Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me.' A slight examination will serve to show with what consummate art a world of character is portrayed in that small poem. The person of the speaker stands firmly full-drawn, as one of the portraits by Titian, with their live eyes, and long beards, and black velvet dresses. The proud bearing, together with the love of a proud bearing, the indifference to shedding blood which had not the true-blue drop in it, the gentlemanly way in which that matter of the murder' is delicately implied, and the subject dismissed, as with a graceful wave of the hand, for another passing glance at the bronze statue-the feeling for art which sets the portrait above the wife, the painter's name over both--the slight touch or two at which the dead face comes and smiles as in life-all is done with the easy stroke of a master, and the verse, too, is exquisitely modulated for its purpose, never pausing because it has to rhyme its lines. From this quotation we may see how Mr. Browning's poems have to be judged. They were not put together by parts. Hence they are not to be enjoyed piecemeal. We cannot point out that this is valuable for some deep thought or just reflection, and another for a magnificent image. Each poetic characteristic is merged in the human character which we find so frequently unfolded with great fulness in a few lines. These poems of Mr. Browning, which are dramatic in principle and lyrical in expression, are not always easy to master. The poem once presented, we get no help from the poet. He is only a dumb showman. We have to work our way back from where the poet left off, and get to the centre of the web, whence strike out all the rays of detail. The complaint often made is that readers do not at once catch the idea, which is the root of vitality to the poem. Now the question is, not Vol. 118.-No. 235. whether whether obscurity is a fault or not-we think it is a great fault, and we should have thought Mr. Browning a much greater poet if he had been free from it; but whether it is too much to ask one or two readings of a few stanzas in order that something worth getting at may be reached. Is it not well known that no true work of art with any depth in it can be fathomed at first sight? that, as Bacon says, there is an element of strangeness in all the highest beauty? The question is, Is there something worth getting at in such poems? And we have to answer emphatically in the affirmative. There may be difficulties to unlock, but it is worth while to try to unlock them, for the sake of the hidden treasure which they keep concealed. When we have conquered, we are wealthier by a substantial gain. The result is not like a pleasant ripple of emotion that passes away, or a mere play of feeling, as with the subjective poem. We are the richer by some new and original picture of life, of intricate character, of uncommon manners, which has been almost engraved upon the mind by the process of getting at it, and remains a possession for ever. Another complaint is that Mr. Browning is unmusical. But in every case we must first grasp the character before we can judge of the fitness of the verse, or the quality of its music. The music may not be our music, or Mr. Tennyson's music, or like anything we ever heard in verse: that is not the point. The point is whether the music and movement of the verse receive their impetus and government in any sensible way from the character, so as to become its natural expression. This we cannot determine until we know the character well enough to be able to read the poem off at an unchecked heat, such as may fuse all down into a music of a fit and efficient kind, that could not be excelled for its purpose; which can only be done upon acquaintance. It is often a very grave and difficult character that has to be dealt with, and the smooth music and liquid lapse of vowelled sounds which serve to convey mellifluous emotion would be altogether inadequate to wrestle with the sterner strength. The subjective lyric can wander at its own sweet will, and slip softly through sunshine and shadow with pleasant murmurs for the dreamer's ear; but the dramatic lyric has other work to do. We think it quite probable that Mr. Browning has a peculiar sense of music. He is, we have heard, an educated musician, and a great lover of music. Indeed, we might learn this from his poems. Now, it might be shown that some of the most melodious verse has been written by poets who could not read music, or rather who put all their feeling for music into their language, and the hidden quality has worked more sweetly, perhaps perhaps because it was more a music of the spirit than of the sense. Whereas the poet who could read music has sometimes appeared harsh, crabbed, unequal, in the music of verse. With Mr. Browning it would seem that his sense of music served to put into his verse a greater use of accent than flow of melody; conducing to a kind of staccato mental notation in words; and that much of the meaning in some poems was intended to be got at through this stress of the accent or dash of the notes. The whole poem entitled the 'Laboratory' would illustrate our remark. Here is one stanza : 'He is with her; and they know that I know Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow The accent serves to italicise the meaning in these lines. It helps to make the music bite into the subject-so to speak-in a most bitter way, corresponding to the feeling of the speaker. Then the accent is often varied very suddenly, intricately, and is not followed easily by the lovers of jog-trot verse and common metre. The first two lines of the galloping ballad, called 'How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix,' will afford us a brief specimen— 'I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three with their sudden reversal of the accent in the second line. Following out this cue we think it will be found that the coarse, blunt, guttural sounds, and dogged stiffnecked movement of the Soliloquy in the Spanish Cloister,' are characteristic; an essential and effective part of the character, they aid materially in embodying the imaginary speaker, as in the poem first quoted, the supple, fluent movement, the low-toned suavity and colloquial ease give an insinuating grace of manner to the Italian Noble. Still the question remains whether such harsh, abrupt sounds can be legitimately introduced into poetry. We do not think them well suited to the English language. In his purely lyrical measures the poet appears at times to tread a rugged path with lame feet, and it is not easy for the mind of the reader to move to the measure. The music does not meander. It is much more like a cascade that comes hurrying from some far-off hill-top, leaping from crag to crag, and seems to split its force in twain because of the haste with which it dashes at all obstacles. Of this, however, we cannot judge apart from the character of the speaker; we must distin G 2 guish guish before we are able to divide the merits from the defects. Mr. Browning, in his dramatic poems with a lyrical utterance, undertakes to do more than any lyrical poet who ever lived. He writes under conditions hardly ever attempted hitherto, and has given to the world many lyrics, dramatic in principle, and lyrical in expression,-containing a great amount and variety of character. So that whatever flashes of lyric energy his mind may be capable of kindling into, it is impossible for us to sum up his lyrical power as we might that of Moore and Burns, who are all the while singing their own sentiment or emotion, and have nothing else to do! We cannot compare Mr. Browning's lyrics with those of any subjective poet; he has called them Dramatic Lyrics for the very purpose of distinguishing them from such. Nor may we judge him as a lyrical poet by comparison with any subjective lyrist. We must in both cases appraise them on their own grounds; and if we applaud the subjective lyrist because the movement of his verse felicitously corresponds to the thought or emotion, then we must at least estimate the fitness or beauty of the movement in the Objective Lyric by its correspondence with the speaker's character, or the nature of the action. If we were to judge the fine dramatic lyric entitled A Grammarian's Funeral,' as we should a lyric of emotion set to its own music, we should make little of it. We might probably think the poet had gone to the extremest limit, out of the ordinary way, to discover the most uncommon and uninteresting measure. But, let us read it with an understanding of what is meant. It is the burial of a man of learning who had toiled up through the dark to meet the dawn; who was awake and working whilst the rest of the world were asleep, or in gross darkness. He has done his work, and shall have a symbolic burial! 'Leave we the unlettered plain, its herd and crop; On a tall mountain, citied to the top, Crowded with culture! All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels; Clouds overcome it: No, yonder sparkle is the citadel's, Circling its summit! Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights: Wait ye the warning? Our low life was the level's and the night's; He's for the morning!' So the bearers chant as they carry up the corpse of the master, 'famous, calm, and dead, borne on their shoulders,' and having reached the topmost height they sing 'Well, "Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers of the feathered race, Here's the peak-top! the multitude below Live-for they can, there. This Man decided not to Live but Know— Bury this man there? Here-here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened, Stars come and go! let joy break with the storm, Peace let the dew send! Lofty designs must close in like effects: Loftily lying, Leave him-still loftier than the world suspects, Now, to our feeling, the movement of this verse is most dramatic, and answers admirably to the character of the poem. It conveys a great sense of going up-hill, and the weight of the burden,-together with the exultation of the bearers, which gives them strength to mount; it toils upward step by step-long line and short-best-foot forward, and altogether carries out the idea of a spirit that climbed in life, and a burial that shall afford the dead rest at the effort's end, with his resting-place in the pathway of the Morning. We must understand the principles of Mr. Browning's art, then, before we shall be on the way for interpreting his poems rightly. A good deal of the difficulty in getting at them lies here in the beginning. Next we must try to enter into the nature of his genius, and its peculiar predilections. He has 'strange far-flights' of imagination. He is fond of dwelling abroad, and of working widely apart from the life and circumstances of our time. He loves a gnarly character, or a knotty problem; a conflict that is mental rather than emotional; and he has given full scope to his choice at times in the strangest rhymes on record. He is not yet entirely free from the mannerisms of Sordello.' Nor does he allow sufficiently for the difficulties of his own conditions, and for those of the reader in following him. Here, we think, is a grave fault in art. But, what strikes us as one of the greatest drawbacks of all, is this: that, whereas the subject selected, the character portrayed, is often of the remotest from the common apprehension, it is treated in a manner totally new to objective poetry. The objective poets of the past dealt with their subjects in a simpler way, and more in the mass. A few broad touches sufficed for |