So large, indeed,
appear to be his natural endowments, that we cannot feel as if the whole
vast extent of his work has come near to exhausting them.

As it is, he has written more than any other English poet with the
exception of Shakespeare, and he comes very near the gigantic total of
Shakespeare. Mass of work is of course in itself worth nothing without
due quality; but there is no surer test nor any more fortunate
concomitant of greatness than the union of the two. The highest genius
is splendidly spendthrift; it is only the second order that needs to be
niggardly. Browning's works are not a mere collection of poems, they are
a literature. And his literature is the richest of modern times. If
"the best poetry is that which reproduces the most of life," his place
is among the great poets of the world. In the vast extent of his work he
has dealt with or touched on nearly every phase and feature of humanity,
and his scope is bounded only by the soul's limits and the last reaches
of life. But of all "Poetical Works," small or great, his is the most
consistent in its unity. The manner has varied not a little, the
comparative worth of individual poems is widely different, but from the
first word to the last the attitude is the same, the outlook on life the
same, the conception of God and man, of the world and nature, always the
same. This unity, though it may be deduced from, or at least
accommodated to, a system of philosophical thought, is much more the
outcome of a natural and inevitable bent. No great poet ever constructed
his poems upon a theory, but a theory may often be very legitimately
discovered in them. Browning, in his essay on Shelley, divides all poets
into two classes, subjective and objective, the Seer and the Maker. His
own genius includes a large measure of them both; for it is equally
strong on the dramatic and the metaphysical side. There are for him but
two realities; and but two subjects, Life and Thought. On these are
expended all his imagination and all his intellect, more consistently
and in a higher degree than can be said of any English poet since the
age of Elizabeth. Life and thought, the dramatic and the metaphysical,
are not considered apart, but woven into one seamless tissue; and in
regard to both he has one point of view and one manner of treatment. It
is this that causes the unity which subsists throughout his work; and it
is this, too, which distinguishes him among poets, and makes that