a counter creed but the materialising effects of the
industrial movement of his own day. Expecting no contradiction,
Wordsworth did not care to quit his own standpoint in order that he
might see how things appear from the opposing side. He did not argue but
let his utterance fall into a half soliloquy spoken in presence of an
audience but not always directly addressed to them. Browning's manner of
speech was very unlike this. He seems to address it often to
unsympathetic hearers of whose presence and gainsaying attitude he could
not lose sight. The beliefs for which he pleaded were not in his day, as
they had been in Wordsworth's, part of a progressive wave of thought. He
occupied the disadvantageous position of a conservative thinker. The
later poet of spiritual beliefs had to make his way not with, but
against, a great incoming tide of contemporary speculation. Probably on
this account Browning's influence as a teacher will extend over a far
shorter space of time than that of Wordsworth. For Wordsworth is
self-contained, and is complete without reference to the ideas which
oppose his own. His work suffices for its own explanation, and will
always commend itself to certain readers either as the system of a
philosophic thinker or as the dream of a poet. Browning's thought where
it is most significant is often more or less enigmatical if taken by
itself: its energetic gestures, unless we see what they are directed
against, seem aimless beating the air. His thought, as far as it is
polemical, will probably cease to interest future readers. New methods
of attack will call forth new methods of defence. Time will make its
discreet selection from his writings. And the portion which seems most
likely to survive is that which presents in true forms of art the
permanent passions of humanity and characters of enduring interest.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 144: Mrs Orr gives the dates of composition of several of the
_Asolando_ poems. _Rosny_, _Beatrice Signorini_ and _Flute-Music_ were
written in the winter of 1887-1888. Two or three of the _Bad Dreams_
are, with less confidence, assigned to the same date. The _Ponte dell'
Angelo_ "was imagined during the next autumn in Venice" (see Mrs
Bronson's article "Browning in Venice"). "_White Witchcraft_ had been
suggested in the same summer (1888) by a letter from a friend in the
Channel Islands which spoke of the number of toads to be seen there."
_The Cardinal and the Dog_, written with t