love had withstood
the chill passage of the years.

* * * * *

On the night of Browning's death a new star suddenly appeared in Orion.
The coincidence is suggestive if we like to indulge in the fancy that in
that constellation--

"No more subjected to the change or chance
Of the unsteady planets----"

gleam those other "abodes where the Immortals are." Certainly, a
wandering fire has passed away from us. Whither has it gone? To that
new star in Orion: or whirled to remote silences in the trail of lost
meteors? Whence, and for how long, will its rays reach our storm and
gloom-beleaguered earth?

Such questions cannot meanwhile be solved. Our eyes are still confused
with the light, with that ardent flame, as we knew it here. But this we
know, it was indeed "a central fire descending upon many altars." These,
though touched with but a spark of the immortal principle, bear enduring
testimony. And what testimony! How heartfelt: happily also how
widespread, how electrically stimulative!

But the time must come when the poet's personality will have the
remoteness of tradition: when our perplexed judgments will be as a tale
of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It is impossible for any student
of literature, for any interested reader, not to indulge in some
forecast as to what rank in the poetic hierarchy Robert Browning will
ultimately occupy. The commonplace as to the impossibility of
prognosticating the ultimate slow decadence, or slower rise, or, it may
be, sustained suspension, of a poet's fame, is often insincere, and but
an excuse of indolence. To dogmatise were the height of presumption as
well as of folly: but to forego speculation, based upon complete present
knowledge, for an idle contentment with narrow horizons, were perhaps
foolisher still. But assuredly each must perforce be content with his
own prevision. None can answer yet for the generality, whose decisive
franchise will elect a fit arbiter in due time.

So, for myself, let me summarise what I have already written in several
sections of this book, and particularly in the closing pages of Chapter
VI. There, it will be remembered--after having found that Browning's
highest achievement is in his second period--emphasis was laid on the
primary importance of his life-work in its having compelled us to the
assumption of a fresh critical standpoint involving the construction of
a new definition. In the light of thi