o a happy concord at their
close. There are others the melody of which is so strange, brilliant,
and capturing that their sound is never forgotten. There are others the
subtle, minor harmonies of which belong to and represent remote pathetic
phases of human passion, and they, too, are heard by us in lonely hours
of pitiful feeling, and enchant the ear and heart. And these will endure
for the noble pleasure of man.

There are also poems the style of which is fitted most happily to the
subject, like the Letter of Karshish to his Friend, in which Browning
has been so seized by his subject, and yet has so mastered it, that he
has forgotten to intercalate his own fancies; and in which, if the style
is broken, it is broken in full harmony with the situation, and in
obedience to the unity of impression he desired to make. There are
others, like _Abt Vogler_, in which the style is extraordinarily noble,
clear, and uplifted; and there are long passages in the more important
poems, like _Paracelsus_, where the joy and glory of the thought and
passion of Browning inform the verse with dignity, and make its march
stately with solemn and beautiful music. Where the style and melody are
thus fine the composition is also good. The parts, in their variety,
belong to one another and to the unity of the whole. Style, melody and
composition are always in the closest relation. And this nobleness of
composition, style, and melody is chiefly found in those poems of his
which have to do with the great matter of poetry--the representation of
the universal and simple passions of human nature with their attendant
and necessary thoughts. And there, in that part of his work, not in that
other part for which he is unduly praised, and which belongs to the
over-subtilised and over-intellectual time in which our self-conscious
culture now is striving to resist its decay, and to prove that its
disease is health, is the lasting power of Browning.

And then, beyond all these matters of form, there is the poet himself,
alone among his fellows in his unique and individual power, who has
fastened himself into our hearts, added a new world to our perceptions,
developed our lives and enlarged our interests. And there are the
separate and distinguished excellences of his work--the virtues which
have no defects, the virtues, too, of his defects, all the new wonders
of his realm--the many originalities which have justly earned for him
that high and lonely seat o