Laureate's versatility. He has touched so many strings, from "Will
Waterproof's Monologue," so far above Praed, to the agony of "Rizpah,"
the invincible energy of "Ulysses," the languor and the fairy music of
the "Lotus Eaters," the grace as of a Greek epigram which inspires the
lines to Catullus and to Virgil. He is with Milton for learning, with
Keats for magic and vision, with Virgil for graceful recasting of ancient
golden lines, and, even in the latest volume of his long life, "we may
tell from the straw," as Homer says, "what the grain has been."

There are many who make it a kind of religion to regard Mr. Browning as
the greatest of living English poets. For him, too, one is thankful as
for a veritable great poet; but can we believe that impartial posterity
will rate him with the Laureate, or that so large a proportion of his
work will endure? The charm of an enigma now attracts students who feel
proud of being able to understand what others find obscure. But this
attraction must inevitably become a stumbling-block.

Why Mr. Browning is obscure is a long question; probably the answer is
that he often could not help himself. His darkest poems may be made out
by a person of average intelligence who will read them as hard as, for
example, he would find it necessary to read the "Logic" of Hegel. There
is a story of two clever girls who set out to peruse "Sordello," and
corresponded with each other about their progress. "Somebody is dead in
'Sordello,'" one of them wrote to her friend. "I don't quite know _who_
it is, but it must make things a little clearer in the long run." Alas!
a copious use of the guillotine would scarcely clear the stage of
"Sordello." It is hardly to be hoped that "Sordello," or "Red Cotton
Night Cap Country," or "Fifine," will continue to be struggled with by
posterity. But the mass of "Men and Women," that unexampled gallery of
portraits of the inmost hearts and secret minds of priests, prigs,