l be invaluable. The members have also done a good work in causing
some of Browning's plays to be produced again on the stage, and in Miss
Alma Murray and others have found sympathetic and able exponents of some
of the poet's most attractive _dramatis personae_. There can be no
question as to the powerful impetus given by the Society to Browning's
steadily-increasing popularity. Nothing shows his judicious good sense
more than the letter he wrote, privately, to Mr. Edmund Yates, at the
time of the Society's foundation.

"The Browning Society, I need not say, as well as Browning
himself, are fair game for criticism. I had no more to do with the
founding it than the babe unborn; and, as Wilkes was no Wilkeite,
I am quite other than a Browningite. But I cannot wish harm to a
society of, with a few exceptions, names unknown to me, who are
busied about my books so disinterestedly. The exaggerations
probably come of the fifty-years'-long charge of unintelligibility
against my books; such reactions are possible, though I never
looked for the beginning of one so soon. That there is a grotesque
side to the thing is certain; but I have been surprised and
touched by what cannot but have been well intentioned, I think.
Anyhow, as I never felt inconvenienced by hard words, you will not
expect me to wax bumptious because of undue compliment: so enough
of 'Browning,'--except that he is yours very truly, 'while this
machine is to him.'"

The latter years of the poet were full of varied interest for himself,
but present little of particular significance for specification in a
monograph so concise as this must perforce be. Every year he went
abroad, to France or to Italy, and once or twice on a yachting trip in
the Mediterranean.[25] At home--for many years, at 19 Warwick Crescent,
in what some one has called the dreary Mesopotamia of Paddington, and
for the last three or four years of his life at 29 De Vere Gardens,
Kensington Gore--his avocations were so manifold that it is difficult to
understand where he had leisure for his vocation. Everybody wished him
to come to 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 translate