ing out those on
which we have already touched. New points of interest will thus arise;
and, moreover, taking his natural description as it occurs from volume
to volume, we may be able--within this phase of his poetic nature--to
place his poetic development in a clearer light.

I begin, therefore, with _Pauline_. The descriptions of nature in that
poem are more deliberate, more for their own sake, than elsewhere in
Browning's poetry. The first of them faintly recalls the manner of
Shelley in the _Alastor_, and I have no doubt was influenced by him. The
two others, and the more finished, have already escaped from Shelley,
and are almost pre-Raphaelite, as much so as Keats, in their detail. Yet
all the three are original, not imitative. They suggest Shelley and
Keats, and no more, and it is only the manner and not the matter of
these poets that they suggest. Browning became instantly original in
this as in other modes of poetry. It was characteristic of him from the
beginning to the end of his career, to possess within himself his own
methods, to draw out of himself new matter and new shapings.

From one point of view this was full of treasureable matter for us. It
is not often the gods give us so opulent an originality. From another
point of view it was unfortunate. If he had begun by imitating a little;
if he had studied the excellences of his predecessors more; if he had
curbed his individuality sufficiently to mark, learn and inwardly digest
the noble style of others in natural description, and in all other
matters of poetry as well, his work would have been much better than it
is; his original excellences would have found fitter and finer
expression; his faults would have been enfeebled instead of being
developed; his style would have been more concise on one side, less
abrupt on another, and we should not have been wrongly disturbed by
obscurities of diction and angularities of expression. He would have
reached more continuously the splendid level he often attained. This is
plentifully illustrated by his work on external nature, but less perhaps
than by his work on humanity.

The first natural description he published is in the beginning of
_Pauline_:

Thou wilt remember one warm morn when winter
Crept aged from the earth, and spring's first breath
Blew soft from the moist hills; the blackthorn boughs,
So dark in the bare wood, when glistening
In the sunshine were white with coming buds,