Chapter 1.



It must, to admirers of Browning's writings, appear singularly appropriate
that so cosmopolitan a poet was born in London. It would seem
as though something of that mighty complex life, so confusedly petty
to the narrow vision, so grandiose and even majestic to the larger ken,
had blent with his being from the first. What fitter birthplace for the poet
whom a comrade has called the "Subtlest Assertor of the Soul in Song",
the poet whose writings are indeed a mirror of the age?

A man may be in all things a Londoner and yet be a provincial.
The accident of birthplace does not necessarily involve
parochialism of the soul. It is not the village which produces the Hampden,
but the Hampden who immortalises the village. It is a favourite jest
of Rusticus that his urban brother has the manner of Omniscience
and the knowledge of a parish beadle. Nevertheless,
though the strongest blood insurgent in the metropolitan heart
is not that which is native to it, one might well be proud
to have had one's atom-pulse atune from the first with the large rhythm
of the national life at its turbulent, congested, but ever ebullient centre.
Certainly Browning was not the man to be ashamed of his being a Londoner,
much less to deny his natal place. He was proud of it: through good sense,
no doubt, but possibly also through some instinctive apprehension of the fact
that the great city was indeed the fit mother of such a son.
"Ashamed of having been born in the greatest city of the world!"
he exclaimed on one occasion; "what an extraordinary thing to say!