and in another way perturbed the poet's
father, saw something more of his young friend after the publication of
"Pauline." He very kindly offered to print in his magazine any short
poems the author of that book should see fit to send--an offer, however,
which was not put to the test for some time.

Practically simultaneously with the publication of "Pauline" appeared
another small volume, containing the "Palace of Art," "Oenone,"
"Mariana," etc. Those early books of Tennyson and Browning have
frequently, and somewhat uncritically, been contrasted. Unquestionably,
however, the elder poet showed a consummate and continuous mastery of
his art altogether beyond the intermittent expressional power of
Browning in his most rhythmic emotion at any time of his life. To affirm
that there is more intellectual fibre, what Rossetti called fundamental
brain-work, in the product of the younger poet, would be beside the
mark. The insistence on the supremacy of Browning over all poets since
Shakspere because he has the highest "message" to deliver, because his
intellect is the most subtle and comprehensive, because his poems have
this or that dynamic effect upon dormant or sluggish or other active
minds, is to be seriously and energetically deprecated. It is with
presentment that the artist has, fundamentally, to concern himself. If
he cannot _present_ poetically then he is not, in effect, a poet, though
he may be a poetic thinker, or a great writer. Browning's eminence is
not because of his detachment from what some one has foolishly called
"the mere handiwork, the furnisher's business, of the poet." It is the
delight of the true artist that the product of his talent should be
wrought to a high technique equally by the shaping brain and the
dexterous hand. Browning is great because of his formative energy:
because, despite the excess of burning and compulsive thought--

"Thoughts swarming thro' the myriad-chambered brain
Like multitudes of bees i' the innumerous cells,
Each staggering 'neath the undelivered freight--"

he strikes from the _furor_ of words an electric flash so transcendently
illuminative that what is commonplace becomes radiant with that light
which dwells not in nature, but only in the visionary eye of man. Form
for the mere beauty of form, is a playing with the wind, the acceptance
of a shadow for the substance. If nothing animate it, it may possibly be
fair of aspect, but only as the frozen smile