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great comet had disappeared from the sky;” and on the night of his death “a new star appeared in Orion”; but he was, we should say, the last man in the world to be attended by such meteorological circumstances. Those great poems which have slowly but surely conquered their place in the mind of the country, not by any shrieking of the enthusiast or flash of supernatural illumination, but by the fact that, in spite of often involved phraseology and halting rhythm, they have in them in many cases the highest poetic insight that has been known since Shakespeare—have nothing at all of the comet in them. He descends into the deep places of the soul with that lamp, and lays bare what he sees there—whether the workings of an evil soul elaborately making itself out to itself, the most subtle yet the most universal of all processes, to be not evil; or the heavenly explanation of a noble one of its own natural simple impulses, as in Guido Franceschini and Caponsacchi; or those musings of the great spirit which knows itself to be a failure, most pathetic of all things upon earth, like Andrea—or which perceives this in the failing of all followers and friends, like Luria; or the high innocence and passion, the white light of human feeling at its most exalted and purest, as in Pompilia. To see those beings from without is one thing, and a great and noble art. Such are Elaine and Enid, and even, though only in part, Lancelot. But to see them from within is another—an art more penetrating still, a revelation which is almost too dazzling, and which the ordinary spectator often blenches at, bewildered by the intensity of the light. How does a man get to do that? Answer, ye shades of Darwin; answer, all schools of all philosophies! There are no miracles, say the sages—and this is how Mrs Sutherland Orr, for example, who is nothing if not philosophical, sheds her little light upon the problem:—

The reader will see from this that when a bank clerk who is fond of books marries a woman with no health to speak of, a poet is likely to be the result. Nothing could be more romantic or agreeable to the imagination than the manner in which Mr Browning met his future wife. She was a great invalid, as is well known, unable to move from her sofa, able for little but poetry, whether classic or native, and finding all the happiness of her life in books, and her own inspired reflections and suggestions—sparks struck out from them, and from the fire of her own ardent spirit. In one of her poems, “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” showing how a great lady mated herself with an artist, she had noted her admiration of the new poet, who up to this time had made so little way in the knowledge of the public:—

What more fit than such a winged messenger through the dark to bring the two together?