and we seem almost to be listening to a different voice. Many poets have written in more than one manner. Tennyson himself had his familiar style, the poem written in his old age to FitzGerald, for example, which is as distinct from his graver manner as was the Keats of the Mermaid lines from the Keats of the Odes, or Milton in the verses to Hobson the carrier from himself in _Samson Agonistes_. But in these other cases the more colloquial manner is deliberately assumed for some occasion of lowered poetic pressure, not in the least unworthy or trivial, but of less imaginative urgency than “this great argument,” while with Browning it becomes, no less than this greater ceremony, a serious poetic style, and one that as time went by more and more governed his practice. But Browning did not stay at the point indicated by “I want to know a butcher paints.” So far he was in some measure, and more than any other major poet, following the example of Byron, and replacing poetic elevation--using the word in its original sense--by a racy conversationalism. He was, fairly enough, basing his poetic style upon common idiom, but the common idiom of his use was rather evangelised into poetic efficiency than distilled into poetic purity. Before he could conceivably have written “blows out his brains upon the flute” Tennyson would have been seen consciously putting his singing robes aside, but it came from Browning in full dress. But the unequivocal use of witty tap-room rhetoric, or call it what you will, was not all, nor, be it said, was it in Browning’s handling an easy or undistinguished thing. This was in no sense mere reporting. Before the idiom got into his verse it was subjected to a very keen intellectual scrutiny and ordering, but when it did get there it was still far more recognisably itself than was common in poetry. When, however, we come upon such lines as-- Hobbs hints blue,--straight he turtle eats: Nobbs prints blue,--claret crowns his cup: Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats,-- Both gorge. Who fished the murex up? What porridge had John Keats?