by his inseparable defect. He cannot be prevented from inserting now and
then in the midst of exquisite passages more or fewer of his quirks and
cranks of thought and phrase, of his vernacularity or his euphuism, of
his outrageous rhymes (which, however, are seldom or never absolutely
bad), of those fantastic tricks of his in general which remind one of
nothing so much as of dashing a bladder with rattling peas in the
reader's face just at the height of the passion or the argument.

Yet the beauty, the charm, the variety, the vigour of these short poems
are as wonderful as the number of them. He never lost the secret of them
to his latest years. The delicious lines "Never the time and the place,
And the loved one all together" are late; and there are half a dozen
pieces in _Asolando_, latest of all, which exhibit to the full the
almost bewildering beauty of combined sound, thought, and sight, the
clash of castanets and the thrill of flutes, the glow of flower and
sunset, the subtle appeal for sympathy in feeling or assent in judgment.
The song snatches in _Pippa Passes_, "Through the Metidja," "The Lost
Leader," "In a Gondola," "Earth's Immortalities," "Mesmerism," "Women
and Roses," "Love Among the Ruins," "A Toccata of Galuppis," "Prospice,"
"Rabbi Ben Ezra," "Porphyria's Lover," "After," with scores of others,
and the "Last Ride Together," the poet's most perfect thing, at the head
of the list, are such poems as a very few--Shakespeare, Shelley, Burns,
Coleridge--may surpass now and then in pure lyrical perfection, as
Tennyson may excel in dreamy ecstasy, as some seventeenth century
songsters may outgo in quaint and perfect fineness of touch, but such as
are nowhere to be surpassed or equalled for a certain volume and variety
of appeal, for fulness of life and thought, of action and passion.

Mr. Browning's wife, Elizabeth Barrett, was older than himself by six
years, and her period of popularity considerably anticipated his. But
except one very juvenile book she published nothing of importance till
1838, when Browning, whom she did not then know, had already manifested
his idiosyncrasy. Miss Barrett, whose father's original name was
Moulton, was born at Carlton Hall, Durham, on 6th March 1806. The change
of name was brought on by succession to estates in the West Indies; and
the family were wealthy. For the greater part of Miss Barrett's youth
they lived in Herefordshire at a place, Hope End, which has left great
tr