been evolved, eventually, creations as perfect even as those?
But I prefer to look for the highest attainment, not simply the high,
-- and, seeing it, I hold by it. There is surely enough
of the work `Shelley' to be known enduringly among men, and, I believe,
to be accepted of God, as human work may; and AROUND THE IMPERFECT
PROPORTIONS OF SUCH, THE MOST ELABORATED PRODUCTIONS OF ORDINARY ART
MUST ARRANGE THEMSELVES AS INFERIOR ILLUSTRATIONS."

The italics are mine. I would say, but without admitting
imperfect art on the part of Browning, for I regard him as one
of the greatest of literary artists, that HE must be estimated by
the standard presented in this passage, by the "presentment",
everywhere in his poetry, "of the correspondency of the universe
to Deity, of the natural to the spiritual, and of the actual
to the ideal."

The same standard is presented in `Andrea del Sarto',
in `Old Pictures in Florence', and in other of his poems.






V. Arguments of the Poems.

* It has not been thought necessary, in these Arguments,
to use quotation marks wherever expressions from the poems
are incorporated; and especially where they are adapted
in construction to the place where they are introduced.