The Project Gutenberg EBook of Robert Browning, by Edward Dowden

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Robert Browning

Author: Edward Dowden

Release Date: July 5, 2004 [EBook #12817]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT BROWNING ***

Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Wilelmina Malliere and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.

THE TEMPLE BIOGRAPHIES

Edited by Dugald Macfadyen, M.A.

Robert Browning

[Illustration: _Robert Browning, from a portrait in oil, for which he
sat to R.W. Curtis at Venice 1880._]

ROBERT BROWNING

BY EDWARD DOWDEN

LITT.D., D.C.L., LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN

1904

If I, too, should try and speak at times,
Leading your love to where my love, perchance,
Climbed earlier, found a nest before you knew,
Why, bear with the poor climber, for love's sake.

--_Balaustion's Adventure_.

Editor's Preface

"In the case of those whom the public has learned to honour and admire,
there is a _biography of the mind_--the phrase is Mr Gladstone's--that
is a matter of deep interest." In a life of Robert Browning it is
especially true that the biography we want is of this nature, for its
events are to be classed rather among achievements of the human spirit
than as objective incidents, and its interest depends only in a
secondary sense on circumstance or movement in the public eye. The
special function of the present book in the growing library of Browning
literature is to give such a biography of Browning's mind, associating
his poems with their date and origin, as may throw some light on his
inward development. Browning has become to many, in a measure which he
could hardly have conceived possible himself, one of the authoritative
interpreters of the spiritual factors in human life. His tonic optimism
dissipates the grey atmosphere of materialism, which has obscured the
sunclad heights of life as effectually as a fog. To see life through
Browning's eyes is to see it shot through and through with spiritual
issues, with a background of eternal destiny; and to come appreciably
nearer than the general consciousness of our