that Mr. Browning "speaks the word of poetry for a scientific age" enough is said to indicate the fact that to the degree in which he succeeded in meeting the demands of such a standard to that degree he failed in realizing the essential ends of verse. Thus it is that in such a poem as "The Inn Album," and in "Paracelsus," "Colombe's Birthday," and other dramas, as well as in some of the shorter products of his pen, he often passes over the border line from the clear thinker to the abstruse and speculative reasoner, and writes an order of verse midway between prose and poetry, with the didactic element as the prominent one.

But there is another side to Mr. Browning's work as intellectual, and bearing directly upon the purpose before us. It is seen in the thoughtfulness of his verse, a form of intellectuality quite distinct from the philosophic and speculative. It is more psychologic than philosophic, a deep and quiet brooding over the great problems of the world, if so be he may approximately solve them for himself and others. In such a mental process faith is more important than mere reason, and, for the time being, the primary instincts of the soul assert themselves over all the formulæ and methods of the schools. One of the most impressive forms which such a thoughtfulness assumes in Browning is seen in his mental sobriety, amounting with him to a kind of religion, in full consonance with the profound gravity of his nature and with his exalted

ideals of the mission of the poet. As a recent critic expresses it, "A philosopher, dealing with abstract ideas, appeals solely to intellect, but Browning is above everything a poet, ascribing the deepest thrill of his inspiration to a religion which represents the vitalizing and personal element in philosophy." Hence how little is there found in Browning of the trivial and the frivolous! How little is there in his dramas on the side of comedy! With what a Senecan sedateness he thinks and composes! Though, in his earlier years, attracted to Lord Byron, how soon was he freed from the enchantment, as he protested against his prevailing methods!

These are precisely the elements that made him a mystic, conning over the facts of life from the standpoint of a religionist, a philosopher, indeed, but a moral philosopher, as deeply absorbed as a man could be in the where and the whither, the why and the what, and the how-a great theistic psychologist. Just here we reach and touch the source of Browning's meditative nature and verse, as found in his thoughtfulness and sobriety, and if to this we add the element of feeling, we reach the source of his lyric nature and verse. Such an element is more and more apparent as we surrender ourselves to the inner meaning and spirit of his poetry. Thus, as we are told, does he "enter the soul by the double gateway of the intellect and feelings," evincing a kind of mental emotiveness,

which reveals him to be, as has been said, more of a dynamic than a didactic force." At this point inspiration is more prominent as an end than mere instruction, and we see at once the widening distance that separates such a quickening poet as Browning from such didactic versifiers as Pope and Dryden. The emotional or lyric element in Browning now takes the form of a deep, subterranean current, all the more potent because profound a great Gulf Stream of poetic feeling, warming and vivifying all that it touches. What we may call the stimulus of Browning's verse is partly mental and partly emotional, and to the degree in which it is emotional it is lyric in its type, an expression of that "spiritual ebb and flow" so discernible in the movement of his best productions, the close combination of the lyric and dramatic being one of the evidences of his essential emotiveness. A more thorough and appreciative study of Browning's poetry confirms the fact that this great poet had a heart as well as a brain; that he was an asserter of the soul in song," and had a message addressed to the sympathies and feelings of men as well as to their rational judgments.

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If we now inquire as to the precise amount and character of this lyric element on the meditative side, we shall find it to be far more important than common criticism has generally allowed. If we follow the order of the Cambridge edition of his poems, we note several larger or smaller lyric collec

tions, each of them marked, more or less, by the presence of the reflective feature. Such are:

Dramatic Lyrics, including such meditative poems as "The Lost Leader," "The Confessional,” "Evelyn Hope," "By the Fireside," "Life in a Love," "In a Year," "The Guardian Angel," and "Cristina," the most beautiful, perhaps, of the collection. Of its eight stanzas, one is especially striking, as it reads:

O, we're sunk enough here God knows!
But not quite so sunk that moments,
Sure tho' seldom, are denied us.

When the spirit's true endowments
Stand out plainly from its false ones,
And apprise it of pursuing

Or the right way or the wrong way,
To its triumph or undoing.

Then follows the collection Dramatic Romances, including such titles of contemplative order as "The Boy and the Angel," "The Last Ride Together," "Holy-Cross Day," and "The Statue and the Bust," the first of these opening with the pleasing couplets:

Morning, evening, noon, and night,
"Praise God!" sang Theocrite.

Then to his poor trade turned,
Whereby the daily meal was earned.

Hard he labored, long and well;
O'er his works the boy's curls fell.

But ever, at each period,

He stopped and sang "Praise God!"

The series of poems under the general title Men and Women then follows, of which the poem entitled "Johannes Agricola in Meditation" is one of the choicest, as it opens:

There's heaven above and night by night

I look right through its gorgeous roof;
No suns and moons though e'er so bright
Avail to stop me; splendour-proof
I keep the broods of stars aloof;
For I intend to get to God.

For 'tis to God I speed so fast,
For in God's breast, my own abode,
These shoals of dazzling glory, passed,
I lay my spirit down at last,

I lie where I have always lain,

God smiles as he has always smiled;

Ere suns and moons could wax and wane,

Ere stars were thundergirt, or piled

The heavens, God thought on me his child;
Ordained a life for me, arrayed

Its circumstances every one

To the minutest.

These lines read as if from the pen of Pascal or some mediæval mystic, and would of themselves justify for Browning the appellation of a Christian theist. The doctrine of divine foreordination could scarcely be stated more strongly by the most pronounced disciple of Calvin. Following this collection, we note Dramatis Persona, in which are some of Browning's richest reflective lyrics, as "The Worst of It," one of its nineteen stanzas reading:

Far better commit a fault and have done

As you, dear!-forever; and choose the pure,
And look where the healing waters run,