of corruption intoxicated with the abandonment and depraved joy of its own wickedness, has any poet given us than the "Ottima" of that poem. There stands the villa, with its closed shutters; within it the murdered man, and the guilty woman pouring out her confessions of passion to the man who slew him. Can human action produce a more hideous combination? Yet the sun shines fair, and "God has not said a word." Has God's good government of things broken down, then? No, indeed. Pippa passes-Pippa, the poor girl with her one day's holiday in the whole year, yet happy, cheerful, trustful; and as she pauses she sings rebuke to our doubts of God, and terror to the black heart of Ottima :

The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven ;

The hillside's dew-pearled;

The lark's on the wing,

God's in His heaven,

All's right with the world.

It is thus Browning, like many a great spirit before him, falls back upon faith in God, saying in effect what Abraham said when confronted with the corruption of man and the judgment of God: "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"

B

CHAPTER XXX.

BROWNING'S SIGNIFICANCE IN LITERATURE.

ROWNING stands utterly alone in English poetry;

he has no prototype, and he can have no successor. He has created his style, as he has also created his readers. In almost every other poet of our day we can trace the course of influences, more or less defined, which have shaped the poetic form and moulded the poetic thought. Browning has had no model. If we except the faintest possible trace of Shelley's influence, which, like an ethereal fragrance, haunts the pages of “Pauline,” we may say that he shows no sign of the influence of any of the elder bards upon his style. He is unique in his rugged individuality, the subtlety of his analysis, the suggestiveness and intensity of his thought, the originality of his phrases, and, if one may use the term, the extraordinary agility of his intellect. His intuitions go by bounds and leaps, so that it taxes all our energy occasionally to keep pace with him. His pages are literally crammed full of thought. All the living poets of the English language taken together have produced nothing like the body of thought which he has produced. Moreover, of great latter day poets he is the most genuine humorist when it suits his purpose. "Humour," it has been said, "originally meant

moisture, a signification it metaphorically retains, for it is the very juice of the mind, oozing from the brain, and enriching and fertilising wherever it falls." Humour is, in fact, based on sympathy-a large, genuine, noble sympathy, which embraces all kinds and conditions of human life like a genial atmosphere. This gift Browning distinctly possesses, and it explains the variety of his poems. Nothing that pertains to man is foreign to him. But the humour of Browning does not manifest itself so much in individually ludicrous forms as in a general humorous attitude toward all sorts of forms. To quote a portion of the famous definition of humour given by Dr. Barrow, and which, according to Mackintosh, affords the greatest "proof of mastery over language ever given by an English writer," it may be said of Browning's humour, "Sometimes it lurketh under an odd similitude, sometimes it is lodged in a sly expression, in a smart answer, in a quirkish reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cunningly diverting or cleverly retorting an objection; sometimes it is couched in a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in a lusty hyperbole, in a startling metaphor, in a plausible reconciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense."

The worst form which Browning's humour has taken is in the purposed grotesqueness of his rhymes, and it is impossible to suppose that some of his verses could have been written without some sense on the part of their author of their extraordinary ludicrousness. What can one say to such verbal contortions as these: Witanagemot rhyming to bag 'em hot, cub licks to Republics, vociference to stiffer hence, corrosive to O Sieve, spirito to weary toe? Or what mortal ingenuity is equal to the task of unravelling the meaning which may possibly be found in such a verse as this?—

One is incisive, corrosive;

Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant;

Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive;

Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant;
Five... O Danaides, O Sieve!

Even Browning seems to have had some consciousness of the obscurity of his enigma, for he remarks in the next verse, and his readers will heartily agree with him—

On we drift; where looms the dim port?

One, Two, Three, Four, Five contribute their quota;
Something is gained, if one caught but the import.

When Browning produces verses such as these, we can hardly help suspecting him of perpetrating an elaborate joke. Nor can we discern any really welcome humour in the "acute nonsense." If there be humour it is after the pattern of the celebrated German Baron, who wished to be humorous, and accordingly took to dancing on the dining-table. It is grotesque, eccentric, curious, even ridiculous, but not humorous. It is Browning amusing himself with conundrums, and slyly laughing at the confusion of tongues they are likely to produce among the critics, to say nothing of the depth of imbecility to which they will reduce his friends who are devoted enough to seek their "import."

It is necessary to consider Browning in these his most wilful moods if we are to estimate his significance as a stylist in literature. Poetry depends upon expression far more than prose; it is noble thought clothed in beautiful language. It is, therefore, impossible wholly to disregard the defects of style, the maimed metres, the verbal somersaults, the unique grotesqueness of rhyme which Browning unquestionably displays. It is only a great poet who could have survived

such literary escapades. But having survived them, in virtue of the immense genius of which they are but the excrescence, they nevertheless remain as part and parcel of his works, and have their influence. What is the significance of Browning, then, in a literary sense? Chiefly this-that he has introduced into English poetry a new, strong, fresh, and intensely masculine style. He is a transcendentalist in philosophy, but a realist in style. No word is too common for him, no phrase too hackneyed, or too idiomatic, or too scholastic, or too bizarre if it will carry his thought home. Wordsworth aimed at writing poetry in the language of prose, but Browning has ventured further, and has used vernacular prose. He makes his men and women speak as they would have spoken if alive. In this respect Browning is in line with the development of his age. We are becoming less idealistic and more realistic every day. The modern imagination is less concerned. with the bright dreams of old chivalry than the present mysteries of sad humanity. It finds sufficient food for sorrow, wonder, faith, and passion in the things of the day. It fixes its piercing gaze on man rather than on Nature, knowing that he is of more value than many sparrows building in the summer eaves, or many lilies whitening happy hillsides in the spring. Browning is the interpreter of all that is highest, noblest, and most moral in this realism of to-day. His style is a protest against euphemism, as his poetry is a plea for realism. His significance as a man of letters is that he has enlarged the possibilities of English poetry by adding to it a bold, nervous, masculine vocabulary, and by using it as it was never used before, save by Shakespeare himself, for the analysis and portrayal of human character and motive.