very filament of the web of human "legislature."

This double aspect of Browning's poetic nature is vividly reflected in
the memorable essay on Shelley which he wrote at Paris in 1851, as an
introduction to a series of letters since shown to have been forged. The
essay--unfortunately not included in his Works--is a document of
first-rate importance for the mind of Browning in the midst of his
greatest time; it is also by far the finest appreciation of Shelley
which had yet appeared. He saw in Shelley one who, visionary and
subjective as he was, had solved the problem which confronts every
idealist who seeks to grasp the visible world in its concrete actuality.
To Browning himself that problem presented itself in a form which tasked
far more severely the resources of poetic imagination, in proportion as
actuality bodied itself forth to his alert senses in more despotic
grossness and strength. Shelley is commonly thought to have evaded this
task altogether,--building his dream-world of cloud and cavern
loveliness remote from anything we know. It is Browning, the most
"actual" of poets, who insisted, half a century ago, on the
"practicality" of Shelley,--insisted, as it is even now not superfluous
to insist, on the fearless and direct energy with which he strove to
root his intuitions in experience. "His noblest and predominating
characteristic," he urges, to quote these significant words once more,
"is his simultaneous perception of Power and Love in the absolute, and
of Beauty and Good in the concrete, while he throws, from his poet's
station between both, swifter, subtler, and more numerous films for the
connection of each with each than have been thrown by any modern
artificer of whom I have knowledge; proving how, as he says--

"'The spirit of the worm beneath the sod
In love and worship blends itself with God.'"

Browning has nowhere else expounded so fully his ideas about the aims of
his own art. It lay in the peculiar "dramatic" quality of his mind to
express himself freely only in situations not his own. Hence, while he
does not altogether avoid the poet as a character, his poets are drawn
with a curious externality and detachment. It is in his musicians, his
painters, his grammarians, that the heart and passion of Browning the
poet really live. He is the poet of musicians and of painters, the poet
of lawyers and physicians and Rabbis, and of scores of callings which
never had a poet before; but he is