yet enthusiastic student in literature--in intellectual problems;
always quiet and sane, praising Mr. Browning with tact, with a real
refinement and grace; saying well many [42] things which every
competent reader of the great poet must feel to be true; devoting to
the subject he loves a critical gift so considerable as to make us
wish for work from his hands of larger scope than this small volume.
His book is, according to his intention, before all things a useful
one. Appreciating Mr. Browning fairly, as we think, in all his
various efforts, his aim is to point his readers to the best, the
indisputable, rather than to the dubious portions of his author's
work. Not content with his own excellent general criticism of Mr.
Browning, he guides the reader to his works, or division of work,
seriatim, making of each a distinct and special study, and giving a
great deal of welcome information about the poems, the circumstances
of their composition, and the like, with delightful quotations.
Incidentally, his Introduction has the interest of a brief but
effective selection from Mr. Browning's poems; and he has added an
excellent biography.

Certainly we shall not quarrel with Mr. Symons for reckoning Mr.
Browning, among English poets, second to Shakespeare alone--"He comes
very near the gigantic total of [43] Shakespeare." The quantity of
his work? Yes! that too, in spite of a considerable unevenness, is a
sign of genius. "So large, indeed, appear to be his natural
endowments that we cannot feel as if even thirty volumes would have
come near to exhausting them." Imaginatively, indeed, Mr. Browning
has been a multitude of persons; only (as Shakespeare's only untried
style was the simple one) almost never simple ones; and certainly he
has controlled them all to profoundly interesting artistic ends by
his own powerful personality. The world and all its action, as a