It was in this house, surrounded by all the beauties of Venice, that the poet breathed his last on December 12, 1889.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
From a portrait painted at Rome in 1859 by Field Talfourd.
Browning was often a very effective artist; but he was often very indifferent to form, and there are long productions of his which are intensely interesting but are not in any proper sense poetry. Time will separate the experiments in psychology from the achievements in art, and there will remain a body of poetry which appeals powerfully to men and women of intellectual interests and habits; a poetry notable for its reading of the secrets of individuality, its splendid optimism based on faith in the individual soul and in the purpose and power behind the universe, in the sense of freedom to take and use life daringly, in the impulse to action and spiritual venture, for its bold imagery and strong phrasing. Such poems as “Prospice,” “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” are not only impressive poetry, but have the note of the bugle in them.
MRS. BROWNING’S TOMB IN FLORENCE, ITALY
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was herself a poet of exceptional genius; she was born in 1806, married to Robert Browning in 1846, and died in 1861.
SUPPLEMENTARY READING.—“Life of Wordsworth,” Professor Knight; “Wordsworth,” F. W. H. Myers (English Men of Letters Series); “Life of Shelley,” Medwin; “Shelley,” J. Addington Symonds (English Men of Letters Series); “Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats,” Richard Monckton Milnes; “The Works of Lord Byron, with His Letters and Journals and His Life,” Thomas Moore (17 volumes); “The Real Lord Byron,” J. C. Jeafferson (2 volumes); “The Life and Letters of Browning,” Mrs. Sutherland Orr; “Browning,” G. K. Chesterton (English Men of Letters Series); “Alfred, Lord Tennyson: a Memoir,” Hallam, Second Baron Tennyson; “The Life of Lord Tennyson,” G. C. Benson.