rmal public speaking, and in
1877 he had to decline on similar grounds the similar offer from the
University of St. Andrews. He was much at the English universities,
was a friend of Dr. Jowett, and enjoyed the university life at the age
of sixty-three in a way that he probably would not have enjoyed it if
he had ever been to a university. The great universities would not let
him alone, to their great credit, and he became a D.C.L. of Cambridge
in 1879, and a D.C.L. of Oxford in 1882. When he received these
honours there were, of course, the traditional buffooneries of the
undergraduates, and one of them dropped a red cotton night-cap neatly
on his head as he passed under the gallery. Some indignant
intellectuals wrote to him to protest against this affront, but
Browning took the matter in the best and most characteristic way. "You
are far too hard," he wrote in answer, "on the very harmless
drolleries of the young men. Indeed, there used to be a regularly
appointed jester, 'Filius Terrae' he was called, whose business it was
to gibe and jeer at the honoured ones by way of reminder that all
human glories are merely gilded baubles and must not be fancied
metal." In this there are other and deeper things characteristic of
Browning besides his learning and humour. In discussing anything, he
must always fall back upon great speculative and eternal ideas. Even
in the tomfoolery of a horde of undergraduates he can only see a
symbol of the ancient office of ridicule in the scheme of morals. The
young men themselves were probably unaware that they were the
representatives of the "Filius Terrae."

But the years during which Browning was thus reaping some of his late
laurels began to be filled with incidents that reminded him how the
years were passing over him. On June 20, 1866, his father had died, a
man of whom it is impossible to think without a certain emotion, a man
who had lived quietly and persistently for others, to whom Browning
owed more than it is easy to guess, to whom we in all probability
mainly owe Browning. In 1868 one of his closest friends, Arabella
Barrett, the sister of his wife, died, as her sister had done, alone
with Browning. Browning was not a superstitious man; he somewhat
stormily prided himself on the contrary; but he notes at this time "a
dream which Arabella had of Her, in which she prophesied their meeting
in five years," that is, of course, the meeting of Elizabeth and
Arabella. His friend Milsand