poet. Much of the finest poetry of _Faust_, as, in a lower degree, of
the _Idylls_, is won by a subtle transformation of the rude stuff of
popular imagination: for Browning, with rare exceptions, this rude stuff
was dead matter, impervious to his poetic insight, and irresponsive to
the magic of his touch. Winnowing the full ears, catching eagerly the
solid and stimulating grain, he hardly heeded the golden gleam of the
chaff as it flew by.

He did not, however, refrain from accentuating his view of the story by
interweaving in it some gracious figures of his own. Festus, the honest,
devoted, but somewhat purblind friend, who offers Paracelsus the
criticism of sober common-sense, and is vindicated--at the bar of
common-sense--by his great comrade's tragic end; Michal, an exquisitely
tender outline of womanhood, even more devoted, and even less
distinguished; and the "Italian poet" Aprile, a creature of genius,
whose single overpowering thought avails to break down the stronghold of
Paracelsus's else unassailable conviction. Aprile, who lives for love as
Paracelsus for knowledge, is not to be identified with Shelley, but he
has unmistakable Shelleyan traits, and the dreamy pageant of his
imaginary creations might stand for a summary review of Shelley's work.
Had Shelley lived, he might have come nearer than any one else to
fulfilling the rounded and complete ideal of which Paracelsus and Aprile
were dissevered halves: the greater part of his actual achievement
belonged, Browning evidently thought, to the category of those dazzling
but imperfectly objective visions which he ascribes to his Aprile. But
Shelley--the poet of _Alastor_, the passionate "lover of Love," was yet
the fittest embodiment of that other finer spiritual energy which
Paracelsus in his Faustian passion for knowledge had ruthlessly put from
him. Sixteen years later, Browning was to define in memorable words what
he held to be the "noblest and predominating characteristic of