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". There are no doubt people who estimate his resolve
as Mr. Barrett, so his daughter declared, regarded Horne
when he heard of that poet having published "Orion" at a farthing:
"Perhaps he is going to shoot the Queen, and is preparing evidence
of monomania."

With Browning there never could have been two sides to the question:
it were excusable, it were natural even, had his father wavered.
The outcome of their deliberations was that Robert's further education should
be obtained from travel, and intercourse with men and foreign literatures.

By this time the poet was twenty. His youth had been uneventful; in a sense,
more so than his boyhood. His mind, however, was rapidly unfolding,
and great projects were casting a glory about the coming days.
It was in his nineteenth year, I have been told on good authority,