We do not find in it any trace of the analytical Browning who is believed in by learned ladies and gentlemen.

How indeed would such sympathisers feel if informed that the first poems that Browning wrote in a volume called _Incondita_ were noticed to contain the fault of "too much splendour of language and too little wealth of thought"?
They were indeed Byronic in the extreme, and Browning in his earlier appearances in society presents himself in quite a romantic manner.

Macready, the actor, wrote of him: "He looks and speaks more like a young poet than any one I have ever seen." A picturesque tradition remains that Thomas Carlyle, riding out upon one of his solitary gallops necessitated by his physical sufferings, was stopped by one whom he described as a strangely beautiful youth, who poured out to him without preface or apology his admiration for the great philosopher's works.

Browning at this time seems to have left upon many people this impression of physical charm.

A friend who attended University College with him says: "He was then a bright handsome youth with long black hair falling over his shoulders." Every tale that remains of him in connection with this period asserts and reasserts the completely romantic spirit by which he was then possessed.