their setting. It adds but little to our knowledge of Shakespeare's work
to regard him as the great Elizabethan; there is nothing temporary in
his dramas, except petty incidents and external trappings--so truly did
he dwell amidst the elements constituting man in every age and clime.
But this cannot be said of any other poet, not even of Chaucer or
Spenser, far less of Milton, or Pope or Wordsworth. In their case, the
artistic form and the material, the idea and its expression, the beauty
and the truth, are to some extent separable. We can distinguish in
Milton between the Puritanic theology which is perishable, and the art
whose beauty can never pass away. The former fixes his kinship with his
own age, gives him a definite place in the evolution of English life;
the latter is independent of time, a thing which has supreme worth in
itself.

Nor can it be doubted that the same holds good of Browning. He also is
ruled by the ideas of his own age. It may not be altogether possible for
us, "who are partners of his motion and mixed up with his career," to
allow for the influence of these ideas, and to distinguish between that
which is evanescent and that which is permanent in his work; still I
must try to do so; for it is the condition of comprehending him, and of
appropriating the truth and beauty he came to reveal. And if his
nearness to ourselves makes this more difficult, it also makes it more
imperative. For there is no doubt that, with Carlyle, he is the
interpreter of our time, reflecting its confused strength and chaotic
wealth. He is the high priest of our age, standing at the altar for us,
and giving utterance to our needs and aspirations, our fears and faith.
By understanding him, we shall, to some degree, understand ourselves and
the power which is silently moulding us to its purposes.

It is because I thus regard Browning as not merely a poet but a prophet,