BROWNING



I


THE MAN

If we enter this world from some other state of existence, it seems
certain that in the obscure pre-natal country, the power of free
choice--so stormily debated by philosophers and theologians
here--does not exist. Millions of earth's infants are handicapped at
the start by having parents who lack health, money, brains, and
character; and in many cases the environment is no better than the
ancestry. "God plants us where we grow," said Pompilia, and we can
not save the rose by placing it on the tree-top. Robert Browning,
who was perhaps the happiest man in the nineteenth century, was
particularly fortunate in his advent. Of the entire population of
the planet in the year of grace 1812, he could hardly have selected
a better father and mother than were chosen for him; and the place
of his birth was just what it should have been, the biggest town on
earth. All his life long he was emphatically a city man, dwelling in
London, Florence, Paris, and Venice, never remaining long in rural
surroundings.

Browning was born on May 7, 1812, in Southampton Street, Camberwell,
London, a suburb on the southern side of the river. One hundred years