same period were the births of Freiligrath, Gutzkow, and Auerbach,
respectively one of the most lyrical poets, the most potent dramatist,
the most charming romancer of Germany: and, also, in France, of
Theophile Gautier and Alfred de Musset. Among representatives of the
other arts--with two of which Browning must ever be closely
associated--Mendelssohn and Chopin were born in 1809, and Schumann,
Liszt, and Wagner within the four succeeding years: within which space
also came Diaz and Meissonier and the great Millet. Other high names
there are upon the front of the century. Macaulay, Cardinal Newman, John
Stuart Mill (one of the earliest, by the way, to recognise the genius of
Browning), Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Ampere, Quinet,
Prosper Merimee, Sainte-Beuve, Strauss, Montalembert, are among the
laurel-bearers who came into existence betwixt 1800 and 1812.

When Robert Browning was born in London in 1812, Sheridan had still four
years to live; Jeremy Bentham was at the height of his contemporary
reputation, and Godwin was writing glibly of the virtues of humanity and
practising the opposite qualities, while Crabbe was looked upon as one
of the foremost of living poets. Wordsworth was then forty, Sir Walter
Scott forty-one, Coleridge forty-two, Walter Savage Landor and Charles
Lamb each in his forty-fifth year. Byron was four-and-twenty, Shelley
not yet quite of age, two radically different men, Keats and Carlyle,
both youths of seventeen. Abroad, Laplace was in his maturity, with
fifteen years more yet to live; Joubert with twelve; Goethe, with
twenty; Lamarck, the Schlegels, Cuvier, Chateaubriand, Hegel, Niebuehr
(to specify some leading names only), had many years of work before
them. Schopenhauer was only four-and-twenty, while Beranger was
thirty-two. The Polish poet Mickiewicz was a boy of fourteen, and
Poushkin was but a twelvemonth older; Heine, a lad of twelve, was
already enamoured of the great Napoleonic legend. The foremost literary
critic of the century was running about the sands of Boulogne, or
perhaps wandering often along the ramparts of the old town,
introspective even then, with something of that rare and insatiable
curiosity which we all now recognise as so distinctive of Sainte-Beuve.
Again, the greatest creative literary artist of the century, in prose at
any rate, was leading an apparently somewhat indolent schoolboy life at
Tours, undreamful yet of enormous debts, colossal underta