is a painting 
 by his son. It depicts an eagle struggling with a serpent, 
 and is illustrative of a superb passage in Shelley's 
 " Revolt of Islam." What memories, what deep 
 thoughts, it must have suggested ; how significant, to 
 us, the circumstance ! But weak as the poet was, he yet 
 did not see the shadow which had begun to chill the 
 hearts of the watchers. Shortly before the great bell of 
 San Marco struck ten, he turned and asked if any news 
 had come concerning "Asolando," published that day. 
 His son read him a telegram from the publishers, telling 
 how great the demand was and how favourable were the 
 advance-articles in the leading papers. The dying poet 
 smiled and muttered, " How gratifying !" When the last 
 toll of St. Mark's had left a deeper stillness than before, 
 those by the bedside saw a yet profounder silence on the 
 face of him whom they loved. 
 
 It is needless to dwell upon the grief everywhere felt 
 and expressed for the irreparable loss. The magnificent 
 closing lines of Shelley's " Alastor " must have occurred 
 to many a mourner ; for gone, indeed, was " a surpassing 
 Spirit." The superb pomp of the Venetian funeral, the
 
 BROWNING. 197 
 
 solemn grandeur of the interment in Westminster Abbey, 
 do not seem worth recording : so insignificant are all 
 these accidents of death made by the supreme fact 
 itself. Yet it is fitting to know that Venice has never 
 in modern times afforded a more impressive sight, than 
 those craped processional gondolas following the high 
 flower-strewn funeral-barge through the thronged water- 
 ways and out across the lagoon to the desolate Isle of 
 the Dead : that London has rarely seen aught more 
 solemn than the fog-dusked Cathedral spaces, echoing at 
 first with the slow tramp of the pall-bearers, and then with 
 the sweet aerial music swaying upward the loved familiar 
 words of the 'Lyric Voice' hushed so long before. 
 Yet the poet was as much honoured by those humble 
 friends, Lambeth artizans and a few poor working- 
 women, who threw sprays of laurel before the hearse — 
 by that desolate, starving, woe-weary gentleman, shiver- 
 ing in his threadbare clothes, who seemed transfixed 
 with a heart-wrung though silent emotion, ere he hur- 
 riedly drew from his sleeve a large white chrysanthemum, 
 and throwing it beneath the coffin as it was lifted 
 inward, disappeared in the crowd, which closed again 
 like the sea upon this lost wandering wave. 
 
 Who would not honour this mighty dead ? All who 
 could be present were there, somewhere in the ancient 
 Abbey. One of the greatest, loved and admired by the 
 dead poet, had already put the mourning of many into 
 the lofty dignity of his verse : — 
 
 " Now dumb is he who waked the world to speak, 
 And voiceless hangs the world beside his bier, 
 Our words are sobs, our cry of praise a tear : 
 We are the smitten mortal, we the weak.
 
 198 LIFE OF 
 
 We see a spirit on Earth's loftiest peak 
 
 Shine, and wing hence the way he makes more clear : 
 
 See a great Tree of Life that never sere 
 
 Dropped leaf for aught that age or storms might wreak : 
 
 Such ending is not Death : such living shows 
 
 What wide illumination brightness sheds 
 
 From one big heart — to conquer man's old foes : 
 
 The coward, and the tyrant, and the force 
 
 Of all those weedy monsters raising heads 
 
 When Song is murk from springs of turbid source." 1 
 
 One word more of "light and fleeting shadow." In 
 the greatness of his nature he must be ranked with 
 Milton, Defoe, and Scott. His very shortcomings, such 
 as they were, were never baneful growths, but mere 
 weeds, with a certain pleasant though pungent savour 
 moreover, growing upon a rich, an exuberant soil. Pluck 
 one of the least lovely — rather call it the unworthy arrow 
 shot at the body of a dead comrade, so innocent of ill 
 intent : yet it too has a beauty of its own, for the shaft 
 was aflame from the fulness of a heart whose love had 
 withstood the chill passage of the years. 
 
 On the night of Browning's death a new star suddenly 
 appeared in Orion. The coincidence is suggestive if we 
 like to indulge in the fancy that in that constellation — 
 
 " No more subjected to the change or chance 
 Of the unsteady planets " 
 
 gleam those other " abodes where the Immortals are." 
 Certainly, a wandering fire has passed away from us. 
 
 1 George Meredith.
 
 BROWNING. 199 
 
 Whither has it gone ? To that new star in Orion : or 
 whirled to remote silences in the trail of lost meteors ? 
 Whence, and for how long, will its rays reach our storm 
 and gloom-beleaguered earth ? 
 
 Such questions cannot meanwhile be solved. Our 
 eyes are still confused with the light, with that ardent 
 flame, as we knew it here. But this we know, it was 
 indeed "a central fire descending upon many altars." 
 These, though touched with but a spark of the immortal 
 principle, bear enduring testimony. And what testimony! 
 How heartfelt : happily also how widespread, how elec- 
 trically stimulative ! 
 
 But the time must come when the poet's personality 
 will have the remoteness of tradition : when our perplexed 
 judgments will be as a tale of sound and fury, signifying 
 nothing. It is impossible for any student of literature, 
 for any interested reader, not to indulge in some forecast 
 as to what rank in the poetic hierarchy Robert Brown- 
 ing will ultimately occupy. The commonplace as to 
 the impossibility of prognosticating the ultimate slow 
 decadence, or slower rise, or, it may be, sustained 
 suspension, of a poet's fame, is often insincere, and but 
 an excuse of indolence. To dogmatise were the height 
 of presumption as well as of folly : but to forego 
 speculation, based upon complete present knowledge, 
 for an idle contentment with narrow horizons, were 
 perhaps foolisher still. But assuredly each must 
 perforce be content with his own prevision. None can 
 answer yet for the generality, whose decisive franchise 
 will elect a fit arbiter in due time. 
 
 So, for myself, let me summarise what I have already 
 written in several sections of this book, and particularly
 
 200 LIFE OF 
 
 in the closing pages of Chapter VI. There, it will 
 be remembered — after having found that Browning's 
 highest achievement is in his second period — emphasis 
 was laid on the primary importance of his life-work 
 in its having compelled us to the assumption of a fresh 
 critical standpoint involving the construction of a new 
 definition. In the light of this new definition I think 
 Browning will ultimately be judged. As the sculptor 
 in " Pippa Passes " was the predestinated novel thinker 
 in marble, so Browning himself appears as the predes- 
 tinated novel thinker in verse ; the novel thinker, 
 however, in degree, not in kind. But I do not for a 
 moment believe that his greatness is in his status as a 
 thinker : even less, that the poet and the thinker are 
 indissociable. Many years ago Sainte-Beuve destroyed 
 this shallow artifice of pseudo-criticism : " Venir nous 
 dire que tout poete de talent est, par essence, un grand 
 pensezir, et que tout vrai penseur est necessairement 
 artiste et poete, c'est une pretention insoutenable et que 
 dement a chaque instant la realite." 
 
 When Browning's enormous influence upon the spiritual 
 and mental life of our day — an influence ever shaping 
 itself to wise and beautiful issues — shall have lost much 
 of its immediate import, there will still surely be dis- 
 cerned in his work a formative energy whose resultant 
 is pure poetic gain. It is as the poet he will live : 
 not merely as the " novel thinker in verse." Logically, 
 his attitude as ' thinker ' is unimpressive. It is the 
 attitude, as I think some one has pointed out, of 
 acquiescence with codified morality. In one of his 
 Cmiseries, the keen French critic quoted above has a 
 remark upon the great Bossuet, which may with singular
 
 BROWNING. 201 
 
 aptness be repeated of Browning : — " His is the Hebrew 
 genius extended, fecundated by Christianity, and open 
 to all the acquisitions of the understanding, but retaining 
 some degree of sovereign interdiction, and closing its 
 vast horizon precisely where its light ceases." Browning 
 cannot, or will not, face the problem of the future 
 except from the basis of assured continuity of individual 
 existence. He is so much in love with life, for life's 
 sake, that he cannot even credit the possibility of incon- 
 tinuity ; his assurance of eternity in another world is at 
 least in part due to his despair at not being eternal in 
 this. He is so sure, that the intellectually scrupulous 
 detect the odours of hypotheses amid the sweet savour 
 of indestructible assurance. Schopenhauer says, in one 
 of those recently-found Annotations of his which are so 
 characteristic and so acute, " that which is called ' mathe- 
 matical certainty' is the cane of a blind man without 
 a dog, or equilibrium in darkness." Browning would 
 sometimes have us accept the evidence of his ' cane ' as 
 all-sufficient. He does not entrench himself among con- 
 ventions : for he already finds himself within the fortified 
 lines of convention, and remains there. Thus is true 
 what Mr. Mortimer says in a recent admirable critique 
 — " His position in regard to the thought of the age 
 is paradoxical, if not inconsistent. He is in advance 
 of it in every respect but one, the most important of 
 all, the matter of fundamental principles ; in these he is 
 behind it. His processes of thought are often scientific 
 in their precision of analysis ; the sudden conclusion 
 which he imposes upon them is transcendental and 
 inept." Browning's conclusions, which harmonise so 
 well with our haphazard previsionings, are sometimes
 
 202 LIFE OF 
 
 so disastrously facile that they exercise an insurrectionary 
 influence. They occasionally suggest that wisdom of 
 Gotham which is ever ready to postulate the certainty 
 of a fulfilment because of the existence of a desire. 
 It is this that vitiates so much of his poetic reasoning. 
 Truth may ring regnant in the lines of Abt Vogler — 
 
 " And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence 
 For the fulness of the days ? " — 
 
 but, unfortunately, the conclusion is, in itself, illogical. 
 
 We are all familiar with, and in this book I have 
 dwelt more than once upon, Browning's habitual attitude 
 towards Death. It is not a novel one. The frontage is 
 not so much that of the daring pioneer, as the sedate 
 assurance of ' the oldest inhabitant.' It is of good hap, 
 of welcome significance : none the less there is an aspect 
 of our mortality of which the poet's evasion is uncom- 
 promising and absolute. I cannot do better than quote 
 Mr. Mortimer's noteworthy words hereupon, in con- 
 nection, moreover, with Browning's artistic relation to 
 Sex, that other great Protagonist in the relentless duel 
 of Humanity with Circumstance. " The final inductive 
 hazard he declines for himself; his readers may take it if 
 they will. It is part of the insistent and perverse 
 ingenuity which we display in masking with illusion the 
 more disturbing elements of life. Veil after veil is torn 
 down, but seldom before another has been slipped 
 behind it, until we acquiesce without a murmur in the 
 concealment that we ourselves have made. Two facts 
 thus carefully shrouded from full vision by elaborate 
 illusion conspicuously round in our lives — the life-giving
 
 BRO WN1NG. 203 
 
 and life-destroying elements, Sex and Death. We are 
 compelled to occasional physiologic and economic dis- 
 cussion of the one, but we shrink from recognising the 
 full extent to which it bases the whole social fabric, 
 carefully concealing its insurrections, and ignoring or 
 misreading their lessons. The other, in certain aspects, 
 we are compelled to face, but to do it we tipple on 
 illusions, from our cradle upwards, in dread of the 
 coming grave, purchasing a drug for our poltroonery at 
 the expense of our sanity. We uphold our wayward 
 steps with the promises and the commandments for 
 crutches, but on either side of us trudge the shadow 
 Death and the bacchanal Sex, and we mumble prayers 
 against the one, while we scourge ourselves for leering 
 at the other. On one only of these can Browning be \ 
 said to have spoken with novel force — the relations of 
 sex, which he has treated with a subtlety and freedom, 
 and often with a beauty, unapproached since Goethe. 
 On the problem of Death, except in masquerade of 
 robes and wings, his eupeptic temperament never allowed 
 him to dwell. He sentimentalised where Shakspere^ 
 thought." Browning's whole attitude to the Hereafter 
 is different from that of Tennyson only in that the latter 
 'faintly,' while he strenuously, "trusts the larger hope." 
 To him all credit, that, standing upon the frontiers of 
 the Past, he can implicitly trust the Future. 
 
 " High-hearted surely he; 
 
 But bolder they who first off-cast 
 
 Their moorings from the habitable Past." 
 
 The teacher may be forgotten, the prophet may be 
 hearkened to no more, but a great poet's utterance is
 
 204 LIFE OF 
 
 never temporal, having that in it which conserves it 
 against the antagonism of time, and the ebb and flow of 
 literary ideals. What range, what extent of genius ! 
 As Mr, Frederick Wedmore has well said, ' Browning 
 is not a book — he is a literature.' 
 
 But that he will " stand out gigantic " in mass of 
 imperishable work, in that far-off day, I for one cannot 
 credit. His poetic shortcomings seem too essential to 
 permit of this. That fatal excess of cold over emotive 
 thought, of thought that, however profound, incisive, or 
 scrupulously clear, is not yet impassioned, is a funda- 
 mental defect of his. It is the very impetuosity of this 
 mental energy to which is due the miscalled obscurity of 
 much of Browning's work — miscalled, because, however 
 remote in his allusions, however pedantic even, he is 
 never obscure in his thought. His is that "palace 
 infinite which darkens with excess of light." But mere 
 excess in itself is nothing more than symptomatic. 
 Browning has suffered more from intellectual exploit- 
 ation than any writer. It is a ruinous process — for the 
 poet. " He so well repays intelligent study." That is 
 it, unfortunately. There are many, like the old Scotch 
 lady who attempted to read Carlyle's French Revo- 
 lution, who think they have become "daft" when they 
 encounter a passage such as, for example, 
 
 " Rivals, who . . . 
 Tuned, from Bocafoli's stark-naked psalms, 
 To Plara's sonnets spoilt by toying with, 
 
 ' As knops that stud some almug to the pith 
 
 ' Pricked for gum, wry thence, and crinkled worse 
 
 ' Than pursed eyelids of a river-horse 
 
 ' Sunning himself o' the slime when whirrs the breeze — 
 Gad-fly, that is."
 
 BROWNING. 205 
 
 The old lady persevered with Carlyle, and, after a few 
 days, found "she was nae sae daft, but that she had 
 tackled a varra dee-fee-cult author." What would even 
 that indomitable student have said to the above quota- 
 tion, and to the poem whence it comes ? To many it is 
 not the poetry, but the difficulties, that are the attraction. 
 They rejoice, after long and frequent dippings, to find 
 their plummet, almost lost in remote depths, touch bot- 
 tom. Enough ' meaning ' has been educed from ' Childe 
 Roland,' to cite but one instance, to start a School of 
 Philosophy with : though it so happens that the poem is 
 an imaginative fantasy, written in one day. Worse still, 
 it was not inspired by the mystery of existence, but by ' a 
 red horse with a glaring eye standing behind a dun one 
 on a piece of tapestry that used to hang in the poet's 
 drawing-room.' 1 Of all his faults, however, the worst is 
 that jugglery, that inferior legerdemain, with the elements 
 of the beautiful in verse : most obvious in " Sordello," 
 in portions of "The Ring and the Book," and in so many 
 of the later poems. These inexcusable violations are like 
 the larvae within certain vegetable growths : soon or late 
 they will destroy their environment before they perish 
 themselves. Though possessive above all others of that 
 science of the percipient in the allied arts of painting 
 and music, wherein he found the unconventional Shelley 
 so missuaded by convention, he seemed ever more alert 
 to the substance than to the manner of poetry. In a 
 
 1 One account says ' Childe Roland' was written in three days; 
 another, that it was composed in one. Browning's rapidity in com- 
 position was extraordinary. "The Return of the Druses" was 
 written in five days, an act a day; so, also, was the " Blot on the 
 'Scutcheon."
 
 206 LIFE OF 
 
 letter of Mrs. Browning's she alludes to a friend's " melo- 
 dious feeling : ' for poetry. Possibly the phrase was acci- 
 dental, but it is significant. To inhale the vital air of 
 poetry we must love it, not merely find it "interesting," 
 "suggestive," "soothing," "stimulative": in a word, we 
 must have a " melodious feeling " for poetry before we can 
 deeply enjoy it. Browning, who has so often educed from 
 his lyre melodies and harmonies of transcendent, though 
 novel, beauty, was too frequently, during composition, 
 without this melodious feeling of which his wife speaks. 
 The distinction between literary types such as Browning 
 or Balzac on the one hand, and Keats or Gustave Flaubert 
 on the other, is that with the former there exists a 
 reverence for the vocation and a relative indifference to the 
 means, in themselves — and, with the latter, a scrupulous 
 respect for the mere means as well as for that to which 
 they conduce. The poet who does not love words 
 for themselves, as an artist loves any chance colour 
 upon his palette, or as the musician any vagrant 
 tone evoked by a sudden touch in idleness or reverie, 
 has not entered into the full inheritance of the sons of 
 Apollo. The writer cannot aim at beauty, that which 
 makes literature and art, without this heed — without, 
 rather, this creative anxiety : for it is certainly not 
 enough, as some one has said, that language should be 
 used merely for the transportation of intelligence, as a 
 wheelbarrow carries brick. Of course, Browning is not 
 persistently neglectful of this fundamental necessity for 
 the literary artist. He is often as masterly in this as in 
 other respects. But he is not always, not often enough, 
 alive to the paramount need. He writes with "the verse 
 being as the mood it paints : " but, unfortunately, the
 
 BROWNING. 207 
 
 mood is often poetically unformative. He had no 
 passion for the quest for seductive forms. Too much of 
 his poetry has been born prematurely. Too much of it, 
 indeed, has not died and been born again — for all 
 immortal verse is a poetic "resurrection. Perfect poetry 
 is the deathless part of mortal beauty. The great artists 
 never perpetuate gross actualities, though they are the 
 supreme realists. It is Schiller, I think, who says in 
 effect, that to live again in the serene beauty of art, it is 
 needful that things should first die in reality. Thus 
 Browning's dramatic method, even, is sometimes dis- 
 astrous in its untruth, as in Caliban's analytical reasoning 
 — an initial absurdity, as Mr. Berdoe has pointed out, 
 adding epigrammatically, 'Caliban is a savage, with 
 the introspective powers of a Hamlet, and the theology 
 of an evangelical Churchman.' Not only Caliban, but 
 several other of Browning's personages (Aprile, Egla- 
 mour, etc.) are what Goethe calls schtvankende Gestalten, 
 mere "wavering images." 
 
 Montaigne, in one of his essays, says that to stop 
 gracefully is sure proof of high race in a horse : cer- 
 tainly to stop in time is imperative upon the poet. Of 
 Browning may be said what Poe wrote of another, that 
 his genius was too impetuous for the minuter techni- 
 calities of that elaborate art so needful in the building 
 up of monuments for immortality. But has not a greater 
 than Poe declared that " what distinguishes the artist 
 from the amateur is architeclonike in the highest sense ; 
 that power of execution which creates, forms, and con- 
 stitutes : not the profoundness of single thoughts, not 
 the richness of imagery, not the abundance of illustra- 
 tion." Assuredly, no " new definition " can be an
 
 208 LIFE OF 
 
 effective one which conflicts with Goethe's incontro- 
 vertible dictum. 
 
 But this much having been admitted, I am only too 
 willing to protest against the uncritical outcry against 
 Browning's musical incapacity. 
 
 A deficiency is not incapacity, otherwise Coleridge, at 
 his highest the most perfect of our poets, would be lowly 
 estimated. 
 
 " Bid shine what would, dismiss into the shade 
 What should not be — and there triumphs the paramount 
 Surprise o' the master." . . . 
 
 Browning's music is oftener harmonic than melodic: 
 and musicians know how the general ear, charmed with 
 immediately appellant melodies, resents, wearies of, or is 
 deaf to the harmonies of a more remote, a more com- 
 plex, and above all a more novel creative method. He 
 is, among poets, what Wagner is among musicians; as 
 Shakspere may be likened to Beethoven, or Shelley to 
 Chopin. The common assertion as to his incapacity for 
 metric music is on the level of those affirmations as to 
 his not being widely accepted of the people, when the 
 people have the chance ; or as to the indifference of the 
 public to poetry generally — and this in an age when 
 poetry has never been so widely understood, loved, and 
 valued, and wherein it is yearly growing more acceptable 
 and more potent ! 
 
 A great writer is to be adjudged by his triumphs, not 
 by his failures : as, to take up Montaigne's simile again, 
 a famous race-horse is remembered for its successes and 
 not for the races which it lost. The tendency with certain 
 critics is to reverse the process. Instead of saying with
 
 BRO WNING. 209 
 
 the archbishop in Home's "Gregory VII.," "He owes it 
 all to his Memnonian voice ! He has no genius : " or of 
 declaring, as Prospero says of Caliban in "The Tempest," 
 " He is as disproportioned in his manners as in his 
 shape : " how much better to affirm of him what Ben 
 Jonson wrote of Shakspere, "Hee redeemed his vices 
 with his vertues : there was ever more in him to bee 
 praysed than to bee pardoned." In the balance of 
 triumphs and failures, however, is to be sought the 
 relative measure of genius — whose equipoise should be 
 the first matter of ascertainment in comparative criticism. 
 For those who would discriminate between what Mr. 
 Traill succinctly terms his generic greatness as thinker 
 and man of letters, and his specific power as poet, it is 
 necessary to disabuse the mind of Browning's "mes- 
 sage." The question is not one of weighty message, but 
 of artistic presentation. To praise a poem because of its 
 optimism is like commending a peach because it loves 
 the sunshine, rather than because of its distinguishing 
 bloom and savour. The primary concern of the artist 
 must be with his vehicle of expression. In the instance 
 of a poet, this vehicle is language emotioned to the 
 white-heat of rhythmic music by impassioned thought 
 or sensation. Schopenhauer declares it is all a question 
 of style now with poetry ; that everything has been sung, 
 that everything has been duly cursed, that there is 
 nothing left for poetry but to be the glowing forge of 
 words. He forgets that in quintessential art there is 
 nothing of the past, nothing old : even the future has 
 part therein only in that the present is always encroach- 
 ing upon, becoming, the future. The famous pessimistic 
 philosopher has, in common with other critics, made, in 
 
 14
 
 210 LIFE OF 
 
 effect, the same remark — that Style exhales the odour of 
 the soul : yet he himself has indicated that the strength 
 of Shakspere lay in the fact that ' he had no taste,' that 
 ' he was not a man of letters.' Whenever genius has 
 displayed epic force it has established a new order. In 
 the general disintegration and reconstruction of literary 
 ideals thus involved, it is easier to be confused by the 
 novel flashing of strange lights than to discern the 
 central vivifying altar-flame. It may prove that what 
 seem to us the regrettable accidents of Browning's 
 genius are no malfortunate flaws, but as germane thereto 
 as his Herculean ruggednesses are to Shakspere, as the 
 laboured inversions of his blank verse are to Milton, as 
 his austere concision is to Dante. Meanwhile, to the 
 more exigent among us at any rate, the flaws seem flaws, 
 and in nowise essential. 
 
 But when we find weighty message and noble utterance 
 in union, as we do in the magnificent remainder after 
 even the severest ablation of the poor and mediocre 
 portion of Browning's life-work, how beneficent seem the 
 generous gods ! Of this remainder most aptly may be 
 quoted these lines from " The Ring and the Book," 
 
 " Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore ; 
 Prime nature with an added artistry." 
 
 How gladly, in this dubious hour — when, as an eminent 
 writer has phrased it, a colossal Hand, which some call 
 the hand of Destiny and others that of Humanity, is 
 putting out the lights of Heaven one by one, like candles 
 after a feast — how gladly we listen to this poet with 
 his serene faith in God, and immortal life, and the 
 soul's unending development ! " Hope hard in the
 
 BROWNING. 211 
 
 subtle thing that's Spirit," he cries in the Prologue to 
 " Pacchiarotto '' : and this, in manifold phrasing, is his 
 kit-jnotif, his fundamental idea, in unbroken line from 
 the "Pauline" of his twenty-first to the " Asolando" of 
 his seventy-sixth year. This superb phalanx of faith — 
 what shall prevail against it ? 
 
 How winsome it is, moreover : this, and the humanity 
 of his song. Profoundly he realised that there is no more 
 significant study than the human heart. " The develop- 
 ment of a soul : little else is worth study," he wrote in 
 his preface to " Sordello " : so in his old age, in his last 
 " Reverie " — 
 
 " As the record from youth to age 
 Of my own, the single soul — 
 So the world's wide book : one page 
 
 Deciphered explains the whole 
 Of our common heritage." 
 
 He had faith also that " the record from youth to 
 age " of his own soul would outlast any present indiffer- 
 ence or neglect— that whatever tide might bear him 
 away from our regard for a time would ere long flow again. 
 The reaction must come : it is, indeed, already at hand. 
 But one almost fancies one can hear the gathering of the 
 remote waters once more. We may, with Strafford, 
 
 ' ' feel sure 
 That Time, who in the twilight comes to mend 
 All the fantastic day's caprice, consign 
 To the low ground once more the ignoble Term, 
 And raise the Genius on his orb again, — 
 That Time will do me right." . . . 
 
 Indeed, Browning has the grand manner, for all it is
 
 212 LIFE OF BROWNING. 
 
 more that of the Scandinavian Jarl than of the Italian 
 count or Spanish grandee. 
 
 And ever, below all the stress and failure, below all 
 the triumph of his toil, is the beauty of his dream. It 
 was "a surpassing Spirit" that went from out our midst. 
 
 " One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, 
 Never doubted clouds would break, 
 Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, 
 Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
 Sleep to wake." 
 
 " Speed, fight on, fare ever There as here ! " are the last 
 words of this brave soul. In truth, " the air seems bright 
 with his past presence yet." 
 
 " Sun-treader — life and light be thine for ever ; 
 Thou art gone from us — years go by — and spring 
 Gladdens, and the young earth is beautiful, 
 Yet thy songs come not — other bards arise, 
 But none like thee — they stand — thy majesties, 
 Like mighty works which tell some Spirit there 
 Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn, 
 Till, its long task completed, it hath risen 
 And left us, never to return."
 
 INDEX. 
 
 B. 
 
 ERRATA AND ADDENDA. 
 
 Page 101, 1. 7, "shattered" should be "shuttered. " 
 Page 101, 1. 24, " no other" should be " any other. " 
 Page 105, 1. 29, "it" should be "Sordello. " 
 Page 113, 1. 23, " reached " should be " reaches. " 
 Page 177, 1. 4, "alluded to" should be "quoted in part." 
 
 TO INDEX, add 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Meynell, Wilfrid 191 
 
 Murray, Alma 188 
 
 Pater, Walter 88 
 
 e," 1S2, 
 
 >5> 203, 
 
 '4 
 
 170 
 206-7 
 
 es," 76, 
 
 m," 167 
 
 t 
 
 , 179 
 
 m, A," 
 
 praise, 130 
 " Asolando," 22, 39, 128, 131, 
 
 182, 196, 207, 210 
 Asolo, 58, 192 
 
 "A Soul's Tragedy," 89, 91, 179 
 " Athenceum, The," 73 
 "A Toccata of Galuppi's," 
 
 130, 168 
 " Aurora Leigh," 118, 152, 166, 
 
 169, 170 
 
 191 
 
 Barrett : 
 drowning s early intluence on, 
 92; born March 4, 1809, 136; 
 her girlhood and early work, 
 136; death of brother, 136; 
 residence in London, 137 ; 
 "The Cry of the Children," 
 137 ; friendships with Home 
 and Kcnyon, 137; her appre- 
 ciation of Browning's poems, 
 138; correspondence wilh
 
 212 LIFE OF BROWNING. 
 
 more that of the Scandinavian Jarl than of the Italian 
 count or Spanish grandee. 
 
 And ever, below all the stress and failure, below all 
 the triumph of his toil, is the beauty of his dream. It 
 was "a surpassing Spirit" that went from out our midst. 
 
 " One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, 
 Never doubted clouds would break, 
 Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, 
 Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
 Sleep to wake." 
 
 " Speed 
 words o 
 with his
 
 INDEX. 
 
 "Abt Vogler," 130, 172, 202 
 
 "A Face," 130 
 
 " A Forgiveness," 130 
 
 " After," 130 
 
 " Agamemnon of ^Eschylus," 
 
 182 
 " A Grammarian's Funeral," 
 
 129, 168 
 "A Likeness," 130 
 
 Alma , Letter to, 191 
 
 "Amphibian," 130 
 Ancona, 150 
 'Andrea del Sarto," 130, 168 
 "Andromeda," 25 
 " Another way of Love," 130 
 " Any Wife to any Husband," 
 
 129, 168 
 "A Pearl," 130 
 
 " Apparent Failure," 130, 172 
 
 "Appearances," 130 
 
 Appearance, Browning's per- 
 sonal, 74, 161 
 
 Aprile, 107, 204, 207 
 
 "Aristophanes' Apology," 182 
 
 " Ask not one least word of 
 praise," 130 
 
 " Asolando," 22, 39, 128, 131, 
 182, 196, 207, 210 
 
 Asolo, 58, 192 
 
 "A Soul's Tragedy," 89, 91, 179 
 
 " Athenaum, The," 73 
 
 "A Toccata of Galuppi's," 
 
 130, 168 
 
 " Aurora Leigh," 118, 152, 166, 
 169, 170 
 
 B. 
 
 Bagni di Lucca, 157, 165 
 
 Bailey's " Festus," 114 
 
 " Balaustion's Adventure," 1S2, 
 190 
 
 Balzac, 36, 114, 138, 185,203, 
 206 
 
 Barrett, Arabella, 54, 174 
 
 Barrett, Edward, 136 
 
 Barrett, Mr., 144, 161, 170 
 
 " Beatrice Signorini," 131 
 
 Beautiful in Verse, the, 206-7 
 
 Beethoven, 209 
 
 " Before," 130 
 
 "Bells and Pomegranates," 76, 
 81, 138 
 
 " Ben Karshook's Wisdom," 167 
 
 Berdoe, E., 68, 204, 207 
 
 " Bifurcations," 130 
 
 " Bishop Blougram," 93, 179 
 
 Blake, William, 94 
 
 "Blot on the 'Scutcheon, A," 
 79, 88, 89, 90, 91, 206 
 
 Bossuet and Browning, 191 
 
 Browning, Clara, 21 
 
 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett: 
 Browning's early influence on, 
 92; born March 4, 1809, 136; 
 her girlhood and early work, 
 136; death of brother, 136; 
 residence in London, 137 ; 
 "The Cry of the Children," 
 137 ; friendships with Home 
 and Kenyon, 137; her appre- 
 ciation of Browning's poems, 
 138; correspondence with
 
 214 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 him, 138; engagement, 139; 
 acquaintance with Mrs. Jame- 
 son, 143; marriage, 145; 
 Mr. Barrett's resentment, 144; 
 journey to Paris, 145 ; thence 
 to Pisa, 146; Browning's love 
 for his wife, 146; "Sonnets 
 from the Portuguese," 147 ; in 
 spring to Florence, 150; to 
 Ancona, via Ravenna, in June, 
 150; winter at Casa Guidi, 
 152; "Aurora Leigh," 152; 
 description of poetess, 153, 
 154; birth of son in 1849, 157; 
 " Casa Guidi Windows," 159; 
 1850, spring in Rome; pro- 
 posal to confer poet-laureate- 
 ship on Mrs. Browning, 159, 
 161; 1851, visits England, 161; 
 winter in Paris, 162 ; she is en- 
 thusiastic about Napoleon III. 
 and interested in Spiritualism; 
 summer in London, 162 ; 
 autumn at Casa Guidi, 162 ; 
 winter 1853-4 in Rome, 1856 
 "Aurora Leigh," death of 
 Kenyon, legacies, 170; 1857, 
 death of Mr. Barrett, 170; 
 1858, delicacy of Mrs. Brown- 
 ing, 171; July 1858, Brown- 
 ings travel to Normandy; 
 ' ' Two Poems by Elizabeth 
 Barrett and Robert Brown- 
 ing," 1854, 173; i860. 
 " Poems before Congress," 
 and death of Arabella Barrett, 
 160; "North and South," 
 174; return to Casa Guidi, 
 and death on 28th June 186 1, 
 1 75, 206 
 Browning, Reuben, 18, 19, 20 
 Browning, Robert: born in 
 London in 1812, II, 13, 19; 
 his literary and artistic ante- 
 cedents and contemporaries, 
 12-14; his parentage and 
 ancestry, 15, 17-19; con- 
 cerning traces of Semitic 
 origin, 15-19; his sisters, 20; 
 his father, 18; his mother, 20, 
 23; his uncle, Reuben Brown- 
 ing, 20 ; the Camberwell 
 home, 23; his childhood, 22; 
 
 early poems, 25 ; translation 
 of the odes of Horace, 26; 
 goes to school at Peckham, 
 27 ; his holiday afternoons, 
 27; "Death of Harold," 29; 
 criticisms of Miss Flower and 
 Mr. Fox, 30; he reads 
 Shelley's and Keats's poems, 
 30, 31; he has a tutor, 33; 
 attends Gower Street Univer- 
 sity College, 34; he decides 
 to be a poet, 35 ; writes 
 "Pauline," 1832, 36; it is 
 published in 1833, 39; 
 "Pauline," 39-49 ; criticisms 
 thereon, 49 ; Rossetti and 
 " Pauline," studies at British 
 Museum, 52, 53 ; travels in 
 1833 to Russia, 57 ; to Italy, 
 58 ; return to Camberwell, 
 1834, 58, and begins " Para- 
 celsus, " sonnet signed " Z," 
 1834, 60; love for Venice, 
 62; "Paracelsus," 59, 62; 
 criticisms thereon, 71, 73; 
 he meets Macready, 73; 
 "Narses," 76; he meets 
 Talfourd, Wordsworth, Lan- 
 dor, 77; "Strafford," 79; his 
 dramas, 85; his love of the 
 country, 95; " Pippa Passes," 
 96,98; "Sordello," 105; origin 
 of "The Ring and the Book," 
 1865; "The Ring and the 
 Book," 113-119; "The Inn 
 Album," 127 ; " Men and 
 Women," 128; proposed 
 " Transcripts from Life," 129; 
 "Flower o' the Vine," 131; 
 correspondence between him 
 and Miss Barrett, 136; meeting 
 in 1846, 138 ; engagement, 
 140; marriage, 12th Sep- 
 tember 1846, 145; sojourn in 
 Pisa, 146 ; they go to Flor- 
 ence, 148 ; to Ancona, via 
 Ravenna, 150; "The Guar- 
 dian Angel," 150; Casa Guidi, 
 152 ; birth of son, March 9th, 
 1849, *57 > tne y g° t0 Vallom- 
 brosa and Bagni di Lucca for 
 the autumn, and winter at 
 Casa Guidi, 156; spring of
 
 INDEX. 
 
 215 
 
 1850 in Rome, 159; "Two 
 in the Campagna," 156; 1851, 
 they visit England ; descrip- 
 tion of Browning, 161 ; 
 winter 1851-2 in Paris with 
 Robert Browning, senior, 162; 
 Browning writes Prefatory 
 Essay to Moxon's edition of 
 Shelley's Letters, 163; mid- 
 summer, Baths of Lucca, 165 ; 
 in Florence, 166; "In a 
 Balcony," 166; winter in 
 Rome, 1853-4, 166; the work 
 written there, 167; "Ben 
 Karshook's Wisdom," 167; 
 "Men and Women" pub- 
 lished, 168; Kenyon's death, 
 and legacies to the Brownings, 
 170; poems written between 
 1855-64, 169; July 1858, 
 Brownings go to Normandy, 
 173; " Legend of Pornic," 
 "Gold Hair," 173; autumn 
 of 1859 in Sienna ; winter 
 1860-61 in Rome, 173; death 
 of Mrs. Browning, June 1861, 
 175; " Prospice," 176; 1866, 
 Browning loses his father; 
 Miss Sarianna resides with 
 Browning, 177; his ways of 
 life, 177; first collected edi- 
 tion of his works, 1868, 178; 
 first part of " The Ring and 
 the Book" published, 178; 
 "Herve Riel," 179; Tauch- 
 nitz edition, 1872, 179; 
 "Bishop Blougram," 179; 
 "Selections," 180; "La 
 Saisiaz," 1877, 180 ; "The 
 Two Poets of Croisic," 181 ; 
 later works, 182; "Prince 
 Hohenstiel- Schwangau," 
 " Red Cotton Nightcap 
 Country," 182, 183; " Filine 
 at the Fair," 183, 184, 185-7; 
 "Jocoseria," 187; 1881, 
 Browning Society established, 
 188; his latter years, 189; 
 revisits Asolo, 191 ; Palazzo 
 Rezzonico, 192; religious be- 
 lief, 193; death, December 
 1 2th, 1889, 195, 196; funeral, 
 197; to be estimated by a 
 
 new definition, 200; as poet, 
 rather than as thinker, 200; 
 his love of life, 201; his, like 
 Bossuet's, a Hebrew genius 
 fecundated by Christianity, 
 201 ; his artistic relations to 
 Death and Sex, 201-3; where, 
 in standpoint, he differs from 
 Tennyson, 203; as to quality 
 of his mass of work, 204 ; in- 
 tellectually exploited, 204; his 
 difficulties, and their attrac- 
 tion to many, 205; his atti- 
 tude to the future, influence, 
 and significance, 205-21 1 ; sum- 
 mary of his life-work, 200-212. 
 
 Browning, Robert Wiedemann 
 Barrett, 18, 37, 157, 163, 174 
 
 Browning, Robert (senior), 18, 
 20, 32, 33, 37, 38, 159, 173 
 
 Browning, Sarianna (Mrs.), 21, 
 25, 29, 32 
 
 Browning, Sarianna (Miss), 20, 
 177, 188 
 
 Browning Society, the, 160, 
 188 
 
 Browning, William Shergold, 18 
 
 Byron, 149 
 
 "By the Fireside," 130 
 
 " Caliban upon Setebos," 172, 
 207, 209 
 
 Camberwell, 20, 27, 33, 3S, 54, 
 58,61 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 80, 105, no, 
 115, 202, 204 
 
 Casa Guidi, 120, 152, 154, 163, 
 166, 174 
 
 " Cavalier-Tunes," 129 
 
 " Childe Roland," 203, 205 
 
 Chopin, 209 
 
 " Christmas Eve and Easter- 
 Day," 159, 179 
 
 "Cleon," 130 
 
 Coleridge, 208 
 
 " Colombe's Birthday," 89-91 
 
 " Confessional, The," 129 
 
 " Confessions," 130 
 
 Contemporaries, literary and 
 artistic, of Browning, 12-14
 
 216 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Conway, Moncure, 15, 193 
 
 Cristina, 129 
 
 " Cristina and Manaldeschi, " 
 
 130 
 Cunningham, Allan, 50, 51 
 
 D. 
 
 Dante, 93, 106, 107, 150 
 Death, Browning on, 195, 202, 
 
 211 
 "Death of Harold," 29 
 " Death in the Desert, A," 129, 
 
 172 
 Defoe, 198 
 
 " De Gustibus," 57, 59, 130 
 Dickens, Charles, 54, 90 
 " Dis Aliter Visum," 130, 172 
 Domett, A. (Waring), 151 
 Dramas, Browning's, 82-92 
 " Dramatic Idyls," 57, 182 
 "Dramatic Romances," 128, 
 
 179 
 " Dramatis Persons," 127, 171, 
 
 179 
 Dulwich Wood, 62, 95, 98, 
 
 104-5 
 
 E. 
 
 " Earth's Immortalities," 129 
 
 "Echetlos," 130 
 
 Epics, series of monodramatic, 
 
 Equator of Browning's genius, 
 
 the, 178 
 "Evelyn Hope," 129, 168 
 
 F. 
 
 Faucit, Miss Helen, 80 
 
 " Ferishtah's Fancies," 182 
 
 " Fifine at the Fair," no, 130, 
 
 182, 184-7 
 Flaubert, Gustave, 206 
 "Flight of the Duchess," 27, 
 
 129 
 "Flower's Name, The," 129, 
 
 167 
 Flower d the Vine, 131 
 Flower, Miss Sarah (afterwards 
 
 Adams), 30, 52 
 
 Form, Artistic, 206-9 
 Forster, John, 50, 73, 76 
 Fox, Mrs. Bridell-, 59 
 Fox, Rev. William Johnson, 
 
 30, So, 51. 52, 54. 73 
 " Fra Lippo Lippi," 129, 166, 
 
 168 
 Furnivall, Dr., 16, 163 
 Future, Browning and the, 
 
 201-10 
 
 G. 
 
 Goethe, 114, 203, 207, 208 
 "Gold Hair," 172, 173 
 Gordon, General, 69 
 Gosse, E. W., 81 
 "Grammarian's Funeral, A," 
 
 129, 168 
 "Guardian Angel, The," 130, 
 
 150 
 
 H. 
 
 " Halburt and Hob," 130 
 
 Hawthorne, N. , 1 54-5, 17 1 
 
 " Heap Cassia," etc., 71 
 
 Heine, 57, 165 
 
 " Heretic's Tragedy, The," 129 
 
 " Herve Riel," 130, 179 
 
 Hillard, G. S., 154-6 
 
 " Holy Cross Day," 167 
 
 " HomeThoughtsfrom Abroad," 
 
 57, 129, 157, 189 
 " Home Thoughts from the 
 
 Sea," 57, 129, 189 
 Hood, Thomas, 167 
 Home, R. H., 137, 138, 150, 
 
 152, 206, 209 
 Houghton, Lord, 167 
 "How they brought the Good 
 
 News," etc., 29, 179, 189 
 Hugo, Victor, 112, 114 
 
 I. 
 
 " Imperante Augusto," 131 
 "In a Balcony," 88, 166, 167, 
 
 168, 179 
 " In a Gondola," 129 
 " Inapprehensiveness," 131 
 "In a Year," 130 
 " Inn Album, The," 70, 101, 
 
 113, 127, 1S2 
 " Instans Tyrannus," 26 
 " Italian in England, The," 58
 
 INDEX 
 
 217 
 
 Italian Art, Music, etc. — 
 
 Influence of, on Browning, 58 
 Italy, first visit to, 56-7 
 "Ivan Ivanovitch," 57, 130 
 "Ixion," 188 
 
 J- 
 
 Jameson, Mrs., 143 
 
 "James Lee's Wife," 59, 130, 
 
 172 
 Jerrold, Douglas, 109 
 "Jocoseria," 130, 182, 187 
 "Johannes Agricola," 59 
 Joubert, 193 
 
 Karshish, Epistle to, 129, 166 
 Keats, 32, 71, 94, 134, 198, 206 
 Kenyon, John, 137, 163, 170 
 " King Victor and King 
 Charles," 89, 91 
 
 "Lady and the Painter, The," 
 
 131 
 
 Lamartine on Bossuet, 191 
 
 Landor, W. S., 77-9, 92 
 " La Saisiaz," 130, 180 
 "Last Ride Together, The," 
 
 130 
 Le Croisic, 178 
 Lehmann's, Rudolf, portrait of 
 
 Browning, 16, 17 
 Leit- Motif, Browning's, 210 
 Letter to a Girl Friend, 191 
 " Life in a Love," 130 
 " Light Woman, A," 130 
 '•' Lost Leader, The," 78, 129 
 "Love among the Ruins," 129, 
 
 166, 168 
 " Love in a Life," 130 
 " Lover's Quarrel, A," 129 
 Lowell, J. R., 142 
 "Luria, 88, 89-92, 179 
 
 M. 
 
 1436 
 
 Macpherson, Mrs. 
 Macready, 74-81 
 " Magical Nature," 130 
 Manner, Browning's, 211 
 
 Marlowe, 114 
 
 " Mary Wollstonecraft and 
 
 Fuseli," 130 
 "Master Hugues of Saxe- 
 
 Gotha," 130, 168 
 "May and Death," 130 
 Mazzini, 58 
 
 " Meeting at Night," 129, 158 
 "Memorabilia," 130, 166 
 "Men and Women," 127-136, 
 
 166, 168, 169, 171, 178, 179, 
 
 182 
 Meredith, George, 123, 124, 
 
 186, 198 
 Montaigne, 207 
 Mortimer, 201-2 
 Motive, Browning's fundamental 
 
 poetic, 210 
 Mill, John Stuart, 51 
 Milsand, J., in 
 Milton, 49, 92, 133, 198 
 " Misconceptions," 130 
 Mitford, Mary, 78 
 " Muleykeh," 130 
 Music of Browning's verse, 205- 
 
 10 
 " My Last Duchess," 129 
 " My Star," 130 
 
 N. 
 
 "Narses," 76 
 "Natural Magic," 120 
 Nature, Browning's observation 
 
 of, 96 
 Nettleship, J., 75, 107 
 "Never the Time and the 
 
 Place," 130, 18S 
 Newman, Cardinal, 194 
 New Spirit of the Age, 138 
 Normandy, the Brownings in, 
 
 173 
 " Now," 131 
 " Numpholeptos," 130 
 
 O. 
 
 Obscurity, Browning's, 106, 180 
 "Old Pictures in Florence," 130 
 "O Lyric Love," 121, 130, 177 
 " One Way of Love," 130 
 " One Word More," 169, 177 
 Optimism, Browning's, 24 (and 
 Vide Summary)
 
 218 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Orion, new star in, 198 
 
 Orr, Mrs. Sutherland, 18, 98, 
 
 in, 184 
 Orthodoxy, Browning's, 193 
 " Over the seas our galleys 
 
 went," 29 
 
 " Pacchiarotto," 128-30, 165, 
 
 182, 207, 210 
 Palazzo Rezzonico, 192 
 " Pan and Luna," 130 
 " Paracelsus," 50, 58, 60-72, 85, 
 
 106, 107 
 Paris, the Brownings in, 162 
 " Parleyings," 182 
 "Parting at Morning," 158 
 "Pauline," 25, 32, 36, 38-48, 
 
 51-54, 85, 128, 208, 210 
 " Pheidippides," 130 
 " Pictor Ignotus," 129 
 •'Pied Piper of Hamelin," 75, 
 
 129, 179 
 " Pippa Passes," 24, 32, 45, 58, 
 
 59, 7o, 92, 95-I04. US 
 
 Pisa, 146 >. 
 
 " Pisgah Sights," 13b 
 
 Plato, 95 
 
 Poe, E. A., 207 
 
 Poems, Early, 25, 26, 27, 28, 71 
 
 "Poetical Works," 178 
 
 " Poetics," 131 
 
 Pompilia, 58, 122-125 
 
 "Pope, The," 126 
 
 " Popularity," 72 
 
 " Porphyria," 59, 66 
 
 Portraits of Browning, 16, 17, 53 
 
 " Pretty Woman, A," 130 
 
 Primary importance, Brown- 
 ing's, 134 
 
 " Prince Hohenstiel-Schwan- 
 gau," 165, 182, 183 
 
 Profundity, Browning's, 94 
 
 " Prospice," 130, 172, 176 
 
 R. 
 
 Rabbi Ben Ezra, 139., 172 
 Rawdon Brown, Sonnet to, 107 
 " Red Cotton Nightcap Coun- 
 try," no, 182-3 
 Religious Opinions, 193, etc. 
 
 "Rephan," 131 
 
 "Return of the Druses, The," 
 
 37, 89-91, 206 
 " Reverie," 131, 207, 210 
 Richmond, 38 
 " Ring and the Book, The," 39, 
 
 101, 1 13-128, 177, 182, 203, 
 
 205, 210 
 Romance, Browning and, 105 
 Rome, the Brownings in, 159, 
 
 166 
 Roscoe, W. C, 70 
 " Rosny," 131 
 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 52-3, 
 
 55. 104 
 "Round of Day, The," 131 
 Ruskin, J., 23, 129 
 Russia, Visit to, 58 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, 194, 200 
 
 "Saul," 129, 167, 168 
 
 Schiller, 207 
 
 School, Peckham, 27, 33 
 
 Schopenhauer, 209, 210 
 
 Shortcomings, Browning's artis- 
 tic, 205 
 
 Science, Browning and, 68 
 
 Scott, David, 14 
 
 Scott, Sir W., 198 
 
 " Serenade at the Villa," 130 
 
 Sex, Browning's artistic relation 
 to, 202 
 
 Shakspere, 36, 85-8, 93, 114, 
 206, 208, 209, 210 
 
 Shelley, 30, 43, 136, 146, 149, 
 164-5, 172, 196, 203, 205, 209 
 
 Shelley Letters, the, 163 
 
 " Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis," 
 143, 167 
 
 Skelton, John, 90 
 
 " Sludge the Medium," 94, 165 
 
 Songs— "Nay but you," 129; 
 " Round us the wild crea- 
 tures," 130 ; " Once I saw," 
 130 ; " Man I am," 130 ; 
 " You groped your way," 130 ; 
 ' ' Wish me no wish unspoken, " 
 130 
 
 Sonnets, Browning's, 58 
 
 " Sonnets from the Portuguese," 
 147, 148
 
 INDEX. 
 
 219 
 
 " Sordello," 37, 58, 63, 79, §5, 
 
 89, 91, 92, 105-12, 203, 205, 
 
 210 
 Soul, Browning and the, 210- n 
 "Soul's Tragedy, A," 89, 91, 
 
 179 
 " Speculative," 131 
 Spiritual influence, Browning's, 
 
 200 
 "St. Martin's Summer," 130 
 Story, W. W., 154, 171, 192 
 " Strafford," 62, 75, 79-86, 89, 
 
 211 
 Summary of Criticism, 198-212 
 Swinburne, A. C, 106 
 
 Talfourd, 54, 78 
 Tauchnitz edition, 179 
 Taylor, Bayard, 161 
 Tennyson, Lord, 54, 55, 134, 
 161, 180, 192 
 
 "Two Poets of Croisic," 130, 
 181 
 
 U. 
 University College, 33 
 
 V. 
 
 Venice, 59, 192, 197 
 "Verse-making," 130 
 
 W. 
 
 Wagner, 2J39" 2. 
 Wedmore, F., 204 
 Westminster Abbey, 196 
 "What of the Leafage," etc., 
 
 188 
 " Why from the World," 130 
 Wiedemann, Mr., 18 
 " Woman's Last Word, A," 129 
 Women, Browning's, 66 
 " Women and Roses," 130 
 
 "The Statue and the Bust," 173 , Wonder Spirit, Browning and 
 " The Tomb at St. Praxed's," I thCj 95 ' 
 
 129, 143 
 
 " There's a woman like a Dew- 
 drop," 192 
 
 Thinker, Browning as, 200 
 
 " Through the Metidja to Abd- 
 el-Kadr," 129 
 
 "Tokay," 167 
 
 "Too Late," 130 
 
 "Touch him ne'er so lightly," 
 130 
 
 Tour-de-force, Poetry and, 115 
 
 Transcripts from Life, 129-131 
 
 Traill, H. D., 209 
 
 "Two in the Campagna," 130, 
 159, 160 
 
 Wordsworth, 78, 94, 145, 161 
 Work, Browning's mass of, 201 
 
 Yates, E., Letter from Browning 
 
 to, 189 
 York, the horse, 20, 190 
 "Youth and Art," 130, 172 
 
 Z. 
 "Z" signed Sonnet, 58
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN P. ANDERSON 
 (British Museum). 
 
 I. Works. 
 II. Single Works. 
 
 III. Contributions to Magazines. 
 
 IV. Printed Letters. 
 V. Selections. 
 
 VI. Appendix — 
 
 Biography, Criticism, etc. 
 Magazine Articles. 
 
 VII. Chronological 
 Works. 
 
 List of 
 
 I. WORKS. 
 
 Poems. 2 vols. A new edition. 
 London, 1849, 16mo. 
 
 Vol. i., Paracelsus ; Pippa Passes, 
 a Drama; King Victor and King 
 Charles, a Tragedy; Colombe's 
 Birthday, a Play. Vol. ii., A Blot 
 in the 'Scutcheon, a Tragedy; The 
 Return of the Druses, a Tragedy; 
 Luria, a Tragedy ; A Soul's 
 Tragedy; Dramatic Romances and 
 Lyrics. 
 
 The Poetical Works of Robert 
 Browning. Third edition. 3 
 vols. London, 1863, 8vo. 
 
 Vol. i., Lyrics: Romances; Men 
 and Women. Vol. ii., Tragedies and 
 other Plays. Vol. iii., Paracelsus; 
 Christmas Eve and Easter-Day; 
 Sordello. 
 
 The Poetical Works of Robert 
 Browning. 6 vols. London, 
 1868, 8vo. 
 
 Vol. i., Pauline; Paracelsus; 
 Strafford. Vol. ii., Sordello; Pippa 
 Passes. Vol. iii., King Victor and 
 Kiwi Charles; Dramatic Lyrics; 
 The Return oj the Druses- Vol. iv., 
 A Blot in the 'Scutcheon; Colombe's 
 Birthday; Dramatic Romances. 
 Vol. v., A Soul's Tragedy; Luria; 
 Christmas Eve and Easter-Day; 
 Men and Women. Vol. vi., In a 
 Balcony; Dramatis Personal. 
 
 Complete works of Robert Brown- 
 ing. A reprint from the latest 
 English edition. Chicago, 1872- 
 
 74, 8vo. 
 
 Nos. 1-19 of the " Official Guide 
 of the Chicago and Alton R. H. and 
 Monthly Reprint and Advertiser."
 
 11 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 The Poetical Works of Robert 
 Browning. 2 vols. Leipzig, 
 1872, 8vo. 
 
 Vols. 1197, 1198 of the " Tauchnitz 
 Collection of British Authors." 
 
 The Poetical Works of Robert 
 Browning. 16 vols. London, 
 1888-9, 8vo. 
 
 Vol. i. contains Pauline and 
 Sordello. Vol. ii., Paracelsus and 
 Strafford. Vol. hi., Pippa Passes; 
 King Victor and King Charles ; The 
 Return of the Druses; A Soul's 
 Tragedy. Vol. iv., A Blot in the 
 'Scutcheon ; Colombe's Birthday ; 
 Men and Women. Vol. v., Dra- 
 matic Romances; Christmas Eve 
 and Easter-Day. Vol. vi., Dra- 
 matic Lyrics ; Luria. Vol. vii., In a 
 Balcony ; Dramatis Personce. Vols. 
 viii.-x., The King and the Book, 3 
 vols. Vol. xi., Balaustion's Adven- 
 ture; Prince Hohenstiel-Sehwangau; 
 Fifine at the Fair. Vol. xii., Red, 
 Cotton Night-Cap Country ; The Inn 
 Album. Vol. xiii., Aristophanes' 
 Apology; The Agamemnon of 
 Mschylus. Vol. xiv., Pacchiarotto 
 and how he worked in Distemper, 
 with other Poems. Vol. xv., Dra- 
 matic Idyls; Jocoseria. Vol. xvi., 
 Ferishtah's Fancies ; Parleyings 
 with Certain People. 
 
 II. SINGLE WORKS. 
 
 The Agamemnon of iEschylus, 
 transcribed by Robert Browning. 
 London, 1877, 8vo. 
 
 Aristophanes' Apology, including 
 a transcript from Euripides, 
 being the Last Adventure of 
 Balaustion. London, 1875, 
 8vo. 
 
 Asolando : Fancies and Facts. 
 London, 1890 [1889], 8vo. 
 Now in seventh edition. 
 
 Balaustion's Adventure; including 
 a transcript from Euripides [i.e., 
 a translation of the "Alcestis"]. 
 London, 1871, 8vo. 
 Now in third edition. 
 
 Bells and Pomegranates. 8 Nos. 
 London, 1841-1846, 8vo. 
 
 No. i., Pippa Passes, 1841. No. 
 ii., King Victor and King Charles, 
 
 1842. No. iii., Dramatic Lyrics, 1842. 
 No. iv., The Return of the Druses, 
 
 1843. No. v., A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, 
 
 1843. No. vi., Colombe's Birthday, 
 
 1844. No. vii., Dramatic Romances 
 and Lyrics, 1845. No. viii., Luria; 
 and A Soul's Tragedy, 1846. 
 
 Christmas Eve and Easter-Day. 
 A poem. London, 1850, 16mo. 
 
 Cleon. Moxon : London, 1855, 
 8vo. 
 Reprinted in Men and Women. 
 
 Dramatic Idyls. 2 series. Lon- 
 don, 1879-80, 8vo. 
 
 The First Series now in 2nd 
 edition. 
 
 Dramatis Persons. London, 1864, 
 8vo. 
 
 Three poems in this hook were re- 
 printed from advance copies in the 
 Atlantic Monthly in vol. 13, 1864, 
 viz., Gold Hair, pp. 596-599; Pros- 
 pice, p. 694; Under the Cliff, pp. 
 737, 738. 
 
 Second edition. London, 
 
 1864, 8vo. 
 
 Ferishtah's Fancies. London, 
 1884, 8vo. 
 Now in third edition. 
 
 Fifine at the Fair. London, 1872, 
 8vo. 
 
 Gold Hair: a Legend of Pornic. 
 [London], 1864, 8vo. 
 
 Reprinted in Dramatis Personce. 
 Gold Hair appeared in the Atlantic 
 Monthly, May 1864, and Dramatis 
 Personce was published on May 28, 
 1864. 
 
 The Inn Album. London, 1875, 
 8vo. 
 
 Jocoseria. London, 1883, 8vo. 
 Now in third edition. 
 
 La Saisiaz. The Two Poets of 
 Croisic. London, 1878, 8vo. 
 
 Men and Women. 2 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1855, 8vo. 
 
 Pacchiarotto and how he worked 
 in distemper : with other poems. 
 London, 1876, 8vo. 
 
 Paracelsus. London, 1835, 8vo. 
 
 Parleyings with Certain People of
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 in 
 
 Importance in their Day. In- 
 troduced by a Dialogue between 
 Apollo and the Fates, etc. 
 London, 1887, 8vo. 
 Pauline, a Fragment of a Confes- 
 sion. London, 1833, 8vo. 
 
 There are only five known copies 
 extant, two of which are in the 
 British Museum. 
 
 A reprint of the original edi- 
 tion of 1833. Edited by T. J. 
 Wise. London, 1886, 12mo. 
 
 Four copies were printed on 
 vellum. 
 
 The Pied Piper of Hamelin, with 
 35 illustrations by Kate Green- 
 away. London [1889], 4to. 
 
 Appeared originally in Dramatic 
 Lyrics (Bells and Pomegranates, No. 
 III.), 1842. 
 
 Prince Hohenstiel - Schwangau : 
 Saviour of Society. London, 
 1871, 8vo. 
 
 Red Cotton Night-Cap Country; 
 or Turf and Towers. London, 
 1873, 8vo. 
 
 The Ring and the Book. 4 vols. 
 London, 1868-69, 8vo. 
 Now in second edition. 
 
 Sordello. London, 1840, 8vo. 
 
 The Statue and the Bust. Moxon : 
 London, 1855, 8vo. 
 Reprinted in Men and Women. 
 
 Strafford: an historical tragedy. 
 London, 1837, 8vo. 
 
 [Acting edition for the use of 
 
 the North. London Collegiate 
 School for Girls.] [London, 
 1882.] 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. With notes 
 
 and preface by E. H. Hickey, 
 and an introduction by S. R. 
 Gardiner. London, 1884, 8vo. 
 
 Two Poems. By Elizabeth Parrett 
 Browning and Robert Brown- 
 ing. London, 1854, 8vo. 
 
 These two poems, "A Plea for 
 Che Bagged Schools of London," by 
 Elizabeth B. Browning, and "The 
 Twins,'' by Robert Browning, were 
 printed by Miss Arabella Barrett, 
 
 for a bazaar in aid of a "Refuse 
 for Young Destitute Girls." "The 
 Twins " was reprinted in " Men and 
 Women," in 1850. 
 
 III. CONTRIBUTIONS TO 
 MAGAZINES, ETC. 
 
 Sonnet. — "Eyes, calm beside thee, 
 (Lady couldst thou know ! " ) 
 Dated August 17, 1S34 ; signed 
 " Z." {Monthly Repository, vol. 
 8 N.S., 1834, p. 712.) 
 
 The King. — "A King lived long 
 ago." Signed "Z." (Monthly 
 Repository, vol. 9 N.S., 1835, 
 pp. 707, 708.) 
 
 Reprinted with six fresh lines and 
 revised throughout, in Pippa Passes 
 (1841). 
 
 Porphyria. — "The rain set early 
 in to-night." Signed "Z." 
 (Monthly Repository, vol. 10 
 N.S., 1836, pp. 43, 44.) 
 
 Johannes Agricola. — " There's 
 Heaven above ; and night by 
 night." Signed " Z." {Monthly 
 Repository, vol. 10 N.S., 1836, 
 pp. 45, 46.) 
 
 Porphyria and Johannes Agricola 
 were reprinted in "Bells and Pome- 
 granates," No. iii., with the title 
 Madhouse Cells. 
 
 Lines.— "Still ailing, wind? Wilt 
 be appeased or no ? " Signed 
 "Z." (Monthly Repository, vol. 
 10N.S., 1836, pp. 270, 271.) 
 
 Reprinted revised, in Dramatis 
 Persona, 1864, as the first six 
 stanzas of VI. of " James Lee." 
 
 The Laboratory (Ancient Regime). 
 (Hood's Magazine, vol. 1, 1844, 
 pp. 513, 514.) 
 
 Reprinted in Dramatic Romances 
 and Lyrics (1845), as the first of two 
 poems called " France and Eng- 
 land." 
 
 Claret and Tokay. (Hood's Maga- 
 zine, vol. 1, 1844, p. 525.) 
 
 Reprinted in Dramatic Romances 
 and Lyric* (1845).
 
 IV 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Garden Fancies. I. The Flower's 
 Name ; II. Sibrandus Schafna- 
 burgensis. {Hood's Magazine, 
 vol. 2, 1844, pp. 45-48.) 
 
 Reprinted in Dramatic Romances 
 and Lyrics (1845). 
 
 The Boy and the Anzel. (Hood's 
 Magazine, vol. 2, 1844, pp. 140- 
 142.) 
 
 Reprinted revised, and with five 
 fresh coup'ets, in Dramatic Rom- 
 ances and Lyrics (1845). 
 
 The Tomb at St. Praxed's (Rome 
 15 — ). (Hood's Magazine, vol. 
 3, 1845, pp. 237-239.) 
 
 Reprinted in Dramatic Romances 
 and Lyrics (1845). 
 
 The Flight of the Duchess. (Hood's 
 Magazine, vol. 3, 1845, pp. 313- 
 318.) 
 
 Reprinted in Dramatic Romances 
 and Lyrics (1845). 
 
 Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 [A fabrication.] With an in- 
 troductory essay, by Robert 
 Browning. London, 1852, 
 Svo. 
 
 On the poet, objective and 
 
 subjective ; on the latter'saim; 
 on Shelley as man and poet. 
 [Being a reprint of the Intro- 
 ductory Essay to " Letters of 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley."] Lon- 
 don, 1881, 8vo. 
 
 Published for the Browning 
 Society. 
 
 A reprint of the Introductory 
 
 Essay prefixed to the volume 
 of Letters of Shelley. Edited 
 by W. Tyas Harden. London, 
 1888, Svo. 
 
 Ben Karshook's Wisdom. (The 
 Keepsake, 1856, p. 16.) 
 
 May and Death. (The Keepsake, 
 1857, p. 164.) 
 
 Reprinted in Dramatis Persona 
 (1845). 
 
 Orpheus and Eurydice. F. Leigh- 
 ton. 8 lines. (Royal Academy 
 
 Exhibition Catalogue 1864, p. 
 13.) 
 
 Reprinted in Poetical Works, 1SCS, 
 whore it is included in Dramatis 
 
 J\rsono3. 
 
 Gold Hair. See note to Dramatis 
 Personam. 
 
 Prospice. See note to Dramatis 
 Persona. 
 
 Under the Cliff. See note to 
 Dramatis Personal. 
 
 A selection from the poetry of 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 [First series edited by Robert 
 Browning.] 2 series. London, 
 1866-80, 8vo. 
 
 Herve Riel. (Cornhill Magazine, 
 vol. 23, 1871, pp. 257-260.) 
 
 Reprinted in Pacchiarotto and 
 other Poems, 1876. 
 
 "Oh Love, Love:" the Lyric of 
 Euripides in his Hippolytus. 
 (Euripides. By J. P. Mahaffy, 
 p. 116.) London, 1879, 12uio. 
 
 "The Blind Man to the Maiden 
 said." (The Hour will Come, 
 by Wilhclmine von Hillern. 
 From the German by Clara Bell, 
 ,vol. ii., p. 174.) London [1879], 
 8vo. 
 
 Printed anonymously ; quoted 
 with statement of authorship in the 
 Whitehall Review, March 1, 1883. 
 Reprinted in Browning Society's 
 Papers, Pt. iv., p. 410. 
 
 Ten new lines to "Touch him 
 ne'er so lightly." (Dramatic 
 Idyls, 2nd ser., 18S0, p. 149.) 
 Lines written in an autograph 
 album, Oct. 14, 1880. (Century 
 Magazine, vol. 25, 1882, pp. 
 159, 160.) 
 
 Printed without Mr. Browning's 
 consent. Reprinted in the Brown- 
 ing Society's Papers, Pt. iii., p. 48. 
 
 Sonnet on Goldoni (dated "Venice, 
 Nov. 27, 1883"). Written for 
 the Album of the Committee 
 of the Goldoni Monument at 
 Venice, and inserted on the first
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 page. (Pall Mall Gazette, Dec. 
 8,1883.) 
 
 Reprinted in the Browning So- 
 ciety's Papers, Pt. v., p. 9S.* 
 
 Sonnet on Rawdon Brown (dated 
 Nov. 28, 1883). (Century Maga- 
 zine, vol.27, 1884, p. 640.) 
 
 Reprinted in the Browning So- 
 ciety's Papers, Pt. v., p. 132.* 
 
 Paraphrase from Horace. Four ! 
 lines, written impromptu for ! 
 Mr. Felix Moscheles. (Pall 
 Mall Gazette, Dec. 13, 1883, p. : 
 
 6.) 
 
 Reprinted in the Browning So- 
 ciety's Papers, Pt. v., p. 99.* 
 
 Helen's Tower : Sonnet, dated 
 " April 26, 1870." Written for 
 the Earl of Dufferin, who built 
 a tower in memory of his 
 mother, Helen, Countess of 
 Gilford, on his estate at Clande- 
 boye. (Pall Mall Gazette, Dec. 
 28, 1883, p.^2.) 
 
 Reprinted in Sonnets of this 
 Century, edited by William Sharp, 
 18S6, and in the Browning Society's 
 Papers, Pt. v., p. 97.* 
 
 The Founder of the Feast : Sonnet. 
 (Dated "April 5, 1884.'") In- 
 
 • scribed by Mr. Browning in the 
 Album presented to Mr. Arthur 
 Chappell, director of the St. 
 James's Hall Concerts, etc. 
 (The World, April 16, 1884.) 
 
 Reprinted in the Browning So- 
 ciety's Papers, Pt. vii., p. 18.* 
 
 "The Names." Sonnet on Shake- 
 speare. Contributed to the 
 " Shaksperian Show-Book " of 
 the Shaksperian Show, held at 
 the Albert Hall, on May 29-31, 
 1884. 
 
 Reprinted in the Pall Mall Ga- 
 zette), May 29, and in the Browning 
 Society's Papers, Pt. v., p. 105.* 
 
 The Divine Order and other Ser- 
 mons and Addresses, by the 
 late Thomas Jones. Edited by 
 Brynmor Jones. With a short 
 
 introduction by Robert Brown- 
 ing. London, 1^84, Svo. 
 Why I am a Liberal : Sonnet. 
 ( Why I am a Liberal, edited by 
 Andrew Reid. London, 1885, 
 
 p. 11.) 
 
 Reprinted in Sonnets of this 
 Century, edited by William sharp, 
 1886, and in the Browning Society's 
 Papers, Pt. viii., p. 92. * 
 
 Prefatory Note to ihe Poetical 
 Works of Elizabeth Barrett 
 Browning, 1889, dated " Dec. 
 10, 1887/' 
 
 To Edward Fitzgerald. "I 
 chanced upon a new book yester- 
 day." 12 lines, dated "July 
 8, 1889" (Athenaeum, July 13, 
 1889, p. 64). 
 
 IV. PRINTED LETTERS. 
 
 Letter to Laman Blanchard 
 [? April, 1841], dated "Craven 
 Cottage, Saturday." (Poetical 
 Works of Laman Blanchard, 
 pp. 6-8.) London, '1876, 8vo. 
 
 Letters to Henry Fothergill 
 Chorley on his novels Pomfret 
 (1845) and Roccabella (1860). 
 (Autobiography, Memoir, and 
 Letters of Henry Fothergill 
 Charley, vol. ii., pp. 25, 26, 169- 
 174.) ' 
 
 Letter to R. H. Home, dated 
 Pisa, Dec. 4 [1846J. Another 
 dated London, Sept. 24 [1851], 
 signed Robert and Elizabeth 
 Barrett Browning. (Letters of 
 Elizabe'h Barrett Browning to 
 R. H. Home, 1877, vol. ii., pp. 
 182-3, 194-5.) London, 1877, 
 8vo. 
 
 Letter to William Etty, R.A., 
 dated " Hagni di Lucca, Sept. 
 21, 1849." (Life of William 
 Etty, 11. A. By Alexander 
 
 T 5
 
 VI 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Gilchrist, vol. ii., pp. 280-81.) 
 London, 1855, 8vo. 
 
 Letter to Leigh Hunt (dated 
 "Bagni di Lucca, 6th Oct., 
 1857"). {Correspondence of 
 Leigh Hunt, edited by his eldest 
 son, vol. ii., pp. 264-267.) Lon- 
 don, 1862, Svo. 
 
 Letter to the Editor of The Daily 
 News, dated "19 Warwick 
 Crescent, W., Feb. 9," stating 
 that his contribution to the 
 French Relief Fund was his 
 publishers' payment for a lyrical 
 poem (Herve Riel). {Daily 
 News, Feb. 10, 1871.) 
 
 Letter to the Editor of The Daily 
 News, dated "Nov. 20." On 
 line 131, " Gave us the doctrine 
 of the enclitic De " of the poem, 
 A Grammarian's Funeral. 
 {Daily News, Nov. 21, 1874.) 
 
 Letter to the Rev. Alexander B. 
 Grosart, on the Poem of Tlie 
 Lost Leader and Wordsworth, 
 dated "19 Warwick Crescent, 
 Feb. 24, 1875." {The Prose 
 Works of William Wordsworth. 
 Edited by the Rev. A. B. 
 Grosart, vol. i., p. xxxvii.) 
 London, 1876, 8vo. 
 
 The Lord Rectorship of St. 
 Andrew's. Letter to the Editor 
 of The Times, dated "19 
 Warwick Crescent, Nov. 19." 
 {Times, Nov. 20, 1877.) 
 
 Letter to F. J. Furni vail. {Academy, 
 Dec. 20, 1878.) 
 
 Letter to Mr. J. O. Halliwell- 
 Phillipps, and printed by the 
 latter in 1881. 
 
 Letter to Mr. Charles Kent, dated 
 "29 De Vere Gardens, W., 28 
 August, 1889." Accompanied 
 by a presentation copy of the 
 3rd vol. of the new collective 
 edition of "Poems." {Athen- 
 ccum. Dec. 21. 1889, p. 860). 
 
 In Berdoe's " Browning's 
 Message to his Time," etc., 
 London, 1890, there are a num- 
 ber of letters from Browning. 
 
 In the new edition of Kings- 
 land's "Robert Browning," 
 London, 1890, there are several 
 letters from Browning. 
 
 V. SELECTIONS. 
 
 Selections from the Poetical Works 
 of Robert Browning. [Edited by 
 J. Forster and B. W. Procter.] 
 London, 1863 [1862], 16mo. 
 
 Moxon's Miniature Poets. A 
 Selection from the Works of 
 Robert Browning. London, 
 1865, 8vo. 
 
 Selections from the Poetical Works 
 of Robert Browning. 2 series. 
 London, 1872-80, 8vo. 
 
 Favourite Poems. Illustrated. 
 Boston, 1877, 16mo. 
 
 A Selection from the Works of 
 Robert Browning. With a 
 memoir of the author, and 
 explanatory notes. Edited by 
 F. H. Ahn. Berlin, 1882, 8vo. 
 Vol. viii. of Aim's " Collection of 
 British and American Standard 
 Authors." 
 
 Stories from Robert Browning. 
 By F. M. Holland. With an 
 introduction by Mrs. Sutherland 
 Orr. London, 1882, 8vo. 
 
 Lyrical and Dramatic Poems se- 
 lected from the works of Robert 
 Browning. With an extract 
 from Stedman's "Victorian 
 Poets." Edited by E. T. 
 Mason. New York, 1883, 8vo. 
 
 Selections from the Poetry of 
 Robert Browning. With an 
 introduction by R. G. White. 
 New York [1883], 8vo. 
 
 Pomegranates from an English 
 Garden : a selection from the
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 vn 
 
 poems of Robert Browning. 
 With introduction and notes by 
 J. M. Gibson. New York, 
 1885, 8vo. 
 
 Select Poems of Robert Browning. 
 Edited, with notes, by William 
 J. Rolfe and Heloise E. Hersey. 
 New York, 1886, 8vo. 
 
 Lyrics, Idyls, and Romances from 
 the poetic and dramatic works 
 of Robert Browning. Boston, 
 1887, 8vo. 
 
 Good and true Thoughts from 
 Robert Browning. Selected by 
 Amy Cross. New York, 1888, 
 4to. 
 
 Printed in blue ink, and on one 
 side of the leaf. 
 
 The Browning Reciter : Poems for 
 Recitation, by Robert Browning 
 and other writers. Edited by 
 A. H. Miles. London, 1889, 
 8vo. 
 Part of the " Platform Series." 
 
 VI. APPENDIX. 
 Biography, Criticism, etc. 
 
 Alexander, William John. — An 
 Introduction to the poetry of 
 Robert Browning. Boston, 1889, 
 8vo. 
 
 Austin, Alfred. — The Poetry of 
 the Period. London, 1870, 8vo. 
 Robert Browning, pp. 38-76. Ap- 
 peared originally in Temple Bar, vol. 
 26, 1SC9, pp. 316-333. 
 
 Bagehot, Walter. — Literary 
 Studies. 2 vols. London, 1879, 
 8vo. 
 
 Wordsworth, Tennyson, and 
 Browning ; or, Pure, Ornate, and 
 Grotesque Art in English Poetry, 
 Yi il. ii., pp. 338-390. Appeared ori- 
 ginally in the National Review, vol. 
 11), 1864, pp. 27-67. 
 
 Barnet't, Professor. — Browning's 
 Jews and Shakespeare's Jew. 
 liead at the 54th meeting of 
 
 the Browning Society, Nov. 
 25th, 1887. London, 1888, 8vo. 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. x., pp. 207-220. 
 
 Beale, Dorothea. — The Religious 
 Teaching of Browning. (Read 
 at the 10th meeting of the 
 Browning Society, Oct. 27th, 
 1882.) London, 1882, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. hi., pp. 323-338. 
 
 Berdoe, Edward. — Browning as a 
 Scientific Poet. (Read at the 
 meeting of the Browning 
 Society, April 24th, 1885.) 
 London, 1885, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt, vii., pp. 33-54. 
 
 Browning's Estimate of Life. 
 
 (Read at the meeting of the 
 Society, Oct. 28, 1887.) Lon- 
 don, 1888, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. x.,pp. 200-206. 
 
 Browning's Message to his 
 
 Time : His Religion, Philosophy, 
 and Science. [With fac-simile 
 letters of Browning and por- 
 trait.] London, 1890, 8vo. 
 
 Birrell, Augustine. — Obiter Dicta. 
 London, 1884, 8vo. 
 
 On the alleged obscurity of Mr. 
 Browning's poetry, pp. 55-95. 
 
 Browning, Robert. — Robert 
 Browning's Poetry. Outline 
 Studies publishedfortheChicago 
 Browning Society. Chicago, 
 1886, 8vo. 
 
 Browning Society. — The Browning 
 Society's Papers. In progress. 
 London, 1881, etc., 8vo. 
 
 Buchanan, Robert. — Master- 
 spirits. London, 1873, 8vo. 
 
 Browning's Masterpiece, pp. 89- 
 109. A revised reprint of the Athen- 
 aeum reviews of the " Ring and the 
 Book " in December and March 1870. 
 
 Bulkeley, Rev. J. H. — James 
 Lee's Wife. (Read at the 16th 
 meeting of the Browning
 
 vm 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Society, May 25, 1883.) Lon- 
 don, 1883, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning- Society's Papers, 
 Pt. iv., pp. 455-468. 
 
 The Reasonable Rhythm of 
 
 some of Browning's poems. 
 Read at the 42nd meeting of 
 the Browning Society, May 28, 
 1886. London, 1886, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. viii., pp. 119-131. 
 
 Burt, Mary E. — Browning's 
 Women, etc. Chicago, 18S7, 
 8vo. 
 
 Bury, John B.— Browning's Philo- 
 sophy. (Read at the 6th meet- 
 ing of the Browning Society, 
 April 28, 1882. ) London, 1882, 
 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. iii.,pp. 259-277. 
 
 On "Aristophanes' Apology." 
 
 Read at the 38th meeting of the 
 Browning Society, Jan. 29, 
 1886. London, 1886, Svo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. viii., pp. 79-86. 
 
 C. C. S., i.e., C. S. Calverley.— 
 Fly Leaves. Cambridge, 1872, 
 8vo. 
 
 "The Cock and the Bull," a 
 Parody on The Ring and the Bouk, 
 pp. 113-120. 
 
 Cooke, Bancroft. — An Intro- 
 duction to Robert Browning. 
 A criticism of the purpose and 
 method of his earlier works. 
 London [1883], 8vo. 
 
 Cooke, George Willis. — Poets and 
 Problems. London [1886], 8vo. 
 Browning, pp. 269-38S. 
 
 Cooper, Thompson. — Men of Mark, 
 etc., London, 1881, 4to. 
 
 Robert Browning, with photo- 
 graph. Fifth Series, No. 17. 
 
 Corson, Hiram. — The Idea of Per- 
 sonality, as embodied in Robert 
 Browning's Poetry. (Read at 
 the Sth meeting of the Browning 
 
 Society, June 23, 1882.) Lon- 
 don, 1882, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. hi., pp. 293-321. 
 
 An Introduction to the Study 
 
 of Robert Browning's Poetry. 
 Boston, 1886, 8vo. 
 Courtney, W. L. — Studies New 
 and Old. London, 1888, 8vo. 
 
 Robert Browning, Writer of Plays, 
 pp. 100-123. 
 Devey, J. — A Comparative Esti- 
 mate of Modern English Poets. 
 London, 1873, 8vo. 
 Browning, pp. 376-421. 
 Dowden, Edward. — Mr. Tennyson 
 and Mr. Browning. {The After- 
 noon Lectures on Literature a id 
 Art delivered in . . . Dublin, 
 1867 and 1868, pp. 141-179.) 
 Dublin, 1869, 8vo. 
 
 Reprinted in E. Dowden's "Studies 
 in Literature," 1S78, pp. 191-239. 
 
 Studies in Literature, 1789- 
 
 1877. London, 1878, 8vo. 
 
 Mr. Browning's place in recent 
 literature, pp. SO-84 ; Mr. Tennyson 
 and Mr. Browning, pp. 191-239. 
 — Transcripts and Studies. 
 
 London, 1888, 8vo. 
 
 Mr. Browning's "Sordello," pp. 
 474-525. 
 
 Eyles, F. A. H.— Popular Poets of 
 the Period, etc. London, 1888, 
 etc., Svo. 
 
 Robert Browning, by Alexander 
 H. Japp, No. 7, pp. 193-199. 
 
 Fleming, Albert. — Andrea del 
 Sarto. Read at the 39th meet- 
 ing of the Browning Society, 
 Feb. 26, 1886. London, 1886, 
 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. viii., pp. 95-102. 
 
 Forman, H. Buxton. — Our Living 
 Poets. London, 1871, 8vo. 
 Robert Browning, pp. 103-152. 
 
 Fotheringham, James. — Studies 
 in the Poetry of Robert Brown- 
 ing. London, 1887, 8vo. 
 
 Second edition, revised and 
 
 enlarged. London, 1888, Svo.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 IX 
 
 Friswellj J. Hain. — Modern Men 
 of Letters honestly criticised. 
 London, 1870, 8vo. 
 Robert Browning, pp. 119-131. 
 
 Fuller, S. Margaret. — Papers on 
 Literature and Art. 2 parts. 
 London, 1846, 8vo. 
 
 Browning's Poems, pt. ii., pp. 31- 
 45. 
 
 Furnivall, Frederick J. — A Biblio- 
 graphy of Robert Browning, 
 from '1833-81. London, 1881- 
 82, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 1881-4, Pts. i. andii. 
 
 How the Browning Society 
 
 came into being. With some 
 words on tbe characteristics and 
 contrasts of Browning's early 
 and late work. London, 1884, 
 8vo. 
 
 A grammatical analysis of 
 
 " Lyric Love." Read at the 
 48th meeting of the Browning 
 Society, Feb. 25, 1886. Lon- 
 don, 1888, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. ix., pp. 165-168. 
 
 Galton, Arthur. — Urbana Scripta. 
 Studies of five living poets, etc. 
 London, 1885, 8vo. 
 Mr. Browning, pp. 59-76. 
 
 Gannon, Nicholas J. — An Essay 
 on the characteristic errors of our 
 most distinguished living poets. 
 Dublin, 1853, 8vo. 
 Robert Browning, pp. 25-32. 
 
 Glazebrook, Mrs. M. G. — " A 
 Death in the Desert." Read at 
 the 48th meeting of the Brown- 
 ing Society, Feb. 25, 1887. 
 London, 1888, 8vo. 
 
 I he Browning Society's Papers, 
 toI. ix., pp. 153-164. 
 
 Halliwell-Phillipps, James 0.— 
 Copy of Correspondence [be- 
 tween J. 0. Halliwell-Phillipps 
 and Robert Browniug, concern- 
 ing expressions respecting Halli- 
 well-Phillipps, used by F. J. 
 
 Furnivall in the preface to a 
 fac-simile of the second edition, 
 of Hamlet, published in 1880]. 
 [Brighton ? 1881] fol. 
 Hamilton, Walter. — Parodies of 
 the Works of English and Ameri- 
 can Authors. London, 1889, 
 8vo. 
 
 Robert Browning, vol. vi., pp. 46- 
 55. 
 
 Haweis, Rev. H. R. — Poets in the 
 Pulpit. London, 1S80, 8vo. 
 
 Robert Browning. New Year's 
 Eve, pp. 117-143. 
 
 Herford, C. H. — Prince Hohen- 
 stiel-Schwangau. London, 1886, 
 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. viii., pp. 133-145. 
 
 Hodgkins, Louise Manning. — 
 Nineteenth Century Authors. 
 Robert Browning. Boston 
 
 [1889], 8vo. 
 
 Holland, F. May.— Sordello. A 
 Storv from Robert Browning. 
 New' York, 1881, 8vo. 
 Very scarce. 
 
 Home, R. H.— A New Spirit of 
 the Age. 2 vols. London, 1844, 
 8vo. 
 
 Robert Browning (with a portrait 
 engraved by J. C. Armytage) and 
 J. W. Marston, vol. ii., pp. 153-186. 
 
 Hutton, Richard Holt. — Essays, 
 Theological and Literary. 2 
 vols. London, 1871, 8vo. 
 
 Mr. Browning, vol. ii., pp. 190- 
 247. 
 
 Johnson, Rev. Prof. Edwin. — 
 On "Bishop Blougram's Apol- 
 ogy." (Read at the 7th meeting 
 of the Browning Society, May 
 26, 1882.) London, 1882, 8vo. 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. iii., pp. 279-292. 
 
 Conscience and Art in Brown- 
 ing. London, 1882, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 l'l. iii.. pp. 846-879. 
 
 On "Mr. Sludge the Medium." 
 
 Read at the 31st meeting of the
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Browning Society, March 27, 
 1885. London, 1885, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. vii., pp. 13-32. 
 
 Kingsland, William G. — Robert 
 Browning : chief poet of the 
 age. An essay addressed prim- 
 arily to beginners in tbe study 
 of Browning's poems. London, 
 1887, 8vo. 
 
 New edition, with biographi- 
 cal and other additions. Lon- 
 don, 1890, 8vo. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage. — The 
 Works of Walter Savage Lan- 
 dor. 2 vols. London, 1846, 
 8vo. 
 
 Poem "To Robert Browning," 
 vol. ii., p. 673. 
 
 M'Cormick, William S. — Three 
 Lectures on English Literature. 
 Paisley, 1889, 8vo. 
 
 The poetry of Robert Browning, 
 pp. 125-184. 
 
 Macdonald, George. — Orts. Lon- 
 don, 1882, 8vo. 
 
 Browning's " Christmas Eve," pp. 
 195-217. 
 
 The Imagination and other 
 
 Essays. Boston [1883], 8vo. 
 
 Browning's " Christmas Eve," pp. 
 195-217. 
 McNicoll, Thomas. — Essays on 
 English Literature. London, 
 1861, 8vo. 
 
 New Poems of Browning and 
 Landor (1856), pp. 298-314. 
 McCrie, George. — The Religion of 
 our Literature. Essays upon 
 Thomas Carlyle, Robert Brown- 
 ing, Alfred Tennyson, etc. Lon- 
 don, 1875, 8vo. 
 
 Robert Browning, pp. 69-109. 
 Macready, William Charles. — 
 Macready's Reminiscences and 
 Selections from his diaries and 
 letters. 2 vols. London, 1875, 
 8vo. 
 
 Numerous references to Brown- 
 ing. 
 
 Mayor, Joseph B. — Chapters on 
 English Metre. London, 1886, 
 8vo. 
 
 Tennyson and Browning, Chap. 
 xii., pp. 184-196. 
 
 Morison, J. Cotter. — " Caliban 
 upon Setebos," with some notes 
 on Browning's Subtlety and 
 Humour. (Read at the 24th 
 MeetingoftheBrowningSociety, 
 April 25, 1884.) London, 1884, 
 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. v., pp. 4S9-498. 
 
 Morrison, Jeanie. — Sordello. An 
 outline analysis of Mr. Brown- 
 ing's Poem. London, 1889, 
 8vo. 
 
 Nettleship, John T. — Essays on 
 Robert Browning's Poetry. Lon- 
 don, 1868, 8vo. 
 
 New edition. New York, 
 
 1890, 8vo. 
 
 On Browning's " Fifine at the 
 
 Fair." To be read at the 4th 
 MeetingoftheBrowningSociety, 
 Feb. 24, 1882. London, 1882, 
 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. ii., p. 199-230. 
 
 Classification of Browning's 
 
 Works. London, 1882, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. ii., pp. 231-234. 
 -Browning's Intuition, speci- 
 
 ally in regard of music and the 
 Plastic Arts. (Read at the 13th 
 Meetingof theBro wningSociety, 
 Feb. 23, 1883.) London, 18S3, 
 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. iv., pp. 381-396. 
 — On the development of Brown- 
 ing's Genius in his capacity as 
 poet or maker. Read at the 
 35th Meeting of the Browning 
 Society, Oct. 30, 1885. London, 
 1886, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. viii., pp. 55-77.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 XI 
 
 Noel, Hon. Roden.— Essays on 
 
 Poetry and Poets. London, 
 
 1886, 8vo. 
 Robert Browning, pp. 256-282; 
 
 Robert Browning's Poetry, pp. 283- 
 
 303. 
 Notes and Queries. — Notes and 
 
 Queries. 7 Series. London, 
 
 1849-1889, 4to. 
 Numerous references to Browning. 
 
 0' Byrne, George.— Robert Brown- 
 ing. In Memoriam. An Epi- 
 cedium. Nottingham [1890], 
 8vo. 
 
 0' Conor, William Anderson. — 
 Essays in Literature and Ethics. 
 Manchester, 1889, 8vo. 
 
 Browning's " Childe Roland," pp. 
 1-24. 
 
 Ormerod, Helen J. — Some Notes 
 on Browning's Poems referring 
 to Music. Read at the 51st 
 Meetingof theBrowningSociety, 
 May 27, 1887. London, 1888, 
 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. is., pp. 180-195. 
 
 Abt Vogler, the Man. Read 
 
 at tbe 55th Meeting of the 
 Browning Society, Jan. 27th, 
 1888. London, 1888, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. x., pp. 221-236. 
 
 Orr, Mrs. Sutherland.— A Hand- 
 book to the Works of Robert 
 Browning, London, 1885, 8vo. 
 
 Second edition, revised. Lon- 
 don, 1886, 8vo. 
 
 Classification of Browning's 
 
 Poems. London, 1882, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. ii., pp. 235-238. 
 
 Outran), Leonards.— Love's Value. 
 Colombe's Birthday. Act IV. 
 (The Avowal of Valence. ) Read 
 at the 38th Meeting of the 
 Browning Society, Jan. 29, 
 1886. London, 1886, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. viii., pp. 87-94. 
 
 Pearson, Howard S. — On Brown- 
 ing as a Landscape Painter. 
 Read at the 41st Meeting of the 
 Browning Society, April 30, 
 1886. London, 1886, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. viii., pp. 103-118. 
 
 Pollock, Frederick. — Leading cases 
 done into English. By an Ap- 
 prentice of Lincoln's Inn 
 [Frederick Pollock]. Second 
 edition. London, 1876, 8vo. 
 
 IV. "Scott v. Shepherd (1 Sm. 
 L. C. 477), Any Pleader to any 
 Student," pp. 15-19. A Parody on 
 Browning. 
 
 Portrait.— The Portrait. Vol. I. 
 London, 1877, 4to. 
 
 Robert Browning, by G. Barnett 
 Smith, 4 pages. The portrait is 
 from a photograph by Elliott & 
 Fry. 
 
 Portrait Gallery.— National Por- 
 trait Gallery. London [1877], 
 
 4to. 
 
 Robert Browning (with portrait), 
 4th Series, pp. 73-SO. 
 Powell, Thomas.— The Living 
 Authors of England. New 
 York, 1849, 8vo. 
 Robert Browning, pp. 71-85. 
 
 Pictures of the Living Authors 
 
 of Britain. London, 1851, 8vo. 
 Robert Browning, pp. 61-75. 
 Radford, Ernest.— Illustrations to 
 Browning's Poems; with a notice 
 of the artists and the pictures, 
 by E. Radford. 2 pts. London, 
 
 1882-3, fol. 
 
 Published for the Broivning 
 Society. 
 Raleigh, W. A.— On some promi- 
 nent points in Browning's 
 Teaching. (Read at the 22nd 
 Meetingof theBrowningSociety, 
 Feb. 22, 1884.) London, 1884, 
 
 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. v., pp. 477-488. 
 Reeve, Lovell.— Portraits of Men 
 of Eminence in Literature,
 
 xu 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Science, and Art, with bio- 
 graphical memoirs, etc. 6 vols. 
 London, 1863-67, 8vo. 
 
 Robert Browning, vol. i., pp. 109- 
 112. 
 Revell, William F. — Browning's 
 Poems on God and Immortality 
 as bearing on life here. (Read 
 at the 14th Meeting of the 
 Browning Society, March 30, 
 1883.) London, 1883, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. iv., pp. 435-454. 
 
 Browning's Views of Life. 
 
 Address on Oct. 28, 1887. Lon- 
 don, 1888, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. x.,pp. 197-199. 
 
 Sharp, William. — Browning and 
 the Arts. London, 1882, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. iii., pp. 34*-40*. 
 
 Sharpe, Rev. John. — On " Pietro 
 of Abano " and the leading 
 ideas of "Dramatic Idyls." 
 Second series, 1880. (Read at the 
 2nd Meeting of the Browning 
 Society, Nov. 25, 1881.) Lon- 
 don, 1882, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. ii., pp. 191-197. 
 
 Jocoseria. (Read at the 20th 
 
 MeetingoftheBrowningSociety, 
 Nov. 23, 1S83.) London, 1884, 
 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. v., pp. 93*-97*. 
 
 Shirley, pseud, [i.e., John Skelton]. 
 — A Campaigner at Home. Lon- 
 don, 1865, 8vo. 
 
 Robert Browning, pp. 247-283. 
 Appeared originally in Praser's 
 Magazine, vol. 67, 1S63, pp. 240-256. 
 
 Stedman, Edmund Clarence. — 
 Victorian Poets. Boston, 1876, 
 8vo. 
 Robert Browning, pp. 293-341. 
 
 Another edition. Boston, 
 
 1887, 8vo. 
 
 Stoddart, Anna M. — "Saul." 
 Read at the 59 th Meeting of the 
 
 Browning Society, May 25, 
 1888. London, 1888, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. x., pp. 264-274. 
 Swinburne, Algernon C. — The 
 Works of George Chapman : 
 Poems and Minor Translations. 
 London, 1875, 8vo. 
 
 On Browning, pp. xiv.-xix. of the 
 " Essay on George Chapman's poeti- 
 cal and dramatic works." 
 
 ■Specimens of Modern Poets. 
 
 9-39. 
 
 London, 
 A parody 
 
 The Heptalogia, or the Seven 
 against Sense, etc. 
 1880, 8vo. 
 
 John Jones, pp. 
 on James Lee. 
 
 Symons, Arthur. — Is Browning 
 Dramatic? (Read at the 29th 
 Meeting of the Browning 
 Society, Jan. 30, 1885.) Lon- 
 don, 1885, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. vii., pp. 1-12. 
 
 An Introduction to the Study 
 
 of Browning. London, 1886, 
 
 8vo. 
 — Some 
 
 Notes 
 
 on Mr. Brown- 
 ing's last volume. (On Parley- 
 ings with Certain People.) Read 
 at the 50th Meeting of the 
 Browning Society, April 29, 
 1887. London, 1888, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. ix., pp. 169-179. 
 
 Thomson, James. — Notes on the 
 Genius of Robert Browning. 
 (Read at the 3rd Meeting of 
 the Browning Society, Jan. 
 27, 1882.) London, 1882, 8vo. 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. ii., pp. 239-250. 
 
 Todhunter, Dr. John. — " The 
 Ring and the Book." (Read at 
 the 19th Meeting of the 
 Browning Society, Oct. 26, 
 1883.) London, 1884, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. v., pp. S5*-92*. 
 
 "Strafford" at the Strand 
 
 Theatre, Dec. 21, 1886. Read
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 • •• 
 
 xin 
 
 at the 47th Meeting of the 
 Browning Society, Jan. 28, 
 1887. London, 1883, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. ix., pp. 147-152. 
 
 Turnbull, Mrs. — Abt Vogler. 
 (Read at the 17th Meeting of 
 the Browning Society, June 22, 
 1883.) London, 188"3, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. iv., pp. 469-476. 
 
 In a Balcony. (Read at the 
 
 Annual Meeting of the Browning 
 Society, July 4, 1884.) London, 
 1884, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. v., pp. 499-502. 
 
 Wall, Annie.— Sordello's Story re- 
 told in prose. Boston, 1886, 8vo. 
 
 West, E. D.— One aspect of 
 Browning's Villains. (Read at ! 
 the 15th Meeting of the Brown- ! 
 ing Society, April 27, 1883.) 
 London, 1883, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. iv., pp. 411-434. 
 
 Westcott, B. F.— On some points 
 in Browning's View of Life. A 
 paper read before the Cambridge 
 Browning Society, November, 
 1882. Cambridge, 1883, 8vo. 
 
 Printed also in the Browning 
 Society's Papers, Pt. iv., pp. 397-410. 
 
 Whitehead, Miss C. M.— Browning 
 as a Teacher of the Nineteenth 
 Century. Read at the 58th 
 Meeting of the Browninc 
 Society, April 27, 1888. Lon" 
 don, 1888, 8vo. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, 
 Pt. x., pp. 237 
 
 Magazine Articles, etc. 
 
 Browning, Robert. — Sharpe's Lon- 
 don Magazine, vol. 8, 1849, 
 pp. 60-62, 122-127.— Revue des 
 Deux Mondes, by J. Milsand, 
 15 Aug. 1851, pp. 661-689. 
 — London Quarterly Review, 
 vol. 6, 1856, pp. 493-501, 
 
 Browning, Robert, 
 vol. 22, p. 30, etc.— Revue 
 Contemporaine, by J. Milsand, 
 vol. 27, 1856, pp. 511-546.— 
 Fraser's Magazine, by J. 
 Skelton, vol. 67, 1S63, pp. 240- 
 256; reprinted in "A Cam- 
 paigner at Home," 1865. — 
 Victoria Magazine, by M. D. 
 Conway, vol. 2, 1864, pp. 298- 
 316. — Contemporary Review, 
 vol. 4, 1867, pp. 1-15, 133-148; 
 same article, Eclectic Magazine, 
 vol. 5 N.S., pp. 314-323, 501- 
 513. — Revue des Deux Mondes, 
 by Louis Etienne, torn. 85, 
 1870, pp. 704-735.— Appleton's 
 Journal (with portrait), by R. 
 H. Stoddard, vol. 6, 1871, pp. 
 533-536.— Once a Week, vol. 9 
 N.S., 1872, pp. 164-167.— 
 Scribner's Monthly, by E. C. 
 Stedman, vol. 9, 1874, pp. 167- 
 183.— Galaxy, by J. H. Browne, 
 vol. 19, 1875, pp. 764-774.— 
 St. James's Magazine, by T. 
 Bayne, vol. 32, 1877, pp. 153- 
 164. — Dublin University Maga- 
 zine (with portrait), vol. 3 
 N.S., 1878, pp. 322-335, 416- 
 443. — Gentleman's Magazine, 
 by A. N: McNicoll, vol. 244, 
 1879, pp. 54-67. — Congregation- 
 alism vol. 8, 1879, pp. 91f>-922. 
 — International Review, by G. 
 Barnett Smith, vol. 6, 1879, 
 pp. 176-194. — Literary World 
 (Boston), by F. J. Furnivall, H. 
 E. Scudder, etc., vol. 13, 188v, 
 pp. 76-81.— Critic, by J. H. 
 Morse, vol. 3, 1883, pp. 263, 264. 
 — Contemporary Review, by 
 Hon. Roden Noel, vol. 44, 
 1883, pp. 701-718; same article, 
 Littell's Living Age, vol. 159, 
 pp. 771-781. — British Quarterly 
 Review, vol. 80, 1884, pp. 1-28. 
 — Family Friend, by J. Fuller 
 
 '5*
 
 XIV 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Browning, Robert. 
 Higgs, vol. 18, 1887, pp. 10-13. 
 — Graphic, with portrait, Jan. 
 
 15, 1887.— Athenaeum, Dec. 21, 
 
 1889, pp. 858-860.— Atalanta, 
 by Edmund Gosse, Feb. 1889, 
 pp. 361-364. —Atlantic Monthly, 
 Feb. 1890, pp. 243-248.— Con- 
 temporary Review, by the Rev. 
 Stopford A. Brooke, Jan. 1890, 
 pp. 141-152. — Universal Review, 
 by Gabriel Sarrazin, Feb. 1890, 
 pp. 230-246.— Art and Litera- 
 ture, with portrait, Feb. 1890, 
 pp. 17-19. — Congregational Re- 
 view, by Ruth J. Pitt, Jan. 
 
 1890, pp. 57-66,— Expository 
 Times, by the Rev. Professor 
 Salmond, Feb. 1890, pp. 110, 
 111. — The Speaker, by Augus 
 tine Birrell, Jan. 4, 1890, pp, 
 
 16, 17. — National Review, by 
 H. D. Traill, Jan. 1890, pp 
 592-597.— Scots Magazine, Jan, 
 1890, pp. 131-136.— Argosy, by 
 E.F. Bridell-Fox, Feb. 1890, pp 
 108-114.— New Church Maga 
 zine, by C. E. Rowe, Feb. 1890 
 pp. 49-58. 
 
 Agamemnon. Edinburgh Re 
 
 view, vol. 147, 1878, pp. 409 
 436.— Athenaeum, Oct. 27, 1877 
 pp. 525-527. — Academy, by J 
 A. Symonds, Nov. 3, 1877, pp 
 419, 420.— Literary World (Bos 
 ton), vol. 13, 1882, p. 419. 
 
 -and Elizabeth Barrett Brown 
 
 ing. Leisure Hour (with por 
 traits), 1883, pp. 396-404.— 
 Manhattan, by K. M. Rowland, 
 June 1884, pp. 553-562. 
 
 -and the Edinburgh Review. 
 
 Reader, by Gerald Massey, Nov. 
 26, 1864, pp. 674, 675. 
 
 — and the Epic of Psychology. 
 London Quarterly Review, vol. 
 32, 1869, pp. 325-357. 
 
 Browning, Robert. 
 
 and the Greek Drama. 
 
 Man- 
 
 chester Quarterly, by A. S. Wil- 
 kins, vol. 2, 1883, pp. 377-390. 
 
 — and James Russell Lowell. 
 New Eusdander, vol. 29, 1870, 
 pp. 125-136. 
 
 — and Tennyson. Eclectic Re- 
 view, vol. 7 N.S., 1864, pp. 
 361-389.— Leisure Hour, Feb. 
 1890, pp. 231-234. 
 
 — Another Way of Love. Critic 
 (New York), by F. L. Turn- 
 bull, Sept. 26, 1885, pp. 151, 
 152. 
 
 — Aristophanes' Apology. Lon- 
 don Quarterly Review, vol. 44, 
 1875, pp. 354-376.— Academy, 
 by J. A. Symonds, April 17, 
 1875, pp. 389,390.— Athenaeum, 
 April 17, 1875, pp. 513, 514. 
 
 — as a Preaclier. Dark Blue, by 
 E. D. West, vol. 2, 1872, pp. 
 171-184, 305-319; same article, 
 Littell's Living Age, vol. 3, pp. 
 707-723. 
 
 — as a Religious Teacher. 
 Month, by the Rev. John 
 Rickaby, Feb. 1890, pp. 173- 
 190.— Good Words, by R. H. 
 Hutton, Feb. 1890, pp. 87-93. 
 
 — as a Teacher. In Memoriam. 
 Gentlemen's Magazine, by Mrs. 
 Alexander Ireland, Feb. 1890, 
 pp. 177-184. 
 -as Theologian. Time, by H. 
 
 W. Massingham, Jan. 1890, pp. 
 90-96. 
 
 — as a Writer of Plays. Fort- 
 nightly Review, by W. L. 
 Courtney, vol. 33 N.S., 1883, 
 pp. 888-900 ; same article, 
 Eclectic Magazine, vol. 38 N.S., 
 pp. 358-366. 
 
 — Balaustion's Adventure. Con- 
 temporary Review, by Matthew 
 Browne, vol. 18, 1871, pp. 284- 
 296. — Nation, by J. R. Dennett,
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 xv 
 
 Browning, Robert, 
 vol. 13, 1871, pp. 178, 179.— 
 Fortnightly Review, by Sidney 
 Colvin, vol. 10 N.S., 1871, pp. 
 478-490. — Edinburgh Review, 
 vol. 135, 1872, pp. 221-249.— 
 London Quarterly Review, vol. 
 37, 1871, pp. 346-368.— Athe- 
 naeum, Aug. 12, 1S71, pp. 199, 
 200.— Penn Monthly, by R. E. 
 Thompson, vol. 6, 1875, pp. 
 928-940.— St. Paul's Magazine, 
 by E. J. Hasell, vol. 12, 1873, 
 pp. 680-699 ; vol. 13, pp. 49-66.— 
 Pioneer, Oct. 1887, pp. 159-162. 
 
 Bells and Pomegranates. 
 
 Christian Remembrancer, vol. 
 11 N.S., 1846, pp. 316-330.— 
 People's Journal, by H. F. 
 Chorley, vol. 2, 1847, pp. 38- 
 40, 104-106. 
 -Browning Society. Saturday 
 
 Review, vol. 53, 1882, pp. 12, 
 13 ; vol. 58, 1884, pp. 721, 722. 
 -Childe Poland. Papers of 
 
 the Manchester Literary Club, 
 by the Rev. W. A. O'Conor, 
 vol. 3, 1877, pp. 12-25.— Critic 
 (New York), by J. E. Cooke, 
 vol. 8, 1S86, pp. 201, 202, and 
 by A. Bates, pp. 231, 232. 
 
 -Childe Poland, Childe 
 
 Harold, and the Sangrail. 
 Papers of the Manchester 
 Literary Club, by John Mor- 
 timer, vol. 3, 1877, pp. 26-31. 
 
 — Christmas Eve and Easter-Day. 
 Prospective Review, vol. 6, 
 1850, pp. 267-279. — Littell's 
 Living Age (fromtheExaminer), 
 vol. 25, pp. 403-409. — The 
 Germ, No. 4, by W. M. Ros- 
 setti, pp. 187-192. —Day of Rest, 
 bv George MacDonald, vol. 1, 
 1873, pp. 34-36, 55, 56. 
 
 — Clubs in the United States. 
 Literary World (Boston), by II. 
 Corson, vol. 14, 1883, p. 127. 
 
 Browning, Robert. 
 
 Day with the Brownings at 
 
 Pratolino. Scribner's Monthly, 
 by E. C. Kinney, vol. 1, 1870, 
 pp. 185-188. 
 
 ■Dead in Venice. (Verses.) 
 
 Athenaeum, Dec. 21, 1889, p. 
 860. 
 
 - The ' ' Detachment" of. Athe- 
 
 naeum, Jan. 4, 1890, pp. 18, 19. 
 
 Dramatic Idyls. Fortnightly 
 
 Review, by Grant Allen, vol. 
 26 N.S., 1879, pp. 149-154.— 
 Contemporary Review, by Mrs. 
 Sutherland Orr, vol. 35, 1879, 
 pp. 289-302.— Saturday Review, 
 June 21, 1879, pp. 774, 775.— 
 Fraser's Magazine, vol. 20 N.S., 
 1879, pp. 103-124.— St. James's 
 Magazine, by T. Bayne, vol. 8, 
 fourth series, 1880, pp. 10S- 
 118.— Athenaeum, May 10, 1879, 
 pp. 593-595. — Academy, bv 
 Frank Wedmore, May 10, 1879, 
 pp. 403, 404. — Athenaeum, July 
 10, 1880, pp. 39-41.— Literary 
 World, July 23, 1880, pp. 49-51. 
 -Dramatis Persona;. St. James's 
 
 Magazine, by R. Bell, vol. 10, 
 1864, pp. 477-491. — New 
 Monthly Magazine, by T. F. 
 Wedmore, vol. 133, 1S65, pp. 
 186-194. — Dublin Uniyersity 
 Magazine, vol. 64, 1864, pp. 
 578-579.— Eclectic Review, by 
 E. Paxton Hood, vol. 7 N.S., 
 1864, pp. 62-72. 
 
 — Early Writings of. Century, 
 by E. W. Gosso, vol. 23, 1881, 
 pp. 189-200. 
 
 — Fcrishtah's Fancies. Athe- 
 nceum, Dec. 6, 1884, pp. 725- 
 727.— Saturday Review, vol. 58, 
 1884, pp. 727, 728.— Spectator, 
 Dec. 6, 1884, pp. 1614-1616.— 
 Academy, by H. C. Becching, 
 Dec. 13, 1884, pp. 385, 386.—
 
 XVI 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Browning, Robert. 
 
 Critic (New York), Dec. 13, 
 1884, p. 279.— Oxford Maga- 
 zine, vol. 3, 1885, pp. 161, 162. 
 
 Fifine at the Fair. Old and 
 
 New, by C. C. Everett, vol. 6, 
 1872, pp. 609-615.— Canadian 
 Monthly, by Goldwin Smith, 
 vol. 2, 1872, pp. 285-287.— 
 Temple Bar, vol. 37, 1873, pp. 
 315-328.— Literary World, July 
 12, 1872, pp. 17, 18, and July 
 19, pp. 42, 43.— Fortnightly 
 Review, by Sidney Colvin, vol. 
 12 N.S., 1872, pp. 118-120.— 
 Saturday Review, vol. 34, 1872, 
 pp. 220, 221. 
 
 First Poem of- St. James's 
 
 Magazine, vol. 7 N.S., 1871, 
 pp. 485-496. 
 -Funeral of. Scots Magazine, 
 
 by Elizabeth R. Chapman, Feb. 
 1890, pp. 216-223. . 
 — Handbook to the Works of, 
 Orr's. Academy, by J. T. 
 Nettleship, vol. 27, 1885, pp. 
 429-431. — Athenseum, Sept. 
 26, 1885, pp. 396, 397. 
 -in 1869. Cornhill Magazine, 
 
 vol. 19, 1869, pp. 249-256, 
 — In a Balcony. Theatre, by 
 B. L. Mosely, May 1, 1885, pp. 
 225-230. 
 
 — In Memoriam. New Review, 
 by Edmund W. Gosse, Jan. 1890, 
 pp. 91-96. 
 
 — Inn Album. Macmillan's 
 Magazine, by A. C. Bradley, 
 vol. 33, 1876, pp. 347-354.— 
 Nation, by Henry James, junr., 
 vol. 22, 1876, pp. 49,50.— Inter- 
 national Review, by Bayard 
 Taylor, vol. 3, 1876, pp. 402- 
 404. — Athenseum, Nov. 27, 
 1875, pp. 701, 702.— Academy, 
 by J. A. Symonds, Nov. 27, 
 1875, pp. 543, 544. — Spectator, 
 December 11, 1875, pp. 1555- 
 
 Browning, Robert. 
 
 1557. — Examiner, Dec. 11, 
 
 1875, pp. 1389-1390. 
 in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 Speaker, by Henry James, Jan. 
 
 4, 1890, pp. 10-12. 
 Jocoseria. National Review, 
 
 bv W. J. Courthope, vol. 1, 
 1883, pp. 548-561.— Atlantic 
 Monthly, vol. 51, 1883, pp. 
 840-845. — Cambridge Review, 
 vol. 4, 1883, pp. 352, 353.— 
 Gentleman's Magazine, by R. 
 H. Shepherd, vol. 254, 1883, 
 pp. 624-630.— Academy, by J. 
 A. Symonds, vol. 23, 1883, pp. 
 213, 214.— Athenseum, March 
 24, 1883, pp. 367, 368.— Satur- 
 day Review, vol. 55, 1883, pp. 
 376, 377. —Spectator, March 
 17, 1883, pp. 351-353. 
 
 — Kingsland's. Literary Opi- 
 nion, May 1, 1887. 
 
 — La Saisiaz. The Two Poets 
 of Croisic. Academy, by G. A. 
 Simcox, vol. 13, 1878, pp. 478- 
 480. — Athenaeum, May 25, 
 1878, pp. 661-664.— Saturday 
 Review, June 15, 1878, pp. 
 759, 760. 
 
 — Love Poems of. Journal of 
 Education, by Arthur Sidgwick, 
 May 1, 1882, pp. 139-143. 
 
 — Lyrical and Dramatic Poems. 
 Literary World (Boston), Feb. 
 24, 1883, p. 58. 
 
 — Men and Women. Bentley's 
 
 Miscellany, vol. 39, 1856, pp. 
 64-70.— British Quarterly Re- 
 view, vol. 23, 1856, pp. 151- 
 180. —Rambler, vol. 5 N.S., 
 1856, pp. 55-71. — Christian 
 Remembrancer, vol. 31 N.S., 
 1856, pp. 281-294; vol. 34 
 N.S., 1857, pp. 361-390.— 
 Dublin University Magazine, 
 vol. 47, 1856, pp. 673-675.— 
 Fraser's Magazine, by G.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 xvn 
 
 Browning, Robert. 
 
 Brimley, vol. 53, 1856, pp. 
 105-116.— Irish Quarterly Re- 
 view, vol. 6, 1856, pp. 21-28.— 
 Westminster Review, vol. 9 
 N.S., 1856, pp. 290-296. 
 
 Note on. Art Review, by W. 
 
 Mortimer, Jan. 1890, pp. 28-32. 
 
 One Way of Love. Literary 
 
 World (Boston), by C. R. 
 Corson, July 26, 1884, pp. 250, 
 251. 
 -Pacchiarotto. Academy, by 
 
 Edward Dowden, July 29, 1876 
 pp. 99, 100. — Athenseum, July 
 22, 1876, pp. 101, 102. 
 
 Paracelsus. New Monthly 
 
 Magazine, by John Forster, vol. 
 46, 1836, pp. 289-308.— Exam- 
 iner, by John Forster, Sept. 6, 
 1835, pp. 563-565.— Theologian, 
 vol. 2, 1845, pp. 276-282.— 
 Monthly Repository, by W. J. 
 Fox, vol. 9 N.S., 1835, pp. 
 716-727. — Fraser's Magazine, by 
 J. Heraud, vol. 13, 1836, pp. 
 363-374.— Leigh Hunt's Jour- 
 nal, vol. 2, 1835, pp. 405-408.— 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, by 
 Philarete Chasles, torn, xxii., 
 1840, pp. 127-133. 
 
 — Parleyings with Certain 
 People. Literary Opinion, 
 March 1, 1887. 
 
 — Pauline. Monthly Reposi- 
 tory, by W. J. Fox, vol. 7 N.S., 
 1833, pp. 252-262.— Athenseum, 
 April 6, 1833, p. 216. 
 
 — Place of, in Literature. Con- 
 temporary Review, by Mrs. 
 Sutherland-Orr, vol. 23, 1874, 
 pp. 934-965 ; same article, 
 Littell's Living Age, vol. 122, 
 pp. 67-85. 
 
 — Plays and Poems. North 
 American Review, by J. R. 
 Lowell, vol. 66, 1848, pp. 357- 
 400. 
 
 Browning, Robert. 
 
 Poems. British Quarterly Re- 
 view, vol. 6, 1S47, pp. 490-509. 
 —Eclectic Review, vol. 26 N.S., 
 1849, pp. 203-214.— Eclectic 
 Magazine, vol. 18, 1849, pp. 
 453-469. — Christian Examiner, 
 by C. C. Everett, vol. 48, 1850, 
 pp. 361-372. — Massachusetts 
 Quarterly Review, vol. 3, 1850, 
 pp. 347-385.— Fraser's Maga- 
 zine, vol. 43, 1851, pp. 170-182. 
 — Putnam's Monthly Magazine, 
 vol. 7, 1856, pp. 372-381.— 
 North British Review, vol. 34, 
 1861, pp. 350-374.— Chambers's 
 Journal, vol. 19, 1863, pp. 91- 
 95; vol. 20, pp. 39-41.— Na- 
 tional Review, vol. 17, 1863, 
 pp. 417-446. — Eclectic Review, 
 by E. P. Hood, vol. 4 N.S., 
 
 1863, pp. 436-454 ; vol. 7 N.S., 
 
 1864, pp. 62-72.— Edinburgh 
 Review, vol. 120, 1864, pp. 
 537-565. — Christian Examiner, 
 by C. C. Everett, vol. 77, 1864, 
 pp. 51-64. — Quarterly Review, 
 vol. 118, 1865, pp. 77-105.— 
 Nuova Antologia di Scienze, 
 Lettere ed Arti, by Enrico Nen- 
 cioni, July 1867, pp. 468-481.— 
 North British Review, by J. 
 Hutchinson Stirling, vol. 49, 
 1868, pp. 353-408. —Temple Bar, 
 by Alfred Austin, vol. 26, 1869, 
 pp. 316-333 ; vol. 27, pp. 170- 
 186; vol. 28, pp. 33-48.— 
 British Quarterly Review, vol. 
 49, 1869, pp. 435-459.— Saint 
 Paul's Magazine, by E. J. H[a- 
 sell], vol. 7, 1871, pp. 257-276; 
 same article, Eclectic Magazine, 
 vol. 13 N.S., pp. 267-279, and 
 in Littell's Living Age, vol. 108, 
 pp. 155-166. — Church Quarterly 
 Review, by the Hon. and Rov. 
 Arthur Lyttlcton, vol. 7, 1878, 
 pp. 65-92. — Cambridge Review,
 
 Will 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Browning, Robert. 
 
 vol. 3, 1881, pp. 126, 127.— 
 Scottish Review, vol. 2, 1883, 
 pp. 349-358. — London Quarterly 
 Review, vol. 65, 1886, pp. 238- 
 250. 
 
 Prince Hohenstiel - Schwan- 
 
 gau. New Englander, by J. 
 S. Sewall, vol. 33, 1874, pp. 
 493-505.— Examiner, Dec. 23, 
 1871, pp. 1267, 1268.— Aca- 
 demy, by G. A. Simcox, Jan. 
 15, 1872, pp. 24-26.— Literary 
 World, Jan. 5, 1872, pp. 8, 9. 
 
 Red Cotton Night-Cap Country. 
 
 Nation, by J. R. Dennett, vol. 
 17, 1873, pp. 116-118.— Con- 
 temporary Review, by Mrs. 
 Sutherland-Orr, vol. 22, 1873, 
 pp. 87-106. — Penn Monthly 
 Magazine, vol. 4, 1873, pp. 
 657-661.— Athenaeum, May 10, 
 1873, pp. 593, 594. 
 
 Ring and the Book. Athen- 
 aeum, Dec. 26, 1868, pp. 875, 
 876; March 20, 1869, pp. 399, 
 400. — Edinburgh Review, vol. 
 130, 1869, pp. 164-186.— Dub- 
 lin Review, vol. 13 N.S., 1869, 
 pp. 48-62. — Chambers's Journal, 
 July 24, 1869, pp. 473-476.— 
 Fortnightly Review, by John 
 Morley, vol. 5 N.S., 1869, pp. 
 331-343. — Macmillan's Maga- 
 zine, by J. A. Svmonds, vol. 19, 
 1869, pp. 258-262, and by J. R. 
 Mozley, pp. 544-552.— North 
 American Review, by E. J. 
 
 • Cutler, vol. 109, 1869, pp. 279- 
 283.— Nation, by J. R. Den- 
 nett, vol. 8, 1869, pp. 135, 136. 
 — Tinsley's Magazine, vol. 3, 
 1869, pp. 665-674.— Christian 
 Examiner, by J. W. Chadwick, 
 vol. 86, 1869, pp. 295-315. 
 — Gentleman's Magazine, by 
 James Thomson, vol. 251, 1881, 
 pp. 682-695.— St. James's Maga- 
 
 Browning, Robert, 
 zine, vol. 2 N.S., 1869, pp. 
 460-464.— Saint Paul's, vol. 7, 
 1871, pp. 377-397; same 
 article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 
 13 N.S., pp. 400-412, and in 
 Littell's Living Age, voL 108, 
 pp. 771-783. — North British 
 Review, vol. 51, 1870, pp. 97- 
 126. — Quarterly Review, vol. 
 126, 1869, pp. 328-359. 
 
 Some of the Teachings 
 
 of " The Ring and the Book." 
 Poet- Lore, by F. B. Horn- 
 brooke, July 1889, pp. 314-320. 
 -Science of. Poet-Lore, by 
 
 Edward Berdoe, Aug. 15, 1889, 
 
 pp. 353-362. 
 — Selections from. London 
 
 Quarterly Review, by Frank T. 
 
 Marzials, vol. 20, 1863, pp. 527- 
 
 532.— Literary World, May 19, 
 
 1883, p. 157. 
 — Sequence of Sonnets on death 
 
 of. Fortnightly Review, by 
 
 Algernon C. Swinburne, Jan. 
 
 1890, pp. 1-4. 
 — Some Thoxights on. Mac- 
 
 millan's Magazine, by M. A. 
 Lewis, vol. 46, 1882, pp. 205- 
 219 ; same article, Littell's 
 Living Age, vol. 154, pp. 238- 
 246. 
 -Sonnets to. Macmillan's Maga- 
 
 zine, by Aubrey de Vere, Feb. 
 1890, p. 258. — Blackwood's 
 Edinburgh Magazine, by Sir 
 Theodore Martin, Jan. 1890, 
 p. 112. — Household Words, vol. 
 4, 1852, p. 213. 
 
 Sonnets of. Manchester Quar- 
 terly, by Benjamin Sagar, vol. 
 6, 1887, pp. 148-159. 
 
 Sordello. Fraser's Magazine, 
 
 by E. Dowden, vol. 76, pp. 
 518-530. — Macmillan's Maga- 
 zine, by R. W. Church, vol. 
 55, 1887, pp. 241-|53.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 xix 
 
 Browning, Robert. 
 
 bordello at the East 
 
 End. Journal of Education, 
 July 1, 1885, pp. 281-283. 
 
 Stories from, Holland's. 
 
 Academy, by J. A. Blaikie, 
 vol. 22, 1882, pp. 287, 288. 
 
 Strafford: a Tragedy. Edin- 
 burgh Review, vol. 65, 1837, 
 pp. 132-151. 
 -Study of. Overland Monthly, 
 
 by Caroline Le Conte, vol. 
 3, 2nd series, 18S4, pp. 645- 
 651. — Literary World (Boston), 
 vol. 17, 1S86, p. 44. 
 
 — Two Sonnets to. New Monthly 
 Magazine, vol. 48, 1835, p. 
 48. 
 
 — Typos of Womanhood. Wo- 
 man's World, by Annie E. 
 
 Browning, Robert. 
 Ireland, Nov. 1889, pp. 47- 
 50. 
 
 Verses on. Art Review (with 
 
 portrait), by William Sharp, 
 Feb. 1S90, pp. 33-36.— Murray's 
 Magazine, by Rev. H. D. 
 Rawnsley, Feb. 1890, pp. 145- 
 150. — Belford's Magazine (poem 
 of 20 six-line stanzas), by Wil- 
 liam Sharp, March 1890. 
 
 Wordsworth and Tennyson. 
 
 National Review, by Walter 
 Bagehot, vol. 19, 1864, pp. 27- 
 67; reprinted in "Literary 
 Studies," 1879 ; same article, 
 Eclectic Magazine, vol. 1 N.S., 
 pp. 273-284, 415-427, and in 
 Littell's Living Age, vol. 84, 
 pp. 3-24. 
 
 VII. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS. 
 
 Pauline 
 Paracelsus 
 Strafford . 
 Sordello . 
 Pippa Passes [Bells and 
 Pomegranates, No. I.) . 
 King Victor and King 
 Charles {Bells and Pome- 
 granates, No. II. ) . 
 Dramatic Lyrics (Bells and 
 Pomegranates, No. Ill) . 
 Cavalier Times. 
 
 I. Marching Along. 
 II. Give a House. 
 III. My Wife Gertrude. 
 Italy and France. 
 I. Italy. 
 II. France. 
 
 1833 
 1835 
 1837 
 1840 
 
 1841 
 
 1842 
 1842 
 
 Camp and Cloister. 
 I. Camp (French). 
 II. Cloister (Spanish). 
 In a Gondola. 
 Artemis Prologuizes. 
 Waring. 
 Queen Worship. 
 
 I. Rudel and the Lady 
 
 of Tripoli. 
 II. Christina. 
 
 Madhouse Cells. 
 
 I. Johannes Agricola. 
 II. Porphyria, 
 Through the Metidja. 
 The Pied Piper of Hamelin. 
 The Return of the Druses 
 (Bells and Pomegranates, 
 No. IV.) . . 
 
 1843
 
 XX 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 A Blot in the 'Scutcheon 
 {Bells and Pomegranates, 
 No. V.) . . . 1843 
 
 Colonibe's Birthday (Bells 
 and Pomegranates, No. 
 VI.) . ' . . . 1844 
 Dramatic Romances and 
 Lyrics (Bells and Pome- 
 granates, No. VII.) . 1845 
 
 How they brought the 
 (/'' Good News. 
 Pictor Ignotus. 
 Italy in England. 
 England in Italy. 
 The Lost Leader. 
 The Lost Mistress. 
 Home Thoughts from 
 
 Abroad. 
 The Tomb at St. Praxed's. 
 Garden Fancies. 
 
 I. The Flower's Name. 
 II. Sibrandus Schafna- 
 burgensis. 
 France and Spain. 
 I. The Laboratory. 
 II. The Confessional. 
 The Flight of the Duchess. 
 Earth's Immortalities. 
 Song. 
 
 The Boy and the Angel. 
 Night and Morning. 
 Claret and Tokay. 
 Saul. 
 
 Time's Revenges. 
 The Glove. 
 Luria. 1 
 
 A Soul's Tragedy. J 
 
 (Bells and Pomegranates, 
 No. VIII.) . . . 1S46 
 Christmas-Eve and Easter- 
 Day .... 1850 
 Introductory Essay to Let- 
 ters of Percy Bysshe 
 Shelley .... 1852 
 Men and Women . . 1855 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 Love among the Ruins. 
 A Lover's Quarrel. 
 Evelyn Hope. 
 Up at a Villa— Down in 
 
 the City. 
 A Woman's Last Word. 
 Fra Lippo Lippi. 
 A Toccata of Galuppi's. 
 By the Fireside. 
 
 Any Wife to any Husband. 
 
 An Epistle of Karshish. 
 
 Mesmerism. 
 
 A Serenade at the Villa. 
 
 My Star. 
 
 Instans Tyrannus. 
 
 A Pretty Woman. 
 
 "Childe Roland to the 
 Dark Tower came." 
 
 Respectability. 
 
 A Light Woman. 
 
 The Statue and the Bust. 
 
 Love in a Life. 
 
 Life in a Love. 
 
 How it strikes a Contem- 
 porary. 
 
 The Last Ride Together. 
 
 The Patriot. 
 
 Master Hugues of Saxe- 
 Gotha. 
 
 Bishop Blougram's Apology. 
 
 Memorabilia. 
 
 Vol. II. 
 
 Andrea del Sarto. 
 
 Before. 
 
 After. 
 
 In Three Days. 
 
 In a Year. 
 
 Old Pictures in Florence. 
 
 In a Balcony. 
 
 Saul. 
 
 " De Gustibus " 
 
 Women and Roses. 
 Protus. 
 
 Holy-Cross Day. 
 The Guardian-Angel. 
 Cleon. 
 The Twins. 
 Popularity. 
 
 The Heretic's Tragedy. 
 Two in the Campagna. 
 A Grammarian's Funeral. 
 One Way of Love. 
 Another Way of Love. 
 " Transcendentalism." 
 Misconceptions. 
 One Word More. 
 Dramatis Personaj 
 James Lee. 
 Gold Hair. 
 The Worst of It. 
 Dis Aliter Visum. 
 Too Late. 
 Abt Vogler. 
 Rabbi Ben Ezra. "- 
 A Death in tin- Desert; 
 Caliban upon Setebos. 
 Confessions. 
 May and Death. 
 Prospice. 
 
 1SG4
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 xxi 
 
 Youth and Art. 
 A Face. 
 A Likeness. 
 Mr. Sludge. 
 Apparent Failure. 
 Epilogue. 
 The Ring and the Book 
 Balaustion's Adventure 
 Prince Hohenstiel-Schwan- 
 
 gau . 
 Fitine at the Fair 
 Red Cotton Night-Cap 
 
 Country 
 Aristophanes' Apology 
 The Inn Album 
 Pacchiarotto, and other 
 Poems . 
 Prologue. 
 Of Pacchiarotto. 
 At the " Mermaid." 
 House. 
 
 Shop. , _ 
 
 Pisgah Sights, I. and II. 
 Fears and Scruples. 
 Natural Magic. 
 Magical Nature. 
 Bifurcation. 
 Numpholeptos. 
 Appearances. 
 St. Martin's Summer. 
 Herv(§ Riel. (Reprinted 
 from Cornhill Magazine, 
 March 1871.) 
 A Forgiveness. 
 Cenciaja. 
 
 Filippo Baldinucci. 
 Epilogue. 
 The Agamemnon of iEschy 
 
 lus . 
 
 La Saisiaz . . • m > 
 The Two Poets of Croisic 
 
 Dramatic Idyls . 
 
 Series I. 
 Martin Relph. 
 Pheidippides. 
 Balbertand Hob. 
 Ivan Ivknovitch. 
 Tray. 
 Ned Bratts. 
 
 Series II. 
 Proem. 
 EchetlOB. 
 ( live. 
 Muleykeh. 
 Pietro of Abano. 
 
 Doctor 
 
 Pan and Luna. 
 
 1868-69 
 . 1S71 
 
 1871 
 
 1872 
 
 1873 
 1875 
 
 1875 
 
 1876 
 
 1SS3 
 
 1877 
 ■ "j-1878 
 
 1879-80 
 
 Epilogue. 
 Jocoseria . 
 
 Wanting is— What? 
 
 Donald. 
 
 Solomon and Balkis. 
 
 Cristina and Monaldeschi. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft and 
 Fuseli. 
 
 Adam, Lilith, and Eve. 
 
 Ixion. 
 
 Jochanan Hakkadosh. 
 
 Never the Time and the 
 Place. 
 
 Pambo. 
 Ferisbtah's Fancies . • 1884 
 
 Prologue. 
 
 Ferisbtah's Fancies : 
 
 1. The Eagle. 
 
 2. Melon-Seller. 
 
 3. Shah Abbas. 
 
 4. The Family. 
 
 5. The Sun. 
 
 6. Mihrab Shah. 
 
 7. A Camel-Driver. 
 
 8. Two Camels. 
 
 9. Cherries. 
 
 10. Plot-Culture. 
 
 11. A Pillar at Sebzevah. 
 
 12. A Bean-stripe ; also 
 Apple-Eating. 
 Epilogue. 
 
 Parleyings with Certain 
 
 People . 1887 
 
 Apollo and the Fates— a 
 Prologue. 
 I. With Bernard de 
 
 Mandeville. 
 II With Daniel Bartoli. 
 
 III. With Christopher 
 
 Smart. 
 
 IV. With George Bubb 
 
 Dodington. 
 
 V. With Francis Funni 
 
 VI. With Gerard de Lair- 
 
 esse. 
 VII. With Charles Avison. 
 Fust and his Friends— an 
 Epilogue. 
 Asolando . . ■ 18J0 
 
 Prologue. 
 Rosny. 
 Dubiety. 
 
 Humility. 
 
 Poetics. 
 
 Summnm I'.onum. 
 
 A Pearl, aGirL 
 
 Speculative. 
 
 w hite Witchcraft, 
 
 Bad Dreams.
 
 XX11 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Inapprehensiveness. 
 
 Which? 
 
 The Cardinal and the Dog. 
 
 The Pope and the Net. 
 
 The Bean-Feast. 
 
 Muckle-mouth Meg, 
 
 Arcades Ambo. 
 
 The Lady and the Painter. 
 
 Ponte dell' Angelo, Venice. 
 
 Beatrice Signorini. 
 Flute-music, with an 
 
 Accompaniment. 
 " Imperante Augusto 
 
 natus est " 
 
 Development. 
 Rephan. 
 Reverie. 
 Epilogue 
 
 
 
 Printed by Walter Scoytf, Felling, A'ewcastle-on-Tync 
 
 22\
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Bwnaijy! 
 
 
 
 
 VJ* 
 
 
 
 MAY 
 
 K E C E ! 
 
 AIM i.OAN 
 
 MAY *8 1936 
 
 a.;/i. 
 
 Fo||i L9-37m-3,'57(C5424s4)444 
 
 |JL OCT 061981 
 
 Y £ 3 
 DESK 
 
 P.M. 
 
 

 
 3 1158 00928 19 
 
 uc 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 366 216 o