f Browning in the
history of English poetry is perhaps premature. Yet the record of "How
it strikes a contemporary" may itself have a certain historical
interest. When estimates of this kind have been revised by time even
their errors are sometimes instructive, or, if not instructive, are
amusing. It is probable that Tennyson will remain as the chief
representative in poetry of the Victorian period. Browning, who was
slower in securing an audience, may be found to possess a more
independent individuality. Yet in truth no great writer is independent
of the influences of his age.

Browning as a poet had his origins in the romantic school of English
poetry; but he came at a time when the romance of external action and
adventure had exhausted itself, and when it became necessary to carry
romance into the inner world where the adventures are those of the soul.
On the ethical and religious side he sprang from English Puritanism.
Each of these influences was modified by his own genius and by the
circumstances of its development. His keen observation of facts and
passionate inquisition of human character drew him in the direction of
what is termed realism. This combination of realism with romance is even
more strikingly seen in an elder contemporary on whose work Browning
bestowed an ardent admiration, the novelist Balzac. His Puritanism
received important modifications from his wide-ranging artistic
instincts and sympathies, and again from the liberality of a
wide-ranging intellect. He has the strenuous moral force of Puritanism,
but he is wholly free from asceticism, except in the higher significance
of that word--the hardy discipline of an athlete. Opinions count for
less than the form and the habitual attitudes of a soul. These with
Browning were always essentially Christian. He regarded our life on
earth as a state of probation and of preparation; sometimes as a
battle-field in which our test lies in the choice of the worse or the
better side and the energy of devotion to the cause; sometimes as a
school of education, in the processes of which the emotions play a
larger part than the intellect. The degrees in that school are not to be
taken on earth. And on the battle-field the final issue is not to be
determined here, so that what appears as defeat may contain within it an
assured promise of ultimate victory. The attitudes of the spirit which
were most habitual with him were two--the attitude of aspiration and the
attitu