If you like these
poems, then try the more ambitious poems like _A Blot in the
'Scutcheon_, _The Inn Album_, _Fifine at the Fair_ and others.
Browning, above all other English poets, seems to have had the power
of seizing upon a character at a crucial hour in life and laying bare
all the impulses that impel one to high achievement or great
self-sacrifice. He seems always to have worked at the highest
emotional stress, so that his words are surcharged with feeling. In
many of his poems this emotional element is painful in its intensity.
Character to him was the main feature, and his selections comprise
some of the most picturesque in all history. That he was able to make
these people live and move and impress us as real flesh-and-blood
human beings shows the great creative power of the man, who ought to
have written some of the world's finest plays.
Robert Browning was born in 1812 and died in 1889. His father, though
a clerk in the Bank of England, was a fine classical scholar and had
dabbled in verse. His mother was an accomplished musician. Browning
had every early advantage, and while still a lad he came under the
spell of Byron and had his poetical faculty greatly stimulated by the
"Napoleon of rhyme." Then came Shelley and Keats, and their influence
set him upon the course which he followed for many years. His first
poem was _Pauline_, which has passages of rare beauty set among dreary
commonplaces.
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