The Pied Piper of Hamelin Tray Incident of the French Camp "How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" Herve Riel Pheidippides My Star Evelyn Hope Love among the Ruins Misconceptions Natural Magic Apparitions A Wall Confessions A Woman's Last Word A Pretty Woman Youth and Art A Tale Cavalier Tunes Home-Thoughts, from the Sea Summum Bonum A Face Songs from Pippa Passes The Lost Leader Apparent Failure Fears and Scruples Instans Tyrannus The Patriot The Boy and the Angel Memorabilia Why I am a Liberal Prospice Epilogue to "Asolando" "De Gustibus--" The Italian in England My Last Duchess The Bishop Orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church The Laboratory Home Thoughts, from Abroad Up at a Villa--Down in the City A Toccata of Galuppi's Abt Vogler Rabbi Ben Ezra A Grammarian's Funeral Andrea del Sarto Caliban upon Setebos "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" An Epistle Saul One Word More NOTES INTRODUCTION LIFE OF BROWNING 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.