olate
and separately appraise the worth of many detachable portions
which might be acknowledged AS UTTERLY PERFECT IN A LOWER
MORAL POINT OF VIEW, UNDER THE MERE CONDITIONS OF ART.
It would be easy to take my stand on successful instances
of objectivity in Shelley: there is the unrivalled `Cenci'; there is
the `Julian and Maddalo' too; there is the magnificent `Ode to Naples':
why not regard, it may be said, the less organized matter
as the radiant elemental foam and solution, out of which would have
been evolved, eventually, creations as perfect even as those?
But I prefer to look for the highest attainment, not simply the high,
--and, seeing it, I hold by it. There is surely enough
of the work `Shelley' to be known enduringly among men, and, I believe,
to be accepted of God, as human work may; and AROUND THE IMPERFECT
PROPORTIONS OF SUCH, THE MOST ELABORATED PRODUCTIONS OF ORDINARY ART
MUST ARRANGE THEMSELVES AS INFERIOR ILLUSTRATIONS."

The italics are mine. I would say, but without admitting
imperfect art on the part of Browning, for I regard him as one
of the greatest of literary artists, that HE must be estimated by
the standard presented in this passage, by the "presentment",
everywhere in his poetry, "of the correspondency of the universe
to Deity, of the natural to the spiritual, and of the actual
to the ideal."

The same standard is presented in `Andrea del Sarto',
in `Old Pictures in Florence', and in other of his poems.

V. Arguments of the Poems.

* It has not been thought necessary, in these Arguments, to
use quotation marks wherever expressions from the poems are
incorporated; and especially where they are adapted in
construction to the place where they are introduced.

Wanting is--What?

"Love, the soul of soul, within the soul", the Christ-spirit,
the spirit of the "Comer" (o` e'rxo/menos, Matt. 11:3),
completes incompletion, reanimates that which without it is dead,
and admits to a fellowship with the soul of things; `Ubi caritas,
ibi claritas'. See passage from `Fifine at the Fair',
quoted under `My Star'.

My Star.

The following passage from `Fifine at the Fair', section 55,
is an expansion of the idea involved in `My Star', and is
the best commentary which can be given on it:--

"I search but cannot see
What purpose serves the soul that strives, or world it tries
Conclusions with, unless the fruit of victories
Stay, one