torches through England, the idea of the free development of women
was also born; and it carried with it a strong emotion. They claimed the
acknowledgment of their separate individuality, of their distinct use
and power in the progress of the world. This was embodied with
extraordinary fulness in _Aurora Leigh_, and its emotion drove itself
into the work of Tennyson and Browning. How Tennyson treated the subject
in the _Princess_ is well known. His representation of women in his
other poems does not pass beyond a few simple, well-known types both of
good and bad women. But the particular types into which the variety of
womanhood continually throws itself, the quick individualities, the
fantastic simplicities and subtleties, the resolute extremes, the
unconsidered impulses, the obstinate good and evil, the bold cruelties
and the bold self-sacrifices, the fears and audacities, the hidden work
of the thoughts and passions of women in the far-off worlds within them
where their soul claims and possesses its own desires--these were beyond
the power of Tennyson to describe, even, I think, to conceive. But they
were in the power of Browning, and he made them, at least in lyric
poetry, a chief part of his work.

In women he touched great variety and great individuality; two things
each of which includes the other, and both of which were dear to his
imagination. With his longing for variety of representation, he was not
content to pile womanhood up into a few classes, or to dwell on her
universal qualities. He took each woman separately, marking out the
points which differentiated her from, not those which she shared with,
the rest of her sex. He felt that if he dwelt only on the deep-seated
roots of the tree of womanhood, he would miss the endless play, fancy,
movement, interaction and variety of its branches, foliage and flowers.
Therefore, in his lyrical work, he leaves out for the most part the
simpler elements of womanhood and draws the complex, the particular, the
impulsive and the momentary. Each of his women is distinct from the
rest. That is a great comfort in a world which, through laziness, wishes
to busy itself with classes rather than with personalities. I do not
believe that Browning ever met man or woman without saying to
himself--Here is a new world; it may be classed, but it also stands
alone. What distinguishes it from the rest--that I will know and that
describe.

When women are not enslaved to conventions--a