But one cannot deal with all poetry or all life in one article; and it is the intention here to consider narrative poetry alone. Narrative poetry, when it is anything more than a ballad, is epic: and epic is heroic poetry; not by any convention, I believe, but in accordance with deep-seated law. There is room for nothing personal or limited here; for no dissection of personal characteristics, no consideration or criticism of problems of exterior life. Those things all belong to prose; poetry proclaims the actions and perceptions of the soul. Heroic or epic poetry tells of the soul as hero, warrior, redeemer; as Sigurd going out against Fafnir, Arthur ferried in a dark barge to The Island of the Apples; as Satan unconquered in the lake of flame; as Christ on Golgotha, or Prometheus on Caucasus. It has to show forth the glory, the indomitableness, the magnanimity of the soul, dwelling in those lofty regions and letting who will come to it for general strength and inspiration. It is the Mountain; it will not descend from itself for any Mohammed. For this reason is its aloofness, its tendency to concern itself with periods _apparently_ in the far past, but really in the eternal. That atmosphere all narrative poetry must retain, under penalty of sinking into berhymed or bemetred prose; or into the ballad--which, indeed, can be good, at its best, but not supremely good. Yet how many stories there are, beautifully written in verse, which are neither epic in spirit nor ballad in form; which are, if the truth should be told, novels strayed from their proper fold of prose, valley wanderers by no means at home on the mountain. One thinks, for example, of such a work as Mrs. Browning's _Aurora Leigh_. If she had only written it in prose! With that faultlessness of expression, that delicate insight and unerring justness of criticism which mark it, it would have become a classic; we should have said, "Why, this is a prose poem, a literary treasure among novels." But being in verse, it remains, however beautiful, only versified prose; and it is to be feared that we neglect it; to be feared, but hardly to be wondered at. If she had only written it in prose!