the Brownings’ only child, their beloved son Robert Wiedemann Barrett. After this event Mrs Browning resumed her literary activities, preparing a new issue, with some additions, of her poems (1850). A poem on the death of a friend’s child appeared in the Athenaeum (1849), and there the new volumes were warmly praised. Casa Guidi Windows followed in 1851. Visiting England in that year, the Brownings saw much of the Procters, and something of Florence Nightingale, Kingsley, Ruskin, Rogers, Patmore and Tennyson, and also of Carlyle, with whom they went to Paris, where they saw George Sand, and where they passed the December days of the coup d’état. Mrs Browning happened to take a political fancy to Napoleon III., whom she would probably have denounced if a tithe of his tyrannies had occurred in Italy, and the fancy became more emotional in after years.
A new edition of Mrs Browning’s poems was called for in 1853, and at about this time, in Florence, she began to work on Aurora Leigh. She was still writing this poem when the Brownings were again in England, in 1855. Tennyson there read to them his newly-written Maud. After another interval in Paris they were in London again—Mrs Browning for the last time. She was with her dear cousin Kenyon during the last months of his life. In October 1856 the Brownings returned to their Florentine home, Mrs Browning leaving her completed Aurora Leigh for publication. The book had an immediate success; a second edition was required in a fortnight, a third a few months later. In the fourth edition (1859) several corrections were made. The review in Blackwood was written by W. E. Aytoun, that in the North British by Coventry Patmore.
In 1857 Mrs Browning addressed a petition, in the form of a letter, to the emperor Napoleon begging him to remit the sentence of exile upon Victor Hugo. We do not hear of any reply. In 1857 Mrs Browning’s father died, unreconciled. Henrietta Barrett had married, like her sister, and like her was unforgiven. In 1858 occurred another visit to Paris, and another to Rome, where Hawthorne and his family were among the Brownings’ friends. In 1859 came the Italian war in which Mrs Browning’s hasty sympathies were hotly engaged. Her admiration of Italy’s champion, Napoleon III., knew no bounds, and did not give way when, by the peace of Villafranca, Venice and Rome were left unannexed to the kingdom of Italy, and the French frontiers were “rectified” by the withdrawal from that kingdom of Savoy and Nice. That peace, however, was a bitter disappointment, and her fragile health suffered. At Siena and Florence this year the Brownings were very kind to Landor, old, solitary, and ill. Mrs Browning’s poem, “A Tale of Villafranca”, was published in the Athenaeum in September, and afterwards included in Poems before Congress (1860). Then followed another long visit to Rome, and there Mrs Browning prepared for the press this, her last volume. The little book was judged with some impatience, A Curse for a Nation being mistaken for a denunciation of England, whereas it was aimed at America and her slavery. The Athenaeum, amongst others, committed this error. The Saturday Review was hard on the volume, so was Blackwood; the Atlas and Daily News favourable. In July 1860 was published “A Musical Instrument” in the young Cornhill Magazine, edited by the author’s friend W. M. Thackeray. The last blow she had to endure was the death of her sister Henrietta, in the same year.
On the 30th of June 1861 Elizabeth Barrett Browning died. Her husband, who tended her alone on the night of her decease, wrote to Miss Blagden: “Then came what my heart will keep till I see her again and longer—the most perfect expression of her love to me within my whole knowledge of her. Always smilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl’s, and in a few minutes she died in my arms, her head on my cheek. . . . There was no lingering, nor acute pain, nor consciousness of separation, but God took her to himself as you would lift a sleeping child from a dark uneasy bed into your arms and the light. Thank God.” Her married life had been supremely happy. Something has been said of the difference between husband and wife in regard to “spiritualism”, in which Mrs Browning had interest and faith, but no division ever interrupted their entirely perfect affection and happiness. Of her husband’s love for her she wrote at the time of her marriage, “He preferred ... of free and deliberate choice, to be allowed to sit only an hour a day by my side, to the fulfilment of the brightest dream which should exclude me in any possible world.” “I am still doubtful whether all the brightness can be meant for me. It is just as if the sun rose again at 7 o’clock p.m.” “I take it for pure magic, this life of mine. Surely nobody was ever so happy before.” “I must say to you [Mrs Jameson] who saw the beginning with us, that this end of fifteen months is just fifteen times better and brighter; the mystical 'moon' growing larger and larger till scarcely room is left for any stars at all: the only differences which have touched me being the more and more happiness.” Browning buried his wife in Florence, under a tomb designed by their friend Frederick Leighton. On the wall of Casa Guidi is placed the inscription: “Qui scrisse e mori Elisabetta Barrett Browning, che in cuore di donna conciliava scienza di dotto e spirito di poeta, e face del suo verso aureo annello fra Italia e Inghilterra. Pone questa lapide Firenze grata 1861.” In 1866 Robert Browning published a volume of selections from his wife’s works.
The place of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in English literature is high, if not upon the summits. She had an original genius, a fervent heart, and an intellect that was, if not great, exceedingly active. She seldom has composure or repose, but it is not true that her poetry is purely emotional. It is full of abundant, and even over-abundant, thoughts. It is intellectually restless. The impassioned peace of the greatest poetry, such as Wordsworth’s, is not hers. Nor did she apparently seek to attain those heights. Her Greek training taught her little of the economy that such a poetic education is held to impose; she “dashed”, not by reason of feminine weakness, but as it were to prove her possession of masculine strength. Her gentler work, as in the Sonnets from the Portuguese, is beyond praise. There is in her poetic personality a glory of righteousness, of spirituality, and of ardour that makes her name a splendid one in the history of an incomparable literature.
See the Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning addressed to R. H. Horne, with Comments on Contemporaries, edited by S. R. Townshend Mayer (2 vols., 1877); The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning from 1826 to 1844, edited with memoir by J. H. Ingram (1887); Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Eminent Women series), by J. H. Ingram, 1888); Records of Tennyson, Ruskin and the Brownings, by Anne Ritchie (1892); The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, edited with biographical additions by Frederick G. Kenyon (2 vols., 1897); The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett (2 vols., 1899); La Vie et l’œuvre d’Elizabeth Browning, by Mdlle. Germaine-Marie Merlette (Paris, 1906). (A. Me)
BROWNING, OSCAR (1837–), English writer, was born in London on the 17th of January 1837, the son of a merchant, William Shipton Browning. He was educated at Eton and at King’s College, Cambridge, of which he became fellow and tutor, graduating fourth in the classical tripos of 1860. He was for fifteen years a master at Eton College, resuming residence in 1876 at Cambridge, where he became university lecturer in history. He soon became a prominent figure in college and university life, encouraging especially the study of political science and modern political history, the extension of university teaching and the movement for the training of teachers. He is well known to Dante students by his Dante; Life and Works (1891), and to the study of Italian history he has contributed Guelphs and Ghibellines (1903). His works on modern history include England and Napoleon in 1803 (1887), History of England (4 vols. 1890), Wars of the Nineteenth Century (1899), History of Europe 1814–1843 (1901), Napoleon, the first Phase (1905).
BROWNING, ROBERT (1812–1889), English poet, was born at Camberwell, London, on the 7th of May 1812. He was the son of Robert Browning (1781–1866), who for fifty years was employed in the Bank of England. Earlier Brownings had been settled in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, and there is no ground for the statement that the family was partly of Jewish origin. The poet’s mother was a daughter of William Wiedemann, a German who had settled in Dundee and married a Scottish wife. His parents had one other child, a daughter, Sarianna, born in 1814. They lived quietly in Camberwell. The elder Browning
