ity and a tragic intensity
which move the soul as nobly as any scene in modern literature. Here,
at least, the art is pure and not "decorated;" the effect is produced
by the simplest means, and all is just, natural, and grand. _Maud_--a
love novel in verse--published in 1855, and considerably enlarged in
1856, had great sweetness and beauty, particularly in its lyrical
portions, but it was uneven in execution, imperfect in design, and
marred by lapses into mawkishness and excesses in language. Since 1860
Tennyson has added little of permanent {293} value to his work. His
dramatic experiments, like _Queen Mary_, are not, on the whole,
successful, though it would be unjust to deny dramatic power to the
poet who has written, upon one hand, _Guinevere_ and the _Passing of
Arthur_, and upon the other the homely, dialectic monologue of the
_Northern Farmer_.

When we tire of Tennyson's smooth perfection, of an art that is over
exquisite, and a beauty that is well-nigh too beautiful, and crave a
rougher touch, and a meaning that will not yield itself too readily, we
turn to the thorny pages of his great contemporary, Robert Browning
(1812- ----). Dr. Holmes says that Tennyson is white meat and Browning
is dark meat. A masculine taste, it is inferred, is shown in a
preference for the gamier flavor. Browning makes us think; his poems
are puzzles, and furnish business for "Browning Societies." There are
no Tennyson societies, because Tennyson is his own interpreter.
Intellect in a poet may display itself quite as properly in the
construction of his poem as in its content; we value a building for its
architecture, and not entirely for the amount of timber in it.
Browning's thought never wears so thin as Tennyson's sometimes does in
his latest verse, where the trick of his style goes on of itself with
nothing behind it. Tennyson, at his worst, is weak. Browning, when
not at his best, is hoarse. Hoarseness, in itself, is no sign of
strength. In Browning, however, the failure is in art, not in thought.

{294}

He chooses his subjects from abnormal character types, such as are
presented, for example, in _Caliban upon Setebos_, the _Grammarian's
Funeral_, _My Last Duchess_, and _Mr. Sludge, the Medium_. These are
all psychological studies, in which the poet gets into the inner
consciousness of a monster, a pedant, a criminal, and a quack, and
gives their point of view. They are dramatic soliloquies; but the
poet's sel