* A grandson of William Shergold, Robert Jardine Browning,
graduated at Lincoln College, was called to the Bar, and is
now Crown Prosecutor in New South Wales; where his name
first gave rise to a report that he was Mr. Browning's son,
while the announcement of his marriage was, for a moment,
connected with Mr. Browning himself. He was also intimate
with the poet and his sister, who liked him very much.

The friendly relations with Carlyle, which resulted in his high estimate
of the poet's mother, also began at Hatcham. On one occasion he took
his brother, the doctor, with him to dine there. An earlier and much
attached friend of the family was Captain Pritchard, cousin to the noted
physician Dr. Blundell. He enabled the young Robert, whom he knew from
the age of sixteen, to attend some of Dr. Blundell's lectures; and this
aroused in him a considerable interest in the sciences connected with
medicine, though, as I shall have occasion to show, no knowledge of
either disease or its treatment ever seems to have penetrated into his
life. A Captain Lloyd is indirectly associated with 'The Flight of the
Duchess'. That poem was not completed according to its original plan;
and it was the always welcome occurrence of a visit from this gentleman
which arrested its completion. Mr. Browning vividly remembered how the
click of the garden gate, and the sight of the familiar figure advancing
towards the house, had broken in upon his work and dispelled its first
inspiration.

The appearance of 'Paracelsus' did not give the young poet his just
place in popular judgment and public esteem. A generation was to pass
before this was conceded to him. But it compelled his recognition by the
leading or rising literary men of the day; and a fuller and more varied
social life now opened before him. The names of Serjeant Talfourd,