in his view, the individual will must be suppressed; the
self must always be subordinate. His resignation is at times almost
Oriental in its fatalism, and occasionally it suggests Schopenhauer in its
mixture of fate and pessimism. Browning's message, on the other hand, is
the triumph of the individual will over all obstacles; the self is not
subordinate but supreme. There is nothing Oriental, nothing doubtful,
nothing pessimistic in the whole range of his poetry. His is the voice of
the Anglo-Saxon, standing up in the face of all obstacles and saying, "I
can and I will." He is, therefore, far more radically English than is
Tennyson; and it may be for this reason that he is the more studied, and
that, while youth delights in Tennyson, manhood is better satisfied with
Browning. Because of his invincible will and optimism, Browning is at
present regarded as the poet who has spoken the strongest word of faith to
an age of doubt. His energy, his cheerful courage, his faith in life and in
the development that awaits us beyond the portals of death, are like a
bugle-call to good living. This sums up his present influence upon the
minds of those who have learned to appreciate him. Of the future we can
only say that, both at home and abroad, he seems to be gaining steadily in
appreciation as the years go by.

MINOR POETS OF THE VISTORIAN AGE

ELIZABETH BARRETT. Among the minor poets of the past century Elizabeth
Barrett (Mrs. Browning) occupies perhaps the highest place in popular
favor. She was born at Coxhoe Hall, near Durham, in 1806; but her childhood
and early youth were spent in Herefordshire, among the Malvern Hills made
famous by _Piers Plowman_. In 1835 the Barrett family moved to London,
where Elizabeth gained a literary reputation by the publication of _The
Seraphim and Other Poems_ (1838). Then illness and the shock caused by the
tragic death of her brother, in 1840, placed her frail life in danger, and
for six years she was confined to her own room. The innate strength and
beauty of her spirit here showed itself strongly in her daily study, her
poetry, and especially in her interest in the social problems which sooner
or later occupied all the Victorian writers. "My mind to me a kingdom is"
might well have been written over the door of the room where this delicate
invalid worked and suffered in loneliness and in silence.

In 1844 Miss Barrett published her _Poems_, which, though somewhat
impulsive and overwrought,