had ceased to be original, and life and art had become darkened by the
pain of the soul. We pass on to two different periods of the
Renaissance in _Fra Lippo Lippi_ and in _Andrea del Sarto_, and are
carried further through the centuries of art when we read _Abt Vogler_
and _A Toccata of Galuppi's_. Each of these poems is a concentrated,
accurate piece of art-history, with the addition to it of the human
soul.

Periods and phases of religious history are equally realised. _Caliban
upon Setebos_ begins the record--that philosophic savage who makes his
God out of himself. Then follows study after study, from _A Death in the
Desert_ to _Bishop Blougram's Apology_. Some carry us from early
Christianity through the mediæval faith; others lead us through the
Paganism of the Renaissance and strange shows of Judaism to Browning's
own conception of religion in the present day contrasted with those of
the popular religion in _Christmas-Day and Easter-Day_.

Never, in poetry, was the desire of the historical critic for accuracy
of fact and portraiture, combined with vivid presentation of life, so
fully satisfied. No wonder Browning was not read of old; but it is no
wonder, when the new History was made, when he was once found out, that
he passed from a few to a multitude of readers.

6. Another contrast appears at the very beginning of their career.
Tennyson, in his two earliest books in 1830 and 1833, though clearly
original in some poems, had clinging round his singing robes some of the
rags of the past. He wrote partly in the weak and sentimental strain of
the poets between 1822 and 1832. Browning, on the contrary, sprang at
once into an original poetic life of his own. _Pauline_ was unfinished,
irregular in form, harsh, abrupt, and overloaded, but it was also