What is true of Tennyson is true of most of our recent poets. There is one exception, however, and that a very curious one. The single English poet of high rank whose works seem to me to be distinctly affected by the democratic spirit, nay, to be the direct outcome of the influence of democracy, is Robert Browning. It has scarcely been sufficiently noted by those who criticise the style of that great writer that the entire tone of his writings introduces something hitherto unobserved in British poetry. That something is the repudiation of the recognised oligarchic attitude of the poet in his address to the public. It is not that he writes or does not write of the poor. It is a curious mistake to expect the democratic spirit to be always on its knees adoring the proletariat. To the true democracy all are veritably of equal interest, and even a belted earl may be a man and a brother. In his poems Robert Browning spoke as though he felt himself to be walking through a world of equals, all interesting to him, all worthy of study. This is the secret of his abrupt familiar appeal, his "Dare I trust the same to you?" "Look out, see the gipsy!" "You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am?" the incessant confidential aside to a cloud of unnamed witnesses, the conversational tone, things all of which were before his time unknown in serious verse. Browning is hail-fellow-well-met with all the world, from queen to peasant, and half of what is called his dramatic faculty is merely the result of his genius for making friends with every species of mankind. With this exception, however, the principal poetical writers of our time seem to be unaffected by the pressure of the masses around them. They select their themes, remain true to the principles of composition which they prefer, concern themselves with the execution of their verses, and regard the opinion of the millions as little or even less than their great forerunners did that of emperor or prince-bishop. Being born with quick intelligences into an age burdened by social difficulties, these latter occasionally interest them very acutely, and they write about them, not, I think, pressed into that service by the democratic spirit, but yielding to the attraction of what is moving and picturesque. A wit has lately said of the most popular, the most democratic of living French poets, M. François Coppée, that his blazon is "des rimes riches sur la blouse prolétaire." But the central fact to a critic about M. Coppée's verse is, not the accident that he writes about poor people, but the essential point that his rhymes are richer and his verse more faultless than those of any of his contemporaries. We may depend upon it that democracy has had no effect on his prosody, and the rest is a mere matter of selection.