is strikingly apparent.  Without referring for the present to what are assumed to be perverse faults of execution—­a question the principles and bearing of which will shortly be considered—­assuredly the mention of the names of a few among Browning’s poems—­of “Paracelsus,” “Pippa Passes,” “Luria,” the “Souls’s Tragedy,” “King Victor and King Charles,” even of the less perfect achievement, “Strafford”; or, passing to the smaller poems, of “The Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister,” “The Laboratory,” and “The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed’s";—­will at once realize to the memory of all readers an abstruse ideal never lost sight of, and treated to the extreme of elaboration.  As regards this point, we address all in any manner acquainted with the poet’s works, certain of receiving an affirmative answer even from those who “can’t read Sordello, or understand the object of writing in that style.”

If so many exceptions to Browning’s “system of extravagance” be admitted,—­and we again refer for confirmation or refutation to all who have sincerely read him, and who, valuing written criticism at its worth, value also at its worth the criticism of individual conviction,—­wherein are we to seek this extravagance?  The groundwork exempted, the imputation attaches, if anywhere, to the framework; to the body, if not to the soul.  And we are thus left to consider the style, or mode of expression.

Style is not stationary, or, in the concrete, matter of principle:  style is, firstly, national; next, chronological; and lastly, individual.  To try the oriental system by the European, and pronounce either wrong by so much as it exceeds or falls short, would imply so entire a want of comprehensive appreciation as can scarcely fail to induce the conviction, that the two are distinct and independent, each to be tested on its own merits.  Again, were the Elizabethan dramatists right, or are those of our own day?  Neither absolutely, as by comparison alone; his period speaks in each; and each must be judged by this:  not whether he is true to any given type, but whether his own type be a true one for himself.  And this, which holds good between nations and ages, holds good also between individuals.  Very different from Shelley’s are Wordsworth’s nature in description, his sentiment, his love; Burn’s and Keats’s different from these and from each other:  yet are all these, nature, and sentiment, and love.

But here it will be urged:  by this process any and every style is pronounced good, so that it but find a measure of recognition in its own age and country; nay, even the author’s self-approval will be sufficient.  And, as a corollary, each age must and ought to reject its predecessor; and Voltaire was no less than right in dubbing Shakspere barbarian.  That it is not so, however, will appear when the last element of truth in style, that with which all others combine, which includes and implies consistency with