Browning and Shelley

The question of Shelley's influence on the young Robert Browning is hardly a disputed one, but the question of how far it continues into the life and work of the later Browning is quite a different matter. While the early influence is readily acknowledged, the later hardly receives the amount of attention it deserves. The consensus among critics has long been that in his youth Browning had a great enthusiasm for Shelley, an enthusiasm clearly apparent in Pauline and Paracelsus, but abruptly extinguished in Sordello. Generally speaking, it would seem that Browning's ardent enthusiasm for Shelley the poet ends with Sordello in 1840, just as his respect for Shelley the man ends in 1856, with the discovery that he had abandoned his first wife. Any evidence for a lapse of his disaffection in later life seems effectively countered by Browning's own testimony in a letter written in 1885 to F. J. Furnivall, refusing the presidency of the newly formed Shelley Society: “For myself, I painfully contrast my notions of Shelley the man and Shelley, well, even the poet, with what they were sixty years ago, when I only had his works, for a certainty, and took his character on trust.” With these highlights of the relationship, most Browning critics and biographers terminate the discussion.