BROWNING’S PLACE AND MESSAGE.  Browning’s place in our literature will be better appreciated by comparison with his friend Tennyson, whom we have just studied.  In one respect, at least, these poets are in perfect accord.  Each finds in love the supreme purpose and meaning of life.  In other respects, especially in their methods of approaching the truth, the two men are the exact opposites.  Tennyson is first the artist and then the teacher; but with Browning the message is always the important thing, and he is careless, too careless, of the form in which it is expressed.  Again, Tennyson is under the influence of the romantic revival, and chooses his subjects daintily; but “all’s fish” that comes to Browning’s net.  He takes comely and ugly subjects with equal pleasure, and aims to show that truth lies hidden in both the evil and the good.  This contrast is all the more striking when we remember that Browning’s essentially scientific attitude was taken by a man who refused to study science.  Tennyson, whose work is always artistic, never studied art, but was devoted to the sciences; while Browning, whose work is seldom artistic in form, thought that art was the most suitable subject for a man’s study.

The two poets differ even more widely in their respective messages.  Tennyson’s message reflects the growing order of the age, and is summed up in the word “law.” in his view, the individual will must be suppressed; the self must always be subordinate.  His resignation is at times almost Oriental in its fatalism, and occasionally it suggests Schopenhauer in its mixture of fate and pessimism.  Browning’s message, on the other hand, is the triumph of the individual will over all obstacles; the self is not subordinate but supreme.  There is nothing Oriental, nothing doubtful, nothing pessimistic in the whole range of his poetry.  His is the voice of the Anglo-Saxon, standing up in the face of all obstacles and saying, “I can and I will.”  He is, therefore, far more radically English than is Tennyson; and it may be for this reason that he is the more studied, and that, while youth delights in Tennyson, manhood is better satisfied with Browning.  Because of his invincible will and optimism, Browning is at present regarded as the poet who has spoken the strongest word of faith to an age of doubt.  His energy, his cheerful courage, his faith in life and in the development that awaits us beyond the portals of death, are like a bugle-call to good living.  This sums up his present influence upon the minds of those who have learned to appreciate him.  Of the future we can only say that, both at home and abroad, he seems to be gaining steadily in appreciation as the years go by.

MINOR POETS OF THE VISTORIAN AGE