grotesque is a queer psychological state of mind; the abnormal is an
extreme kind of individualism that is probably insane, provided the
opposite is sane.

What is important, as Chesterton feels, is that we shall get some
account of Browning's home. It is in the home that we can usually detect
the embryo of future activity. The germ, although sometimes hidden, is
nevertheless there, which is exactly why the commonplace home life of a
genius, before the public has discovered the fact, is interesting.

To quote our critic: 'Browning was a thoroughly typical Englishman of
the middle class,' and he remained so through his life.

But this middle-class Englishman walking through the streets of
Camberwell, as the boys played in the gutters, was Browning, not then
the master poet of the Victorian Era, but the young man who could 'pass
a bookstall and find no thrill in beholding on a placard the name of
Shelley.'

Browning found his early life in an age 'of inspired office boys,' an
age that emerged from the shadow of the French Revolution, that extreme
method of optimism which Chesterton believes no Englishman can
understand, not even Carlyle himself. It was an optimism that was so,
because it held that man was worthy of liberty, which is to say that no
man is by his nature ever meant to be a slave.

While Browning was living his daily life in Camberwell, Dickens was
existing in the blacking factory; yet again it was an age of the
beginning of intellectual giants.

The Chestertonian standpoint with regard to the early days of Browning
is interesting. It is a ready acknowledgment of the poetic instinct that
was being slowly but surely nurtured in the heart of the unknown young
man of Camberwell.

It is in this early period of his life that Browning attempts what
Chesterton rightly describes as the most difficult of literary
propositions, that of writing a good political play. This Browning
essayed to do, and wrote 'Strafford,' a play that dealt with that most
controversial part of history, the time when kings could be executed in
Whitehall under the shadow of their own Parliament.

For our critic, Strafford was one of the greatest men ever born with the
sacred name of England on his brow. The play was not a gigantic success,
it was not a failure; it was, as was to be expected, popular with a
limited public, which is very often one of the surest criterions of
merit in a book or play. The success of the play was sufficie