because it filleth the
imagination. Certainly if it be not _vinum daemonum_ it is not Poetry.

In this year also appeared the first series of "Selections" by the
poet's latest publishers: "Dedicated to Alfred Tennyson. In
Poetry--illustrious and consummate: In Friendship--noble and sincere."
It was in his preface to this selection that he wrote the often-quoted
words: "Nor do I apprehend any more charges of being wilfully obscure,
unconscientiously careless, or perversely harsh." At or about the date
of these "Selections" the poet wrote to a friend, on this very point of
obscurity, "I can have little doubt that my writing has been in the main
too hard for many I should have been pleased to communicate with; but I
never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics have
supposed. On the other hand, I never pretended to offer such literature
as should be a substitute for a cigar or a game at dominoes to an idle
man. So perhaps, on the whole, I get my deserts, and something over--not
a crowd, but a few I value more."

In 1877 Browning, ever restless for pastures new, went with his sister
to spend the autumn at La Saisiaz (Savoyard for "the sun"), a villa
among the mountains near Geneva; this time with the additional company
of Miss Anne Egerton Smith, an intimate and valued friend. But there was
an unhappy close to the holiday. Miss Smith died on the night of the
fourteenth of September, from heart complaint. "La Saisiaz" is the
direct outcome of this incident, and is one of the most beautiful of
Browning's later poems. Its trochaics move with a tide-like sound.

At the close, there is a line which might stand as epitaph for the
poet--

"He, at least, believed in Soul, was very sure of God."

In the following year "La Saisiaz" was published along with "The Two
Poets of Croisic," which was begun and partly written at the little
French village ten years previously. There is nothing of the eight-score
stanzas of the "Two Poets" to equal its delightful epilogue, or the
exquisite prefatory lyric, beginning

"Such a starved bank of moss
Till that May-morn
Blue ran the flash across:
Violets were born."

Extremely interesting--and for myself I cannot find "The Two Poets of
Croisic" to be anything more than "interesting"--it is as a poem
distinctly inferior to "La Saisiaz." Although detached lines are often
far from truly indicative of the real poetic status of a long poem,
wh