Taking, then, this first period of Mr. Browning's poetry as a whole, and asking ourselves if we are the richer for it, how can there be any doubt as to the reply? What points of human interest has he left untouched? With what phase of life, character, or study does he fail to sympathize? So far from being the rough-hewn block 'dull fools' have supposed him, he is the most dilettante of great poets. Do you dabble in art and perambulate picture-galleries? Browning must be your favourite poet: he is art's historian. Are you devoted to music? So is he: and alone of our poets has sought to fathom in verse the deep mysteries of sound. Do you find it impossible to keep off theology? Browning has more theology than most bishops--could puzzle Gamaliel and delight Aquinas. Are you in love? Read 'A Last Ride Together,' 'Youth and Art,' 'A Portrait,' 'Christine,' 'In a Gondola,' 'By the Fireside,' 'Love amongst the Ruins,' 'Time's Revenges,' 'The Worst of It,' and a host of others, being careful always to end with 'A Madhouse Cell'; and we are much mistaken if you do not put Browning at the very head and front of the interpreters of passion. The many moods of sorrow are reflected in his verse, whilst mirth, movement, and a rollicking humour abound everywhere. I will venture upon but three quotations, for it is late in the day to be quoting Browning. The first shall be a well-known bit of blank verse about art from 'Fra Lippo Lippi': 'For, don't you mark, we're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see: And so they are better painted--better to us, Which is the same thing. Art was given for that-- God uses us to help each other so, Lending our minds out. Have you noticed now Your cullion's hanging face? A bit of chalk, And, trust me, but you should though. How much more If I drew higher things with the same truth! That were to take the prior's pulpit-place-- Interpret God to all of you! Oh, oh! It makes me mad to see what men shall do, And we in our graves! This world's no blot for us, Nor blank: it means intensely, and means good. To find its meaning is my meat and drink.' The second is some rhymed rhetoric from 'Holy Cross Day'--the testimony of the dying Jew in Rome: 'This world has been harsh and strange, Something is wrong: there needeth a change. But what or where? at the last or first? In one point only we sinned at worst. 'The Lord will have mercy on Jacob yet, And again in his border see Israel set. When Judah beholds Jerusalem, The stranger seed shall be joined to them: To Jacob's house shall the Gentiles cleave: So the prophet saith, and his sons believe.