Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/368

 clergy, and by Sir [q.v.], late chief justice. On 27 Aug. 1860 the colonial office called for a full report on the right of a chief to forbid the sale of land by members of his tribe; and on 4 Dec. Browne furnished this report, showing that such 'seignorial right,' apart from landownership, had never been recognised by his predecessors, and giving the opinions of various authorities. On 25 May 1861 the secretary of state (the Duke of Newcastle) informed him that Sir [q.v. Suppl.] had been appointed his successor, in the hope that Grey's influence and special qualifications would arrest the war which threatened to spread. The duke added: 'I recognise with pleasure the sound and impartial judgment, the integrity, intelligence, and anxiety for the public good which have characterised your government of the colony for nearly six years.' Grey arrived on 26 Sept., but the hopes of the British government were not realised. The Maoris afterwards, contrasting the two governors, said: 'Browne was like a hawk, he swooped down upon us; Grey was like a rat, he undermined us.'

On 5 March 1862 Browne was appointed governor of Tasmania, and remained there till the end of 1868. He was made K.C.M.G. on 23 June 1869. He administered the government of Bermuda temporarily from 11 July 1870 to 8 April 1871. He died in London on 17 April 1887. In 1854 he had married Harriet, daughter of James Campbell of Craigie, Ayrshire, who survived him. They had several children. The eldest son, Harold, commanded the first battalion king's royal rifle corps in the Boer war of 1899-1900, and took part in the defence of Ladysmith.

 BROWNING, ROBERT (1812–1889), poet, was descended, as he believed, from an Anglo-Saxon family which bore in Norman times the name De Bruni. As a matter of fact the stock has been traced no further back than to the early part of the eighteenth century, when the poet's natural great-grandfather owned the Woodgates inn in the parish of Partridge in Dorset. The son of this man, Robert Browning, was born in 1749, and was a clerk in the bank of England, rising to be principal of the bank stock office. He married, in 1778, Margaret Tittle, a West Indian heiress. He died at Islington on 11 Dec. 1833. By his first wife he had two children, a son Robert, and a daughter who died unmarried; by his second wife he had a large family. The second Robert Browning, who was born in 1781, was early sent out to manage the parental estate in St. Kitts, but threw up his appointment from disgust at the system of slave labour prevailing there. In 1803 he became a clerk in the bank of England, and in 1811 settled in Camberwell, and married the daughter of a small shipowner in Dundee named Wiedemann, whose father was a Hamburg merchant. He was a fluent writer of accurate verse, in the eighteenth century manner, and of tastes both scholarly and artistic. He had wished to be trained as a painter, and it is said that he was wont in later life to soothe his little boy to sleep by humming odes of Anacreon to him. The poet, who had little sympathy for his grandfather, adored the memory of his father, and gave impressions of his genius, which were perhaps exaggerated by affection. He was athletic and enjoyed magnificent health; a ruddy, active man, of high intelligence and liberality of mind. He lived on until 1866, vigorous to the end. A letter from Frederick Locker Lampson preserves some interesting impressions of this fine old man. He had two children—Robert, the poet, and Sarianna, who still survives (born 1814).

Robert Browning, one of the Englishmen of most indisputable genius whom the nineteenth century has produced, was born at Southampton Street, Camberwell, on 7 May 1812. 'He was a handsome, vigorous, fearless child, and soon developed an unresting activity and a fiery temper' (Mrs. Orr). He was keenly susceptible, from earliest infancy, to music, poetry, and painting. At two years and three months he painted (in lead-pencil and black-currant jam-juice) a composition of a cottage and rocks, which was thought a masterpiece. So turbulent was he and destructive that he was sent, a mere infant, to the day-school of a dame, who has the credit of having divined his intellect. One of the first books which influenced him was Croxall's 'Fables' in verse, and he soon began to make rhymes, and a little later plays. From a very early age he began to devour the volumes in his father's well-stocked library, and about 1824 he had completed a little volume of verses, called 'Incondita,' for which he endeavoured in vain to find a publisher, and it was destroyed. It had been shown, however, to Miss [q. v.], who made a copy of it; this copy, fifty years afterwards, fell