| Introduction— | PAGE |
| I. The Life of Browning | [7] |
| II. The Poetry of Browning | [31] |
| Bibliography | [57] |
| Chronological Table | [60] |
| Selections from Browning— | |
| (The figures in parentheses refer to the pages of the Notes.) | |
| Songs from Paracelsus ([389]) | [65] |
| Cavalier Tunes ([391]) | [69] |
| The Lost Leader ([391]) | [72] |
| "How They Brought the Good News" ([392]) | [73] |
| The Flower's Name ([393]) | [76] |
| Meeting at Night ([393]) | [78] |
| Parting at Morning ([393]) | [78] |
| Evelyn Hope ([393]) | [78] |
| Love Among the Ruins ([394]) | [81] |
| Up at a Villa—Down in the City ([394]) | [84] |
| A Toccata of Galuppi's ([395]) | [88] |
| Old Pictures in Florence ([396]) | [91] |
| "De Gustibus—" ([399]) | [101] |
| Home-Thoughts, from Abroad ([399]) | [103] |
| Home-Thoughts, from the Sea ([400]) | [104] |
| Saul ([400]) | [105] |
| My Star ([402]) | [126] |
| Two in the Campagna ([403]) | [126] |
| In Three Days ([403]) | [129] |
| The Guardian-Angel ([403]) | [130] |
| Memorabilia ([404]) | [132] |
| Incident of the French Camp ([404]) | [133] |
| My Last Duchess ([404]) | [135] |
| The Boy and the Angel ([404]) | [137] |
| The Pied Piper of Hamelin ([404]) | [141] |
| The Flight of the Duchess ([405]) | [152] |
| A Grammarian's Funeral ([406]) | [183] |
| "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" ([407]) | [189] |
| How It Strikes a Contemporary ([409]) | [196] |
| Fra Lippo Lippi ([409]) | [200] |
| Andrea Del Sarto ([413]) | [213] |
| The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church ([414]) | [222] |
| Cleon ([416]) | [227] |
| One Word More ([417]) | [239] |
| Abt Vogler ([419]) | [247] |
| Rabbi Ben Ezra ([422]) | [253] |
| Caliban Upon Setebos ([423]) | [260] |
| May and Death ([425]) | [271] |
| Prospice ([425]) | [272] |
| A Face ([425]) | [273] |
| O Lyric Love ([425]) | [274] |
| Prologue to Pacchiarotto ([425]) | [275] |
| House ([426]) | [276] |
| Shop ([426]) | [278] |
| Hervé Riel ([426]) | [282] |
| Good to Forgive ([427]) | [289] |
| "Such a Starved Bank of Moss" ([427]) | [290] |
| Epilogue to the Two Poets of Croisic ([427]) | [290] |
| Pheidippides ([427]) | [295] |
| Muléykeh ([428]) | [302] |
| Wanting Is—What? ([428]) | [309] |
| Never the Time and the Place ([428]) | [310] |
| The Patriot ([429]) | [311] |
| Instans Tyrannus ([429]) | [312] |
| The Italian in England ([430]) | [315] |
| "Round Us the Wild Creatures" ([431]) | [321] |
| Prologue to Asolando ([431]) | [321] |
| Summum Bonum ([431]) | [323] |
| Epilogue to Asolando ([431]) | [324] |
| Pippa Passes ([431]) | [325] |
| Notes | [389] |
INTRODUCTION
THE LIFE OF BROWNING
Robert Browning, the poet, was the third of that name. The first Robert Browning, a man of energy and ability, held an important post in the Bank of England. His wife, Margaret Tittle, was a Creole from the West Indies, and at the time of her marriage her property was still in the estates owned by her father near St. Kitts. When their son, the second Robert, was seven years of age, his mother died, and his father afterwards married again. The second wife's ascendency over her husband was unfortunately exerted against the best interests of the son. His desire to become an artist, his wish for a university training, were disregarded, and he was sent instead to St. Kitts, where he was given employment on his mother's sugar plantations. The breach between Robert and his father became absolute when the boy defied local prejudice by teaching a negro to read, and when, because of what his father considered a sentimental objection to slavery, he finally refused to remain in the West Indies. The young man returned to England and at twenty-two started on an independent career as a clerk in the Bank of England. In 1811 he married Sarah Anne Wiedemann. They settled in Camberwell, London, where Robert, the poet, was born, May 7, 1812, and his sister Sarianna in 1814.
Browning's father was a competent official in the Bank and a successful business man, but his tastes were æsthetic and literary, and his leisure time was accordingly devoted to such pursuits as the collection of old books and manuscripts. He also read widely in both classic and modern literatures. The first book of the Iliad he knew by heart, and all the Odes of Horace, and he was accustomed to soothe his child to sleep by humming to him snatches of Anacreon to the tune of "A Cottage in the Wood." Mr. Browning had also considerable skill in two realms of art, for he drew vigorous portraits and caricatures, and he had, even according to his son's mature judgment, extraordinary force and facility in verse-making. In character he was serene, lovable, gentle, "tenderhearted to a fault." So instinctively chivalrous was he that there was "no service which the ugliest, oldest, crossest woman in the world might not have exacted of him." He was a man of great physical vigor, dying at the age of eighty-four without ever having been ill.
Browning's mother was the daughter of William Wiedemann, a German who had settled in Dundee and married a Scotch wife. Mrs. Browning impressed all who knew her by her sweetness and goodness. Carlyle spoke of her as "the true type of a Scottish gentlewoman"; her son's friend, Mr. Kenyon, said that such as she had no need to go to heaven, because they made it wherever they were; and her son called her "a divine woman." She had deep religious instincts and concerned herself particularly with her son's moral and spiritual development. The bond between them was always very strong, and when she died in 1849 his wife wrote, "He has loved his mother as such passionate natures can love, and I never saw a man so bowed down in an extremity of sorrow—never."
Robert Browning's childhood was passed in an unusually serene and happy home. In Development he tells how, at five years of age, he was made to understand the main facts of the Trojan War by his father's clever use of the cat, the dogs, the pony in the stable, and the page-boy, to impersonate the heroes of that ancient conflict. Latin declensions were taught the child by rhymes concocted by his father as memory-easing devices. Stories and even lessons were made intelligible and vivid by colored maps and comic drawings. Until the boy was fourteen, his schooling was of the most casual sort, his only formal training being such as he received in the comparatively unimportant three or four years he spent, after he was ten, at Mr. Ready's private school. His real education came, through all his early life, from his home. What would now be called nature-study he pursued ardently and on his own initiative in the home garden and neighboring fields. His love for animals was inherited from his mother and fostered by her. He used to keep, says Mrs. Orr in her account of his life, "owls and monkeys, magpies and hedge-hogs, an eagle, and even a couple of large snakes, constantly bringing home the more portable animals in his pockets and transferring them to his mother for immediate care." Browning says that his faculty of observation at this time would not have disgraced a Seminole Indian. In the matter of reading he was not entirely without advice and guidance, but was, on the whole, allowed unusual freedom of choice. He afterwards told Mrs. Orr that Milton, Quarles, Voltaire, Mandeville, and Horace Walpole were the authors in whom, as a boy, he particularly delighted. His love for art was established and developed by visits to the Dulwich picture gallery, of which he afterwards wrote to Miss Barrett with "love and gratitude" because he had been allowed to go there before the age prescribed by the rules, and had thus learned to know "a wonderful Rembrandt," a Watteau, "three triumphant Murillos," a Giorgione Music Lesson, and various Poussins. His marked early susceptibility to music is evidenced by an incident narrated by Mr. Sharp: "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 subsided, whispering with shy urgency: 'Play! Play!'"
In various ways the boy Robert was noticeably precocious. He could not remember a time, he said, when he did not rhyme, and his sister records that as a very little boy he used to walk around the table "spanning out on the smooth mahogany the scansion of verses he had composed." Some of these early lines he could recall and he could recall, too, the prodigious satisfaction with which he uttered them, especially the sentence he put into the mouth of a man who had just committed murder—"Now my soul is satisfied." At twelve he had a volume named Incondita ready for publication. To discerning eyes the little volume was a production of great promise, dominated though it was by the influence of his father's idol, Pope, and of his own temporary ruling deity, Byron. But a publisher was not found, and in later years, at Browning's request, the two extant manuscript copies of Incondita were destroyed, along with many others of his youthful poems that had been preserved by his father.