ch it lost. The
tendency with certain critics is to reverse the process. Instead of
saying with the archbishop in Horne's "Gregory VII.," "He owes it all
to his Memnonian voice! He has no genius:" or of declaring, as Prospero
says of Caliban in "The Tempest," "He is as disproportioned in his
manners as in his shape:" how much better to affirm of him what Ben
Jonson wrote of Shakspere, "Hee redeemed his vices with his vertues:
there was ever more in him to bee praysed than to bee pardoned." In the
balance of triumphs and failures, however, is to be sought the relative
measure of genius--whose equipoise should be the first matter of
ascertainment in comparative criticism.

For those who would discriminate between what Mr. Traill succinctly
terms his _generic_ greatness as thinker and man of letters, and his
_specific_ power as poet, it is necessary to disabuse the mind of
Browning's "message." The question is not one of weighty message, but of
artistic presentation. To praise a poem because of its optimism is like
commending a peach because it loves the sunshine, rather than because of
its distinguishing bloom and savour. The primary concern of the artist
must be with his vehicle of expression. In the instance of a poet, this
vehicle is language emotioned to the white-heat of rhythmic music by
impassioned thought or sensation. Schopenhauer declares it is all a
question of style now with poetry; that everything has been sung, that
everything has been duly cursed, that there is nothing left for poetry
but to be the glowing forge of words. He forgets that in quintessential
art there is nothing of the past, nothing old: even the future has part
therein only in that the present is always encroaching upon, becoming,
the future. The famous pessimistic philosopher has, in common with other
critics, made, in effect, the same remark--that Style exhales the odour
of the soul: yet he himself has indicated that the strength of Shakspere
lay in the fact that 'he had no taste,' that 'he was not a man of
letters.' Whenever genius has displayed epic force it has established a
new order. In the general disintegration and reconstruction of literary
ideals thus involved, it is easier to be confused by the novel flashing
of strange lights than to discern the central vivifying altar-flame. It
may prove that what seem to us the regrettable accidents of Browning's
genius are no malfortunate flaws, but as germane thereto as his
Herculean ruggedne