and since his death it has, with much other land in the town, become the property of his son. At the beginning of November he tore himself away from Asolo, and settled in at the Palazzo Rezzonico in Venice. He thought himself quite well, and walked each day in the Lido. But the temperature was very low, and his heart began to fail. He wrote to England (29 Nov.): 'I have caught a cold; I feel sadly asthmatic, scarcely fit to travel, but I hope for the best;' on the 30th he declared it was only his 'provoking liver,' and hoped soon to be in England. But he now sank from day to day, and at ten p.m., on 12 Dec. 1889, he died in the Palazzo Rezzonico. 'It was an unexpected blow,' his sister wrote, 'he seemed in such excellent health and exuberant spirits.' On the 14th, with solemn pomp, the body was given the ceremony of a public funeral in Venice, but on the 16th was conveyed to England, where, on 31 Dec, it was buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, the pall being carried by Lord Dufferin, Leighton, Sir Theodore Martin, George M. Smith (his publisher), and other illustrious friends. Browning's last volume of poems, 'Asolando,' was actually published on the day of his death; but a message with regard to the eagerness with which it had been 'subscribed' for had time to reach him on his death-bed, and he expressed his pleasure at the news. Shortly after his death memorial tablets were affixed by the city of Venice to the outer wall of the Palazzo Rezzonico, and by the Society of Arts to that of 19 Warwick Crescent. He left behind him his sister. Miss Sariana Browning, and his son, Mr. Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, who are now resident at Venice and Asolo.
Browning's rank in the literature of the nineteenth century has been the subject of endless disputation. It can be discussed here only from the point of view of the illustration of his writings by his person and character. As a contributor to thought, it is noticeable in the first place that Browning was almost alone in his generation in preaching a persistent optimism. In the latest of his published poems, in the 'Epilogue' to 'Asolando,' he sums up and states with unflinching clearness his attitude towards life. He desires to be remembered as
One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Neverdreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph.
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better
Sleep to wake.
No poet ever comprehended his own character better, or comprised the expression of it in better language. This note of militant optimism was the ruling one in Browning's character, and nothing that he wrote or said or did in his long career ever belied it. This optimism was not discouraged by the results of an impassioned curiosity as to the conditions and movements of the soul in other people. He was, as a writer, largely a psychological monologuist—that is to say, he loved to enter into the nature of persons widely different from himself, and push his study, or construction, of their experiences to the furthest limit of exploration. In these adventures he constantly met with evidences of baseness, frailty, and inconsistency; but his tolerance was apostolic, and the only thing which ever disturbed his moral equanimity was the evidences of selfishness. He could forgive anything but cruelty. His optimism accompanied his curiosity on these adventures into the souls of others, and prevented him from falling into cynicism or indignation. He kept his temper and was a benevolent observer. This characteristic in his writings was noted in his life as well. Although Browning was so sublime a metaphysical poet, nothing delighted him more than to listen to an accumulation of trifling (if exact) circumstances which helped to build up the life of a human being. Every man and woman whom he met was to Browning a poem in solution; some chemical condition might at any moment resolve any one of the multitude into a crystal. His optimism, his curiosity, and his clairvoyance occupied his thoughts in a remarkably objective way. He was of all poets the one least self-centred, and therefore in all probability the happiest. His physical conditions were in harmony with his spiritual characteristics. He was robust, active, loud in speech, cordial in manner, gracious and conciliatory in address, but subject to sudden fits of indignation which were like thunderstorms. In all these respects it seems probable that his character altered very little as the years went on. What he was as a boy, in these respects, it is believed that he continued to be as an old man. 'He missed the morbid over-refinement of the age; the processes of his mind were sometimes even a little coarse, and always delightfully direct. For real delicacy he had full appreciation, but he was brutally scornful of all exquisite morbidness. The vibration of his loud voice, his hard fist upon the table, would make very short work with cobwebs. But this external roughness, like the rind
