er. It is all very well to say that "he
carried the prejudices of his class (i.e. the middle class) into
eternity!" But we have to reckon with the hot passion of "Time's
Revenges," the daring unconventionality of "Fifine at the Fair," and the
rare sympathy and discernment of the gipsy temperament in "The Flight of
the Duchess." Conventional prejudices Browning undoubtedly had, and
there was a splendid level-headedness about the man which kept in check
the extravagances of Vagabondage.

But no poet who has studied men and women as he had studied them,
pondering with loving care the curious, the complex, the eccentric, could
have failed to break away at times from the outlook of the middle-class
Englishman.

Tennyson, on the other hand, looking the handsome Vagabond to the life,
living apart from the world, as if its conventions and routine were
distasteful to him, had scarcely a touch of the Vagabond in his
temperament. That he had no Vagabond moods I will not say; for the poet
who had no Vagabond moods has yet to be born. But he frowned them down
as best he could, and in his writings we can see the typical, cultured,
middle-class Englishman as we certainly fail to see in Browning. A great
deal of Tennyson is merely Philistinism made musical. The romantic
temper scarcely touches him at all; and in those noble
poems--"Lucretius," "Ulysses," "Tithonus"--where his special powers find
their happiest expression, the attitude of mind has nothing in common
with that of the Vagabond. It was classic art, not romantic art, that
attracted Tennyson.

Compare the "Guinevere" of Tennyson with the "Guenevere" of Morris, and
you realize at once the vast difference that separates Sentimentalism
from Romanticism. And Vagabondage can be approached only through the
gateway of Romanticism.

VII

In looking back upon these discursive comments on the Vagabond element in
modern literature, one cannot help asking what is the resultant effect of
the Vagabond temperament upon life and thought. As psychologists no
doubt we are content to examine its peculiarities and extravagances
without troubling to ask how far it has made for sanity and sweetness.

Yet the question sooner or later rises to our lips. This Vagabond
temperament--is its charm and attractiveness merely superficial? I
cannot think so. I think that on the whole its effect upon our
literature has been salutary and beneficial.

These more eager, more adventuro