Robert Browning was born in Camberwell, London, May 7, 1812. He was
contemporary with Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, Lowell, Emerson,
Hawthorne, Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Dumas, Hugo, Mendelssohn, Wagner,
and a score of other men famous in art and science.
Browning's good fortune began with his birth. His father, a clerk in
the Bank of England, possessed ample means for the education of his
children. He had artistic and literary tastes, a mind richly stored
with philosophy, history, literature, and legend, some repute as a
maker of verses, and a liberality that led him to assist his gifted
son in following his bent. From his father Robert inherited his
literary tastes and his vigorous health; in his father he found a
critic and companion. His mother was described by Carlyle as a type
of the true Scotch gentlewoman. Her "fathomless charity," her love of
music, and her deep religious feeling reappear in the poet.
Free from struggles with adversity, and devoid of public or stirring
incidents, the story of Browning's life is soon told. It was the life
of a scholar and man of letters, devoted to the study of poetry,
philosophy, history; to the contemplation of the lives of men and
women; and to the exercise of his chosen vocation.
His school life was of meagre extent. He attended a private academy,
read at home under a tutor, and for two years attended the University
of London. When asked in his later life whether he had been to Oxford
or Cambridge, he used to say, "Italy was my University," And, indeed,
his many poems on Italian themes bear testimony to the profound
influence of Italy upon him. In his teens, he came under the influence
of Pope and Byron, and wrote verses after their styles. Then Shelley
came by accident in his way, and became to the boy the model of poetic
excellence.
In 1838 appeared his first published poem, _Pauline_. It bears
the marks of his peculiar genius; it has the germs of his merits and
his defects. Though not widely read, it received favorable notice
from some of the critics. In 1835 appeared _Paracelsus_, in 1837
_Strafford_, in 1840 _Sordello_. From this time on, for the
fifty remaining years of his life, his poetic activity hardly ceased,
though his poetry was of uneven excellence. The middle period of his
work, beginning with _Bells and Pomegranates_ in 1842, and
ending with _Balaustion's Adventure_ (a transcript of Euripides'
_Alcestis_) in 1871, was by far the richest in poetic value.
In 1846 he married Elizabeth Barrett, the poet. They left England for
Italy, where, because of Mrs. Browning's feeble health, they continued
to reside until her death in 1861. The remainder of his life was
divided between England and Italy, with frequent visits to southern
France. His reputation as a poet had steadily grown. He was now one of
the best known men in England. His mental activity continued unabated
to the end. Within the last thirty years of his life he wrote _The
Ring and the Book_--his longest work, one of the longest and,
intellectually, one of the greatest, of English poems; translated the
_Agamemnon_ of Æschylus and the _Alcestis_ of Euripides;
published many shorter poems; kept up the studies which had always
been his labor and his pastime; and found leisure also to know a wide
circle of men and women. William Sharp gives a pleasing picture of the
last years of his life: "Everybody wished him to come and dine; and he
did his utmost to gratify Everybody. He saw everything; read all the
notable books; kept himself acquainted with the leading contents of
the journals and magazines; conducted a large correspondence; read
new French, German, and Italian books of mark; read and translated
Euripides and Æschylus: knew all the gossip of the literary clubs,
salons, and the studios; was a frequenter of afternoon tea-parties;
and then, over and above it, he was Browning: the most profoundly
subtle mind that has exercised itself in poetry since Shakespeare."[1]
He died in Venice, on December 12, 1889, and was buried in the poet's
corner of Westminster Abbey.
[Footnote 1: Sharp's _Life of Browning_.]