THE strength of poetry is in its thought, not in its form; and with great lyrists, their music is always secondary, and their substance of saying, primary, so much so, that they will even daringly and wilfully leave a syllable or two rough, or even mean, and avoid a perfect rhythm or sweetness, rather than let the reader's mind be drawn away to lean too definitely on sound. - Ruskin. IF there is any great quality more perceptible than another in Mr. Browning's intellect, it is his decisive and incisive faculty of thought, his sureness and intensity of perception, his rapid and trenchant resolution of aim. To charge him with obscurity is about as accurate as to call Lynceus purblind, or complain of the slowness of the telegraph wire. He is something too much the reverse of obscure; he is too brilliant and subtle for the ready reader of a ready writer to follow with any certainty the track of intelligence which moves with such incessant rapidity.— Swinburne. IT is full of genius, natural and great thoughts, profound and yet simple, and yet beautiful in its vigor. I know nothing that is so affecting, nothing in any book I have ever read, as Mildred's recurrence to that "I was so young I had no mother." I know no love like it, no passion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its conception like it. — Dickens. I LOOK up to Browning as one of the very few men known to me by their works who, with most cordial energy and invincible resolution, have lived thoroughly throughout the whole of their being, to the uttermost verge of all their capacities, in his case truly colossal; lived and wrought thoroughly in sense and soul and intellect. James Thompson. THAN whom a mightier master never Touch'd the deep chords of hidden things; Nor error did from truth dissever With keener glance; nor make endeavor To rise on bolder wings In those high regions of the soul Where Thought itself grows dim with awe. -Owen Meredith. IV. BROWNING. Most of WHENEVER there is a growth of idealism, literature feels the new life which it creates. the great literary periods have been associated with a revival of this philosophy in some one of its many forms. There are an impulse, an energy, and a largeness of conception in what it has to teach, and in the life it produces, which are conducive to literary creation. Whatever its limitations, it affects the imagination and the emotions, gives the largest conceptions of nature and man, and kindles the soul with the fire of renewing life. Idealism is the philosophy of hope and of the future. It clings not to the low earth, but embraces the circle of the heavens. Thought it raises to the place of supreme arbiter in tlie realm of human experience. It gives the imagination objects worthy of its creative vision, and it lifts the whole mind with an exalted sense of its relations to Absolute Being. It is not fancy, but reality, in which idealism finds its life and its reason for being. It creates a love of nature, it awakens the spirit of humanity, and it draws man into ardent sympathy with the world about him. Wherever the idealist goes there are voices to be heard chanting the glory and the beauty of creation. He finds everywhere a life responsive to his own, that reveals to him truth and accords to him peace. The idealist is the only true realist. He it is who takes the world as an actuality, and who stands before it with reverence and awe, because of the life made known in every leaf and star and man. He reads nature with the whole of his mind, and all the pages of her book are bound together into one work for his delight. He does not accept this and reject that, but he peruses all her truths in search of the light which he is sure they contain for him. Literature has gained from the idealist its joy, its beauty, and its fragrance. When it glows with eternal freshness and vigor there his hand is seen and the throbbing of his heart is felt. He it is who interprets the ideas after which the creative process proceeds, making it live anew in poem, essay, or romance. The revival of idealism in Germany, in the middle of the eighteenth century, had a remarkable influence on English literature. It gave us Wordsworth and Coleridge in the place of Pope and Gray. It brought nature, imagination, feeling, and the real world into literature. It gave to the real world a capacity to touch men with its freshness, beauty, and living significance. There came with it a conviction that, if we come into true sympathy with the natural world, we stand face to face with what is real. All worlds are in fact one. They are unified by an immeasurable and inexhaustible life flowing through them all. They therefore reflect, and supplement, and interpret one another. The world of matter is a vision of the world of mind. When we have solved the problem of human thought we have discovered the nature of God. Three men whose names occupy conspicuous places in recent English literature have represented the later effects of German idealism. These are Carlyle, Emerson, and Browning, idealists all, but in a manner to bring out the emphatic individuality which they each exhibited. Their |