ordsworth has not been
at all harmed by it. The worst that has happened is the raising in our
minds of a question touching Browning's good taste.

Just here it will be interesting to speak of a bit of purely personal
expression on the subject of Browning's known liberal standpoint,
written by him in answer to the question propounded to a number of
English men of letters and printed together with other replies in a
volume edited by Andrew Reid in 1885.

"Why I am a Liberal."

"'Why?' Because all I haply can and do,
All that I am now, all I hope to be,--
Whence comes it save from fortune setting free
Body and soul the purpose to pursue,
God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,
Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,
These shall I bid men--each in his degree
Also God-guided--bear, and gayly too?

"But little do or can the best of us:
That little is achieved thro' Liberty.
Who then dares hold, emancipated thus,
His fellow shall continue bound? Not I,
Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss
A brother's right to freedom. That is 'Why.'"

[Illustration: William Wordsworth

"How all our copper had gone for his service.
Rags--were they purple, his heart had been proved."]

Enthusiasm for liberal views comes out again and again in the poetry of
Browning.

His fullest treatment of the cause of political liberty is in
"Strafford," to be considered in the third chapter, but many are the
hints strewn about his verse that bring home with no uncertain touch the
fact that Browning lived man's "lover" and never man's "hater." Take as
an example "The Englishman in Italy," where the sarcastic turn he gives
to the last stanza shows clearly where his sympathies lie:

--"Such trifles!" you say?
Fortu, in my England at home,
Men meet gravely to-day
And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws
Be righteous and wise!
--If 't were proper, Scirocco should vanish
In black from the skies!

More the ordinary note of patriotism is struck in "Home-thoughts, from
the Sea," wherein the scenes of England's victories as they come before
the poet arouse pride in her military achievements.

HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
In the