This is the most practical duty of biography, and this is also the most difficult.

It is a great deal easier to hunt a family from tombstone to tombstone back to the time of Henry II.

than to catch and realise and put upon paper that most nameless and elusive of all things--social tone.
It will be said immediately, and must as promptly be admitted, that we could find a biographical significance in any of these theories if we looked for it.

But it is, indeed, the sin and snare of biographers that they tend to see significance in everything; characteristic carelessness if their hero drops his pipe, and characteristic carefulness if he picks it up again.

It is true, assuredly, that all the three races above named could be connected with Browning's personality.