in and keep the
delight and love of the centuries to come. By work of this type he will
be finally judged and finally endure; and, even now, every one who loves
great poetry knows what these master-poems are. As to the others, the
merely subtle, analytic poems in which intellect, not imagination, is
supreme, especially those into which he drifted in his later life when
the ardour of his poetic youth glowed less warmly--they will always
appeal to a certain class of persons who would like to persuade
themselves that they like poetry but to whom its book is sealed; and
who, in finding out what Browning means, imagine to their great surprise
that they find out that they care for poetry. What they really care for
is their own cleverness in discovering riddles, and they are as far away
from poetry as Sirius is from the Sun.

There are, however, many true lovers of poetry who are enthusiastic
about these poems. And parts of them deserve this enthusiasm, for they
have been conceived and made in a wild borderland between analysis and
imagination. They occupy a place apart, a backwater in the noble stream
of English poetry, filled with strange plants; and the final judgment of
Browning's rank as an artist will not depend on them but on the earlier
poems, which, being more "simple, sensuous and passionate," are nearer
to the common love and life of man. When, then, we apply this test, the
difference of rank between him and Tennyson is not great, but it is
plain. Yet comparison, on this point, is difficult. Both drew mankind.
Tennyson is closer to that which is most universal in the human heart,
Browning to the vast variety within it; and men in the future will find
their poetic wants best satisfied by reading the work of both these
poets. Let us say then that in this matter they are equal. Each has done
a different part of that portraiture of human nature which is the chief
work of a poet.

But this is not the only test we may apply to these men as poets. The
second question which tries the endurance and greatness of poetic work
is this: "How far is any poet's representation of what is true and
loving in itself lovely?" Their stuff may be equally good. Is their form
equally good? Is it as beautiful as an artist, whose first duty is to be
true to beauty as the shape of love and truth, ought to make it? The
judgment of the future will also be formed on that ground, and
inevitably.

What we call form in poetry may be said to consi