breaking-up or commemorative day, when, according to programme, 'Master
Browning' ascended a platform in the presence of assembled parents and
friends, and, in best jacket, white gloves, and carefully curled hair,
with a circular bow to the company and the then prescribed waving
of alternate arms, delivered a high-flown rhymed address of his own
composition.

* In spite of this ludicrous association Mr. Browning always
recognized great merit in Watts's hymns, and still more in
Dr. Watts himself, who had devoted to this comparatively
humble work intellectual powers competent to far higher
things.

** It was in no case literally true. William, afterwards
Sir William, Channel was leaving Mr. Ready when Browning
went to him; but a friendly acquaintance began, and was
afterwards continued, between the two boys; and a closer
friendship, formed with a younger brother Frank, was only
interrupted by his death. Another school friend or
acquaintance recalled himself as such to the poet's memory
some ten or twelve years ago. A man who has reached the age
at which his boyhood becomes of interest to the world may
even have survived many such relations.

And during the busy idleness of his schooldays, or, at all events, in
the holidays in which he rested from it, he was learning, as perhaps
only those do learn whose real education is derived from home. His
father's house was, Miss Browning tells me, literally crammed with
books; and, she adds, 'it was in this way that Robert became very early
familiar with subjects generally unknown to boys.' He read omnivorously,