This Browningism which we are disposed to laugh at is a most interesting
secondary outcome of his influence. It has its roots in natural piety,
and the educational value of it is very great.
Browning's individuality created for him a personal following, and he
was able to respond to the call to leadership. Unlike Carlyle, he had
something to give his disciples beside the immediate satisfaction of a
spiritual need. He gave them not only meal but seed. In this he was like
Emerson; but Emerson's little store of finest grain is of a different
soil. Emerson lived in a cottage and saw the stars over his head through
his skylight. Browning, on the other hand, loved pictures, places,
music, men and women, and his works are like the house of a rich man,--a
treasury of plunder from many provinces and many ages, whose manners
and passions are vividly recalled to us. In Emerson's house there was
not a peg to hang a note upon,--"this is his bookshelf, this his bed."
But Browning's palace craves a catalogue.
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