owning's poems. Of those
prior to her death the most beautiful is "One Word More," which has been
already quoted in part: of the two or three subsequent to that event
none surpasses the magic close of the first part of "The Ring and the
Book."

Thereafter the details of his life are public property. He all along
lived in the light, partly from his possession of that serenity which
made Goethe glad to be alive and to be able to make others share in that
gladness. No poet has been more revered and more loved. His personality
will long be a stirring tradition. In the presence of his simple
manliness and wealth of all generous qualities one is inclined to pass
by as valueless, as the mere flying spray of the welcome shower, the
many honours and gratifications that befell him. Even if these things
mattered, concerning one by whose genius we are fascinated, while
undazzled by the mere accidents pertinent thereto, their recital would
be wearisome--of how he was asked to be Lord Rector of this University,
or made a doctor of laws at that: of how letters and tributes of all
kinds came to him from every district in our Empire, from every country
in the world: and so forth. All these things are implied in the
circumstance that his life was throughout "a noble music with a golden
ending."

In 1866 his father died in Paris, strenuous in life until the very end.
After this event Miss Sarianna Browning went to reside with her brother,
and from that time onward was his inseparable companion, and ever one of
the dearest and most helpful of friends. In latter years brother and
sister were constantly seen together, and so regular attendants were
they at such functions as the "Private Views" at the Royal Academy and
Grosvenor Gallery, that these never seemed complete without them. A
Private View, a first appearance of Joachim or Sarasate, a first concert
of Richter or Henschel or Halle, at each of these, almost to a
certainty, the poet was sure to appear. The chief personal happiness of
his later life was in his son. Mr. R. Barrett Browning is so well known
as a painter and sculptor that it would be superfluous for me to add
anything further here, except to state that his successes were his
father's keenest pleasures.

Two years after his father's death, that is in 1868, the "Poetical Works
of Robert Browning, M.A., Honorary Fellow of Baliol College, Oxford,"
were issued in six volumes. Here the equator of Browning's genius may be
draw