ABSTRACT

This passage, in which the American writer records a visit made in 1858, is of especial interest in that Hawthorne expresses what so many others who knew Browning felt: that the ‘private’ Browning was so much more simple, straightforward (and, for Henry James, at least, less interesting) than the ‘public’ Browning of the difficult poetry. Home is, of course, the American ‘medium’, D.D. Home, whom Browning characterized as ‘Mr. Sludge’.