with liquid light every narrow street and passage, contrasting sharply
with the dense black shadows. Browning had a love of the sky that made its
glorious panorama one of the delights of his life.

One of the crowning honors of the poet's life invested these days for him
with renewed vitality of interest,--that of the formation of the Browning
Society in London for the study and promulgation of his poetic work. This
was, indeed, a contrast to the public attitude of thirty years before.
Once, in a letter to Mrs. Millais (dated January 7, 1867) he had described
himself to her as "the most unpopular poet that ever was." The Browning
Society was due, in its first inception, to Dr. Furnivall and to Miss
Emily Hickey, and its founding was entirely without Browning's knowledge.
Although the poet avowed himself as "quite other than a Browningite," he
could not fail to be touched and gratified by such a mark of interest and
appreciation.

Dr. Hiram Corson, Professor of Literature at Cornell University, had,
however, formed a Browning Club, composed of professors and their wives
and many eminent scholars, some four or five years before the formation of
the Browning Society in London, and the notable Browning readings which
Professor Corson had given continually in many of the large cities and
before universities, had been of incalculable aid in making Robert
Browning's poetry known and understood in the United States. As an
interpreter of Browning, Dr. Corson stood unrivaled. His aim was to give
to his audience the spiritual meaning of the poem read. His rich voice had
the choral intonation without which no poem can be vocally interpreted.
His reading gave not only the articulated thought, but the spiritual
message of the poet. It is hardly too much to say that no one has ever
fully realized the dramatic power of Browning who has not listened to the
interpretation of Dr. Corson. Of his own part in the creation of the
Browning Society in London, Dr. Corson kindly contributed this record:

"I was stopping with my wife at the Inns of Court Hotel, on High
Holborn. A day or two before receiving Mr. Browning's invitation, Dr.
Frederick James Furnivall dined with us, and after dinner we went over
to the Inns of Court Gardens, just back of the hotel. There we walked
about during the long evening twilight, and talked over the founding
of a Society which Dr. Furnivall and Miss Emily Henriette Hickey, the
poete