If there be a more foolish cry than that poetry is on the wane, it is
that the great days had passed away even before Robert Browning and
Alfred Tennyson were born. The way was prepared for Browning, as it was
for Shakspere: as it is, beyond doubt, for the next high peer of these.

There were 'Roberts' among the sons of the Browning family for at least
four generations. It has been affirmed, on disputable authority, that
the surname is the English equivalent for Bruning, and that the family
is of Teutonic origin. Possibly: but this origin is too remote to be of
any practical concern. Browning himself, it may be added, told Mr.
Moncure Conway that the original name was De Bruni. It is not a matter
of much importance: the poet was, personally and to a great extent in
his genius, Anglo-Saxon. Though there are plausible grounds for the
assumption. I can find nothing to substantiate the common assertion
that, immediately, or remotely, his people were Jews.[1]

[Footnote 1: Fairly conclusive evidence to the contrary, on the paternal
side, is afforded in the fact that, in 1757, the poet's
great-grandfather gave one of his sons the baptismal name of Christian.
Dr. Furnivall's latest researches prove that there is absolutely "no
ground for supposing the presence of any Jewish blood in the poet's
veins."]

As to Browning's physiognomy and personal traits, this much may be
granted: if those who knew him were told he was a Jew they would not be
much surprised. In his exuberant vitality, in his sensuous love of music
and the other arts, in his combined imaginativeness and shrewdness of
common sense, in his superficial expansiveness and actual reticence, he
would have been typical enough of the potent and artistic race for whom