'The conscious Parcae threw
Upon their roseate lips a Stygian hue.'

That their lives may be prolonged is my pious prayer. In these bad
days, when it is thought more educationally useful to know the
principle of the common pump than Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn,' one
cannot afford to let any good poetry die.

But when we take down Browning, we cannot think of him and the 'wormy
bed' together. He is so unmistakably and deliciously alive. Die,
indeed! when one recalls the ideal characters he has invested with
reality; how he has described love and joy, pain and sorrow, art and
music; as poems like 'Childe Roland,' 'Abt Vogler,' 'Evelyn Hope,'
'The Worst of It,' 'Pictor Ignotus,' 'The Lost Leader,' 'Home Thoughts
from Abroad,' 'Old Pictures in Florence,' 'Herve Riel,' 'A
Householder,' 'Fears and Scruples,' come tumbling into one's memory,
one over another--we are tempted to employ the language of hyperbole,
and to answer the question 'Will Browning die?' by exclaiming, 'Yes;
when Niagara stops.' In him indeed we can

'Discern
Infinite passion and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.'

But love of Mr. Browning's poetry is no exclusive cult.

Of Lord Tennyson it is needless to speak. Certainly amongst his Peers
there is no such Poet.