produce such a work.'-Macready likes the altered prologue very much.'. . Forster's Life of Dickens,' vol. ii. (1873), p. 24-5.

1843. Gentleman's Magazine,' August, p. 168-9, reviews Bells and Pomegranates, Nos. I-IV. Of Mr. Browning's poetical powers and philosophical knowledge of the mind of man, we have a very high opinion, and on some of the eloquent and powerful passages in his former productions we have been delighted to dwell. His Paracelsus was a noble monster(!); but as regards the present work. we take it that Mr. Browning in poetry, as Mr. Turner in the sister art of painting, being self-delighted with the exercise of his acknowledged powers, writes for his own gratification and to his own will, without much regard to the approbation or applause of his readers. His mind is full of imagery, and all fancies quaint and noble; a copious flow of language is at his command ; he is master of the passions that sway the human heart: and thus conscious of his powers, he mounts his steed, turns the magic peg in its ear, and instantly shoots aloft, and goes careering along in the high regions of the empyrean, hardly visible to ordinary mortals. Of his four numbers we like best his first, Pippa Pases. The scene between the wife Olivia [Ottima] and her paramour Sibald [Sebald].. is very poetically drawn; and so is the sketch of the Poor Girls who sit on the steps near the Duomo of S. Maria. . . . The dramatic lyrics are very clever in parts; but the following is perfect as a whole, as an excellent companion to the best of the spirited old political ballads and garlands, Cavalier Tunes.-I. Marching Along [all quoted]. The Cloister [Spanish] is the next best, in our belief, but we have not room to extract it. (Mr. W. G. Stone gives me the reference.)

1845. The Theologian: a Chronicle of Ancient and Modern Divinity, and Universal Christian Literature,' London, Ollivier, no. 6, vol. ii. p. 276-282. Review of Paracelsu, p. 278. Browning's Paracelsus is indeed one of the most remarkable,- one of the most poetically beautiful works, that has been added for many years to our stores of national literature. A profundity of thought is displayed in it, almost unrivalled in the poetic creations of our countrymen; whilst the imaginativeness, the picturesque fancy of the illustrative comparisons, the tenderness of loving depth of soul developed in the characters of the drama, form a whole that must at once challenge high admiration for its grandeur and nobility, and heartfelt sympathy with its gentler beauties ... p. 279. The poetry in which the drama is embodied is of the very highest order worthy indeed of its author, for whom we scruple not to challenge admiration and acknowledgement, as the first poet of the day. Let us give some proofs of the truth of the allegation. . . Thus beautifully speaks Browning, in the poem of Paracelsus, of the influence of man's birth on creation.

"Man once descried, imprints for ever

His presence on all lifeless things"... (V. 720-739.)

p. 280. Or again, for a description of night verging towards morning, is

it possible to surpass this?....

The night, late strewn with clouds and flying stars,

Is blank and motionless. How peaceful sleep

The tree-tops all together! like an asp

The wind slips whispering from bough to bough" .... (V. 997-1001.)

p. 281. Still, the highest merit of this poem remains almost untouched on. These will be found chiefly in that dramatic verisimilitude, that entering into the very heart and soul of man, which is Browning's special prerogative; that "He [Dickens] is a strong admirer of Tennyson and Browning; we have heard him declare that he would rather have written the Blot in the 'Scutcheon than any work of modern times."-T. Powell, Living Authors,' 1849, p. 175.

"All the incidents-as in The Blot on the 'Scutcheon, one of the most perfectly conceived and perfectly executed tragedies in the language- -are grouped around the supreme crisis out of which they spring, and to which they are organically related. The tragedy may cover a life-time; but the one moment big with fate burns like a baneful star in the centre." 1865. Jno. Skelton. Campaigner at Home,' p. 277.

portraying of separate individualities which it is almost impossible to confound or miscomprehend... It is more particularly in the portraiture of gentle hearts and noble deeds that Browning excels... (p. 282). Paracelsus is a great poem, one that requires long and careful study for a full appreciation, but which contains many beauties that will strike the reader at the first glance. It is truly important.. it confirms us in that belief. . which Paracelsus here expresses, and which may be said to convey the very essence of Christianity, as establishing the superiority of spirit over mind,

"Love, hope, fear, faith,—these make humanity!" Intellect is subordinate to Conscience.

1845 (?). Landor on R. Browning.' "I have written to Browning, a great poet, a very great poet indeed, as the world will have to agree with us in thinking. I am now deep in the Soul's Tragedy. The sudden close of Luria is very grand ; but preceding it, I fear there is rather too much of argumentation and reflection. It is continued too long after the Moor has taken poison. I may be wrong; but if it is so, you will see it and tell him. God grant that he may live to be much greater than he is, high as he stands above most of the living: latis humeris et toto vertice. But now to the Soul's Tragedy, &c. Adieu till we meet at this very table."

1846. Easter. W. S. Landor to R. B. on his dedication of Luria and the Soul's Tragedy to L. (From S. Colvin's ' Landor,' 1881, p. 188. Accept my thanks for the richest of Easter offerings made to any one for many years. I staid at home last evening on purpose to read Luria, and if I lost my good music (as I certainly did) I was well compensated in kind. To-day I intend to devote the rainy hours entirely to The Soul's Tragedy. I wonder whether I shall find it as excellent as Luria. You have conferred too high a distinction on me in your graceful inscription. I am more of a dramatist in prose than in poetry. Go on and pass us poor devils! If you do not go far ahead of me, I will crack my whip at you and make you spring forward. So, to use a phrase of Queen Elizabeth, "Yours as you demean yourself,

"W. LANDOR." 1848. J. Russell Lowell on Browning's Humour. 'His humour is as genuine as that of Carlyle, and if his laugh have not the "earthquake" character with which Emerson has so happily labelled the shaggy merriment of that Jean Paul Burns, yet it is always sincere and hearty, and there is a tone of meaning in it which always sets us thinking. Had we room, we should be glad to give our readers a full analysis of his Soul's Tragedy, which abounds in the truest humor, flitting from point to point with all the electric sparkle and condensed energy of wit." 1848. North American Review,' April, vol. 66, p. 394. p. 395: We copy one specimen of Mr. Browning's more formal, and so to speak, scholastic humor, Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. (p. 397). We are confident that our readers will sympathize with us in the joy we feel, that one of those old bores in Quarto, whose oppressions we have all suffered in our several degrees, has met with an adequate retribution.' 1850. Massachusetts Quarterly Review,' No. XI. June, 1850. Art. IV. "Browning's Poems." 1. Poems. In Two Vols. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields. 1850. 2. Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day. London. 1850. . . If we have nearly made up our mind that a metaphysical faculty, both keen and profound, is the writer's gift, we suspend our judgment when he gives us some of the most subtle developments of human character and motive that exist since Shakspeare. Lest we should decide in favor of this great trait of genius, he hurries us into the domain of nature, charms us by description at once delicate and sublime, brings the fleeting graces of earth and sky to match his thoughts, gives animals an individuality, from the quick jerboa, 'none such as he for a wonder," to the lion, thinking of his desert, with "the hope in those eyes wide and steady:" there is not a dead or living thing with which the poet has not the healthiest sympathy. He brings them all out, the shy birds, the dumb flowers, and encourages them to show their best side to us. We yield our admiration to his pictures of still life, and are on the point of calling him the artist of nature, when he gives his tube another turn. Were it not for the genial relations

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which all his gifts bear to each other, we should say that another poet was demonstrating before us, with the power of vivid relation, the dramatic rendering of imaginary scenes into life and wonderful movement, with inevitable word-painting, with coloring and grouping that cheapen in our estimation the best pictures we can remember. Then he tosses us a lyric, with the rich 'golden cry" of the trumpet, such as Marching Along, Incident of the French Camp, The Lost Leader. Then his clear voice rolls out the sly humor of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, and one of the Garden Fancies. Then he breaks into a fierce scorn with The Confessional; recovers and consoles himself with (p. 348) the singing of The Boy and the Angel, and those two exquisite pieces, at once song and picture, Meeting at Night, and Parting at Morning... then he sings songs. Suddenly he grows very serious as he calls up the scenes of Luria to pass before you. As you become elevated and strengthened, he bids you look again; film after film passes over the magical mirror, each film a character or a life: the pure pathos of Mildred's lapse in The Blot in the 'Scutcheon... the naïve and sweet prayerfulness of Pippa, God's unconscious singer the endurance, the love of right, of Valence, rewarded by a doubling of all these in Colombe the great lesson of the impulsive, ruined Paracelsus ... his heart broken by its last throb, suggesting too late that Love should precede Power, that love itself was knowledge. the line will stretch out to the crack of doom... (p. 349) The characters are as substantial and probable as the landscapes; they are reproduced with all the vividness of thought and feeling belonging to a history (p. 350) You long to know more about them, for their imagined acts and situations have won you completely, enlisting heart and soul in their behalf. . . The story related may be simple enough, but it is transfused with the life's blood of the actors. as in real life you are conscious of their reserved power and character. Chance touches reveal to you a world of feeling or passion, and a couple of lines gives you a lustrum of their lives... (p. 355) We do not find the condensed energy and meaning of Mr. Br. an objectionable trait. "Hamlet" has to be studied a little, and we remember that Beethoven's symphonies do not possess us till we have heard each half a dozen times. Mr. B. seems to take his poems, after writing them, and crush them at both ends, till he gets the well-knit symmetry and consistency of a Bedouin ... (p. 358) Paracelsus . . . on his death-bed gives us nearly 11 pages of a discussion upon the nature of man, and the need of establishing knowledge upon love. The thoughts are so grand, the fancy is so rich and illustrative, the whole mood is so sublime, that we forget the dying man upon his pallet, and the listening friend, completely rapt and charmed away from all ideas of unity into regions of still meditation. Thought urged with eloquence holds us enthralled; noble and finished figures surprise and stimulate us.. We remember the ascetic loftiness of Milton's metaphysics, only to feel them at last depreciated, for they are the mere discursus of a theologian compared with the domestic thoughts and the tender human religion in Paracelsus. At least, we have a body of divinity clad in the glowing robes of the epic, speaking with the clear bright voices of the lyric... let us enjoy some of these lines together... (p. 360) The dying Paracelsus ignores dramatic proprieties, to talk with us concerning God; to lend to dumb, wistful nature, waiting for man's recognition, the hues of his great human spirit, brightening towards the close to fill us with faith and brotherly love. This is the loftiest effort of Mr. Browning's genius; he resigns part of his manifoldness, the fresh earthy humour, the subtle irony, for a great recompense in solemn conceptions of the nature of God. Solemn, yet cheerful, mingling with his vital fancy, like thoughts of death long past, with the sunshine lying aslant the placid hearth. No man can read without acknowledging that here poetry fulfils her highest object. She takes of the things of God, and shows them unto men... (p. 384) Nothing of late has so lifted the veil behind our customary routine and feeling, letting in upon them ripples of glory from the sphere of perfect beauty, as the latter half of Easter Eve, with its presageful lines, its credible anticipations, its cosraic thought. We forbear to mar the sustained and solemn grace of the poem by quotations of that which every man must buy and read. (p. 385). Is it too much to say that, with this pen for his sceptre, Mr. Br. can exact the

homage of all hearts... Last words of admiration and gratitude linger on our pen. We bespeak for every future line of Mr. Br. a cordial welcome here. And it is pleasant to think that he cannot regard the warm personal friendships ba has unconsciously established here, with indifference.'

1852. Dr. Asher: England's Dichter und Prosaisten der Neuzeit,' Berlin, A. Nauck, gives the first extracts from R. B.'s poems, and the first sketch of his life contained in any Anthology in Germany. Dr. Ahn's 'Selections from R. B.', 1872 (see below) were also submitted to Dr. Asher for revision.

1855. C. Knight, Half-Hours with the best Authors,' 3rd ed., reprints The Pied Piper in vol. iv. p. 366-374, with a short criticism of the see-saw order prefixt. -W. G. Stone.

1856. JOHN RUSKIN. Modern Painters, vol. iv. p. 377-9. "Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence he writes of the Middle Ages; always vital, right, and profound; so that in the matter of art, with which we have been specially concerned, there is hardly a principle connected with the mediaval temper, that he has not struck upon in those seemingly careless and too rugged rhymes of his"...: [then, commenting on a point misst by Shakspere1 (because it was specially Italian and un-English) but caught by Browning-"the kind of admiration with which a Southern artist regarded the stone? he worked in; and the pride which populace or priest took in the possession of precious mountain substance, worked into the pavements of their cathedrals, and the shafts of their tombs," he quotes "The Bishop orders his Tomb in St. Praxed's Church

"As here I lie" (to)

"Truly, my masters? Ulpian serves his need."]

§ 34. "I know no other piece of modern English prose or poetry, in which there is so much told, as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit,-its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of Luxury, and of good Latin. It is nearly all that I have said of the central Renaissance in thirty pages of the 'Stones of Venice,' put into as many lines, Browning's also being the antecedent work. The worst of it is, that this kind of concentrated writing needs so much solution before the reader can fairly get the good of it, that people's patience fails them, and they give the thing up as insoluble; though, truly, it ought to be, to the current of common thought, like Saladin's talisman dipped in clear water, not soluble altogether, but making the element medicinal.'

1856. Mons. J. Milsand in the Revue Contemporaire,' 107 Livraison: 15 Septembre, Art. III., "La poésie expressive et dramatique en Angleterre M. Robert Browning," p. 511-546. Reviews Men and Women. Part I., a review of the character of English poetry-Shakspere, Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning at once realist and idealist, dealing with life, anecdote, nature, the other world. Part II. An account of some of Browning's leading poems, and of his method: (p. 520) "il n'entend point nous confier ses impressions intimes, il veut dérouler devant nous un panorama de l'espèce humaine; il veut figurer ce qu'il en a pu apprendre par ses observations et ses retours sur lui-même. Tout au travers de ces deux volumes on respire comme une insatiable avidité de saisir et de vivre en esprit toutes les formes possibles de l'existence. Aux yeux de M. Br., le poète est l'homme qui a vu, qui a vécu, et qui parle pour prêter aux autres son expérience. . . . (p. 521) son but est moins de répresenter les réalités que de présenter sous la figure d'une réalité toutes les idées qu'il peut se faire de ce qui existe ou de ce qui est seulement concevable.... Enoncer une pensée, et par cette pensée même révéler un carac tère dont il lui fait prendre la couleur, tel est un des procédés aimés de M. Br... .. (p. 523) Pittoresque et dramatique, M. Browning l'est au plus haut point: il sait sortir entièrement de lui-même (comme son Childe Roland3 suf

1 'Not because he is greater than Shakspere, but because he is in another element, and has seen other things.'

2 Basalt (antique-black) and Peach-blossom marble, here.

3... Le poète a voulu montrer comment les objets les plus simples prennent des aspects terribles dans l'esprit d'une homme terrifié. Toute la pièce respire une sorte de magie infernale. M. Br. disparaît complétement derrière son évocation.

firait pour le prouver); mais en général ses personnages sont moins des images taillés à l'instar de tels modèles vivants que les combinaisons naturelles de tout ce que renferme son esprit, de ce qu'il sait ou de ce qu'il a pensé. On sent partout la présence d'une organisation particulière où l'imagination ne dort pas, où les idées ont l'étrange don d'enfanter, en se rapprochant, des manières d'être en action, des fantômes animés qui lui donnent le spectacle de leurs actes.. Il en résulte que les créations du poète font à la fois l'effet du rêve et de la réalité. C'est la vérité ordinaire prolongée dans les espaces du possible et l'imaginable; ce sont les aptitudes de tout le monde avec un développement qu'elles n'ont pu prendre que chez un être à part ;-et en somme, peut-être, ce qui saisit le plus ici, c'est l'individualité qui empreint toutes les pensées de l'écrivain. L'étonnement qu'il cause, tient moins encore aux regions où il vous transporte, qu'aux opérations de son esprit et de son imagination.. (p. 524) Ses inspirations, ses allures de style, ses images, sont empreintes de la même originalité involontaire. Les productions de sa plume peuvent laisser à désirer; mais, comme expression individuelle, comme reflet de se propre figure, elles prennent par moments-à mes yeux du moins-je ne sais quelle grandeur colossale. (p. 540) En général, la beauté n'est pas ce qui le préoccupe le plus; chaque jour, il semble plus frappé par la physionomie mélangée des êtres et par leur multiple activité. . . il est toujours ému et émouvant. Mais ce qu'il sent vivement, et ce qu'il rend avec la même vivacité, c'est le mouvement entraînant des choses et des pensées, c'est l'inexplicable puissance qu'elles ont pour nous saisir et nous surprendre, pour nous attirer et nous repousser; c'est toute la série des émotions complexes que peuvent produire en nous les mille faces d'un même objet, ou la brusque variété du panorama mouvant de la vie, ou le jeu intermittent de nos pensées et de nos sensibilités. En un mot, la poésie de M. Browning est celle des vitalités qui sont à l'œuvre dans ce monde ; et cela est vrai de la forme comme du fond de ses vers. . . . Il fait vivre ses phrases; il met dans la marche et dans la course de ses mots, toutes les allures des sentiments, tous leurs crescendo et leurs adagio, tous les rhythmes saccadés de l'âme humaine. Le charme, de la sorte, lui fait parfois défaut... mais s'il n'a pas cette magie-là, il en a une autre. Lui, il est poète par la grandeur et la puissance de ses créations; il l'est par une imagination sans cesse eveillée et sans cesse occupée à transformer en tableaux et en figures parlantes les découvertes d'une intelligence aussi active; par-dessus tout, je crois, il est poéte par la richesse et par l'affluence de ses impressions. Qu'il aille où il veut, et qu'on le suive comme on peut, il y a toujours chez lui une chose qui provoque la surprise; c'est la somme de force matrice qu'il dépense, et la rapidité avec laquelle ses facultés se donnent l'une à l'autre la réplique; c'est l'empressement des souvenirs qui viennent illustrer les pensées; (p. 541) c'est le mouvement qui se communique de là aux sentiments; c'est la joie enfin que toutes ces forces trouvent à agir en lui, et qu'il éprouve lui-même à se sentir au milieu de tout ce bruit et à s'étonner des spectacles auxquels il assiste.

(Part III. considers the objections to B.'s poetry and subjects, &c.) p. 544. . "Une forte aspiration vers l'expression, voilà donc en un mot ce qui distingue, à mon sens, l'époque actuelle, et plus particulièrement M. Browning. Lui surtout, son instinct l'entraîne à l'inverse même des Italiens qui, pour conserver la poésie tout poétique, n'ont pas craint de l'appauvrir. Il désirerait étendre son domaine jusqu'à y faire entrer la sphère entière du développement humain. Penser, connaître, et sentir tout ce qui peut être connu, senti, et conçu; retenir en soi toute cette expérience, et trouver moyen, par une sorte de pression continue, de la réduire en tableaux poétiques, telle est, en quelque sorte, la tâche qu'il se donne ; et en tant qu'écrivain, ou pourrait dire qu'il se borne à recueillir, parmi les inspirations qui lui viennent, celles qui sont comme un chapitre achevé de ce grand résumé.... (After quoting part of p. 8-9 of Browning's Shelley Essay above, on the 2 classes of poets, M. Milsand says, p. 546.) M. Browning.. sympathise également avec les deux inspirations, et je serais porté a croire que... le travail constant de son esprit n'à été qu'un effort pour les concilier et les fondre en une seule, pour trouver moyen d'être, non pas tour à tour, mais simultanément, lyrique et dramatique, subjectif et pittoresque. Qu'on envisage isolément ses écrits, ou qu'on les envisage en bloc,