of artificial eloquence in "The Dying Christian to his Soul:" "Vital spark of heavenly flame, Hark! they whisper! Angels say, Lend, lend, your wings. I mount! I fly! O grave, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? But not only for the sake of his force, but also for his subtlety, the student of Browning is patient with his obscurity; and often his very failure to express simply, gives him strange power to express what others could not render at all. He revels in the abstruse and difficult, like a consummate executive musician, who bungles over a simple tune and glories in almost impossible difficulties. "Caliban upon Setebos" is an example. The dull gropings after the natural religion of terror by a being half brute half human-the instinctive analysis of the world, untouched by the glow of an awakened spirit in man and unillumined by the love of God,-the speculation and sentiment in "Caliban upon Setebos" is, in short, the whole argument needful to enforce the necessity of a Divine sustained communication between God and man. It images graphically what the life of man-what his feeling towards the unseen would have been, had there been no inner teaching, no development of religion, no Divine intercommunion. The human nature in Caliban shuts up all those elements in us which cry out for a living and a loving God-a God manifest in the flesh. There was never a poet at once so graphic-so capable of painting with a few spots of colour, and yet so independent of what is graphic and external. Caliban is full of an eastern glow of colour-a minute detail and observation of external nature, worthy of a naturalist; but the whole is nothing but a mental drama, played out on the lowest level of human intelligence-as "Luria" is a drama played out on the highest. All Browning's poems are nothing but "dramas of the inner life." He cares really for nothing but metaphysics. Religion, philosophy, science, art, help him to this; but all save the unseen motives which pass "hither and thither dividing the swift mind," is framework-machinery; or so much paint, which might be rubbed off, and still leave the contour of his work perfect. His power lies wholly in atmosphere. The scene is chosen for the atmosphere-the atmosphere is never chosen for the scene; the plot is for the emotion-never the emotion for the plot. But throughout one great moral quality emerges-one of which no age ever tires, of which no age ever stood in such sore need as ours-the passionate love of truth rather than repose. "God," says Emerson, "offers to every man truth and repose; between these two, man as a pendulum ever oscillates." Browning never. Through all its contradictory windings he will know and have the very heart in man and woman. He is a great unveiler; he tears off the mask, tramples the sham underfoot, shows people to themselves and to the world, weighs them in the balance, tries them in the crucible, sets the pure gold in his heart of hearts, and flings the dross passionately to the four winds of heaven. For him no rounded whole, no sham consistency, at the expense of truth. Let us all stand fair, and be judged with all our imperfections on our heads-" nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice." In Browning the unattainable is never attained-the ideal is never reached: there is never a perfect saint or villain throughout the whole of his works. Yet is he no pessimist no real cynic; for the sense of Divine perfection is also never lost; it is the deep undertone of life, amidst its wildest discords. He is passionately wedded to this world; everything about it is full of teeming interest for him; and yet the motto he has selected for death rules life —it is the eternal "Prospice" or "Beyond!" Thus much must suffice for "characteristics." II. THE DISSENTING CHAPEL.-I pass to Browning the truth-seeker, sifter of sects and ceremonies. In the singular poem called "Christmas-Eve," we have three impersonated atmospheres-independent religion, conventional religion, spiritual religion; or the power of the poem may be better marshalled as the Truth-Seeker between the religion of the sects and the spirit of Christ. The situations are universal and recurrent. We, too, have stood in church, and chapel, and lectureroom, and looked on. We, too, have had glimpses of the Christ that comprehends the churches, and whom the churches cannot comprehend. A thin dream-veil of intense drama, like a heated film of human passion, is thrown over this narrative of a soul in travail. Its homely and familiar flashes draw us only nearer to the poet's thought; for have not our souls too been in travail ? Have not we little chapels, and sat in lingered in cathedral aisles, through jewelled panes, and heard the mellowed organ-thunder roll? stood and listened in dismal churches, and and watched the light "Out of the little chapel I burst, Into the fresh night-air again." What brought him there: wind and rain, on the verge of a lonely common; and something besides, perchance? About all universal ex periences there is a spell, which no one quite shakes off about death, as we turn to look at a funeral; an accident in the street we crowd to : K |