There are again others whose tenure of fame is still hanging in the balance like 'The Red Cotton Night-cap Country,' 'The Inn Album,' 'Aristophanes' Apology,' 'Fifine at the Fair'; but as they have had already some able defenders, I shall not attempt any defence of them further than to say, in passing, that the longer I know them, and the more I read them, the more I am impressed with their masterly portrayal of human motives as they either reflect a given social environment or work contrary to it. Only a genius of the greatest power could have grasped and moulded into palpitating life beings of the calibre of the brilliant complex and illogical Aristophanes, or the dunderheaded, well meaning and equally illogical Miranda and set them to act out their little parts in a living historical environment--one in decadent Athens with her petty political and literary rivalries and dying religion; the other in ultramontane France where superstition and materialism were fighting for the mastery. Such art as is illustrated in these poems on in 'Fifine at the Fair' or in 'The Inn Album,' may not be of the kind to give one direct ideals for the conduct of life; but it represents the most splendid realism from which as from life itself deep moral lessons may be drawn. There is an actuality of realism in these poems of Browning's that puts into the shade, that of the great apostle of realism, Zola, for his realism too often presents what I venture to call obverse idealism--evil apotheosized, not evil struggling toward good as it invariably appears in life. Among the poet's later works, 'Ferishtah's Fancies' and 'The Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day' have perhaps been more obscured by mists of non-appreciation than any others. I shall, therefore, confine myself for the present to making here and there a rift in these mists in the hope that some glimpses of the splendor of the giant form behind them may be gained. Without particularizing either critics or criticism, it may be said that criticism of these poems divides itself into the usual three branches,--one which objects to their philosophy, one which objects to their art, one which finds them difficult of comprehension at all. This last criticism may easily be disposed of by admitting it as in part true. The mind whose highest reaches of poetic inspiration are ministered unto by such simple and easily understandable lyrics as 'Twinkle, twinkle little star' might not at once grasp the significance of the Parleying with George Bubb Dodington. Indeed, it may be surmised that some minds might sing upon the starry heights with Hegel and fathom the doctrine of the equivalence of being and non-being and yet be led into a slough of despond by this same cantankerous George.