there were born their two children,
Robert, on May 7, 1812, and on January 7, 1814, Sarah Anna, who came to be
known as Sarianna through all her later life.

The poet's father was not only an efficient financier, but he was also a
man of scholarly culture and literary tastes. He was a lover of the
classics, and was said to have known by heart the first book of the Iliad,
and the Odes of Horace. There is a legend that he often soothed his little
son to sleep by humming to him an ode of Anacreon. He wrote verse, he was
a very clever draughtsman, and he was a collector of rare books and
prints. Mr. W. J. Stillman, in his "Autobiography of a Journalist," refers
to the elder Browning, whom he knew in his later years, as "a serene,
untroubled soul,... as gentle as a gentle woman, a man to whom, it seemed
to me, no moral conflict could ever have arisen to cloud his frank
acceptance of life as he found it come to him.... His unworldliness had
not a flaw." In Browning's poem entitled "Development" (in "Asolando") he
gives this picture of his father and of his own childhood:

"My Father was a scholar and knew Greek.
When I was five years old, I asked him once
'What do you read about?'
'The siege of Troy.'
'What is a siege, and what is Troy?'
Whereat
He piled up chairs and tables for a town,
Set me a-top for Priam, called our cat
--Helen, enticed away from home (he said)
By wicked Paris, who couched somewhere close
Under the footstool....

* * * * *

This taught me who was who and what was what;
So far I rightly understood the case
At five years old; a huge delight it proved
And still proves--thanks to that instructor sage
My Father...."

The poet's mother was a true gentlewoman, characterized by fervent
religious feeling, delicacy of perception, and a great love for music. She
was reared in the Scottish kirk, and her husband in the Church of
England, but they both connected themselves after their marriage with an
"Independent" body that held their meetings in York Street, where the
Robert Browning Hall now stands. They were, however, greatly attached to
the Rev. Henry Melvill (later Canon at St. Paul's), whose evening service
they habitually attended. While the poet's mother had little training in
music, she was a natural musician, and was blessed with that keen,
tremulous susceptibility to musica