--Pachiarotto and other Poems

CHAPTER XV

SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY

La Saisiaz--Immortality--Two Poets of Croisic--Browning in
society--Daily habits--Browning as a talker--Italy--Asolo--Mountain
retreats--Mrs Bronson--Venice

CHAPTER XVI

POET AND TEACHER IN OLD AGE

Popularity--Browning Society--Public honours--Dramatic Idyls--Spirit of
acquiescence--Jocoseria--Ferishtah's Fancies

CHAPTER XVII

CLOSING WORKS AND DAYS

Parleyings--Asolando--Mrs Bronson--At Asolo--Venice--Death--Place in
nineteenth-century poetry

List of Illustrations

ROBERT BROWNING, _from a portrait in oil, for which he sat to R.W.
Curtis at Venice, 1880, reproduced by kind permission of D.S. Curtis,
Esq. (photogravure)_

MAIN STREET OF ASOLO, SHOWING BROWNING'S HOUSE, _from a drawing by Miss
D. Noyes_

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, _from a drawing in chalk by Field Talfourd
in the National Portrait Gallery_

ROBERT BROWNING, _from an engraving by J.G. Armytage_

THE VIA BOCCA DI LEONE, ROME, IN WHICH THE BROWNINGS STAYED, _a
photograph_

PORTRAIT OF FILIPPO LIPPI, BY HIMSELF, _a detail from the fresco in the
Cathedral at Prato, from a photograph by Alinari_

ANDREA DEL SARTO, _from a print after the portrait by himself in the
Uffizi Gallery, Florence_

PIAZZA DI SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE, WHERE "THE BOOK" WAS FOUND BY BROWNING,
_from a photograph by Alinari_

THE PALAZZO GIUSTINIANI, VENICE, _from a drawing by Miss N. Erichsen_

SPECIMEN OF BROWNING'S HANDWRITING, _from a letter to D.S. Curtis, Esq._

ROBERT BROWNING, _from a photograph (photogravure)_

THE PALAZZO REZZONICO, VENICE, _from a drawing by Miss Katherine
Kimball_

Chapter I

Childhood and Youth

The ancestry of Robert Browning has been traced[1] to an earlier Robert
who lived in the service of Sir John Bankes of Corfe Castle, and died in
1746. His eldest son, Thomas, "was granted a lease for three lives of
the little inn, in the little hamlet of East Woodyates and parish of
Pentridge, nine miles south-west of Salisbury on the road to Exeter."
Robert, born in 1749, the son of this Thomas, and grandfather of the
poet, became a clerk in the Bank of England, and rose to be principal in
the Bank Stock Office. At the age of twenty-nine he married Margaret
Tittle, a lady born in the West Indies and possessed of West Indian
property. He is described by Mrs Orr as an able, energetic, and worldly
man. He lived until his grandson was twenty-one years