poetry is the handmaid of Philosophy. There are thoughts which the minstrel alone strikes out. The argument of the poet is sometimes more effective than the logician's. He can explain many things which the metaphysician cannot. The radiant imagination of Mr. Browning has wrestled with not a few of the hardest problems of the schools. As a thinker, he is essentially original. The Two Voices-Tennyson's most directly philosophical poem-is composed of a series of rather obvious reflections,-profusely adorned, no doubt. It is like a common water-jug, stuck all over with gems and precious stones. No very intricate speculations, no very keen doubts, find expression in that elaboratelypolished verse. Mr. Browning does not only adorn,— he originates as well. His imagination flashes light into the dark places. The chasing is rich indeed,—but the pitcher has been designed by Cellini. Paracelsus and Christmas Eve deal with the weighty issues of the life-divine and human. Paracelsus (on which I would willingly linger, as in many respects the most remarkable of Mr. Browning's works, but time fails me) is the record of high hopes defeated, of lofty purposes thwarted, of pure aspirations and an unselfish ambition rendered fruitless. Caricatures of religious fanaticism, coarse, but vigorous and vivacious as Hogarth's, pictures of material nature, pure as summer dawn, frescoes of judgment, heavy with the gloom and pomp of the Sistine, are grotesquely bound up together in Christmas Eve. Throughout that singular poem, in verse that halts, and stumbles, and aspires, the poet strives to read,

honestly, patiently, courageously, humbly, the riddle of life and death.

To conclude. As the dramatic is the poetic form which Mr. Browning prefers, we can seldom be sure that we meet the man himself in his poetry. It is, at nearest, one of his many moods-moods which cannot be safely identified with permanent character. On rare

occasions, however, we find him appearing in propriâ persona. At these times—in the later years at least— a passion for Italian freedom, and a tender regard for that E. B. B.' to whom he offers his latest work, are most noticeable. His voice softens when he speaks of Italy; her name is written upon his heart: and he longs for the day when the national tricolour shall wave over liberated Florence. 'Shall I be alive that morning?' he asks. He has seen the desire of his eyes: and Florence is duly grateful to her English lover.

This faith was shown

To Italy, our mother;-she

Uses my hand and blesses thee.

The nearer and dearer tie has now been hallowed by 'the covenant of the grave.' 'Till death us part, merely?' the great English poetess wistfully inquires in one of her earlier works. Till death us part-O poor to be our best for Love the deathless.' Not so, is the burden of that One Word More with which the husband closes his volumes. Here I can only lay these poor verses at your feet; but hereafter I may find a worthier return for the great love with which I have been blessed.

This of verse alone, one life allows me;

Verse, and nothing else, have I to give you:

Other heights in other lives, God willing

All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love. So-God willing'-let it be.

A

ND so I sat and read in the woodland,-while the sun wested, and the shadows of the pines grew long. And then Letty rose and put away her drawing-paper, on which tender intricate wild flowers and modest grasses had begun to bloom, and packed our panniers. Dobbins, who had been idly wandering and ruminating among the ferns, was recalled. As we emerged from the shade of the trees, we saw the blue sea stretched beneath us-miles away-and amid its gold lay fair green islands, unknown to song, but beautiful as those which Ulysses knew.

Clustering near,

Stars of the blue sea, round about him smile

Dulichium, Samë steep, Zacyinthus wood-crowned isle.

As we passed the hay-fields where we had marked the mowers in the morning, we could see now that the rakes and scythes had been put away, and that girls and boys were romping among the ricks. Such, too, had the wise old mariner seen a thousand years before.

Soon did Odysseus, rapt as in a trance,

Mark the loud pulse of feet, the ever-twinkling glance.

And as we went down the glen, through the crimson

sunset, and beneath the pale summer moon (hanging in the sky more for ornament than use), Letty repeated to me an old ditty written by a poet who has sung his last love song,-Giovanni Boccaccio. Its arch playfulness and its gleam of green leaves and golden hair recall, as Mr. Rossetti says, 'the painted pastorals of Giorgione.'

OF THREE GIRLS, AND OF THEIR TALK.

By a clear well, within a little field

Full of green grass and flowers of every hue,
Sat three young girls, relating (as I knew)

Their loves. And each had twin'd a bough to shield
Her lovely face; and the green leaves did yield

The golden hair their shadow; while the two

Sweet colours mingled, both blown lightly through
With a soft wind for ever stirr'd and still'd.

After a little while one of them said

(I heard her)--' Think! If, ere the next hour struck,
Each of our lovers should come here to-day,
Think you that we should fly, or feel afraid?'
To whom the others answered, 'From such luck
A girl would be a fool to run away.'

285

X.

HORACE LOVELACE.

THE young people are out on the terrace, and they

up at me with a half-sorrowful, half-wistful curiosity. Poor old fellow! he knows nothing of this wonderful new invention. He belongs to an earlier age which had not discovered it. The poets, indeed, have told us about love in their old-fashioned verses; but was such a fresh exquisite rapture as ours is ever known before? Happy we, to whom this cunning charm has been first disclosed!'

Yes, truly, love enjoys a perennial youth. There stands the rosy boy-radiant, smiling, beautiful as morn; and there he has stood for ever and ever so long. For how long? Heaven alone can tell. But the story is a very old one; they used to play at it when we were boys, even in the Doctor's youth, for that matter, as you may have gathered from his Confessions.

You know all about Letty by this time, but Horace has been seen only transiently, and by-the-by. As we are nearing, however, the crisis of the story, I suppose I must say something more about him. Yet I do not