PART I.

BROWNING'S LIFE AND WORK




BROWNING.


CHAPTER I.

EARLY LIFE. _PARACELSUS_.

The Boy sprang up ... and ran,
Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.
--_A Death in the Desert_.

Dass ich erkenne, was die Welt
Im Innersten zusammenhält.
--_Faust_.


Judged by his cosmopolitan sympathies and his encyclopædic knowledge, by
the scenery and the persons among whom his poetry habitually moves,
Browning was one of the least insular of English poets. But he was also,
of them all, one of the most obviously and unmistakably English.