uence on her verse, and
she has caught something of his fine, strange faith. Take, for instance,
her poem, A Strong-minded Woman:

See her? Oh, yes!--Come this way--hush! this way,
Here she is lying,
Sweet--with the smile her face wore yesterday,
As she lay dying.
Calm, the mind-fever gone, and, praise God! gone
All the heart-hunger;
Looking the merest girl at forty-one--
You guessed her younger?
Well, she'd the flower-bloom that children have,
Was lithe and pliant,
With eyes as innocent blue as they were brave,
Resolved, defiant.
Yourself--you worship art! Well, at that shrine
She too bowed lowly,
Drank thirstily of beauty, as of wine,
Proclaimed it holy.
But could you follow her when, in a breath,
She knelt to science,
Vowing to truth true service to the death,
And heart-reliance?
Nay,--then for you she underwent eclipse,
Appeared as alien
As once, before he prayed, those ivory lips
Seemed to Pygmalion.

* * * * *

Hear from your heaven, my dear, my lost delight,
You who were woman
To your heart's heart, and not more pure, more white,
Than warmly human.
How shall I answer? How express, reveal
Your true life-story?
How utter, if they cannot guess--not feel
Your crowning glory?
This way. Attend my words. The rich, we know,
Do into heaven
Enter but hardly; to the poor, the low,
God's kingdom's given.
Well, there's another heaven--a heaven on earth--
(That's love's fruition)
Whereto a certain lack--a certain dearth--
Gains best admission.
Here, too, she was too rich--ah, God! if less
Love had been lent her!--
Into the realm of human happiness
These look--not enter.

Well, here we have, if not quite an echo, at least a reminiscence of the
metre of The Grammarian's Funeral; and the peculiar blending together of
lyrical and dramatic forms, seems essentially characteristic of Mr.
Browning's method. Yet there is a distinct personal note running all
through the poem, and true originality is to be found rather in the use
made of a model than in the rejection of all models and masters. Dans
l'art comme dans la nature on est toujours fils de quelqu'un, and we
should not quarrel with the reed if it whispers to us the music of the
lyre. A little child once asked me if it was the nightingale who taught
t