Painted by G. F. Watts. _From a photograph, copyright by Hollyer, London._] II The best criticisms of the poets have usually come from other poets, and often in the form of verse. Landor wrote of Browning, “Since Chaucer was alive and hale No man hath walked along our roads with step So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue So varied in discourse.” This is a thumb-nail sketch of Browning’s personality,—not complete, but very lifelike. And when we add to it Landor’s prose saying that “his is the surest foot since Chaucer’s, that has waked the echoes from _the difficult places_ of poetry and of life” we have a sufficiently plain clew to the unfolding of Browning’s genius. Unwearying activity, intense curiosity, variety of expression, and a predominant interest in the difficult places of poetry and of life,—these were the striking characteristics of his mind. In his heart a native optimism, an unconquerable hopefulness, was the ruling factor. But of that I shall not speak until later, when we come to consider his message. For the present we are looking simply for the mainspring of his immense intellectual energy. When I say that the clew to Browning’s mind is to be found in his curiosity, I do not mean inquisitiveness, but a very much larger and nobler quality, for which we have no good word in English,—something which corresponds with the German _Wissbegier_, as distinguished from _Neugier_: an ardent desire to know things as they are, to penetrate as many as possible of the secrets of actual life. This, it seems to me, is the key to Browning’s intellectual disposition. He puts it into words in his first poem _Pauline_, where he makes the nameless hero speak of his life as linked to “a principle of restlessness Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all— This is myself; and I should thus have been Though gifted lower than the meanest soul.” _Paracelsus_ is only an expansion of this theme in the biography of a soul. In _Fra Lippo Lippi_ the painter says: “God made it all! For what? Do you feel thankful, ay or no, For this fair town’s face, yonder river’s line, The mountain round it and the sky above, Much more the figures of man, woman, child, These are the frame to? What’s it all about? To be passed over, despised? Or dwelt upon, Wondered at? oh, this last of course!—you say. But why not do as well as say, paint these Just as they are, careless what comes of it? God’s works—paint any one and count it crime To let a truth slip. ... This world’s no blot for us, Nor blank; it means intensely and means good: To find its meaning is my meat and drink.”