English poet and playwright Robert Browning was born #OTD in 1812.
His early long poems Pauline and Paracelsus were acclaimed, but his reputation dwindled for a time – his 1840 poem Sordello was seen as wilfully obscure. By the death of Elizabeth Barrett in 1861 he had published the collection Men and Women. His Dramatis Personae and book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book made him a leading poet.
"We're made so that we love
First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;
And so they are better, painted —better to us,
Which is the same thing. Art was given for that."
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