ROBERT BROWNING
From a portrait painted at Rome in 1859 by Field Talfourd.
BROWNING’S HOME, 1887-9
De Vere Gardens, Kensington, London, England.
Browning is not so broadly representative of the movement of the age. He gave dramatic expression to one aspect of its experience; but that aspect was of thrilling interest. Tennyson did not miss the significance of individual impulse; but he saw men in ordered ranks, in social relations. He felt and expressed the collective experience of his age. Browning felt and expressed the experience of individual souls, of “Paracelsus,” “Luria.” He is the interpreter of exceptional experiences and natures, of “Abt Vogler,” Andrea del Sarto, the Renaissance Bishop.
He knew secrets of great and mean souls, of Pompilia and the Pope, of “Half Rome” and Caponsacchi (kah´´-pahn-sock´-kee), in “The Ring and the Book,” of “The Patriot,” and of the husband of “The Last Duchess.” He was a psychologist of penetrating intelligence, and his passion for analysis and dealing with problems sometimes ran away with him, to use a colloquialism; hence the perplexities which beset the student of some of his work and the organization of clubs to interpret him.
THE PALACE IN VENICE WHERE BROWNING DIED