of English and modern rather than mediaeval
and foreign life."

Noble as much of Mr. Browning's later work is, full of intellect, alive
with excellent passages (in the first volume of the Dramatic Idyls [50]
perhaps more powerful than in any earlier work); notwithstanding all
that, we think the change here indicated matter of regret. After all,
we have to conjure up ideal poets for ourselves out of those who stand
in or behind the range of volumes on our book-shelves; and our ideal
Browning would have for his entire structural type those two volumes of
Men and Women with Pippa Passes.

Certainly, it is a delightful world to which Mr. Browning has given us
the key, and those volumes a delightful gift to our age-record of so
much that is richest in the world of things, and men, and their
works--all so much the richer by the great intellect, the great
imagination, which has made the record, transmuted them into
imperishable things of art:--

"'With souls should souls have place'--this, with Mr. Browning, is
something more than a mere poetical conceit. It is the condensed
expression of an experience, a philosophy, and an art. Like the lovers
of his lyric, Mr. Browning has renounced the selfish serenities of
wild-wood and dream-palace; he has fared up and down among men,
listening to the music of humanity, [51] observing the acts of men, and
he has sung what he has heard, and he has painted what he has seen.
Will the work live? we ask; and we can answer only in his own words--

It lives,
If precious be the soul of man to man."

9th November 1887

IV. "ROBERT ELSMERE"

[55] THOSE who, in this bustling age, turn to fiction not merely for a
little passing amusement, but for profit, for the higher sort of
pleasure, will do well, we think (after a conscientious perusal on our
own part) to bestow careful reading on Robert Elsmere. A chef d'oeuvre
of that kind of quiet evolution of character through circumstance,
introduced into English literature by Miss Austen, and carried to
perfection in France by George Sand (who is more to the point, because,
like Mrs. Ward, she was not afraid to challenge novel-readers to an
interest in religious questions), it abounds in sympathy with people as
we find them, in aspiration towards something better--towards a certain
ideal--in a refreshing sense of second thoughts everywhere. The author
clearly has developed a remarkable natural aptitude for literature by
liberal