ABSTRACT
Robert Browning and the bourgeoisie came of age in the same decade; and, for the arts as well as for the economic and social institutions, the 'old methods' were to prove inadequate to contain the 'increased resources'. The 1830s was the most barren decade for English poetry in the nineteenth century. The poverty of mature literary achievement in England in the 1830s may have been the result of one of those mysterious troughs of history in which the arts as well as other cultural forms find themselves from time to time. Wordsworth, who had celebrated the union of the natural universe with the mind of man, and Crabbe, a relatively realistic poet of rural and village life, are standing in what is essentially a part of suburban London. The lyrical, confessional form of Pauline looks back to the dominant mode of the romantic poets rather than forward to Browning's mid-Victorian achievement.
