jected to ascetic restraints. Those who have failed to catch this note of the imperiousness of passion, or have sought to refine away from it all its sensuous implications, have missed the essence of his teaching. For Tennyson the aim of life is the victory of soul over sense, but Browning will have it otherwise.

"Not with my soul, Love-bid no soul like mine

Lap thee around, nor leave the poor sense room!
Soul-travel-worn, toil-weary-would confine

Along with Soul, Soul's gains from glow and gloom,
Captures from soarings high and divings deep.
Spoil-laden Soul, how should such memories sleep?
Take Sense, too-let me love entire and whole-
Not with my soul!

"Eyes shall meet eyes and find no eyes between,
Lips feed on lips, no other lips to fear!
No past, no future-so thine arms but screen

The present from surprise! not there, 'tis here—
Not then, 'tis now-back, memories that intrude!

Make, Love, the universe our solitude,

And, over all the rest, oblivion roll

Sense quenching Soul!"

Professor Santayana thus characterises Browning's outlook upon life:

"His notion is simply that the game of life, the exhilaration of action, is inexhaustible. You may set up your tenpins again after you have bowled them over, and you may keep up the sport forever. The point is to bring them down as often as possible with a master-stroke and a big bang. That will tend to invigorate in you that self-confidence which in this system passes for faith. . . . In Browning. the zest of life becomes a cosmic emotion; we lump the whole together and cry, 'Hurrah for the Universe!' A faith which is thus a pure

...

matter of lustiness and inebriation rises and falls, attracts or repels, with the ebb and flow of the mood from which it springs. It is invincible because unseizable; it is as safe from refutation as it is rebellious to embodiment. But it cannot enlighten or correct the passions on which it feeds. Like a servile priest, it flatters them in the name of Heaven. It cloaks irrationality in sanctimony; and its admiration for every bluff folly, being thus justified by a theory, becomes a positive fanaticism, eager to defend any wayward impulse."

This judgment is severe, and the very selection of Browning to illustrate an essay upon "The Poetry of Barbarism" is even more severe, but it represents a point of view so deliberately ignored by Browning enthusiasts that I make no apology for bringing it forward to restore the critical balance. Given over almost completely to the sway of impulse, Browning's activity was, on the whole, shaped to fine issues. If his view of life was lacking in philosophical depth, his attitude toward life was a thoroughly brave one, and wins our heartiest admiration. The poem entitled "Prospice," blending as it does the note of passion and the note of courage, is one of Browning's most characteristic utterances; and, better than any epitaph, real or imaginary, may serve our present purpose as we take leave of a spirit at all times so intensely alive that we are fain to ask: "O strong soul, by what shore tarriest thou now?"-to insist that

"Somewhere, surely, afar,

In the sounding labour-house vast
Of being, is practised that strength,
Zealous, beneficent, firm!"

Here are the words with which the poet of life exuberant and abounding greeted the arch enemy of human hopes and endeavours.

"Fear death? to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,

When the mists begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,

The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;

Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:

For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,

Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.

I was ever a fighter, so- -one fight more,
The best and the last!

I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And bade me creep past.

No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers

The heroes of old,

Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness, and cold.

For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,

And the element's rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,

Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,

O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!"

Alfred Tennyson

DURING the thirties and forties, our literature was greatly in need of a new poet. Keats, Shelley, Byron, and Coleridge had all passed away. Wordsworth had become the shadow of a great name, and Landor, despising popularity, had mained the poet of an aristocracy of readers. We have seen how Browning, who was vigorously productive during those two decades, failed to become widely known, and seemed to invite a fate similar to that which had overtaken Landor. With Tennyson it was different. His appearance was fortunately timed, and he appealed in peculiarly seductive strains to a public that had wearied of Byronism, of revolutionary heroics, and of philosophical mysticism. Yet he had himself served a sort of apprenticeship to all of these things. He had been influenced by the metaphysical bent of Hallam's mind; he had even joined with his friend in that mysterious Pyrennean expedition made in behalf of the Spanish insurrection against the absolutism of Ferdinand, and he had but recently shaken off the spell of the poet who had dominated over his youthful imagination. When he came to manhood, there was a new spirit of hopefulness in the air. The period of the long war was long past; the lethargy of

the period of reaction was giving way to a renewed effort in the direction of social progress. England was girding her loins for the task of righting the social and political wrongs that had prevailed unchecked during the Napoleonic years. Science was making new conquests in the domain of theory, and finding new ways to enter into the service of man. There were signs, also, of the new religious impulse that, proceeding from the universities, was destined to exercise so powerful an influence upon the coming generation, and restore something of vitality to the lifeless traditional creeds. To interpret the finer spirit of this new age, a new poet, nourished from the fresh springs of its inspiration, was clearly needed, and with the publication, in 1830, of a slender volume of "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical," there were at least a few observers of enough critical discernment to recognise the fact that the star of such a poet had risen above the horizon. Arthur Hallam, writing of the volume of 1830, emphasised the distinctive manner of the new poet, and singled out five features for special comment:

"First, his luxuriance of imagination, and at the same time his control over it. Secondly, his power of embodying himself in ideal characters, or rather moods of character, with such accuracy of adjustment that the circumstances of the narrative seem to have a natural correspondence with the predominant feeling and, as it were, to be evolved from it by assimilative force. Thirdly, his vivid, picturesque delineation of objects, and the peculiar skill with which he holds all of them fused, to borrow a metaphor from science, in a medium of strong