A man must love a thing very much if he not only practises it without any hope of fame or money, but even practises it without any hope of doing it well.

Such a man must love the toils of the work more than any other man can love the rewards of it.

Browning was in this strict sense a strenuous amateur.

He tried and practised in the course of his life half a hundred things at which he can never have even for a moment expected to succeed.

The story of his life is full of absurd little ingenuities, such as the discovery of a way of making pictures by roasting brown paper over a candle.