that Aunt Betsy had deserved quite so ill of her fellow-creatures

as he then believed.
--

His imaginative emotions were largely absorbed by religion.
The early Biblical training had had its effect, and he was,

to use his own words, `passionately religious' in those nursery years;
but during them and many succeeding ones, his mother filled his heart.

He loved her so much, he has been heard to say, that even as a grown man
he could not sit by her otherwise than with an arm round her waist.

It is difficult to measure the influence which this feeling may have exercised
on his later life; it led, even now, to a strange and touching little incident

which had in it the incipient poet no less than the loving child.
His attendance at Miss Ready's school only kept him from home

from Monday till Saturday of every week; but when called upon to confront
his first five days of banishment he felt sure that he would not survive them.

A leaden cistern belonging to the school had in, or outside it,
the raised image of a face. He chose the cistern for his place of burial,

and converted the face into his epitaph by passing his hand over and over it
to a continuous chant of: `In memory of unhappy Browning' --

the ceremony being renewed in his spare moments, till the acute stage
of the feeling had passed away.

The fondness for animals for which through life he was noted, was conspicuous
in his very earliest days. His urgent demand for `something to do'

would constantly" target="_blank" title="ad.经常地；不断地">constantly include `something to be caught' for him:
`they were to catch him an eft;' `they were to catch him a frog.'

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" target="_blank" title="ad.经常地；不断地">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

especiallyconcerned themselves with the spiritualwelfare 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 secularinstruction 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.

--
* In spite of this ludicrous association Mr. Browning always recognized

great merit in Watts's hymns, and still more in Dr. Watts himself,
who had devoted to this comparativelyhumble work intellectual powers

competent to far higher things.
** It was in no case literally true. William, afterwards Sir William, Channel

was leaving Mr. Ready when Browning went to him; but a friendly
acquaintance began, and was afterwards continued, between the two boys;

and a closer friendship, formed with a younger brother Frank,
was only interrupted by his death. Another school friend or acquaintance

recalled himself as such to the poet's memory some ten or twelve years ago.
A man who has reached the age at which his boyhood becomes

of interest to the world may even have survived many such relations.
--

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.
His father's house was, Miss Browning tells me, literally crammed with books;

and, she adds, `it was in this way that Robert became very early familiar
with subjects generally unknown to boys.' He read omnivorously,

though certainly not without guidance. One of the books
he best and earliest loved was `Quarles' Emblemes', which his father possessed

in a seventeenth century edition, and which contains one or two
very tentative specimens of his early handwriting. Its quaint,

powerful lines and still quainter illustrations combined the marvellous
with what he believed to be true; and he seemed specially identified

with its world of religious fancies by the fact that the soul in it
was always depicted as a child. On its more general grounds

his reading was at once largely literary and very historical;
and it was in this direction that the paternal influence

was most strongly revealed. `Quarles' Emblemes' was only one
of the large collection of old books which Mr. Browning possessed;

and the young Robert learnt to know each favourite author
in the dress as well as the language which carried with it

the life of his period. The first edition of `Robinson Crusoe';
the first edition of Milton's works, bought for him by his father;

a treatise on astrology published twenty years after the introduction
of printing; the original pamphlet `Killing no Murder' (1559),