for the absence of it.

The study of poetry, in our institutions of learning, so far as I
have taken note of it, and the education induced thereby,
are almost purely intellectual. The student's spiritual nature
is left to take care of itself; and the consequence is that he becomes,
at best, only a thinking and analyzing machine.

The spiritual claims of the study of poetry are especially demanded
in the case of Browning's poetry. Browning is generally
and truly regarded as the most intellectual of poets.
No poetry in English literature, or in any literature,
is more charged with discursive thought than his. But he is,
at the same time, the most spiritual and transcendental of poets,
the "subtlest assertor of the Soul in Song". His thought is never
an end to itself, but is always subservient to an ulterior
spiritual end -- always directed towards "a presentment of
the correspondency of the universe to Deity, of the natural to
the spiritual, and of the actual to the ideal"; and it is
all-important that students should be awakened, and made,
as far as possible, responsive to this spiritual end.

The sections of the Introduction on Personality and Art
were read before the Browning Society of London, in June, 1882.
I have seen no reason for changing or modifying, in any respect,
the views therein expressed.

The idea of personality as a quickening, regenerating power,
and the idea of art as an intermediate agency of personality,
are, perhaps, the most reiterated (implicitly, not explicitly)