INTRODUCTION BROWNING'S LIFE His ROBERT BROWNING was born at Camberwell, a suburb of London, May 7, 1812. His father, also Robert Browning, was a clerk in the Bank of England, and had married Sarah Anne Wiedermann, the daughter of a German shipowner, settled in Scotland. This elder Robert Browning had been sent as a young man by his father to manage an estate in the West Indies, but such was his hatred of slavery that he relinquished his employment, quarrelled with his father, and returned to England to live by his own resources. position in the Bank of England gave him a moderate income, and he generously left his son free to choose the most unremunerative of professions. As the poet recorded gratefully after his father's death: "He secured for me all the ease and comfort that a literary man needs to do good work." The elder Browning was himself something of a poet, an artist, a student of classical literature, and a great explorer among curious books; but above all he was a man of high principle, pure character, and sympathetic and cheerful temperament. Mrs. Browning, the poet's mother, was described by Carlyle as "the true type of Scottish gentlewoman." She was possessed at the same time of a deep and simple piety and of an artistic nature which found expression in music and drawing. She was a lover of dumb animals, a trait which her son shared, as is shown in his poetry by countless passages of keen, kindly observation. |