Finally, the enemy of love may call as witnesses poets whom he fancies he has led astray. Strangely enough, considering the dedication of the _Ring and the Book_, he is likely to give most conspicuous place among these witnesses to Browning. Like passages of Holy Writ, lines from Browning have been used as the text for whatever harangue a new theorist sees fit to give us. In _Youth and Art_, the non-lover will point out the characteristic attitude of young people who are "married to their art," and consequently have no capacity for other affection. In _Pauline_, he will gloat over the hero's confession that he is inept in love because he is concerned with his perceptions rather than with their objects, and his explanation, I am made up of an intensest life; Of a most clear idea of consciousness Of self ... And I can love nothing,--and this dull truth Has come at last: but sense supplies a love Encircling me and mingling with my life. He will point out that Sordello is another example of the same type, for though Sordello is ostensibly the lover of Palma, he really finds nothing outside himself worthy of his unbounded adoration. [Footnote: Compare Browning's treatment of Sordello with the conventional treatment of him as lover, in _Sordello_, by Mrs. W. Buck (1837).] Turning to Tennyson, in _Lucretius_ the non-lover will note the tragic death of the hero that grows out of the asceticism in love engendered by his absorption in composition. With the greatest pride the enemy of love will point to his popularity in the 1890's, when the artificial and heartless artist enjoyed his greatest vogue. As his most scintillating advocate he will choose Oscar Wilde. Assuring us of many prose passages in his favor, he will read to us the expression of conflict between love and art in _Flower of Love_, where Wilde exclaims, I have made my choice, have lived my poems, and though my youth is gone in wasted days, I have found the lover's crown of myrtle better than the poet's crown of bays, and he will read the record of the same sense of conflict, in different mood, expressed in the sonnet _Helas_: To drift with every passion till my soul Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play, Is it for this that I have given away Mine ancient wisdom and austere control? Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll Scrawled over on some boyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelai, Which do but mar the secret of the whole. Surely there was a time I might have trod The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God. Is that time dead? Lo, with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance, And must I lose a soul's inheritance?