inion.

"POPULARITY" is an expression of admiring tenderness for some person
whom the supposed speaker knows and loves as a poet, though it is the
coming, not the present age, which will bow to him as such. But the main
idea of the poem is set forth in a comparison. The speaker "sees" his
friend in the character of an ancient fisherman landing the Murex-fish
on the Tyrian shore. "The 'murex' contains a dye of miraculous beauty;
and this once extracted and bottled, Hobbs, Nobbs, and Co. may trade in
it and feast; but the poet who (figuratively) brought the murex to land,
and created its value, may, as Keats probably did, eat porridge all his
life."

"HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY" describes a poet whose personality was
not ignored, but mistaken; and the irony of circumstance is displayed
both in the extent of this mistake, and the colour which circumstance
has given to it. This poet is a mysterious personage, who constantly
wanders through the city, seeing everything without appearing to use his
eyes. His clothing, though old and worn, has been of the fashion of the
Court. He writes long letters, which are obviously addressed to "our
Lord the King," and "which, no doubt, have had to do with the
disappearance of A., and the fate of B." He can be, people think, no
other than a _spy_. A spy, we must admit, might proceed in much the same
manner. Mr. Browning does, however, full justice to the excesses of
popular imagination, once directed into a given channel, in the parallel
touches which depict the portentous luxury in which the spy is supposed
to live: the poor though decent garret in which the poet dies.

"TRANSCENDENTALISM" is addressed to a young poet, who is accused of
presenting his ideas "naked," instead of draping them, in poetic
fashion, in sights and sounds: in other words, of talking across his
harp instead of singing to it. He acts on the supposition that, if the
young want imagery, older men want rational thoughts. And his critic is
declaring this a mistake. "Youth, indeed, would be wasted in studying
the transcendental Jacob Boehme for the deeper meaning of things which
life gives it to see and feel; but when youth is past, we need all the
more to be made to see and feel. It is not a thinker like Boehme who
will compensate us for the lost summer of our life; but a magician like
John of Halberstadt, who can, at any moment, conjure roses up."[66]

There is a strong vein of humour in the argument, which