people up like pigs,--and added with a sigh that he thought that
there was a congestion in the world about his own fame; he had
received no complimentary letters for several days.

Browning, on the other hand, kept his raptures and his processes
severely to himself. He never seems to have given the smallest hint
as to how he conceived a poem or worked it out. He was as reticent
about his occupation as a well-bred stockbroker, and did his best
in society to give the impression of a perfectly decorous and
conventional gentleman, telling strings of not very interesting
anecdotes, and making a great point of being ordinary. Indeed, I
believe that Browning was haunted by the eighteenth-century idea
that there was something not quite respectable about professional
literature, and that, like Gray, he wished to be considered a
private gentleman who wrote for his amusement. When in later years
he took a holiday, he went not for secret contemplation, but to
recover from social fatigue. Browning is really one of the most
mysterious figures in literature in this respect, because his inner
life of poetry was so entirely apart from his outer life of dinner-
parties and afternoon calls. Inside the sacred enclosure, the winds
of heaven blow, the thunder rolls; he proclaims the supreme worth
of human passion, he dives into the disgraceful secrets of the
soul: and then he comes out of his study a courteous and very
proper gentleman, looking like a retired diplomatist, and talking
like an intelligent commercial traveller--a man whose one wish
appeared to be as good-humouredly like everyone else as he
conveniently could.

What, again, is one to make of Dickens, with his love of private
theatricals, his florid waistcoats and watch-chains, his