and religion provided a framework of
decorous routine within which these kindly and beautiful souls moved
with entire content. Well-to-do Camberwell perhaps contained few homes
so pure and refined; but it must have held many in which the life-blood
of political and social interests throbbed more vigorously, and where
thought and conversation were in closer touch with the intellectual life
of the capital and the larger movements of the time. Nothing in
Browning's boyhood tended to open his imagination to the sense of
citizenship and nationality which the imperial pageants and ceremonies
of Frankfurt so early kindled in the child Goethe. But within the limits
imposed by this quiet home young Robert soon began to display a vigour
and enterprise which tried all its resources. "He clamoured for
occupation from the moment he could speak," and "something to do" meant
above all some living thing to be caught for him to play with. The gift
of an animal was found a valuable aid to negotiations with the young
despot; when medicine was to be taken, he would name "a speckled frog"
as the price of his compliance, and presently his mother would be seen
hovering hither and thither among the strawberry-beds. A quaint
menagerie was gradually assembled: owls and monkeys, magpies and
hedgehogs, an eagle and snakes. Boy-collectors are often cruel; but
Robert showed from the first an anxious tenderness and an eager care for
life: we hear of a hurt cat brought home to be nursed, of ladybirds
picked up in the depths of winter and preserved with wondering delight
at their survival. Even in stories the death of animals moved him to
bitter tears. He was equally quick at books, and soon outdistanced his
companions at the elementary schools which he attended up to his
fourteenth year. Near at hand, too, was the Dulwich Gallery,--"a green
half-hour's walk across the fields,"--a beloved haunt of his childhood,
to which he never ceased to be grateful.[3] But his father's overflowing
library and portfolios played the chief part in his early development.
He read voraciously, and apparently without restraint or control. The
letters of Junius and of Horace Walpole were familiar to him "in
boyhood," we are assured with provoking indefiniteness by Mrs Orr; as
well as "all the works of Voltaire." Most to his mind, however, was the
rich sinewy English and athletic fancy of the seventeenth-century
Fantastic Quarles; a preference which foreshadowed his later deli