poet's own soul." If
Shelley was deficient in some subordinate powers which support and
reinforce the purely poetic gifts, he possessed the highest faculty and
in this he lived and had his being. "His spirit invariably saw and spoke
from the last height to which it had attained." What was "his noblest
and predominating characteristic" as a poet? Browning attempts to give
it definition: it was "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 connexion of each with each, than have been
thrown by any modern artificer of whom I have knowledge." In other words
it was Shelley's special function to fling an aerial bridge from
reality, as we commonly understand that word, to the higher reality
which we name the ideal; to set up an aerial ladder--not less solid
because it is aerial--upon the earth, whose top reached to heaven. Such
was Browning's conception of Shelley, and it pays little regard either
to atheistic theory or vegetarian practice.

A time came when Robert Browning must make choice of a future career.
His interests in life were manifold, but in some form or another art
was the predominant interest. His father remembered his own early
inclinations, and how they had been thwarted; he recognised the rare
gifts of his son, and he resolved that he should not be immured in the
office of a bank. Should he plead at the bar? Should he paint? Should he
be a maker of music, as he at one time desired, and for music he always
possessed an exceptional talent? When his father spoke to him, Robert
Browning knew that his sister was not dependent on any effort of his to
provide the means of living. "He appealed," writes Mr Gosse, "to his
father, whether it would not be better for him to see life in the best
sense, and cultivate the powers of his mind, than to shackle himself in
the very outset of his career by a laborious training, foreign to that
aim. ... So great was the confidence of the father in the genius of his
son that the former at once acquiesced in the proposal." It was decided
that he should take to what an old woman of the lake district, speaking
of "Mr Wudsworth," described as "the poetry business." The believing
father was even prepared to invest some capital in the concern. At his
expense _Paracelsus, Sordello_, and _Bells and Pomegranates_ were
published.

A