“Paracelsus” is not a great, but it is a memorable poem:  a notable achievement, indeed, for an author of Browning’s years.  Well may we exclaim with Festus, when we regard the poet in all the greatness of his maturity—­

                                      “The sunrise
      Well warranted our faith in this full noon!”

CHAPTER IV.

The Athenaeum dismissed “Paracelsus” with a half contemptuous line or two.  On the other hand, the Examiner acknowledged it to be a work of unequivocal power, and predicted for its author a brilliant career.  The same critic who wrote this review contributed an article of about twenty pages upon “Paracelsus” to the New Monthly Magazine, under the heading, “Evidences of a New Dramatic Poetry.”  This article is ably written, and remarkable for its sympathetic insight.  “Mr. Browning,” the critic writes, “is a man of genius, he has in himself all the elements of a great poet, philosophical as well as dramatic.”

The author of this enthusiastic and important critique was John Forster.  When the Examiner review appeared the two young men had not met:  but the encounter, which was to be the seed of so fine a flower of friendship, occurred before the publication of the New Monthly article.  Before this, however, Browning had already made one of the most momentous acquaintanceships of his life.

His good friend and early critic, Mr. Fox, asked him to his house one evening in November, a few months after the publication of “Paracelsus.”  The chief guest of the occasion was Macready, then at the height of his great reputation.  Mr. Fox had paved the way for the young poet, but the moment he entered he carried with him his best recommendation.  Every one who met Browning in those early years of his buoyant manhood seems to have been struck by his comeliness and simple grace of manner.  Macready stated that he looked more like a poet than any man he had ever met.  As a young man he appears to have had a certain ivory delicacy of colouring, what an old friend perhaps somewhat exaggeratedly described to me as an almost flower-like beauty, which passed ere long into a less girlish and more robust complexion.  He appeared taller than he was, for he was not above medium height, partly because of his rare grace of movement, and partly from a characteristic high poise of the head when listening intently to music or conversation.  Even then he had that expressive wave o’ the hand, which in later years was as full of various meanings as the Ecco of an Italian.  A swift alertness pervaded him, noticeable as much in the rapid change of expression, in the deepening and illuming colours of his singularly expressive eyes, and in his sensitive mouth, with the upper lip ever so swift to curve or droop in response to the most fluctuant emotion, as in his greyhound-like apprehension, which so often