of the poet. It is the sense of a large free mind and personality identified in feeling and thought for the time with the "person" presented, and working through them, but clear of their bias and free of their limits.

But, further, it is said that, allowing for this quality of characterization, what is it you have in Browning's persona? Not men in Shakspere's or Scott's sense? It is not so clear what that sense exactly is, while the nature of personality and its relations to those more general as well as universal elements that belong to all minds are very far from being clear. But Browning certainly gives types and generalizations in some of his studies, and it results from his more spiritual and inward dramatic poetry that his "persons" should be less definite than those of Shakspere or Scott. But, subject to the conditions and design of his art, he is a master of dramatic detail, and has the quickest eye for essential circumstance or quality. To require the same embodiment of character from Browning that you have in great drama or novels, is to forget the difference both of means and of design. The poet would violate his principle to give it. But he has known how to define and embody with a vital precision on the whole adequate to his kind of "drama." And if I do not maintain the "critical perfection" and "æsthetic purity" of Browning's work considered as dramatic art; if I allow it to be in the nature of his mind, as of his purpose, that his work should involve much of himself, and that the spiritual

should shadow the dramatic interest ;-I hold it not only clear that his power is dramatic, but his poetry is alive with the evidence and energy of it, and his very thought works itself out in that way, not in abstractions, but in terms of character and life.

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CHAPTER IV.

CRITICAL OBJECTIONS OBSCURITY AND ITS CAUSES —FURTHER ANALYSIS OF DRAMATIC METHOD,

WITH REFERENCE TO IT-STYLE AND ITS

QUALITIES-CHARACTERISTICS.

We have seen Browning's theme, his conception of his subject, and his method in the development and expression of that subject. It remains to consider the characteristics of the genius with which he has illustrated his theme, and certain qualities and ideas that have helped him to unfold his subject with the power he has shown. Nor would our purposes of introduction be served if nothing were said of the poet's style, and of that obscurity which is often supposed to be its chief note and a leading reason for the objections many take to his work, and for the difficulties they find in so much of it.

It may be best to take the last points first. The objections to Browning on the part of good and careful readers of poetry are understood to be numerous and reasonable. By some they are thought to spring

from the nature of poetry, and certainly from the theory and practice of the art as always hitherto understood; while all their difficulties are thought to arise from the faults of the poet, and his obscurity is assumed to be not in the nature of his subjects, but only in his way of treating them, and most of all in his way of setting forth whatever he has to say of them. It is still worth while to correct these mistakes, not only in justice to the poet, but in the hope of preparing a way of approach to him on the part of some who could read him if they would, and who, since they might, certainly ought, and lose by not doing so. The work of Browning is still received by some with a smile, and those who read him are expected to offer to culture and good taste some account of their peculiarity, if not some apology for their conduct. It is a pity people are often proud of their narrowness— that they emphasize their limits, and keep themselves from the larger experience and the true judgment by presuppositions that fall to the ground as soon as they grasp the facts and give their minds fair play in their appreciation.

And what are the pre-judgments that have kept good readers from Browning's poetry? We said that some of them arise from what is thought to be the nature of poetry and its primary laws as an art. Art, like other parts of the progressive life of man, has often suffered from two causes. People like what they have got used to, and erect their taste and the works of the past into laws to govern, and not into

F

impulses and principles to stimulate and guide the works of the future, which is what they ought to do. So the standard of pleasure and the restraints of theory have operated to conventionalize art. But in proportion as it is strong and sincere art is vital, and should follow its own principles and instincts in the last resort. And so, if new work should require a revision of theories before it can be understood or classified, then it may be the worse for the theories, not for the work. If Browning's work should require a fresh consideration of the laws of poetic art, there is nothing to complain of. We really gain by enlargement of art and its ideal. For what is the function of criticism in regard to original work in art? To judge and control art by some abstract and fixed standard? To test the creations of genius by some absolute theory of beauty and expression? To deliver decisions according to "law and precedent" and induction of "all previous instances," and so settle what is valuable and ought to be enjoyed? Is this the right relation of criticism to art? Or is its proper task simpler and greater-to follow, note, and generalize the facts of art, and so interpret its works freely and vitally; not to legislate for art, but to learn and understand and test art by frank appeal to the facts of experience and of the mind in its relation to art? That is, in truth, the right and fruitful task of criticism. For is not every work of genius, pure and distinct, in a real sense a work of nature, a product of the “free spirit," yet also a complex result of natural qualities