r
_dramatis personae_ folded in her hands." It was such an hour of destiny as
this when, at a dinner given by Sergeant Talfourd, at his home (No. 56) in
Russell Square, Browning first met John Kenyon. Our great events mostly
come to us like gods in disguise, and this evening was no exception.
Unknown and undreamed of, the young poet had come to one of those partings
of the ways which are only recognized in the perspective of time.
Browning's life had been curiously free from any romance beyond that with
the muses. The one woman with whom he had seemed most intimate, Miss Fanny
Haworth, was eleven years his senior, and their intercourse, both
conversationally and in letters, had been as impersonal as literature
itself. She was a writer of stories and verse, and had celebrated her
young friend in two sonnets. This friendship was one of literary
attractions alone, and the poet had apparently devoted all his romance to
poetry rather than demanded it in life. But now, golden doors were to
open.

At this dinner at Mr. Talfourd's, John Kenyon came over to the poet, after
they had left the dining-room, and inquired if he were not the son of his
old school-fellow, Robert Browning. Finding this surmise to be true, he
became greatly attached to him. Mr. Kenyon had lost his wife some time
previously; he had no children, and he was a prominent and favorite figure
in London society. Southey said of Kenyon that he was "one of the best and
pleasantest of men, whom every one likes better the longer he is known,"
and Kenyon, declaring that Browning "deserved to be a poet, being one in
heart and life," offered to him his "best and most precious gift,"--that
of an introduction to his second cousin, Elizabeth Barrett.

This was the first intimation of Destiny, but the meeting was still to
remain in the future. "Sordello" was published in 1840,--"a colossal
derelict on the ocean of poetry," as William Sharp terms it. The
impenetrable nature of the intricacies of the work has been the theme of
many anecdotes. Tennyson declared that there were only two lines in
it--the opening and the closing ones--which he understood, and "they are
both lies," he feelingly added. Douglas Jerrold tackled it when he was
just recovering from an illness, and despairingly set down his inability
to comprehend it to the probability that his mind was impaired by disease;
and thrusting the book into the hands of his wife he entreated her to read
it at once. He watche