Browning English
Robert Browning
1844~1889. A British poet. His wife is Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a poet. His representative works are Men and Women(1855), Dramatis Personae(1864), The Book and the Ring(1868~9) and others.
In 1881 when Lee visited England, she met Browning. In a letter to his mother Matilda, Lee wrote on this: ”He is very fine, grandheaded, amiable proper old gentleman." (Complete Letters, Volume 1, 311) He praised Lee’s first published work Studies of the Eighteenth Century Italy. Lee loved Browning’s poems and placed Browning on the same level with such prestigious poets as Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe. And she praised equally Hamlet and Faust with Browning’s Men and Women.
In a letter to her friend, Nencioni, Lee wrote on the episodes she had when she visited Browning's in 1886. （Selected Letters, Volume Ⅱ, 177~178.）
In Baldwin, Lee mentioned Browning’s The Book and the Ring. Against the opinion that this is an epic of realism, Baldwin (Lee’s mouthpiece) asserts it is an epic of idealism. The Book and the Ring is one of the favorite literature of Vernon Lee.
In 'Limbo,' after claiming that in discussing 'happiness' mentioning Browning is unavoidable, Lee referred to Browning’s poem Last Ride Together and wrote: "Browning's Last Ride Together expresses, indeed, a view of the subject commending itself to active and cheerful persons, which comes to many just after their salad days."
In 'In Praise of Old Houses' in Limbo, Lee mentioned Browning’s Galuppi in Dramatis Personae. In 'On Modern Travelling,' she referred to Pippa Passes and wrote as follows: "Pippa, Sebald, Ottima, Jules, his bride, the Bishop, the Spy, nay, even Queen Kate and her Page, are all born of that sort of misinterpretation of places, times, and stories which is so fruitful in poetry, because it means the begetting of things in the image of the poet's own soul, rather than the fashioning them to match something outside it."
In The Spirit of Rome, she associated churches in Rome with Browning’s poems. For Lee, Browning was connected with Italy and Rome.
In "The Love of the Saints" in Renaissance Fancies and Studies, referring to Héloïse, she writes: "this nun of the eleventh century is a strong warm-hearted modern woman, fit for Browning."
Other than these, in 'The Epitaphs at Detwang' in Genius Loci, she mentioned Browning.
Vernon Lee met Browning's son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning（ known as Pen Browning）. He was a painter and sculptor and a friend of John Singer Sargeant.
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