Tennyson wrote up to the very close of his long life. His last publications were _The Foresters_ and _The Death of OEnone_. They show some decline of power. _Demeter_ too (1889) was probably a little below his level. But previous to that, though there had been change, there had been nothing that can be called decay. For the long period of sixty years and upwards Tennyson had written, and with rare exceptions he had written greatly. From the death of Wordsworth to his own death he was almost universally looked upon as the first poet of his time. No one else has wielded so great an influence. In no other poet's work is the record of change during the period so clearly written. In part he made the age, in still larger measure it made him. The hesitancy of his early work was typical of the spirit of the time. The gradual awakening, the deeper thought, the larger subjects, the more varied interests of the intermediate period, were typical too. In this last period, while Tennyson was as faithful as ever to the law of his own development, he did not move precisely with the time. Another race was rising and other palms were to be won. Browning could not go through the same phase of development, for in him the intellectual element from the first was even abnormally prominent. Yet in Browning too the influence of the time is felt. _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_ (1850) handles topics to which he is perpetually recurring; but in it they are seen in a new light. The poet had heard the noise of the Tractarian controversy, and in _Christmas Eve_ he passes in review the three principal phases of contemporary opinion regarding religion,--the evangelical, represented by the Nonconformist Chapel, the Catholic, represented by Rome, and the critical, represented by the German professor in his lecture-room. It is significant that while Browning can accept neither of the two former, he prefers both to the third. Both are intellectually indefensible, yet in both the vital thing, love, is present, while it is not to be found in the lecture-room. Both 'poison the air for healthy breathing,' but the critic 'leaves no air to poison.' There is throughout the poem an unquestionable bias towards finding as much true as will by any means pass muster with the intellect. Long afterwards, in _La Saisiaz_ (1878), Browning handled the same problems in a more boldly speculative spirit, though still with the same bias. The difference is largely due to time; for before the date of _La Saisiaz_ Browning had adopted a method more philosophical than artistic. But partly, perhaps, it was due to his wife, who was alive when _Christmas Eve_ was written, and dead long before _La Saisiaz_.