Browning's early tastes in the realm of poetry were, on the whole, romantic. "Now here is the truth," he wrote to Miss Barrett, "the first book I ever bought in my life was Ossian—and years before that the first composition I ever was guilty of was something in imitation of Ossian whom I had not read, but conceived, through two or three scraps in other books." But the decisive literary influence was yet to come. When he was fourteen he happened to see on a bookstall a volume marked, "Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poem. Very Scarce"; and he at once wished to know more of this Mr. Shelley. After a perplexing search his mother found the desired poems, most of them in first editions, at the Olliers, Vere Street, London. She took home also three volumes by another poet, John Keats, who, she was told, was the subject of an elegy by Shelley. Browning never forgot the May evening when he first read these new books, to the accompaniment, he said, of two nightingales, one in a copper-beech, one in a laburnum, each striving to outdo the other in melody. A new imaginative world was opened to the boy. In Memorabilia he afterwards recorded the strong intellectual and emotional excitement, the thrill and ecstasy of this poetical experience. To Shelley especially did he give immediate and fervid personal loyalty, even to the extent of endeavoring to follow him in "atheism" and vegetarianism.
When at fourteen the boy left Mr. Ready's school it was decided that his further education should be carried on at home under private tutors. He studied music under able masters, one in thorough-bass, and one in execution. He played and sang, and he composed spirited settings for songs. He read voraciously. He took lessons in dancing, riding, boxing, and fencing, and is said to have shown himself exceptionally active and vigorous. He kept up his interest in art, and he practiced drawing from casts. He found time also for various friendships. For Miss Eliza and Miss Sarah Flower, two sisters, nine and seven years his senior, he had a deep affection. Both young ladies were gifted in music, and this was one source of their attractions for the music-loving boy. Miss Sarah Flower wrote sacred hymns, the best known of which is "Nearer my God to Thee," and her sister composed music which Browning, even in his mature years, ranked as of especial significance. Other friends of this period were Joseph Arnold, afterwards Chief Justice of Bombay, and a man of great ability; Alfred Domett, a striking and interesting personality described by Browning in a poem beginning "What's Become of Waring," and referred to in "[The Guardian Angel]"; and the three Silverthorne boys, his cousins, the death of one of whom was the occasion of the poem "[May and Death]."
In spite of friends, a beautiful home, and congenial work, this period of home tutelage does not seem to have been altogether happy. His sister in commenting on this period said, "The fact was, poor boy, he had outgrown his social surroundings. They were absolutely good, but they were narrow; it could not be otherwise; he chafed under them." Furthermore, the youth, before he had found his real work as a poet, was restless, irritable, and opinionated; and an ever-present cause of friction was the fact that there were few subjects of taste on which he and his father did not disagree. Their poetic tastes were especially at variance. The father counted Pope supreme in poetry, and it was many years before he could take pleasure in the form in which his son's genius expressed itself. All the more noteworthy, then, is the generosity with which Mr. Browning looked after his son's interests through the unprofitable early years of his poetic career, a generosity never lost sight of by the son. Mr. Sharp in his Life of Browning records some words uttered by Mr. Browning a week or two before his death, which show how permanent was his sense of indebtedness to his father. "It would have been quite unpardonable in my case," he said, "not to have done my best. My dear father put me in a condition most favorable 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.... He secured for me all the care and comfort that a literary man needs to do good work. It would have been shameful if I had not done my best to realize his expectations of me."
After it was determined that Robert should "commence poet," he and his father came to the conclusion that a university training had many elements foreign to the aim the youth had set before him, and that a richer and more directly available preparation could be gained from "sedulous cultivation of the powers of his mind" at home, and from "seeing life in the best sense" at home and abroad. Mrs. Orr tells us that the first qualifying step of the zealous young poet was to read and digest the whole of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary.
Browning's first published poem, Pauline, appeared anonymously in January, 1833, when he was twenty years old. This poem is of especial autobiographical interest. Its enthusiastic praise of Shelley recalls his early devotion to that poet, and in many scattered passages we find references to his own personality or experiences. The following lines show with what intensity he recreated the lives and scenes in the books he read:
And I myself went with the tale—a god
Wandering after beauty, or a giant
Standing vast in the sunset—an old hunter
Talking with gods, or a high-crested chief
Sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos.
I tell you, naught has ever been so clear
As the place, the time, the fashion of those lives:
I had not seen a 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.
There is true and powerful self-analysis in the lines beginning:
I am made up of an intensest life;
and the invocation in lines 811-854 reveals the passionately religious nature of the young poet. In The Early Writings of Robert Browning[1] Mr. Gosse gives an account of the impression made by this poem upon men so diverse as the Rev. William Johnson Fox, John Stuart Mill, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, to all of whom, in spite of its crudities and very evident immaturity, it seemed a production of exceptional promise.
After an interval of two years Browning published, this time under his own name, a second long poem. The subject, Paracelsus, had been suggested by the friend, Amédeé de Ripert-Monclar, to whom the poem is dedicated. In pursuance of his purposed rehabilitation of a vanished age Browning made extensive researches in the British Museum into the history of Paracelsus, the great leader in sixteenth century medical science; but in the poem the facts are subordinated to a minute analysis of the spiritual history of Paracelsus. The poem was too abstruse in subject and style to bring Browning popularity, but his genius was recognized by important critics, and, though he was but twenty-three, he was admitted into the foremost literary circles of London. One of his most distinguished new friends was Mr. Macready, the great actor. It was at his house that Browning first met Mr. Forster, who had already written favorable critiques of Paracelsus, one for The Examiner and one for The New Monthly Magazine. Other literary associates of this period were Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, Sergeant Talfourd, Dickens, and Walter Savage Landor. There were not infrequent dinners and suppers to which the young poet was welcomed. He is described as being at this period singularly handsome. "He looks and acts," said Mr. Macready, "more like a youthful poet than any man I ever saw." He had sculpturesque masses of dark wavy hair, a skin like delicate ivory, deep-set, expressive eyes, and a sensitive mouth. He was slender, graceful, and most attractive in manner, and he was something of a dandy in his attention to dress. He is said to have made an especially good impression on one occasion when the circumstances must have been as trying as they were exhilarating. In May, 1836, a group of poets had assembled at Mr. Talfourd's to celebrate Macready's successful production of Talfourd's Ion. Browning sat opposite Macready, who was between Wordsworth and Landor. When Talfourd proposed a toast, "The Poets of England," he spoke in complimentary terms of Wordsworth and Landor, but called for a response from "the youngest of the Poets of England, the author of Paracelsus." Landor raised his cup to the young man, and Wordsworth shook hands with him across the table, saying, "I am proud to know you, Mr. Browning."