in a masterful paragraph
reflecting Browning's unusual penetration into the secret paths of the
poetic mind, the characteristics of a poet of Shelley's order. The
paragraph is as follows:

"We turn with stronger needs to the genius of an opposite tendency--the
subjective poet of modern classification. He, gifted like the objective
poet, with the fuller perception of nature and man, is impelled to
embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to the many
below as to the One above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends
all things in their absolute truth,--an ultimate view ever aspired to,
if but partially attained, by the poet's own soul. Not what man sees,
but what God sees,--the _Ideas_ of Plato, seeds of creation lying
burningly on the Divine Hand,--it is toward these that he struggles. Not
with the combination of humanity in action, but with the primal elements
of humanity, he has to do; and he digs where he stands,--preferring to
seek them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of that absolute Mind,
according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak.
Such a poet does not deal habitually with the picturesque groupings and
tempestuous tossings of the forest-trees, but with their roots and
fibers naked to the chalk and stone. He does not paint pictures and
hang them on the walls, but rather carries them on the retina of his own
eyes: we must look deep into his human eyes, to see those pictures on
them. He is rather a seer, accordingly, than a fashioner, and what he
produces will be less a work than an effluence. That effluence cannot be
easily considered in abstraction from his personality,--being indeed the
very radiance and aroma of his personality, projected from it but not
separated. Therefore, in our approach to the poetry, we necessarily
approach the personality of the poet; in apprehending it, we apprehend
him, and certainly we cannot love it without loving him. Both for love's
and for understanding's sake we desire to know him, and, as readers of
his poetry, must be readers of his biography too."

Finally, the little "Memorabilia" lyric gives a mood of cherished memory
of the Sun-Treader, who beaconed him upon the heights in his youth, and
has now become a molted eagle-feather held close to his heart.

Keats' lesser but assured place in the poet's affections comes out in
the pugnacious lyric, "Popularity," one of the old-time bits of
ammunition shot from the guns of those