them; from many periods of the arts; from most of the countries of Europe, from France, Germany, Spain, Italy, (rarely from England,) with their specialised types of race and of landscape; and from almost every class of educated modern society.  Moreover, he had a guard within his own nature against the danger of this monotony.  It was the youthful freshness with which, even in advanced age, he followed his rapid impulses to art-creation.  No one was a greater child than he in the quickness with which he received a sudden call to poetry from passing events or scenes, and in the eagerness with which he seized them as subjects.  He took the big subjects now and then which the world expects to be taken, and treated them with elaborate thought and steadfast feeling, but he was more often like the girl in his half-dramatic poem, whom the transient occurrences and sights of the day touched into song.  He picked up his subjects as a man culls flowers in a mountain walk, moved by an ever-recurring joy and fancy in them—­a book on a stall, a bust in an Italian garden, a face seen at the opera, the market chatter of a Tuscan town, a story told by the roadside in Brittany, a picture in some Accademia—­so that, though the ground-thought might incur the danger of dulness through repetition, the joy of the artist so filled the illustration, and his freshness of invention was so delighted with itself, that even to the reader the theory seemed like a new star.

In this way he kept the use of having an unwavering basis of thought which gave unity to his sixty years of work, and yet avoided the peril of monotony.  An immense diversity animated his unity, filled it with gaiety and brightness, and secured impulsiveness of fancy.  This also differentiates him from Tennyson, who often wanted freshness; who very rarely wrote on a sudden impulse, but after long and careful thought; to whose seriousness we cannot always climb with pleasure; who played so little with the world.  These defects in Tennyson had the excellences which belong to them in art, just as these excellences in Browning had, in art, their own defects.  We should be grateful for the excellences, and not trouble ourselves about the defects.  However, neither the excellences nor the defects concern us in the present discussion.  It is the contrast between the two men on which we dwell.

5.  The next point of contrast, which will further illustrate why Browning was not read of old but is now read, has to do with historical criticism.  There arose, some time ago, as part of the scientific and critical movement of the last forty years, a desire to know and record accurately the early life of peoples, pastoral, agricultural and in towns, and the beginning of their arts and knowledges; and not only their origins, but the whole history of their development.  A close, critical investigation was made of the origins of each people; accurate knowledge, derived from contemporary documents, of their life, laws, customs and language was attained; the facts of their history were separated from their mythical and legendary elements; the dress, the looks of men, the climate of the time, the physical aspects of their country—­all the skeleton of things was fitted together, bone to bone.  And for a good while this merely critical school held the field.  It did admirable and necessary work.