The lives of the poets from The Dictionary of National Biography ...

in Switzerland before going on to Italy and delighting in Asolo and Venice. They both liked Venice, with its
large English and American community, so much that they returned there in seven autumns over the next
eleven years. While on this vacation, Browning wrote several poems that he joined with others to publish as
Dramatic Idyls in April 1879. The title inevitably forced comparisons with Tennysonʹs ‘idylls’, and Browning
defined what he meant by the term in this way in 1889:
a succinct little story complete in itself; not necessarily concerning pastoral matters, by any means, though
from the prevalency of such topics in the idyls of Theocritus, such is the general notion. These of mine are
called ‘Dramatic’ because the story is told by some actor in it, not the poet himself. (Poems, 2.1067)
The poems are in rhymed verse, and the metres approximate those of Greek idylls. ‘[B]esides the measure of
formal unity in the volume, there is also some kind of thematic unity in the stress on conscience and
remorse’ (ibid.). Browning was so pleased that the book was well received (for the first time since
Balaustionʹs Adventure a second edition was called for), that he wrote another series of poems, and
published them as Dramatic Idyls, Second Series (June 1880). The second series, however, was not as
popular as the first, and a second edition was not required.
Growing fame, and poems of the early 1880s
By 1880 Browning had become recognized, along with Tennyson, as one of the greatest poets of the period.
He was awarded an LLD degree by Cambridge in 1879, and in summer and autumn 1881 a group of his
admirers founded the Browning Society. The poet was amazed and elated by this outpouring of support,
and he was further delighted and surprised when Browning societies began to spread around the world—
there were twenty‐two of them within the next three years. In 1882 he was given an honorary DCL at
Oxford. In America his reputation spread so that in Chicago, for example, some of his works were printed on
railway timetables, and bookstores could not keep up with the demand for copies of his works. In addition,
foreign visitors in London sought glimpses of him as well as autographs. Browning was delighted and,
resting on his laurels for the next three years, published nothing. He and Sarianna continued to spend their
summers abroad. During the rest of the year he became a strenuous diner‐out and attender at all sorts of
social functions, dressed so dapperly that he was, according to the weekly World of 7 December 1881, ‘as far
a dandy as a sensible man can be’.
Browning ended his period of printed silence with Jocoseria (March 1883). Containing ten poems in the
mode of the dramatic idylls, all treating the theme of desire, the volume is largely undistinguished, ‘Ixion’
being the only poem now recognized as worthy of mention. At the time, however, Jocoseria was well
received. A second edition was needed almost immediately, and a third edition was published in 1885.
Browning himself was not very pleased with this collection, remarking that it had ‘had the usual luck of the
little‐deserving’ (Poems, 2.1084). He was increasingly aware that he was now proclaimed a sage by the
Browning societies, and he felt that he must therefore address philosophical and religious issues in a higher
way. He began trying to improve his German, and it may be that in Goetheʹs Westöstlicher Divan, a
collection of poems with a Persian backdrop divided into twelve books, he found a suitable setting and
persona for a religio‐philosophical poem. Ferishtahʹs Fancies, published in November 1884, contains twelve
‘fancies’, analogies and parables of the great theological problems, plus a prologue and epilogue. Each of
Ferishtahʹs theological speculations is followed by a love lyric, thereby indicating that the ‘fancies’ of the
intellect are authenticated by the ‘facts’ of love. The poem ‘is important as a fairly direct statement of the
poetʹs mature religious beliefs … Browning did not pretend that Ferishtah was more than a transparent
disguise for himself’ (ibid., 2.1096). The poem sold well—two further editions were needed in 1885.
Last long poem
Browning apparently began his next poem when he was seventy‐three. He worked on it for several years
and wanted it to be the summation of his career, so he found the writing difficult. Aiming at a kind of
intellectual autobiography told in a conversational style, he designed it to be of epic, encyclopaedic scope.
Parleyings with Certain People in their Day (1887) was modelled both on Faust and The Divine Comedy,
and consists of seven parts with prologue and coda. Each ‘parleying’ deals with the appearance of a ghost
from the past and its stimulation of a current thought or attitude to be argued with. This means that there