Robert Browning awoke one morning with a start—­it was the morning of his thirtieth birthday.  One’s thirtieth birthday and one’s seventieth are days that press their message home with iron hand.  With his seventieth milestone past, a man feels that his work is done, and dim voices call to him from across the Unseen.  His work is done, and so illy, compared with what he had wished and expected!  But the impressions made upon his heart by the day are no deeper than those his thirtieth birthday inspires.  At thirty, youth, with all it palliates and excuses, is gone forever.  The time for mere fooling is past; the young avoid you, or else look up to you as a Nestor and tempt you to grow reminiscent.  You are a man and must give an account of yourself.

Out of the stillness came a Voice to Robert Browning saying, “What hast thou done with the talent I gave thee?”

What had he done?  It seemed to him at the moment as if he had done nothing.  He arose and looked into the mirror.  A few gray hairs were mixed in his beard; there were crow’s feet on his forehead; and the first joyous flush of youth had gone from his face forever.  He was a bachelor, inwardly at war with his environment, but making a bold front with his tuppence worth of philosophy to conceal the unrest within.

A bachelor of thirty, strong in limb, clear in brain and yet a dependent!  No one but himself to support, and couldn’t even do that!  Gadzooks!  Fie upon all poetry and a plague upon this dumb, dense, shopkeeping, beer-drinking nation upon which the sun never sets!

The father of Robert Browning had done everything a father could.  He had supplied board and books, and given his son an allowance of a pound a week for ten years.  He had sent him on a journey to Italy, and published several volumes of the young man’s verse at his own expense.  And these books were piled high in the garret, save a few that had been bought by charitable friends or given away.

Robert Browning was not discouraged—­oh no, not that!—­only the world seemed to stretch out in a dull, monotonous gray, where once it was green, the color of hope, and all decked with flowers.

The little literary world of London knew Browning and respected him.  He was earnest and sincere and his personality carried weight.  His face was not handsome, but his manner was one of poise and purpose; and to come within his aura and look into his calm eyes was to respect the man and make obeisance to the intellect that you felt lay behind.

A few editors had gone out of their way to “discover” him to the world, but their lavish reviews fell flat.  Buyers would not buy—­no one seemed to want the wares of Robert Browning.  He was hard to read, difficult, obscure—­or else there wasn’t anything in it at all—­they didn’t know which.

Fox, editor of the “Repository,” had met Browning at the Flowers’ and liked him.  He tried to make his verse go, but couldn’t.  Yet he did what he could and insisted that Browning should go with him to the “Sunday evenings” at Barry Cornwall’s.  There Browning met Leigh Hunt, Monckton Milnes and Dickens.  Then there were dinner-parties at Sergeant Talfourd’s, where he got acquainted with Wordsworth, Walter Savage Landor and Macready.