sort of poetry does not rest on the sure foundation which is given by the consciousness the imagination has of its absolute rightness.  He expresses his needless soreness with plenty of wit in Pacchiarotto and in the Epilogue, criticises his critics, and displays his good opinion of his work—­no doubt of these later poems, like The Inn Album and the rest—­with a little too much of self-congratulation.  “The poets pour us wine,” he says, “and mine is strong—­the strong wine of the loves and hates and thoughts of man.  But it is not sweet as well, and my critics object.  Were it so, it would be more popular than it is.  Sweetness and strength do not go together, and I have strength.”

But that is not the real question.  The question is—­Is the strength poetical?  Has it imagination?  It is rough, powerful, full of humanity, and that is well.  But is it half prose, or wholly prose?  Or is it poetry, or fit to be called so?  He thinks that Prince Hohenstiel, or Red Cotton Nightcap Country, are poetry.  They are, it is true, strong; and they are not sweet.  But have they the strength of poetry in them, and not the strength of something else altogether?  That is the question he ought to have answered, and it does not occur to him.

Yet, he was, in this very book, half-way out of this muddle.  There are poems in it, just as strong as The Inn Album, but with the ineffable spirit of imaginative emotion and thought clasped together in them, so that the strong is stronger, and the humanity deeper than in the pieces he thought, being deceived by the Understanding, were more strong than the poems of old.  In Bifurcation, in St. Martin’s Summer, the diviner spirit breathes.  There is that other poem called Forgiveness of which I have already spoken—­one of his masterpieces. Cenciaja, which may be classed with Forgiveness as a study of the passion of hatred, is not so good as its comrade, but its hatred is shown in a mean character and for a meaner motive.  And the Prologue, in its rhythm and pleasure, its subtlety of thought, its depth of feeling, and its close union of both, recalls his earlier genius.

The first of the Pisgah Sights is a jewel.  It is like a poem by Goethe, only Goethe would have seen the “sight” not when he was dying, but when he was alive to his finger-tips.  The second is not like Goethe’s work, nor Browning’s; but it is a true picture of what many feel and are.  So is Fears and Scruples.  As to Natural Magic, surely it is the most charming of compliments, most enchantingly expressed.

The next volume of original poems was La Saisiaz and the Two Poets of Croisic.  The Croisic Poets are agreeable studies, written with verve and lucidity, of two fantastic events which lifted these commonplace poets suddenly into fame.  They do well to amuse an idle hour.  The end of both is interesting.  That of the first, which begins with stanza lix., discusses the question:  “Who cares, how such a mediocrity as Rene lived after the fame of his prophecy died out?"[11] And Browning answers—­