words, “heedless of far gain.”  The contents of characters so conceived can be exhausted, whereas when characters are presented with entire disinterestedness they may seem to yield us less at first, but they are inexhaustible.  The fault—­if it be one—­lay partly in Browning’s epoch, partly in the nature of his genius.  Such a method of deflected dramatic characterisation as his is less appropriate to regular drama than to the monologue; and accordingly the monologue, reflective or lyrical, became the most characteristic instrument of his art.

There is little of repose in Browning’s poetry.  He feared lethargy of heart, the supine mood, more than he feared excess of passion.  Once or twice he utters a sigh for rest, but it is for rest after strife or labour.  Broad spaces of repose, of emotional tranquillity are rare, if not entirely wanting, in his poetry.  It is not a high table-land, but a range, or range upon range, of sierras.  In single poems there is often a point or moment in which passion suddenly reaches its culmination.  He flashes light upon the retina; he does not spread truth abroad like a mantle but plunges it downwards through the mists of earth like a searching sword-blade.  And therefore he does not always distribute the poetic value of what he writes equally; one vivid moment justifies all that is preparatory to that great moment.  His utterance, which is always vigorous, becomes intensely luminous at the needful points and then relapses, to its well-maintained vigour, a vigour not always accompanied by the highest poetical qualities.  The music of his verse is entirely original, and so various are its kinds, so complex often are its effects that it cannot be briefly characterised.  Its attack upon the ear is often by surprises, which, corresponding to the sudden turns of thought and leaps of feeling, justify themselves as right and delightful.  Yet he sometimes embarrasses his verse with an excess of suspensions and resolutions.  Browning made many metrical experiments, some of which were unfortunate:  but his failures are rather to be ascribed to temporary lapses into a misdirected ingenuity than to the absence of metrical feeling.

His chief influence, other than what is purely artistic, upon a reader is towards establishing a connection between the known order of things in which we live and move and that larger order of which it is a part.  He plays upon the will, summoning it from lethargy to activity.  He spiritualises the passions by showing that they tend through what is human towards what is divine.  He assigns to the intellect a sufficient field for exercise, but attaches more value to its efforts than to its attainments.  His faith in an unseen order of things creates a hope which persists through the apparent failures of earth.  In a true sense he may be named the successor of Wordsworth, not indeed as an artist but as a teacher.  Substantially the creed maintained by each was the same creed, and