How winsome it is, moreover:  this, and the humanity of his song.  Profoundly he realised that there is no more significant study than the human heart.  “The development of a soul:  little else is worth study,” he wrote in his preface to “Sordello”:  so in his old age, in his last “Reverie”—­

     “As the record from youth to age
        Of my own, the single soul—­
      So the world’s wide book:  one page
        Deciphered explains the whole
      Of our common heritage.”

He had faith also that “the record from youth to age” of his own soul would outlast any present indifference or neglect—­that whatever tide might bear him away from our regard for a time would ere long flow again.  The reaction must come:  it is, indeed, already at hand.  But one almost fancies one can hear the gathering of the remote waters once more.  We may, with Strafford,

                                  “feel sure
      That Time, who in the twilight comes to mend
      All the fantastic day’s caprice, consign
      To the low ground once more the ignoble Term,
      And raise the Genius on his orb again,—­
      That Time will do me right.” ...

Indeed, Browning has the grand manner, for all it is more that of the Scandinavian Jarl than of the Italian count or Spanish grandee.

And ever, below all the stress and failure, below all the triumph of his toil, is the beauty of his dream.  It was “a surpassing Spirit” that went from out our midst.

“One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.”

“Speed, fight on, fare ever There as here!” are the last words of this brave soul.  In truth, “the air seems bright with his past presence yet.”

“Sun-treader—­life and light be thine for ever;
Thou art gone from us—­years go by—­and spring
Gladdens, and the young earth is beautiful,
Yet thy songs come not—­other bards arise,
But none like thee—­they stand—­thy majesties,
Like mighty works which tell some Spirit there
Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn,
Till, its long task completed, it hath risen
And left us, never to return.”

* * * * *

INDEX.

A.

“Abt Vogler,” 130, 172, 202
“A Face,” 130
“A Forgiveness,” 130
“After,” 130
“Agamemnon of AEschylus,” 182
“A Grammarian’s Funeral,” 129, 168
“A Likeness,” 130
Alma ——­, Letter to, 191
“Amphibian,” 130
Ancona, 150
“Andrea del Sarto,” 130, 168
“Andromeda,” 25
“Another way of Love,” 130
“Any Wife to any Husband,” 129, 168
“A Pearl,” 130
“Apparent Failure,” 130, 172
“Appearances,” 130