his view out of perspective.

Finally, the enemy of love may call as witnesses poets whom he fancies
he has led astray. Strangely enough, considering the dedication of the
_Ring and the Book_, he is likely to give most conspicuous place among
these witnesses to Browning. Like passages of Holy Writ, lines from
Browning have been used as the text for whatever harangue a new
theorist sees fit to give us. In _Youth and Art_, the non-lover
will point out the characteristic attitude of young people who are
"married to their art," and consequently have no capacity for other
affection. In _Pauline_, he will gloat over the hero's confession
that he is inept in love because he is concerned with his perceptions
rather than with their objects, and his explanation,

I am made up of an intensest life;
Of a most clear idea of consciousness
Of self ...
And I can love nothing,--and this dull truth
Has come at last: but sense supplies a love
Encircling me and mingling with my life.

He will point out that Sordello is another example of the same type, for
though Sordello is ostensibly the lover of Palma, he really finds
nothing outside himself worthy of his unbounded adoration. [Footnote:
Compare Browning's treatment of Sordello with the conventional treatment
of him as lover, in _Sordello_, by Mrs. W. Buck (1837).] Turning to
Tennyson, in _Lucretius_ the non-lover will note the tragic death
of the hero that grows out of the asceticism in love engendered by his
absorption in composition. With the greatest pride the enemy of love
will point to his popularity in the 1890's, when the artificial and