inated his imagination when he wrote of
Love; imbuing even God's love for the world with the joy of creation and
the rapture of embrace. Aprile's infinite love for things impelled him
to body them visibly forth. Deeper in Browning than his Christianity,
and prior to it, lay his sense of immeasurable worth in all life, the
poet's passion for being.

[Footnote 145: _Red-cotton Night-cap Country_.]

Browning's poetry is thus one of the most potent of the influences which
in the nineteenth century helped to break down the shallow and
mischievous distinction between the "sacred" and the "secular," and to
set in its place the profounder division between man enslaved by apathy,
routine, and mechanical morality, and man lifted by the law of love into
a service which is perfect freedom, into an approximation to God which
is only the fullest realisation of humanity.

INDEX.

Note--The names of the Persons are given in small capitals; titles of
literary works in _italics_; other names in ordinary type; *black figures*
indicate the more detailed references. Only the more important of the
incidental quotations are included. Poems are referred to only under
their authors' names.

AESCHYLUS, 215.
ALLINGHAM, W., 87.
American fame of Browning, 87.
ARISTOPHANES, 77, 207 f.
ARNOLD, M., 26.
Asolo, 27, 50, 220, 232.
_Athenaeum, The_, 172, 251.

BALZAC, 42, 49, 86, 117.
BARRETT, ELIZABETH. See Browning, E.B.
BARTOLI, his _Simboli_, 27.
BENCKHAUSEN, Russian Consul-General, 14.
BERANGER, 86.
BLAGDEN, ISA. See BROWNING, R., letters.
BRONSON, Mrs ARTHUR, 220, 231.
BRONTE, EMILY, her character "Heathcliff," 66.
BROWNING, ROBERT (grandfather), 2.
BROWNING, ROBERT (father), 3, 6, 18, 149 n., 173.
BROWNING, ROBERT,
cosmopolitan in sympathies, English by his art, 1, 2;
his birth, 3;
likeness to his mother, 4 n.;
character of his home, 5;
boyhood, 5, 6;
early sense of rhythm, 7;
reads Shelley, Keats, and Byron, 8 f.;
journey to St Petersburg, 14;
first voyage to Italy, 26 f.;
second voyage to Italy, 61;
correspondence with E.B. Barrett, 78;
marriage, 81;
settlement in Italy, 84;
friendships and society at Florence, 84 f.;
Italian politics, 88;
Italian scenery, 91;
Italian painting, 98 f.;
and music, 103 f.;
religion, 110 f.;
his interpretation of _In a Balcony_, 145 n.;
death of Mrs Browning, 147;
return to London, 148;
so