workmanship which we find in such poets as Virgil, Racine, and
Milton--that perfection of phrase which we cannot conceive the poet
capable of improving by any labour. Put aside for the moment any
question about the ideas, inspiration, or power of the poem as a whole,
and consider that, in all those hundreds of stanzas, there is hardly
one line that is either careless, prosaic, or harsh, not a single false
note, nothing commonplace, nothing over-coloured, but uniform harmony
of phrase. This perfection of phrasing is not always to be found even
in the greatest poets, for Aeschylus and Dante at times strike a fierce
discord, and Shakespeare, Calderon, and Goethe sometimes pass into rank
extravaganza. But this scholarly and measured speech has impressed
itself on the poetry of our time--insomuch, that the Tennysonian cycle
of minor poets has a higher standard of grace, precision, and subtlety
of phrase than the second rank of any modern literature:--a standard
which puts to shame the rugosities of strong men like Dryden, Burns,
and Byron. There is plenty of mannerism in this school of our minor
poetry, but no one can call it either slovenly or harsh.

The friend, contemporary, almost the rival of Tennyson, one whom some
think endowed by nature with even stronger genius, on the other hand,
struck notes of discord harsher, louder, and more frequent than any
poet since Elizabethan times. Whatever we hold about the insight and
imagination of Browning, no one can doubt that he often chose to be
uncouth, crabbed, grotesque, and even clownish, when the humour was on
him. There are high precedents for genius choosing its own instrument
and making its own music. But, whatever were Browning's latent powers
of melody, his method when he chose to play upon the gong, or the
ancient instrument of marrow-bone and cleavers, was the exact
antithesis of Tennyson's; and he set on edge the teeth of those who
love the exquisite cadences of _In Memoriam_ and _Maud_. Browning has