552 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



The rest of his works may be summed up as efforts, to my 

 mind unavaiHng, on the part of Tennyson to prove that he 

 possessed that dramatic power which his critics denied him. 



The contrast which may be drawn between Browning and 

 Tennyson on ahnost every point begins ahnost with their 

 birth. Born as they were within three years of each other, 

 the elder, Tennyson, was born and brought up at a quiet 

 Lincohishire parsonage. Browning, on the other hand, first 

 saw the hght in what was at that time a rural suburb of 

 London — Camberwell — tolerably tranquil itself, but only some 

 four miles distant from "streaming London's central roar." 

 As I have said, the first work really characteristic of Tenny- 

 son appeared in his twenty-fourth year. When Browning 

 was of the same age there appeared his "Paracelsus"; and 

 this, his first work, is as entirely characteristic of him as any- 

 thing that he has written at any time since. For some time 

 his work was cast in a dramatic mould. The somewhat 

 commonplace " Strafford," and that decidedly not common- 

 place, but chaotic and incomprehensible, " Sordello," were 

 followed by a series of less pretentious dramatic works, many 

 of which are not without their charms. In fact, " Pippa 

 passes " and " Colombo's Birthday " rise to a high level of 

 literary excellence. It was in 1845 that Browning, disap- 

 pointed with the reception of his dramas, bade farewell, for 

 the time being, to the direct dramatic method. To that 

 method he has never returned. 



I said "to the direct dramatic method," for in most of his 

 later work the point of view is that of the dramatist, dealing, 

 however, not with groups but with single figures. Fifty of 

 these portraitures are contained in the " Men and Women"; 

 " Dramatis Persons " forms an addition, in number con- 

 siderable but not great in value. It is by no means worth 

 while to enumerate Browning's work after 1860. It contains 

 much that is worthless, much that is singularly great, but 

 nothing new in kind ; from the beginning Browning is 

 Browning, the most original and the most unequal of the 

 poets of our century. 



From this most inadequate sketch of the rise of the two 

 leaders of the Victorian schools I now pass to that com- 

 parison and contrast of their art, their aims, their opinions, 

 and their thoughts from which I hope to bring into promin- 

 ence those features of Victorian poetry which seem to me most 

 characteristic. More than a sketch I cannot attempt, but I 

 hope that the broad outlines of the sketch will be sufficiently 

 clear. 



Assuredly there have never been two contemporary poets 

 whom a critic might more fairly examine by the method of 

 contrast than Tennyson and Browning. Throughout their 



