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charge that he has touched on subjects outside the pale of art, 
or has stretched his art beyond artistic limits, I can only protest 
against the accusation, and remark that the same charge has 
been laid against Beethoven and Wagner, against Goethe and 
Carlyle, and will probably always be made against those who 
persist in thinking for themselves, or who in spite of themselves 
are ahead of their time. Fora large portion of his life Browning 
has been in advance of the age. ‘The increasing number of 
readers and lovers of Browning’s works is due to the scientific 
spirit which now prevails. He is eminently the psychologic poet 
of the century. He treats souls quite as analytically with his 
mental scalpel as the demonstrator in the dissecting room does 
the body with his; but, with this difference :—that the dissection 
of the scientist 1s one of analysis,only, while that of Browning 
is but the initial stage toa most elaborate synthetical estimate 
of man. The primary difficulty that confronts any one on first 
taking up one of his works is that it is so entirely different from 
any other style of poetry with which the reader is acquainted. 
He is puzzled with it, then he is amazed that such writing 
should be called poetry. Diligent study is needed before Brown- 
ing can be fully understood. Let the reader go to Browning 
with a desire to know him, let his attention be directed to his 
Lyrics (which are as musical as those of Herrick or of Burns), 
to his simpler narrative poems, and to his love songs; the 
student will then no longer repeat the common remark that the 
poet is unmusical, harsh, ungrammatical, obscure. In Browning 
may be found intellectual enjoyment of the highest kind, 
guidance in the most serious questions of life, and consolation 
in the troubles and difficulties which beset every one. 
It is hard to realise that we have still with us a poet who in 
1832 wrote the poem “ Pauline, a fragment of a confession,” 
and who fifty-two years afterwards issued the poem “ Ferishtah’s 
Fancies.”” In ‘‘ Pauline” may be discerned the keenness of 
vision and acuteness of perception which have developed during 
the long interval into the double-distilled concentration of 
‘‘Ferishtah.” At the time the earlier poem was written Brown- 
ing was deeply under the influence of Shelley; and to-day there 
is no greater student or more appreciative worshipper of that 
transcendent genius. In the preface to the edition of Browning 
published in 1868, the author has this remark ‘‘ * * my first 
attempt at poetry always dramatic in principle, and so many 
utterances of so many imaginary persons not mine.” Although 
this might be accepted as the shortest possible description of 
the whole of his poems, the real man—Browning himself—often 
lurks near the “imaginary person,” so near in fact that we 
fancy it is the poet himself who speaks. The digression at the 
end of the third book of “Sordello”’ is a notable instance of 
