It was in this "broad spirit" of Christ’s Teaching that Dickens lived and wrote. He tore down the veil that hid the lives of the poor and suffering from the lives of the rich and prosperous. The remembrance of those dark sights and scenes of his boyhood never passed away from him. "They pierce through my happiness, they haunt me day and night," he said. He could never rest till he had lifted up his voice in the cause of those "little ones" whom he loved and in whom he could recognise so much that was beautiful and true. Kindness, tenderness, sympathy, generosity, and divine pity, these were the stones with which he built up his monument, and they are stones which shall endure through the ages to come, a glorious memorial of him "who loved, with a rare and touching love, his friends, his country, and his fellow-men." Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson, the greatest poets of our generation, lie side by side, underneath Chaucer’s monument, and to both of them was given a stately public funeral, which showed how honoured a place they held in the hearts of their countrymen. For more than fifty years Browning had been writing, and only very slowly, very gradually had he made his way in the public favour. He was not, except on occasions, a sweet singer; his rhymes did not flow gracefully and easily; his thoughts were great, but his words were clumsy; to himself what he taught was as clear as the day, but to his readers it was often sadly confused and hard to understand. Nor did he ever aim at winning popularity or success. He wrote more for the future than for the present, and he was quite content to wait. "Were you never discouraged," a friend asked him once, "at the indifference of the public, and the enmity of the critics?" "_Never_," was his emphatic answer.