of a free-thinker, according to another:  really, the reflex of a great crisis, that of the first movement of the tide of religious thought to a practically limitless freedom.  This edition also contained “Bishop Blougram,” then much discussed, apart from its poetic and intellectual worth, on account of its supposed verisimilitude in portraiture of Cardinal Wiseman.  This composition, one of Browning’s most characteristic, is so clever that it is scarcely a poem.  Poetry and Cleverness do not well agree, the muse being already united in perfect marriage to Imagination.  In his Essay on Truth, Bacon says that one of the Fathers called poetry Vinum Daemonum, because it filleth the imagination.  Certainly if it be not vinum daemonum it is not Poetry.

In this year also appeared the first series of “Selections” by the poet’s latest publishers:  “Dedicated to Alfred Tennyson.  In Poetry—­illustrious and consummate:  In Friendship—­noble and sincere.”  It was in his preface to this selection that he wrote the often-quoted words:  “Nor do I apprehend any more charges of being wilfully obscure, unconscientiously careless, or perversely harsh.”  At or about the date of these “Selections” the poet wrote to a friend, on this very point of obscurity, “I can have little doubt that my writing has been in the main too hard for many I should have been pleased to communicate with; but I never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics have supposed.  On the other hand, I never pretended to offer such literature as should be a substitute for a cigar or a game at dominoes to an idle man.  So perhaps, on the whole, I get my deserts, and something over—­not a crowd, but a few I value more.”

In 1877 Browning, ever restless for pastures new, went with his sister to spend the autumn at La Saisiaz (Savoyard for “the sun"), a villa among the mountains near Geneva; this time with the additional company of Miss Anne Egerton Smith, an intimate and valued friend.  But there was an unhappy close to the holiday.  Miss Smith died on the night of the fourteenth of September, from heart complaint.  “La Saisiaz” is the direct outcome of this incident, and is one of the most beautiful of Browning’s later poems.  Its trochaics move with a tide-like sound.

At the close, there is a line which might stand as epitaph for the poet—­

“He, at least, believed in Soul, was very sure of God.”

In the following year “La Saisiaz” was published along with “The Two Poets of Croisic,” which was begun and partly written at the little French village ten years previously.  There is nothing of the eight-score stanzas of the “Two Poets” to equal its delightful epilogue, or the exquisite prefatory lyric, beginning

“Such a starved bank of moss
Till that May-morn
Blue ran the flash across: 
Violets were born.”