All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."C
C: Tintern Abbey.
Such notes as these could not be struck by Pope, nor be understood by the age of prose. Still they are only the prelude of the fuller song of Browning. Whether he be a greater poet than these or not,—a question whose answer can benefit nothing, for each poet has his own worth, and reflects by his own facet the universal truth—his poetry contains in it larger elements, and the promise of a deeper harmony from the harsher discords of his more stubborn material. Even where their spheres touch, Browning held by the artistic truth in a different manner. To Shelley, perhaps the most intensely spiritual of all our poets,
"That light whose smile kindles the universe,
That beauty in which all things work and move,"
was an impassioned sentiment, a glorious intoxication; to Browning it was a conviction, reasoned and willed, possessing the whole man, and held in the sober moments when the heart is silent. "The heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world" was lightened for Wordsworth, only when he was far from the haunts of men, and free from the "dreary intercourse of daily life"; but Browning weaved his song of hope right amidst the wail and woe of man's sin and wretchedness. For Wordsworth "sensations sweet, felt in the blood and felt along the heart, passed into his purer mind with tranquil restoration," and issued "in a serene and blessed mood"; but Browning's poetry is not merely the poetry of the emotions however sublimated. He starts with the hard repellent fact, crushes by sheer force of thought its stubborn rind, presses into it, and brings forth the truth at its heart. The greatness of Browning's poetry is in its perceptive grip: and in nothing is he more original than in the manner in which he takes up his task, and assumes his artistic function. In his postponement of feeling to thought we recognize a new poetic method, the significance of which we cannot estimate as yet. But, although we may fail to apprehend the meaning of the new method he employs, we cannot fail to perceive the fact, which is not less striking, that the region from which he quarries his material is new.
And yet he does not break away abruptly from his predecessors. His kinship with them, in that he recognizes the presence of God in nature, is everywhere evident. We quote one passage, scarcely to be surpassed by any of our poets, as indicative of his power of dealing with the supernaturalism of nature.
"The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth,