Life. Browning portrays so many different human types as to make us marvel, but we may partly understand his wide range of character-studies by remembering he was an Englishman with some Celtic and German ancestors, and with a trace of Creole (SpanishNegro) blood. He was born and grew up at Camberwell, a suburb of London, and the early home of Ruskin. His father was a Bank-ofEngland clerk, a prosperous man and fond of books, who encouraged his boy to read and to let education follow the lead of fancy. Before Browning was twenty years old, father and son had a serious tall. which ended in a kind of bargain: the boy was to live a life of culture, and the father was to take care of all financial matters, -an arrangement which suited them both very well.

Since boyhood Browning had been writing romantic verses, influenced first by Byron, then by Shelley, then by Keats. His first published works, Pauline and Paracelsus, were what he called soulstudies, the one of a visionary, "a star-treader" (its hero was Shelley), the other of a medieval astrologer somewhat like

ROBERT BROWNING

Faust. These two works, if one had the patience of a puzzle-worker to read them, would be found typical of all the longer poems that Browning produced in his sixty years of writing.

These early works were not read, were not even criticized; and it was not till 1846 that Browning became famous, not because of his books but because he eloped with Elizabeth Barrett, who was then the most popular poet in England. The two went to Florence,

1 The fame of Miss Barrett in mid-century was above that of Tennyson or Browning. She had been for a long time an invalid. Her father, a tyrannical kind of person, insisted on her keeping her room, and expected her to die properly there. He had no personal objection to Browning, but flouted the idea of his famous daughter marrying with anybody.

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discovered that they were made for each other," and in mutual helpfulness did their best work. They lived at " Casa Guidi," a house made famous by the fact that Browning's Men and Women and Mrs. Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese were written there.

This happy period of work was broken by Mrs. Browning's death in 1861. Browning returned to England with his son, and to forget The Brown- his loss he labored with unusual care on The Ring and ing Cult the Book (1868), his bulkiest work. The rest of his life was spent largely in London and in Venice. Fame came to him tardily, and with some unfortunate results. He became known as a poet to

be likened unto Shakespeare, but more analytical, calling for a superior intelligence on the part of his readers; and presently a multitude of Browning clubs sprang up in England and America. Delighted with his popularity among the elect, Browning seems to have cultivated his talent for obscurity; or it may be that his natural eccen

tricity of style increased with age, as did Wordsworth's prosiness.
Whatever the cause, his work grew steadily worse until a succession
of grammar-defying volumes threatened to separate all but a few
devotees from their love of Browning. He died in Venice in 1889.
On the day of his death appeared in London his last book, Asolando.
The "Epilogue" to that volume is a splendid finale to a robust life:
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.

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Tennyson's Crossing the Bar" is a beautiful swan song; but Browning's last poem is a bugle call, and it sounds not the "reveille."

taps" but

Browning's Dramatic Quality. Nearly all the works of Browning are dramatic in spirit, and are commonly dramatic also in form. Sometimes he writes a drama for the stage, such as A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, Colombe's Birthday and In a Balcony, dramas without much action, but packed with thought in a way that would have delighted the Schoolmen. More often his work takes the form of a dramatic monologue, such as "My Last Duchess" and "The Bishop Orders his Tomb," in which one person speaks and, like Peter, his speech bewrayeth him; for he reveals very plainly the kind of man he is. Occasionally Browning tries to sing like another poet, but even here his dramatic instinct is strong. He takes some crisis, some unexpected meeting or parting of the ways of life, and proceeds to show the hero's character by the way he faces the situation, or talks about it. So when he attempts even a love song, such as "The Last Ride Together," or a ballad, such as "The Pied Piper," he regards his subject from an unusual viewpoint and produces what he calls a dramatic lyric. There are at least two ways in which Browning's work differs from that of other dramatists. When a trained playwright produces a drama his rule is, "Action, more action, Thought and still more action." Moreover, he stands aside in crder to permit his characters to reveal their quality by their own speech or action. For example, Shakespeare's plays are filled with movement, and he never tells you what he thinks of Portia or Rosalind or Macbeth, or what ought to become of them. He does not need to tell. But Browning often halts his story to inform you how this or that situation should be met, or what must come out of it. His theory is that it is not action but thought which determines human character; for a man may be doing what appears to be a brave or generous deed, yet be craven or selfish at heart; or he may be engaged in some

Action vs.

E

apparently sinful proceeding in obedience to a motive that we would acclaim as noble if the whole truth were known. "It is the soul and its thoughts that make the man," says Browning; "little else is worthy of study." So he calls most of his works soul-studies. If we label them now dramas, or dramatic monologues, or dramatic lyrics (the three classifications of his works), we are to remember that Browning is the one dramatist who

IN VENICE

deals with thoughts

or motives rather than with action.

What to Read.

One should begin with the simplest of Browning's works, and preferably with those in which he shows some regard for verbal melody. As romantic love is his favorite theme, it is perhaps well to begin with a few of the love lyrics: "My Star," "By the Fireside,' Evelyn Hope," and espe

cially "The Last Ride Together." To these may be added some of the songs that brighten the obscurity of his longer pieces, such as "I Send my Heart," "Oh Love - No Love" and "There's a Woman Like a Dewdrop." Next in order are the ballads, "The Pied Piper," "Hervé Riel" and "How they Brought the Good News"; and then a few miscellaneous short poems, such as "Home Thoughts from Abroad," "Prospice," "The Boy and the Angel" and "Up at a Villa - Down in the City."

The above poems are named not because they are particularly fine examples of their kind, but by way of introduction to Dramatic a poet who is rather hard to read. When these are Monologues known, and are found not so obscure as we feared, then will be the time to attempt some of Browning's dramatic monologues. Of these there is a large variety, portraying many different types of character, but we shall name only a few. "Andrea del Sarto" is a study of the great Italian painter, "the perfect painter," whose love for a pretty but shallow woman was as a millstone about his neck. "My Last Duchess" is a powerfully drawn outline of a vain and selfish nobleman. "Abt Vogler" is a study of the soul of a musician. "Rabbi ben Ezra," one of the most typical of Browning's works, is the word of an old man who faces death, as he had faced life, with magnificent courage. "An Epistle" relates the strange experience of Karshish, an Arab physician, as recorded in a letter to his master Abib. Karshish meets Lazarus (him who was raised from the dead) and, regarding him as a patient, describes his symptoms, such symptoms as a man might have who must live on earth after having looked on heaven. The physician's half-scoffing words show how his habitual skepticism is shaken by a glimpse of the unseen world. He concludes, but his doubt is stronger than his conclusion, that Lazarus must be a madman:

Saul

"And thou must love me who have died for thee."
The madman saith He said so: it is strange!

Another poem belonging to the same group (published under the general title of Men and Women) is "Saul," which finely illustrates the method that makes Browning different from other poets. He would select some familiar event, the brief record of which is preserved in history, and say, "Here we see merely the deed, the outward act or circumstance of life: now let us get acquainted with these men or women by showing that they thought and felt precisely as