For them alone among all men the nearest drawing-room is full of humanity, and even their own families are human.

Shakespeare ended his life by buying a house in his own native town and talking to the townsmen.

Browning was invited to a great many conversaziones and private views, and did not pretend that they bored him.

In a letter belonging to this period of his life he describes his first dinner at one of the Oxford colleges with an unaffected delight and vanity, which reminds the reader of nothing so much as the pride of the boy-captain of a public school if he were invited to a similar function and received a few compliments.

It may be indeed that Browning had a kind of second youth in this long-delayed social recognition, but at least he enjoyed his second youth nearly as much as his first, and it is not every one who can do that.
Of Browning's actual personality and presence in this later middle age of his, memories are still sufficiently clear.