o the facts of life and to each other. In
this respect he has satisfied the most exigent demands of art, and
has already taken rank as one of the great creative minds of the
nineteenth century.

True poet he is, also, in his depth of feeling and range of sympathy.
Beneath a ruggedness of intellect, like his landscape in _De
Gustibus_, there is always sympathy and tenderness. It is, indeed,
more like the serenity of Chaucer's emotions than like the tragic
fervor of Shakespeare's. Mrs. Browning's estimate of him in _Lady
Geraldine's Courtship_,--

"Or from Browning some 'Pomegranate,' which, if cut deep down the middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity,"

is true criticism.

His love of nature, and his sense of the joy and beauty of it, appear
often in his poetry; but not with the same insistence as in Wordsworth
and Burns, and seldom with the same pervasiveness, or with the same
beauty, as in Tennyson. He was rather the poet of men's souls. When
he does use nature, it is generally to illustrate some phase or
experience of the soul, and not for the sake of its beauty. He has,
however, some nature-descriptions so exquisite that English poetry
would be the poorer for their loss. Witness _De Gustibus_, _Up at a
Villa_, _Home Thoughts from Abroad_, _Pippa's Songs_, and _Saul_.

It is too early to guess at Browning's permanent place in our
literature. But his vigor of intellect, his insight into the human
heart, his originality in phrase and conception, his unquenchable and
fearless optimism, and his grasp of the problems of his century, make
him beyond question one of its greatest figures.

APPRECIATIONS

Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's,
Therefore, on him no speech! and brief for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale
No man has walked along our roads with step
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse. But warmer climes
Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze
Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on
Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.

--WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

Tennyson has a vivid feeling of the dignity and potency of
_law_.... Browning vividly feels the importance, the greatness
and beauty of passions and enthusiasms, and his imagination
is comparatively unimpressed by the presence of law and its
operations.... It is not the order and regularity in the proce