ey were born.
I will not discuss them again, but in forming any judgment of the later
poems they must be discarded.

The struggle to which I have drawn attention between the imaginative and
intellectual elements in Browning, and which was equally balanced in
_The Ring and the Book_, continued after its publication, but with a
steady lessening of the imaginative and a steady increase of the
intellectual elements. One poem, however, written before the publication
of _The Ring and the Book_, does not belong to this struggle. This is
_Herve Riel_, a ballad of fire and joy and triumph. It is curiously
French in sentiment and expression, and the eager sea-delight in it is
plainly French, not English in feeling. Nor is it only French; it is
Breton in audacity, in self-forgetfulness, in carelessness of reward,
and in loyalty to country, to love and to home. If Browning had been all
English, this transference of himself into the soul of another
nationality would have been wonderful, nay, impossible. As it is, it is
wonderful enough; and this self-transference--one of his finest poetic
powers--is nowhere better accomplished than in this poem, full of the
salt wind and the leap and joy of the sea-waves; but even more full, as
was natural to Browning, of the Breton soul of Herve Riel.

In _Balaustion's Adventure_ (1871) which next appeared, the imaginative
elements, as we have seen, are still alive and happy; and though they
only emerge at intervals in its continuation, _Aristophanes' Apology_
(1875), yet they do emerge. Meanwhile, between _Balaustion's Adventure_
and the end of 1875, he produced four poems--_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau,
Saviour of Society_; _Fifine at the Fair_; _Red Cotton Nightcap
Country_, or _Turf and Towers_; and _The Inn Album_. They are all long,
and were published in four separate volumes. In them the intellectual
elements have all but completely conquered the imaginative. They are,
however, favourite "exercise-places" for some of his admirers, who think
that they derive poetic pleasures from their study. The pleasure these
poems give, when they give it, is not altogether a poetic pleasure. It
is chiefly the pleasure of the understanding called to solve with
excitement a huddle of metaphysical problems. They have the name but not
the nature of poetry.

They are the work of my Lord Intelligence--attended by wit and
fancy--who sits at the desk of poetry, and with her pen in his hand. He
uses the furniture