Lewes and Marian Evans soon became all the world to each other, but Lewes had an insane wife, and the foolish law of England forbade him to get a divorce or to marry again. So the two decided to live together and to be man and wife in everything except the sanction of the law. The result was disastrous for a time to the woman. There is no question that the social isolation that resulted hurt her deeply. Her close friends like Spencer remained loyal, and her husband was always the devoted lover as well as the ideal companion.

Two years after this new connection Lewes induced his wife to try fiction. Her first story was The Sad Adventures of the Rev. Amos Barton which was followed by Janet's Repentance. These stories appeared under the pen name of George Eliot, which she never relinquished. Gathered into book form under the title Scenes From Clerical Life, these stories in a minor key made a profound impression on Charles Dickens, who divined they were the work of a woman of unusual gifts.

The praise of Lewes and the appreciation of Dickens and other experts gave great stimulus to her mind, and she produced Adam Bede, perhaps her best work, which had a great success. In the following year came The Mill on the Floss, an even greater success. Then in quick succession came the other early novels, Silas Marner, Romola and Felix Holt. A break of six years follows, and then came Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda.

Lewes died in 1878, and two years later this woman, almost exhausted by her tremendous literary labors, married J.W. Cross, an old friend, but, like Charlotte Brontë, she had only short happiness, for she died in the following year. The nations praised her, but she never recovered from the shock of Lewes' death.

Of George Eliot's work the things that impress one most are her fine descriptions of natural scenes, her keen analyses of character and her many little moral sermons on life and conduct. With an abnormal conscience and a keen sense of duty, life proved very hard for her. This is reflected in the somberness of her stories and in the dread atmosphere of fate that hangs over her characters. But over against this must be placed her joy in depicting the rustic character and humor and her delight in reproducing the scenes of her childhood in one of the most beautiful counties of England.

Herbert Spencer, who was long associated with George Eliot, and for a time contemplated the possibility of a union with that remarkable woman, pays her a high tribute in The Study of Sociology. After explaining the origin in women of the ability to distinguish quickly the passing feelings of those around, he says: "Ordinarily, this feminine faculty, showing itself in an aptitude for guessing the state of mind through the external signs, ends simply in intuitions formed without assignable reasons; but when, as happens in rare cases, there is joined with it skill in psychological analysis, there results in extremely remarkable ability to interpret the mental states of others. Of this ability we have a living example (George Eliot) never hitherto paralleled among women, and in but few, if any, cases exceeded among men."

Perhaps the reader who does not know George Eliot would do well to begin with The Mill on the Floss, her finest work, which is full of humor, lovely pictures of English rural life and an analysis of soul in Maggie Tolliver that has never been surpassed. Yet the end is cruel and unnatural, as hard and as unsatisfying as the author's own religious creed. Next read Adam Bede, one of the saddest books in all literature, with comic relief in Mrs. Poyser, one of the most humorous characters in English fiction.

George Eliot drew Dinah Morris from her favorite aunt, who was a Methodist exhorter, and the power and spontaneity of this novel came from the sharpness and clearness of her early impressions, joined to her love of living over again her girlhood days, before doubt had clouded her sky. Also read Silas Marner with its perfect picture of Raveloe, "an English village where many of the old echoes lingered, undrowned by new voices." These descriptions are instinct with poetry, and they affect one like Wordsworth's best poems or like Tennyson's vignettes of rural life. The pale weaver of Raveloe will always remain as one of the great characters in English fiction.

Of George Eliot's more elaborate work it is impossible to speak in entire praise. If you have the leisure, and these books I have named please you, then by all means read Romola, which is a remarkable study of the degeneracy of a young Greek and of the noble strivings of a great-hearted woman. The pictures of Florence in the time of Savonarola are splendid, but they smell of the lamp. Middlemarch is also worth careful study for its fine analysis of character and motive. In all George Eliot's books her characters develop before our eyes, and this is especially true in this elaborate study of the pathos and the tragedy of human life.

George Eliot wrote little poetry, but one piece may be commended to careful attention, "The Choir Invisible." It sums up with impassioned force her ethical creed, which she put in these fine lines:

This was the creed of George Eliot, which she preached in her books and which she followed in her life. This was the only hope of immortality that she cherished—to "live again" in minds that she stimulated.

Ruskin The Apostle of ArtToC

John Ruskin deserves a place among the great English writers of the last century, not only because of his superb style and the amount of his work, but because he was the first to encourage the study of art and nature among the people. So enormous have been the strides made in the last twenty years in popular knowledge of art and architecture, and so great the growth of interest in the beauties of nature that it is difficult to appreciate that a little over a half century ago, when Ruskin first came into prominence as a writer, the English public was densely ignorant of art, and was equally ignorant of the world of pleasure to be derived from beautiful scenery.

It was Ruskin's great service to the world that he opened the eyes of the public to the glories of the art of all countries, and that he also revealed the wonders of architecture. Many critics have laid bare his infirmities as a critic, but a man of colder blood and less emotional nature would never have reached the large public to which Ruskin appealed. Like a great orator he was swayed by the passion of convincing his audience, and the very extravagance of his language and the ardor of his nature served to make a profound impression upon readers who are not usually affected by such appeals as his.

Ruskin was one of the most impractical men that ever lived, but in the exuberance of his nature and in his rare unselfishness he started a dozen social reforms in England, any one of which should have given fame to its founder. He gave away a great fortune in gifts to the public and in private generosity. He founded museums, established scholarships, tried to put into practical working order his dream of a New Life founded on the union of manual labor and high intellectual aims, labored to induce the public to read the good old books that help one to make life worth living.

That much of his good work was neutralized by his lack of common sense detracts nothing from the world's debt to Ruskin. The simple truth is that he was a reformer as well as a great writer, and the very fervor of his religious and social beliefs, his contempt of mere money getting, his hatred of falsehood, his boundless generosity and his childlike simplicity of mind—all these traits at which the world laughed lifted Ruskin above the other men of genius of his time and placed him among the world's great reformers.

Among this small body of men whose spiritual force continues to live in their books or through the influence of their great self-sacrifices, Ruskin deserves a place, for he gave fortune, work and a splendid enthusiasm to the common people's cause.

Ruskin's whole life was abnormal, and his early training served to accentuate those weaknesses of mind and will that made failures of so many schemes for the public good. If Ruskin had been trained in the English public schools he would have learned common sense in boyhood. As it was, his father and mother shielded the boy in every way from all contact with the world. Ruskin's father was a prosperous wine merchant with much culture; his mother was a religious fanatic, whose passion for the Bible imposed upon her boy the daily reading of the Scriptures and the daily memorizing of scores of verses.

Such training in most cases causes a revolt against religion, but in Ruskin's case it resulted in training his boyish ear to the cadences of the Bible writers and in filling his mind with the sublime imagery of the prophets, with the result that when he began to write he had already formed a style, the richest and most varied of the last century.

The boy was a mental prodigy, for he taught himself to read when four years old, and at five he had devoured hundreds of books and was already writing poems and plays. At ten, when he had his first tutor, his knowledge was wide and he had become a passionate lover of natural scenery, as well as no mean artist with pen and pencil. Scott's novels and Byron's Childe Harold formed much of his reading at a time when most boys are content with the stories of Ballantyne or Mayne Reid. The range of his mental activity until he entered Oxford at eighteen was very wide. He was interested in mineralogy, meteorology, mathematics, drawing and painting. What probably expanded his mind more than all else was the education of travel. His father spent about half his time journeying through England and the Continent in an old-fashioned chaise and John always shared in these expeditions. At Oxford he competed for the Newdigate prize in poetry, and after being twice defeated won the coveted honor. He never gained any high scholarship, but he received valuable training in writing.

There is no space here to chronicle more than a few of his many activities after leaving college. He first came into prominence by his passionate defense of the painter Turner against the art critics, and his study of Turner led him to adopt art criticism as his life work. At twenty-three years of age, when most youths are puzzled about their vocation, Ruskin had completed the first volume of Modern Painters, the publication of which gave him fame and made him a social lion in London. Other volumes of this great work followed swiftly and caused a great commotion in the world of art and letters because of the radical views of the author and the remarkable qualities of his style.

This was followed by The Seven Lamps of Architecture, in which Ruskin expounded his radical views on this kindred art; The Stones of Venice, an eloquent book enforcing the argument that Gothic architecture sprang from a pure national faith and the domestic virtues; King's Treasuries, a noble plea for good books; Fors Clavigera, a series of ninety-six parts published in eight volumes, the record of his social experiments; Preterita, one of the most charming books of youthful reminiscences in any language, and many others. Ruskin's mental activity was enormous. He had to his credit in his fifty-five active years no less than seventy-two volumes and one hundred magazine articles, as well as thousands of lectures.

This outline sketch of Ruskin's life would be incomplete without mention of the great sorrows that darkened his days but gave eloquence to his writings. The first was the desertion of his wife, who married the painter Millais, and the second was the loss by death of Rose La Touche, a beautiful Irish girl whom he had known from childhood. She refused to marry him because of their differences of religion; even refused to see him in her fatal illness unless he could say that he loved God better than he loved her. Her death brought bitter despair to Ruskin, but the world profited by it, for grief gave his work maturity and force. The last ten years of Ruskin's life were spent at his beautiful home at Brantwood, surrounded by the pictures that he loved and served faithfully by devoted relatives.

Ruskin's books are not to be read continuously. Many dreary passages may be found in all of them, which the judicious reader skips. But his best works are more full of intellectual stimulus than those of any writer of his time with the single exception of Carlyle. Modern Painters overflows with the enthusiasm of a lover of art and of nature who preaches the gospel of sincerity and truth. It is marked, like all his work, by eloquent digressions on human life and conduct, for Ruskin held that the finest art was simply the flowering of a great soul nurtured on all that was highest and best. The Seven Lamps does for architecture what his first work did for painting. The book is written in more ornate style than any other, but he who loves impassioned prose will find many specimens here that can only by equaled in De Quincey's best work. Read the peroration of the "Lamp of Sacrifice" and you will not need to be told that this is the finest tribute to the work of the builders of the mediæval cathedral. Here is a part of this eloquent passage:

No space is left here to mention in detail Ruskin's other works, but Unto This Last, The Stones of Venice, Sesame and Lilies and The Crown of Wild Olive may be commended as well worth careful reading. Also Preterita is alive with noble passages, such as the pen-picture of the view from the Dale in the Alps, or of the Rhone below Geneva. Read also Ruskin's description of Turner's "Slave Ship" or the impressive passage on the mental slavery of the modern workman in the sixth chapter of the second volume of The Stones of Venice. Read these things and you will have no doubt of the genius of Ruskin or of his command of the finest impassioned prose in the English language.

Tennyson Leads the Victorian WritersToC

Of all the great English writers of the Victorian age it is probable that the next century will give the foremost place to Tennyson. Better than any other poet of his day, he stands as a type of the English people in obedience to law, in strong religious faith, in splendid imaginative force and in a certain unyielding cast of mind that made him bide his time during the dark years when he was bitterly criticized or coldly neglected. Tennyson had to the full the poet's temperament, but he had also a superb physique, which carried him into his eighty-fourth year. From a boy he was a lover of nature, and in nearly every poem that he wrote are found many proofs of his close observation in English woods and fields. Through a period of general skepticism he kept unimpaired his strong faith in God and in immortality that lends so much force to his best verse.

Tennyson's genius found its natural expression in verse, and it is his distinction that while he explored many realms of thought he was always clear and always musical. Browning had more passion, but it was the misfortune of the author of The Ring and the Book that he could not refrain from a cramped and obscure style of verse that makes much of his work very hard reading. Many Browning societies have been formed to study the works of the poet whom they are proud to call master; but Tennyson needs no societies, as the man in the street and the woman whose soul is troubled can understand every line he has written. Nor is Tennyson lacking in passion, as any one may see by reading Locksley Hall or Maud.

Tennyson summed up in his poetry all the spiritual aspiration and the eager search for knowledge of his time. He explored all domains of thought, and he enriched his verse with the fruit of his studies. All the great elemental forces are found in his poems: he is the laureate of love and sorrow, of grief and aspiration. Throughout his verse runs the great natural law that the man who is not pure in heart can never see the glory of the poet's vision.

The purity of his own life was reflected in his verse, just as the mad license and the furious self-indulgence of Byron are mirrored in Don Juan, Manfred and Cain. Even to extreme old age Tennyson preserved that high poetic faculty which he manifested in early youth. One of his latest poems, Crossing the Bar, is also one of the finest in the language, breathing the old man's assurance of a life beyond the grave and a reunion with the dear friend of his youth, whom he mourned and immortalized in In Memoriam.

Alfred Tennyson had one of the finest lives in the roll of English authors. He was born in 1809 and lived to 1892. He spent his early years in one of the most beautiful parts of Lincolnshire. He enjoyed the personal training of his father, a very accomplished clergyman, and much of his boyhood and youth was spent in the open air. In this way he absorbed that knowledge of birds and animals, trees and flowers and all the aspects of nature which is reflected in his verse. As a youth he experimented in many styles of verse, and when only eighteen he issued, with his brother Charles, Poems by Two Brothers. The next year he and Charles entered Trinity College, Cambridge. There they received the greatest impulse toward culture in a society of undergraduates known as the "Apostles." Its membership included Thackeray, Trench, Spedding, Monckton Milnes and Alfred and Arthur Henry Hallam, sons of the famous author of The Middle Ages.

In his second year at college Tennyson won the Chancellor's gold medal with his prize poem, Timbuctoo, and in the following year he published his first volume, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical. He left college without a degree, and in 1833 he issued another volume of poems which contained some of his best work—The Lady of Shalott, The Lotos Eaters, The Palace of Art and A Dream of Fair Women. Any one of these poems if issued to-day would make the reputation of a poet, but this book made little impression on the Victorian public which had lost its taste for poetry and was devoted mainly to prose fiction. The world has yet to catch the note of this master singer.

In 1837 Arthur Hallam, Tennyson's friend and other self, the one man who predicted that he would be the greatest poet of his age, died suddenly in Vienna while traveling abroad. The shock made a profound impression on Tennyson. For ten years he put forth no work. Finally, in 1842, he issued two volumes of poems that at once caught the public fancy. Among the poems that brought him fame were Locksley Hall, Lady Godiva, Ulysses, The Two Voices and Morte d' Arthur. The latter was the seed of the splendid Idylls of the King. Five years later he published The Princess, with its beautiful songs, and three years after In Memoriam the greatest elegiac poem in the language, in which he lamented the fate of Arthur Hallam and poured forth his own grief over this irreparable loss. In the same year he married Miss Emily Sellwood, who made his home a haven of rest and of whom he once said that with her "the peace of God came into my life."

Maud, his most dramatic poem, was issued in 1855. As early as 1859 he published the first part of The Idylls of the King, but it was not until 1872 that the complete sequence of the Idylls was given to the public. These Arthurian legends are cast by Tennyson in his most musical blank verse, and he has given to them a tinge of mysticism that seems to lift them above the everyday world into a realm of pure romance and chivalry.

Enoch Arden, a domestic idyll, written in 1864, made a great hit. It was followed by several plays—Queen Mary, Harold, Becket and others—all finely written, but none appealing to the great public. Up to his last years Tennyson remained the real laureate of his people, his words always tinged with the fire of inspiration. Only three years before his death he wrote Crossing the Bar, a poem which met with instant response from the English-speaking world because of its signs of courage in the face of death and its proofs of steadfast faith in the life beyond the grave.

No adequate estimate of Tennyson's work can be made in the small space allotted to this article. All that can be done is to mention a few of his best works and to quote a few of his stirring lines. If the reader will study these poems he will be pretty sure to read more of Tennyson. To my mind, Locksley Hall is Tennyson's finest poem, as true to-day as when it was written seventy years ago. The long, rolling, trochaic verse, like the billows on the coast that it pictures, suits the thought. The poem is the passionate lament of a returned soldier from India over the mercenary marriage of the cousin whom he loved. Here are a few of the lines that will never die:

It would be difficult among the poets of the last century to parallel these passages for their imaginative sweep and magnetic appeal to the reader. The new criticism that disparages Tennyson and raises Browning to the seventh heaven calls Locksley Hall old-fashioned and sentimental, but to me it is the greatest poem of its age. Next to this I would place In Memoriam, which has never received its just recognition. Readers of Taine will recall his flippant Gaelic comment on Tennyson's conventional but cold words of lament. Nothing, it seems to me, is further from the truth. The many beautiful lines in the poem depict the changing moods of the man who mourned for his dead and finally found comfort in the words of the Bible—the only source of comfort in this world for the sorely wounded heart. The whole poem, as his son Hallam says, emphasizes the poet's belief "in an omnipotent and all-loving God, who has revealed himself through the highest self-sacrificing love in the freedom of the human will and in the immortality of the soul."

The meter of In Memoriam serves to fix the poem in the memory. It seems to fit the thought with perfect naturalness. It is not strange that Queen Victoria should have placed this poem next to the Bible as a means of comfort after the loss of her husband, whom she loved so dearly that all the attractions of power and wealth never made her forget him a single day.

The Idylls of the King are also unappreciated in these days, yet they contain a body of splendid poetry that cannot be duplicated. They represent the author's dreams from early youth, when his imagination was first fired by old Malory's chronicle of the good King Arthur. They breathe a chivalry as lofty as Sidney's, and they teach many ethical lessons that it would do the present-day world good to take to heart. These noble poems, cast in the most musical blank verse in our literature, were the work of thirty years, written only when the poet felt genuine inspiration. They represent, as the poet told his son, "the dream of a man coming into practical life and ruined by one sin. It is not the history of one man or of one generation, but of a whole cycle of generations." And the old poet added these fine words: "Poetry is like shot silk with many glancing colors. Every reader must find his own interpretation according to his ability and according to his sympathy with the poet."

Other fine poems of Tennyson which one should read are the noble Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, Break, Break, Break, the perfect songs in The Princess, and Crossing the Bar. If you read these aright you will wish to know more of Tennyson, the poet who reconciled science and religion and kept his old faith strong to the end.

Browning Greatest Poet Since ShakespeareToC

The greatest of English poets since Shakespeare, is the title given to Robert Browning by many admirers of recognized ability as critics. For his dramatic force and his insight into human nature there is no question that Browning deserves this high rank. In these two qualities he stands above Tennyson. But a large part of his work is written in a style so crabbed that it acts as a bar to one's enjoyment of many fine poems. Only the most resolute reader can go through Sordello or The Ring and the Book, the latter, with its interminable discussions of motive and its curious descriptions of half-forgotten legal and church methods of the seventeenth century. If one-half this long poem of over twenty thousand lines had been cut out, it would have been vastly improved.

The advocates of Browning hold that the study of the poet's obscurities is good mental discipline, but I am of the belief that poetry, like music, should not demand too great exertion of the mind to appreciate its beauty. Wagner's "Seigfried" and "Parsifal" are altogether too long to be enjoyed thoroughly. The composer would have done well to eliminate a third of each, for as they are produced they strain the attention to the point of fatigue, and no work of art should ever tire its admirers.

In the same way Browning offends against this primal canon of art. A man who was capable of writing the most melodious verse, as is shown in some of his lyrics, he refused to put his thoughts in simple form, and often clothed them in obscurity. The result is that the great public which would have enjoyed his studies of character and his powerful dramatic faculty is repelled at the outset by the difficulties of understanding his poems. Browning added to this obscurity by constant reference to little-known authors. This was not pedantry, any more than Milton's use of classic mythology was pedantry. Both men possessed unusual knowledge of rare books, and both were much given to quoting authors who are unknown to the general reading public.

But with all these difficulties in the way, there still remains a body of verse in Browning's work which will richly repay any reader. The lyrics and short poems like The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Pippa Passes, Prospice, O Lyric Love, The Last Ride, One Word More, How They Brought the Good News, Herve Riel, the epilogue to Asolando, The Lost Leader, Men and Women, and A Soul's Tragedy will give any reader a taste of the real Browning. If you like these poems, then try the more ambitious poems like A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, The Inn Album, Fifine at the Fair and others.

Browning, above all other English poets, seems to have had the power of seizing upon a character at a crucial hour in life and laying bare all the impulses that impel one to high achievement or great self-sacrifice. He seems always to have worked at the highest emotional stress, so that his words are surcharged with feeling. In many of his poems this emotional element is painful in its intensity. Character to him was the main feature, and his selections comprise some of the most picturesque in all history. That he was able to make these people live and move and impress us as real flesh-and-blood human beings shows the great creative power of the man, who ought to have written some of the world's finest plays.

Robert Browning was born in 1812 and died in 1889. His father, though a clerk in the Bank of England, was a fine classical scholar and had dabbled in verse. His mother was an accomplished musician. Browning had every early advantage, and while still a lad he came under the spell of Byron and had his poetical faculty greatly stimulated by the "Napoleon of rhyme." Then came Shelley and Keats, and their influence set him upon the course which he followed for many years. His first poem was Pauline, which has passages of rare beauty set among dreary commonplaces. He followed this with Paracelsus and Strafford, which opened to him the doors of all London salons and made his reputation. Sordello, one of his most difficult poems, came next, but he varied these dramatic tragedies with a series of short poems called Bells and Pomegranates. In this the finest thing was Pippa Passes, which was warmly praised by Elizabeth Barrett, who afterwards became his wife. Among the many poems that Browning produced in five years were Colombe's Birthday, A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, Dramatic Romances and Lyrics and A Soul's Tragedy.

Browning, in 1846, married Elizabeth Barrett, the author of Lady Geraldine's Courtship and other poems, a woman who had been an invalid, confined to her room for years. Love gave her strength to arise and walk, and love also gave her the courage to defy the foolish tyranny of her father and elope with Browning. What kind of man that father was may be seen in his comment after the marriage: "I've no objection to the young man, but my daughter should have been thinking of another world." They went to Italy, where for fifteen years they made an ideal home. Mrs. Browning's story of her love is seen in Sonnets From the Portuguese, and some of her finest work is in Casa Guidi Windows. Each stimulated the other, while there was a notable absence of that jealousy which has often served to turn the love of literary men and women into the fiercest hatred.

Mrs. Browning died suddenly in 1861, and the poet for some time was stunned by this unlooked-for calamity. He spent two years in seclusion at work on poems, but then he gathered up his courage and once more took his old place in the social life of London. In Prospice and One Word More, written in the autumn following his wife's death, he shows that he has overcome all doubts of the reality of immortality. These two poems alone would entitle Browning to the highest place among the world's great poets. In addition he wrote the memorial to his wife, O Lyric Love, that is the cry of the soul left here on this earth to the soul of the beloved in Paradise. To the sympathetic this poem, with its solemn rhythm, will appeal like splendid organ music.

Among Browning's other poems that are noteworthy are Fifine at the Fair, Red Cotton Nightcap Country, The Inn Album and Dramatic Idylls. Browning's last poem, Asolando, appeared in London on the same day that its author died at Venice. As the great bell of San Marco struck ten in the evening, Browning, as he lay in bed, asked his son if there were any news of the new volume. A telegram was read saying the book was well received. The aged poet smiled and breathed his last.

In beginning the reading of Browning it is well to understand that at least half or maybe two-thirds of his work should be discarded at the outset, as it is of interest only to scholars. My suggestion to one who would learn to love Browning is to get a little book, Lyrical Poems of Robert Browning, by Dr. A.J. George. The editor in a preface indicates the best work of Browning, and also brings out strongly the fact that readers, and especially young readers, must be given poems which interest them. His selections of lyrics have been made from this standpoint, and his notes will be found very helpful. He develops the point that Browning's great revelation to the world through his poems was his strong and abiding assurance that man has in him the principle of divinity, and that many of the experiences that the world calls failures are really the stepping stones of the ascent to that conquest of self and that development of the whole nature which means the highest life. He says also that Browning is one of the most eloquent expounders of the doctrine of the reality of a future life, in which those who live a noble and unselfish life will get their reward in an existence free from all physical ills.

In this little book will be found Pippa Passes, a noble series of lyrics, which develops the idea of the silent influence of a little silk weaver of Asolo upon four sets of people in the great crises of their lives. In each episode Pippa sings a song that awakens remorse or kindles manhood or arouses patriotism or duty. It is a perfect poem. Among other lyrics given here are Evelyn Hope, which must be bracketed with Burns' To Mary in Heaven or with Wordsworth's Lucy and Prospice, which sounds the note of deep personal love that is as sure of immortality as of life. It is as beautiful and as inspiring as Tennyson's Crossing the Bar. Other poems due to Browning's love for his wife are My Star and One Word More.

If these lyrics appeal to you, then take up some of Browning's longer poems, A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, Colombe's Birthday, A Soul's Tragedy, Fra Lippo Lippi and Rabbi Ben Ezra. Very few readers in these days have time or patience to read The Ring and the Book, but it will repay your attention, as it is the most remarkable attempt in all literature to revive the tragedy of the great and innocent love of a woman and a priest.

Among the many fine passages in Browning, I think there is nothing which equals these lines in O Lyric Love, the beautiful invocation to his wife:

The songs in Pippa Passes should be read, as they are as near perfect as Shakespeare's songs or the songs of Tennyson in The Princess.