poem was placed; and for the concentration into a single poem, gathered
round one person, of the ideas whose new arrival formed a crisis in the
history of art.

Men looked for this in Tennyson and did not find it. His Greek and
mediæval poems were modernised. Their imaginative work was uncritical.
But when the historians and the critics of art and of religious
movements happened at last to look into Browning, they discovered, to
their delight and wonder, that he had been doing, with a curious
knowledge, this kind of work for many years. He had anticipated the
results of that movement of the imagination in historical work which did
not exist when he began to write; he had worked that mine, and the
discovery of this made another host of people readers of his poetry.

We need scarcely give examples of this. _Sordello_, in 1840 (long before
the effort of which we speak began), was such a poem--the history of a
specialised soul, with all its scenery and history vividly mediæval.
Think of the _Spanish Cloister_, _The Laboratory_, _A Grammarian's
Funeral_, the _Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church_, poems,
each of which paints an historical period or a vivid piece of its life.
Think of _The Ring and the Book_, with all the world of Rome painted to
the life, and all the soul of the time!

The same kind of work was done for phases and periods of the arts from
Greek times to the Renaissance, I may even say, from the Renaissance to
the present day. _Balaustion's Prologue_ concentrates the passage of
dramatic poetry from Sophocles to Euripides. _Aristophanes' Apology_
realises the wild licence in which art and freedom died in Athens--their
greatness in their ruin--and the passionate sorrow of those who loved
what had been so beautiful. _Cleon_ takes us into a later time when men