This confidence was not undeserved. Richly gifted in many directions, a true child of the gods, Robert Barrett Browning has an almost marvelous gift in portraiture. He seems to be the diviner, the seer, as well as the artist, when transferring to canvas a face that interests him. The portrait of Milsand, to which allusion has before been made, and that of his father, painted in his Oxford robes, with "the old yellow book in his hand," which is in Balliol, are signal illustrations of his power in portraying almost the very mental processes of thought and feeling and kindling imagination,--all that goes to make up the creative life of art.
He is fairly a connoisseur in literature, as well as in his own specialties of painting and sculpture; and the poetry of the elder Browning has no more critically appreciative reader than his son. Some volume of his father's is always at hand in his traveling; and he, like all Browning-lovers, can never open any volume of Robert Browning's without finding revealed to him new vistas of thought, renewed aspiration and resolve for all noble living, and infinite suggestiveness of spiritual achievement.
"On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round."
"O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest!"
"ASOLANDO"--LAST DAYS IN DEVERE GARDENS--LETTERS OF BROWNING AND TENNYSON--VENETIAN LINGERINGS AND FRIENDS--MRS. BRONSON'S CHOICE CIRCLE--BROWNING'S LETTERS TO MRS. BRONSON--ASOLO--"IN RUBY, EMERALD, CHRYSOPRAS"--LAST MEETING OF BROWNING AND STORY--IN PALAZZO REZZONICO--LAST MEETING WITH DR. CORSON--HONORED BY WESTMINSTER ABBEY--A CROSS OF VIOLETS--CHORAL MUSIC TO MRS. BROWNING'S POEM, "THE SLEEP"--"AND WITH GOD BE THE REST."
In the winter of 1887-1888 Mr. Browning wrote "Rosny," which follows the "Prologue" in "Asolando," and soon after the "Beatrice Signorini" and "Flute Music." He also completely revised his poems for the new edition which his publishers were issuing in monthly volumes, the works completed in July. "Parleyings," which had appeared in 1887, had, gloriously or perilously as may be, apparently taken all the provinces of learning, if not all the kingdoms of earth, for its own; for its themes ranged over Philosophy, Politics, Love, and Art, as well as Alchemy, and one knows not what; but its power and vigor reveal that there had been no fading of the divine fire. The poet made a few minor changes in "The Inn Album," but with that exception he agreed with his friend and publisher, that no further alterations of any importance were required. Mr. Browning's relations with his publishers were always harmonious and mutually gratifying. Such a relation is, to any author, certainly not the least among the factors of his happiness or of his power of work, and to Browning, George Murray Smith was his highly prized friend and counselor, as well as publisher, whose generous courtesies and admirable judgment had more than once even served him in ways quite outside those of literature.