ange, of sierras. In single poems there is often a
point or moment in which passion suddenly reaches its culmination. He
flashes light upon the retina; he does not spread truth abroad like a
mantle but plunges it downwards through the mists of earth like a
searching sword-blade. And therefore he does not always distribute the
poetic value of what he writes equally; one vivid moment justifies all
that is preparatory to that great moment. His utterance, which is always
vigorous, becomes intensely luminous at the needful points and then
relapses, to its well-maintained vigour, a vigour not always accompanied
by the highest poetical qualities. The music of his verse is entirely
original, and so various are its kinds, so complex often are its
effects that it cannot be briefly characterised. Its attack upon the ear
is often by surprises, which, corresponding to the sudden turns of
thought and leaps of feeling, justify themselves as right and
delightful. Yet he sometimes embarrasses his verse with an excess of
suspensions and resolutions. Browning made many metrical experiments,
some of which were unfortunate: but his failures are rather to be
ascribed to temporary lapses into a misdirected ingenuity than to the
absence of metrical feeling.

His chief influence, other than what is purely artistic, upon a reader
is towards establishing a connection between the known order of things
in which we live and move and that larger order of which it is a part.
He plays upon the will, summoning it from lethargy to activity. He
spiritualises the passions by showing that they tend through what is
human towards what is divine. He assigns to the intellect a sufficient
field for exercise, but attaches more value to its efforts than to its
attainments. His faith in an unseen order of things creates a hope which
persists through the apparent failures of earth. In a true sense he may
be named the successor of Wordsworth, not indeed as an artist but as a
teacher. Substantially the creed maintained by each was the same creed,
and they were both more emphatic proclaimers of it than any other
contemporary poets. But their ways of holding and of maintaining that
creed were far apart. Wordsworth enunciated his doctrines as if he had
never met with, and never expected to meet with, any gainsaying of them.
He discoursed as a philosopher might to a school of disciples gathered
together to be taught by his wisdom, not to dispute it. He feared
chiefly not