said to represent waves of the sea, were added to his coat of arms. It
is certainly a point of some importance in the evidence, as has been
indicated, that these arms were displayed by the gallant Captain
Micaiah, and are borne by the present family. That the poet was a
pure-bred Englishman in the strictest sense, however, as has commonly
been asserted, is not the case. His mother was Scottish, through her
mother and by birth, but her father was the son of a German from
Hamburg, named Wiedemann, who, by the way, in connection with his
relationship as maternal grandfather to the poet, it is interesting to
note, was an accomplished draughtsman and musician.[2] Browning's
paternal grandmother, again, was a Creole. As Mrs. Orr remarks, this
pedigree throws a valuable light on the vigour and variety of the poet's
genius. Possibly the main current of his ancestry is as little strictly
English as German. A friend sends me the following paragraph from a
Scottish paper:--"What of the Scottish Brownings? I had it long ago from
one of the name that the Brownings came originally from Ayrshire, and
that several families of them emigrated to the North of Ireland during
the times of the Covenanters. There is, moreover, a small town or
village in the North of Ireland called Browningstown. Might not the poet
be related to these Scottish Brownings?"

[Footnote 2: It has frequently been stated that Browning's maternal
grandfather, Mr. Wiedemann, was a Jew. Mr. Wiedemann, the son of a
Hamburg merchant, was a small shipowner in Dundee. Had he, or his
father, been Semitic, he would not have baptised one of his daughters
'Christiana.']

Browning's great-grandfather, as indicated above, was a small proprietor
in Dorsetshire. His son, whether perforce or from choice, removed to
London when he was a youth, and speedily obtained a clerkship in the