To my immediate wants, yet strong beneath
Was a vague sense of powers folded up--
A sense that though those shadowy times were past,
Their spirit dwelt in me, and I should rule."

When Mr. Browning was satisfied that the tutor had fulfilled his duty he
sent his son to attend a few lectures at University College, in Gower
Street, then just founded. Robert Browning's name is on the registrar's
books for the opening session, 1829-30. "I attended with him the Greek
class of Professor Long" (wrote a friend, in the _Times_, Dec. 14:'89),
"and I well recollect the esteem and regard in which he was held by his
fellow-students. He was then a bright, handsome youth, with long black
hair falling over his shoulders." So short was his period of attendance,
however, and so unimportant the instruction he there derived, that to
all intents it may be said Browning had no University training.

Notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Browning but slightly appreciated his
son's poetic idols and already found himself in an opposite literary
camp, he had a profound sympathy with the boy's ideals and no little
confidence in his powers. When the test came he acted wisely as well as
with affectionate complaisance. In a word, he practically left the
decision as to his course of life to Robert himself. The latter was
helped thereto by the knowledge that his sister would be provided for,
and that, if need be, there was sufficient for himself also. There was
of course but one way open to him. He would not have been a true poet,
an artist, if he had hesitated. With a strange misconception of the
artistic spirit, some one has awarded the poet great credit for his
choice, because he had "the singular courage to decline to be rich."
Browning himself had nothing of this bourgeois spirit: he was the last
man to speak of an inevitable artistic decision as "singular courage."