Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. LIFE OF THE POET, AND HISTORY OF HIS WRITINGS,
PERIODS
OF WORK, AND GROWTH OF ART. It is matter of commonplace that the life of a man of letters is to be found in the history of his writings rather than in the events of his life; and yet the facts of a writer’s life are helpful always, often essential, in the study of his writings. If the inward experience be more than all outward circumstances, yet those circumstances have relations often close, always suggestive, to that experience. In the case of Robert Browning, the
facts
of the life are neither numerous nor striking. Rather may it be said, looking to what is known of the poet’s life, that if quiet events and a settled yet free way of life make happiness, then Browning has had such. Born May 7, 1S12, in London, the year of Childe Harold, the year before
Queen Mab, he was being educated, for the most part privately, during those years when Byron, Shelley, and Keats were making their best work, and closing those careers that in eachcase ended so early. When our poet was in his seventh year,
Don Juan
and
The Cenci
were published, and in his ninth year the
Adonais
was printed at Pisa. Keats died in 1820, Shelley in 1822, and Byron in 1824, so that by the time Browning was twelve, these poets of our century’s first years had all passed away. The poet, it would seem, showed very early a bent towards literature?had
a volume of verses
made in the year of Byron’s death, and under influence of Byron; so Mr. Gosse has told us. Next year he came on part of Shelley, and was so struck by what he had found, that he sought out the poet’s publisher and got the rest of his works. Keats was also got, at the suggestion of Mr. Oilier, and it was a true test of the poetic sensibility of young…