of life in relation to both. But the art of the poet has varied more than the poet's mind. The elements of interest have varied and unfolded as above described, and there have been changes of method and growth of art such as have been indicated and will be afterwards more fully illustrated.

Our survey of the work as a whole suggests also the question of classification of the poems, and one or two ingenious schemes have been drawn. The matter is always difficult, and neither a poet nor his critics usually succeed. I offer only the arrangement made in the groups that follow.

CHAPTER III.

LITERARY RELATIONS-THE AGE AND ITS IDEASMODERN HUMANISM-MATTER AND FORM OF BROWNING'S POETRY-HIS DRAMATIC METHOD

AND POWER.

WITH the facts of the poet's life and literary course before us, we now come upon certain questions of much interest in regard to the poet and the work, especially as we look at both in relation to the time through which the poet has lived.

We have spoken of his long waiting and the slow acceptance of his work; a recent critic speaks as if that acceptance were still to come. During nearly forty years the poet, in the strength and fidelity of genius, kept his aim and maintained his work. The qualities of the man, as of the artist, are in that; self-reliance and conviction are in every line of his work; the assurance and sincerity of genius and of truth.

But, with such independence, what have been the poet's relations to his predecessors and contemporaries

in literature? Under what influences did his mind ripen and his art take form? Who have been his teachers? and whence have his impulses come? On the face of matters, it may seem as if he stood alone, with an energy that required no outside influences, and an individuality that resisted them; so bent on speaking his own mind in his own way that he has stood apart from his contemporaries in their interests and forms of art. It seems impossible to place him among them, or to classify his work with theirs. And the intense way in which he has set himself on matter rather than form; his emphatic care for primary and direct expression ;-these also make his relations less apparent.

It goes without As soon as the

But there are such relations, though they are not only less apparent, but freer and slighter than in the case of others. Let us trace the chief of them. Mr. Gosse has told us two things on this matter—that the poet's first models were some of his father's favourites in eighteenth-century literature, and that early compositions of the poet were Byronic. saying that Byron soon passed. sentiment, the intellectual and moral basis, of the Byronic poetry were felt, they must by this poet have been put aside. But some things in Byron possibly made a stronger impression. His energy and flow, his general force and courage of nature, and his manliness may have stimulated like qualities in the younger poet, who has them on his own account.

But he soon found other work more to his mind,

at once in its inspiration and its style. This work, we have seen, was that of Shelley and of Keats, work of memorable interest to him. Many traces of his care for these poets are found in his own works. Naturally Shelley made the deeper impression, and of him we find most. He is the "sun-treader" of "Pauline," whose renown, like sunlight, is to visit all the world, and he has three pages of fine admiration in that poem. Aprile in "Paracelsus" is a reminiscence of Shelley, and depicts the defect and weakness easily arising in that type. In the opening of “Sordello,” we find Shelley as chief among those to whom our poet looks as he begins his high task, though he feels Shelley's "pure face" fit rather for Athens than for mediæval Italy. And the "Memorabilia" speaks the honour of Shelley; while his "Essay" on Shelley is the critical but cordial statement of Browning's thoughts as to the place of that poet in modern poetry, and his principles and aims, his work being esteemed as a "sublime though fragmentary effort towards a presentment of the correspondency of the universe to Deity," of the natural to the spiritual, of the actual to the ideal. It is characteristic that to Keats the references are fewer. His care for Keats is less, but he is aware of the genius and pure value of the poet. "Popularity" recognizes these.

These references notwithstanding, it may seem that neither Shelley nor Keats throws light on the matter or the manner of Browning's work. The music of the one and the beauty of the other,

the lyrical intensity and ideal passion of the first and the artistic sense and joy of the second, do not seem Browning's way. Yet he has learned from both, and been quickened in the very spirit of his mind by Shelley. Browning regards Shelley as the poet of the real-ideal; that is the effort and goal of his poetry, the meaning of every fact, and of all passion, all life, and beauty is in that. And this, we have seen, is the spirit of Browning, and the goal of his art. It is true that the real is more apparent in the one, and the ideal in the other; the dramatic in the one, the typical in the other; but the principle is the same in both-what a critic and friend of Browning described as the power to "see in everything an epitome of creation," the power to see and feel the ideality of the real.

And so in style, in a quality of natural, intense, and immediate expression, he is in sympathy with Shelley. He has rarely, if ever, Shelley's melody, never his spontaneity and divine freedom of utterance ; but he seeks, as Shelley did, the truest statement within his reach without ulterior cares. To Shelley poetry was life rather than art, and that fine fire and singleness of soul which blent truth and beauty and duty into one, and made song its voice and minister-that is the high and real meaning of poetry to Browning, and he first found such song in Shelley.

But Keats? what affinities are there between Browning and Keats? Tennyson and others derive from Keats clearly, but not Browning? But Keats