though certainly not without guidance. One of the books he best and
earliest loved was 'Quarles' Emblemes', which his father possessed in
a seventeenth century edition, and which contains one or two very
tentative specimens of his early handwriting. Its quaint, powerful lines
and still quainter illustrations combined the marvellous with what he
believed to be true; and he seemed specially identified with its world
of religious fancies by the fact that the soul in it was always depicted
as a child. On its more general grounds his reading was at once largely
literary and very historical; and it was in this direction that the
paternal influence was most strongly revealed. 'Quarles' Emblemes'
was only one of the large collection of old books which Mr. Browning
possessed; and the young Robert learnt to know each favourite author in
the dress as well as the language which carried with it the life of his
period. The first edition of 'Robinson Crusoe'; the first edition of
Milton's works, bought for him by his father; a treatise on astrology
published twenty years after the introduction of printing; the original
pamphlet 'Killing no Murder' (1559), which Carlyle borrowed for his
'Life of Cromwell'; an equally early copy of Bernard Mandeville's
'Bees'; very ancient Bibles--are some of the instances which occur to
me. Among more modern publications, 'Walpole's Letters' were familiar to
him in boyhood, as well as the 'Letters of Junius' and all the works of
Voltaire.

Ancient poets and poetry also played their necessary part in the mental
culture superintended by Robert Browning's father: we can indeed imagine
no case in which they would not have found their way into the boy's
life. Latin poets and Greek dramatists came to him in their due time,
though his special delight in the Greek language only developed itself
later. But his loving, lifelong familiarity with the Elizabethan school,
and indeed with the whole range of English poetry, seems to point to