some scoffers may exclaim. Personally, I cannot but think this craze
for the exposition of poetry, this passion for "dissecting a rainbow",
is harmful to the individual as well as humiliating to the high office
of Poetry itself, and not infrequently it is ludicrous.

I must be content with a few words anent the more important
or significant poems, and in due course attempt an estimate
by a broad synthesis, and not by cumulative critical analyses.

In the selection of Paracelsus as the hero of his first mature poem,
Browning was guided first of all by his keen sympathy
with the scientific spirit -- the spirit of dauntless inquiry,
of quenchless curiosity, of a searching enthusiasm. Pietro of Abano,
Giordano Bruno, Galileo, were heroes whom he regarded with an admiration
which would have been boundless but for the wise sympathy
which enabled him to apprehend and understand their weaknesses
as well as their lofty qualities. Once having come to the conclusion
that Paracelsus was a great and much maligned man, it was natural for him
to wish to portray aright the features he saw looming through the mists
of legend and history. But over and above this, he half unwittingly,
half consciously, felt the fascination of that mysticism
associated with the name of the celebrated German scientist --
a mysticism, in all its various phases, of which he is now acknowledged
to be the subtlest poetic interpreter in our language,
though, profound as its attraction always was for him,
never was poet with a more exquisite balance of intellectual sanity.

Latest research has proved that whatsoever of a pretender
Paracelsus may have been in certain respects, he was unquestionably
a man of extraordinary powers: and, as a pioneer in a science