have
described (_i.e._, domestic bliss) there is sublimity
to welcome me home; the roaring of the wind is my wife; and
the stars through the windowpanes are my children; the
mighty abstract idea of beauty in all things, I have,
stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness.
[Footnote: Letter to George Keats, October 31, 1818.]

Borne aloft by his admiration for this passage, the non-lover may
himself essay to be sublime. He may picture to us the frozen heights on
which genius resides, where the air is too rare for earthly affection.
He may declare that Keats' Grecian Urn is a symbol of all art, which
must be

All breathing human passion far above.

He will assert that the mission of the poet is "to see life steadily and
see it whole," a feat which is impossible if the worship of one figure
out of the multitude is allowed to distort relative values, and to throw
his view out of perspective.

Finally, the enemy of love may call as witnesses poets whom he fancies
he has led astray. Strangely enough, considering the dedication of the
_Ring and the Book_, he is likely to give most conspicuous place among
these witnesses to Browning. Like passages of Holy Writ, lines from
Browning have been used as the text for whatever harangue a new
theorist sees fit to give us. In _Youth and Art_, the non-lover
will point out the characteristic attitude of young people who are
"married to their art," and consequently have no capacity for other
affection. In _Pauline_, he will gloat over the hero's confession
that he is inept in love because he is concerned with his perceptions
rather than with their objects, and his explanation,

I am made up of an intensest life;
Of a most clear idea of consciousness
Of self ...
And I can love nothing,--and this dull truth
Has come at last: but sense supplies a love
Encircling me and mingling with my life.

He will point out that Sordello is another example of the same type, for
though Sordello is ostensibly the lover of Palma, he really finds
nothing outside himself worthy of his unbounded adoration. [Footnote:
Compare Browning's treatment of Sordello with the conventional treatment
of him as lover, in _Sordello_, by Mrs. W. Buck (1837).] Turning to
Tennyson, in _Lucretius_ the non-lover will note the tragic death
of the hero that grows out of the asceticism in love engendered by his
absorption in composition. With the greatest pride the enemy of