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never yet been able to charm the public-he has never produced anything like Mariana at the Moated Grange,' 'Locksley Hall' Ulysses,'' Enone,' 'Godiva,' or the Miller's Daughter,' (we mention those least resembling each other,) with which Tennyson has built himself a name. Nor do we anticipate that he will ever do so. He has now been some years before the public, and in various characters. His first poem, which (unlucky circum stance) is still regarded as his best, was Paracelsus. We well remember its appearance, and the attention it drew on the new poet, who, being young, was held destined to achieve great things. As a first work, it was assuredly remarkable. It had good thoughts, clear imagery, genuine original speech, touches of simple pathos, caprices of fancy, and a power of composition which made one hope that more experience and practice would ripen him into a distinguished poet. There were two objections, which occurred to us at the time. We did not lay much stress | upon them, as the author was evidently young. Age and prac tice, we thought, would certainly remove them. They were the sort of faults most likely to be found in youthful works—viz, a great mistake in the choice of subject, and an abruptness, harshness, and inelegance of versification. It was pardonable in a young man to make a quack his hero; it looked a paradox, tempting to wilful and skilful ingenuity. On the other hand, it also betokened, or seemed to betoken, a want of proper earnestness and rectitude of mind-a love rather of the extraordinary than of the true. Paracelsus was not the hero a young should have chosen; and yet one felt that he was just the hero a young man would choose. It seems to us that what this betokened has come to pass, and that in his subsequent works we have, if not the same fault, yet a fault which springs, we take it, from the same source. His conceptions are either false or feeble. In the work which succeeded Paracelsus,' we noted a repetition of the very error itself-viz., in the attempt to idealize into a hero that great but desperate Strafford, the wicked earl,' as he was called, and as his actions prove him. Meanwhile the other fault-that, namely, of harshness and abruptness-was carried almost to a ridiculous extent; the language was spasmodic, and tortured almost into the style of Alfred Jingle, Esq., in Pickucich, as the Edinburgh Reviewer remarked at the time. Next, after an interval of two or three years, if our memory serves us, came Sordello. What the merit or demerit of conception in that poem may be, no one can presume to say; for except the author himself and the printer's reader (in the course of duty), no earthly being ever toiled through that work. Walking on a new-ploughed field of damp clayey soil, would be skating compared to it

man

Even his staunchest admirers could say nothing to Sordello. Great as is the relish for the obscure and the involved in some minds, there was no one found to listen to these Sybilline incoherences. Other dealers in the obscure have at least charmed the ear with a drowsy music, but Sordello's music was too grating and cacophonous to admit of the least repose. Whether Browning is to this day convinced of his mistake we know not, but to our ever-renewed surprise we often see Sordello advertised. That he has not burnt every copy he could by any means lay hands on, is to be explained only upon the principle which makes a mother cherish more fondly the reprobate or the cripple of her family.

This much, at any rate, is significant; he has ventured on no such experiment on the public patience since Sordello. The subsequent poems here collected, as Bells and Pomegranates, are always readable, if not often musical, and are not insults to our ears. But, as we hinted, the old objections still remain. He has not yet learned to take due pains with his subject, nor to write clearly and musically. It appears as if he sat down to write poetry without the least preparation; that the first subject which presented itself was accepted, as if any canvass was good enough to be embroidered upon. And respecting his versification, it appears as if he consulted his own ease more than the reader's; and if by any arbitrary distribution of accents he could make the verse satisfy his own ear, it must necessarily satisfy the ear of another. At the same time, he occasionally pours forth a strain of real melody, and always exhibits great powers of rhyming. One of the most evenly written of his pieces happens to be a great favourite of ours, and we quote it here for the sake of its manful, sorrowful reproaches.

THE LOST LEADER.

I.

'Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat-
Got the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed:

How all our copper had gone for his service!

Rags-were they purple, his heart had been proud!
We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye;

Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!

Shakspeare was of us, Milton was for us,

[graves!

Burns, Shelley, were with us-they watch from their
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!

II.

We shall march prospering-not thro' his presence;
Songs may excite us-not from his lyre;
Deeds will be done-while he boasts his quiescence,
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:
Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
One task unaccepted, one footpath untrod;
One more devil's triumph, and sorrow to angels,
One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!
Life's night begins: let him never come back to us!
There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain;
Forced praise on our part-the glimmer of twilight,
Never glad confident morning again!

Best fight on well, for we taught him,-come gallantly,
Strike our face hard, ere we shatter his own;
Then let him get the new knowledge and wait us,
Pardoned in Heaven-the first by the throne!'

There are some expressions here to which one might object, but the whole poem exhibits a strength, solidity, and sobriety uncommon in contemporary writing. There is no affectation of thought in it; there is none of the pretension which usually mars such poems. The feeling is true, and is manly in its sor row; and if poets ever listened to the advice so liberally offered them by critics, we would counsel Robert Browning to spare us his caprices, and give us more such writing. He is still young, but he is old enough to have outlived the tendency which urges inexperienced poets into a fantastic and unreal region, simply because they have not sufficiently penetrated into the world of reality. For as Jean Paul, in his Vorschule der Esthetik, admirably says, 'the novelty of their feelings makes them suppose that the objects which excite them are also novel; and they ⚫ believe that through the former they produce the latter. Hence they plunge either into the unknown and unnamed, in foreign lands and times; or, still more willingly, occupy themselves ' with the lyrical: for, in the Lyric, there is no other nature to be represented than that which the Lyrist brings with him.”

**Die Neuheit ihrer Empfindungen muss ihnen als eine Neuheit der Gegenstände vorkommen; und durch die ersten glauben sie die letzten zu geben. Daher wirken sie sich Entweder ins Unbekannte und Unbenannte in fremde Lände und Zeiten ohne individualität; oder vorzüglick auf das Lyrische; denn in diesem ist Keiner Natur nachzuahmen als die mitgebrachte.'

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This period Browning has outlived; and from him now, if ever, we ought to expect works that are the transcript of real experience.

But will he pardon us if we say, that we would more gladly meet him on the next occasion as a writer of prose? It may seem a strange compliment to pay a man who comes before us as a poet; yet a compliment it is. We could say the same to few of his rivals: mediocre as is their poetry, their prose we suspect would be detestable. By dint of assiduous study, 'a reasonable good ear in music,' and a fluent rhyming faculty, they produce verses which, if they do not touch the heart, nor stir the soul, do nevertheless, in some measure, gratify the ear. But if we pause for a moment to consider the material of their works, we shall find it so weak, vapid, common-place, or false, that to think of it in prose is alarming. They do not seem to have thought enough and seen enough to be able to be reasonable in prose. This is not the case with Browning. His works have many defects, but they have not that; they show a clear, open mind, prone to reflection; they show that he thinks for himself, and such a man is worth hearing. But he would be better worth hearing in prose than in verse, because, as Göthe said of the rhymers of his day, it is a pity to hear men attempt to sing what they can only speak.

Ihr Guten-grosser und Kleiner

Ihr singt euch müde und matt;
Und singt doch keiner

Als was er zu sagen hat!'

Browning is certainly not a born singer, and what is more, he has not caught the echo of another's music-he wants the melody and grace of which verse should be made. The sense of Beauty is not keen in him; and thoughts, however noble, conceptions, however grand, will not supply the place of beauty.

'Pinxisti Venerem, colis, Artemidore, Minervam,
Et miraris opus displicuisse tuum?'

asks Martial, and we may put the same question to Browning. The exigences of prose would be beneficial to him, by curbing his capricious flights, and making him pay more attention to the ground plan than he now does. He will understand our meaning if we refer to Pippa Passes-one of the most admired of his Bells and Pomegranates,' and one that really contains some charming writing. What his purpose was, we know not; what the piece means, we have in vain asked ourselves and others. It opens with Pippa springing out of bed on New Year's Day, and

in an irregular lyrical monologue informing us that she means to enjoy her holiday.

For am I not this day

Whate'er I please? Whom shall I seem to-day?

Morn, Noon, Eve, Night-how must I spend my day?

She then intimates her intention, though very vaguely, of per sonating several characters—

'The brother,

The bride, the lover, and the mother

Only to pass whom will remove-
Whom a mere look at half will cure

The Past, and help me to endure

The Coming.. I am just as great, no doubt,
As they!'...

At the conclusion of this very unintelligible monologue she enters the street, and the scene changes. We are then introduced to an adulteress and her paramour, who having just murdered the husband, are feverishly endeavouring in the assurances of their mutual love to drown their remorseful horror. This is a powerful scene: instinct with the true passion of the drama, and written with the vigour and somewhat of the licence of our Elizabethan dramatists. It also contains some fine lines of mere poetry. In the midst of their guilty triumph, as Ottima has bidden her lover to crown her as his queen,

'Your spirit's arbitress Magnificent in sin,'

Pippa is heard singing without

The year's at Spring,

The day's at morn:
Morning's at seven,

The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing,
The snail's on the thorn,
God's in his heaven,

All's right in the world.

[Pippa passes.'

The sound of this innocent voice at once arrests Sebald's guilty conscience, and in a paroxysm of remorse he slays his mistress and himself.

The scene then changes, and we have a new set of actorsyoung artists-and a new dramatic anecdote--which is closed in the same way, by a song from without, and the stage direction,