Sharp gives a pleasing picture of the
last years of his life: "Everybody wished him to come and dine; and he
did his utmost to gratify Everybody. He saw everything; read all the
notable books; kept himself acquainted with the leading contents of
the journals and magazines; conducted a large correspondence; read
new French, German, and Italian books of mark; read and translated
Euripides and AEschylus: knew all the gossip of the literary clubs,
salons, and the studios; was a frequenter of afternoon tea-parties;
and then, over and above it, he was Browning: the most profoundly
subtle mind that has exercised itself in poetry since Shakespeare."[1]

He died in Venice, on December 12, 1889, and was buried in the poet's
corner of Westminster Abbey.

[Footnote 1: Sharp's _Life of Browning_.]

BROWNING AS POET

The three generations of readers who have lived since Browning's first
publication have seen as many attitudes taken toward one of the ablest
poetic spirits of the century. To the first he appeared an enigma, a
writer hopelessly obscure, perhaps not even clear in his own mind,
as to the message he wished to deliver; to the second he appeared a
prophet and a philosopher, full of all wisdom and subtlety, too deep
for common mortals to fathom with line and plummet,--concealing below
green depths of ocean priceless gems of thought and feeling; to the
third, a poet full of inequalities in conception and expression, who
has done many good things well and has made many grave failures.

No poet in our generation has fared so ill at the hands of the
critics. Already the Browning library is large. Some of the criticism
is good; much of it, regarding the author as philosopher and
symbolist, is totally askew. Reams have been written in interpretation
of _Childe Roland_, an imaginative fantasy composed in one day.
Abstruse ideas have been wrested from the simple story of _My Last
Duchess_. His poetry has been the stamping-ground of theologians
and the centre of prattling literary circles. In this tortuous maze of
futile criticism the one thing lost sight of is the fact that a poet
must be judged by the standards of art. It must be confessed, however,
that Browning is himself to blame for much of the smoke of commentary
that has gathered round him. He has often chosen the oblique
expression where the direct would serve better; often interpolated
his own musing subtleties between the reader and the life he would
present; ofte