ge and philosophy.

If we attempt now to fix Tennyson's permanent place in literature, as the
result of his life and work, we must apply to him the same test that we
applied to Milton and Wordsworth, and, indeed, to all our great poets, and
ask with the German critics, "What new thing has he said to the world or
even to his own country?" The answer is, frankly, that we do not yet know
surely; that we are still too near Tennyson to judge him impersonally. This
much, however, is clear. In a marvelously complex age, and amid a hundred
great men, he was regarded as a leader. For a full half century he was the
voice of England, loved and honored as a man and a poet, not simply by a
few discerning critics, but by a whole people that do not easily give their
allegiance to any one man. And that, for the present, is Tennyson's
sufficient eulogy.

ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889)

How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy!

In this new song of David, from Browning's _Saul_, we have a suggestion of
the astonishing vigor and hope that characterize all the works of Browning,
the one poet of the age who, after thirty years of continuous work, was
finally recognized and placed beside Tennyson, and whom future ages may
judge to be a greater poet,--perhaps, even, the greatest in our literature
since Shakespeare.

The chief difficulty in reading Browning is the obscurity of his style,
which the critics of half a century ago held up to ridicule. Their attitude
towards the poet's early work may be inferred from Tennyson's humorous
criticism of _Sordello_. It may be remembered that the first line of this
obscure poem is, "Who will may hear Sordello's story told"; and that the
last line is, "Who would has heard Sordello's story told." Tennyson
remarked that these were the only lines in the whole poem that he
understood, and that they were evidently both lies. If we attempt to
explain this obscurity, which puzzled Tennyson and many less friendly
critics, we find that it has many sources. First, the poet's thought is
often obscure, or else so extremely subtle that language expresses it
imperfectly,--

Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped.

Second, Browning is led from one thing to another by his own mental
associations, and forgets that the reader's associations may be of an
entirely di