s through whole pages of address to the
"Sun-treader" gives no exaggerated picture of Browning's love and
reverence for Shelley, whose _Alastor_ might perhaps in some respects be
compared with _Pauline_. The rhythm of Browning's poem has a certain
echo in it of Shelley's earlier blank verse; and the lyrically emotional
descriptions and the vivid and touching metaphors derived from nature
frequently remind us of Shelley, and sometimes of Keats. On every page
we meet with magical touches like this:--

"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 black-thorn boughs,
So dark in the bare wood, when glistening
In the sunshine were white with coming buds,
Like the bright side of a sorrow, and the banks
Had violets opening from sleep like eyes;"

with lines full of exquisite fancy, such as those on the woodland
tarn:--

"The trees bend
O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl;"

and in one place we have a marvellously graphic description, extending
over three pages, perhaps the most elaborately painted landscape in
Browning's work. It seems like wronging the poem to speak of its
_promise_: it is, indeed, far from mature, but it has a superb precocity
marking a certain stage of ripeness. It is lacking, certainly, as
Browning himself declares, in "good draughtsmanship and right handling,"
but this defect of youth is richly compensated by the wealth of
inspiration, the keen intellectual and ethical insight, and the
numberless lines of haunting charm, which have nothing of youth in them
but its vigorous freshness.

2. PARACELSUS.

[Published in 1835; first acknowledged work (_Poetical
Works_, 1889, Vol. II., pp. 1-186.) The original MS. is in the
Forster Library at South Kensington.]

The poem is divided into five scenes, each a typical episode in the life
of Paracelsus. It is in the form of dialogue between Paracelsus and
others: Festus and his wife Michal in the first scene, Aprile, an
Italian poet, in the second, and Festus only in the remainder. The poem
is followed by an appendix, containing a few notes and a brief biography
of Paracelsus, translated from the _Biographie Universelle_.

_Paracelsus_ might be praised, and has justly been praised, for its
serious and penetrating quality as an historical study of the great
mystic and great man of sci