He would refuse to take his medicine unless bribed by the gift of a speckled frog from among the strawberries;and the maternal parasol,hovering above the strawberry bed during the search for this object of his desires,remained a standing picture in his remembrance.
But the love of the uncommon was already asserting itself;and one of his very juvenile projects was a collection of rare creatures,the first contribution to which was a couple of lady-birds,picked up one winter's day on a wall and immediately consigned to a box lined with cotton-wool,and labelled,'Animals found surviving in the depths of a severe winter.'Nor did curiosity in this case weaken the power of sympathy.His passion for birds and beasts was the counterpart of his father's love of children,only displaying itself before the age at which child-love naturally appears.
His mother used to read Croxall's Fables to his little sister and him.
The story contained in them of a lion who was kicked to death by an ass affected him so painfully that he could no longer endure the sight of the book;and as he dared not destroy it,he buried it between the stuffing and the woodwork of an old dining-room chair,where it stood for lost,at all events for the time being.
When first he heard the adventures of the parrot who insisted on leaving his cage,and who enjoyed himself for a little while and then died of hunger and cold,he --and his sister with him --cried so bitterly that it was found necessary to invent a different ending,according to which the parrot was rescued just in time and brought back to his cage to live peacefully in it ever after.
As a boy,he kept owls and monkeys,magpies and hedgehogs,an eagle,and even a couple of large snakes,constantly bringing home the more portable creatures in his pockets,and transferring them to his mother for immediate care.I have heard him speak admiringly of the skilful tenderness with which she took into her lap a lacerated cat,washed and sewed up its ghastly wound,and nursed it back to health.
The great intimacy with the life and habits of animals which reveals itself in his works is readily explained by these facts.
Mr.Ready's establishment was chosen for him as the best in the neighbourhood;and both there and under the preparatory training of that gentleman's sisters,the young Robert was well and kindly cared for.The Misses Ready especially concerned themselves with the spiritual welfare of their pupils.
The periodical hair-brushings were accompanied by the singing,and fell naturally into the measure,of Watts's hymns;and Mr.Browning has given his friends some very hearty laughs by illustrating with voice and gesture the ferocious emphasis with which the brush would swoop down in the accentuated syllables of the following lines:
Lord,'tis a pleasant thing to stand In gardens planted by Thy hand.
.....
Fools never raise their thoughts so high,Like 'brutes'they live,like BRUTES they die.
He even compelled his mother to laugh at it,though it was sorely against her nature to lend herself to any burlesquing of piously intended things.He had become a bigger boy since the episode of the cistern,and had probably in some degree outgrown the intense piety of his earlier childhood.
This little incident seems to prove it.On the whole,however,his religious instincts did not need strengthening,though his sense of humour might get the better of them for a moment;and of secular instruction he seems to have received as little from the one set of teachers as from the other.I do not suppose that the mental training at Mr.Ready's was more shallow or more mechanical than that of most other schools of his own or,indeed,of a much later period;but the brilliant abilities of Robert Browning inspired him with a certain contempt for it,as also for the average schoolboy intelligence to which it was apparently adapted.It must be for this reason that,as he himself declared,he never gained a prize,although these rewards were showered in such profusion that the only difficulty was to avoid them;and if he did not make friends at school (for this also has been somewhere observed),it can only be explained in the same way.
He was at an intolerant age,and if his schoolfellows struck him as more backward or more stupid than they need be,he is not likely to have taken pains to conceal the impression.It is difficult,at all events,to think of him as unsociable,and his talents certainly had their amusing side.Miss Browning tells me that he made his schoolfellows act plays,some of which he had written for them;and he delighted his friends,not long ago,by mimicking his own solemn appearance on some breaking-up or commemorative day,when,according to programme,'Master Browning'ascended a platform in the presence of assembled parents and friends,and,in best jacket,white gloves,and carefully curled hair,with a circular bow to the company and the then prescribed waving of alternate arms,delivered a high-flown rhymed address of his own composition.
And during the busy idleness of his schooldays,or,at all events,in the holidays in which he rested from it,he was learning,as perhaps only those do learn whose real education is derived from home.
