The air is all softness and crystal the streams,
The west is resplendently clothed in beams.'

The strength of a rope may be but the strength of its weakest part;
but poets are to be judged in their happiest hours, and in their
greatest works.

Taking, then, this first period of Mr. Browning's poetry as a whole,
and asking ourselves if we are the richer for it, how can there be any
doubt as to the reply? What points of human interest has he left
untouched? With what phase of life, character, or study does he fail
to sympathize? So far from being the rough-hewn block 'dull fools'
have supposed him, he is the most dilettante of great poets. Do you
dabble in art and perambulate picture-galleries? Browning must be your
favourite poet: he is art's historian. Are you devoted to music? So is
he: and alone of our poets has sought to fathom in verse the deep
mysteries of sound. Do you find it impossible to keep off theology?
Browning has more theology than most bishops--could puzzle Gamaliel
and delight Aquinas. Are you in love? Read 'A Last Ride Together,'
'Youth and Art,' 'A Portrait,' 'Christine,' 'In a Gondola,' 'By the
Fireside,' 'Love amongst the Ruins,' 'Time's Revenges,' 'The Worst of
It,' and a host of others, being careful always to end with 'A
Madhouse Cell'; and we are much mistaken if you do not put Browning at
the very head and front of the interpreters of passion. The many moods
of sorrow are reflected in his verse, whilst mirth, movement, and a
rollicking humour abound everywhere.

I will venture upon but three quotations, for it is late in the day to
be quoting Browning. The first shall be a well-known bit of blank
verse about art from 'Fra Lippo Lippi':