(If I get my head from out the mouth
O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,
And come again to the land of lands)—
In a sea-side house to the farther south,
Where the baked cicalas die of drouth,
And one sharp tree ('tis a cypress) stands,
By the many hundred years red-rusted,
Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted,
My sentinel to guard the sands

To the water's edge. For what expands
Without the house, but the great opaque
Blue breadth of sea, and not a break?
While, in the house, for ever crumbles
Some fragment of the frescoed walls,
From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.
A girl bare-footed brings and tumbles
Down on the pavement, green-fresh melons,
And says there's news to-day-the king
Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing,
Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling;
-She hopes they have not caught the felons.
Italy, my Italy!

Queen Mary's saying serves for me-
(When fortune's malice

Lost her Calais.)

Open my heart and

6

you

will see

Graved inside of it Italy.'

Such lovers old are I and she;

So it always was, so it still shall be!

It is pleasant to remark that Mr. Browning's sympathies with Italy are thoroughgoing, and that, like her who is at once the partner of his heart and home and his sister in the muses, he does not hesitate ever and anon to speak a poet's flashing word on Italian wrongs and Italian politics.

Lastly, those critics, sensitive in the more minute matters of style, who have already found fault with Mr. Browning for his defects in such matters-for the harshness, crabbedness, and obscurity of many of his expressions, his arbitrary and cranky rhymes, and the frequent want of music in his lines and rhythms-will have no difficulty in accumulating instances from the present work in support of the same charges. The quotations we have already made, and especially the last ones, will supply such instances. Of odd and extravagant rhymes other instances may be found abundantly in the poem entitled Old Pictures in Florence; while from slovenly and untasteful expressions there is perhaps not one of the poems which a very sensitive person would pronounce altogether free. Not to multiply instances of this kind, however, let us quote

but two where it is chiefly the ear that is offended. Here is

one

"When I do come she will speak not, she will stand

Either hand

On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace

Of my face,

Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.'

Speech, each, each, is certainly not the most pleasing of assonances, however true to the fact, in which to record poetically such a historic consummation. Or, take this line:

"That day, the earth's feast-master's brow,'

Try this line by Bentham's rule of easy pronunciability; and either your vocal organs are unusually capable of consecutive combinations of consonants, or you must condemn it. And though Mr. Browning when he likes can present his readers with passages of as powerful and beautiful sound as any poet, yet it requires but a glance at his pages to see that those who regard pleasing and flowing melody as an essential in verse, will frequently have cause of deadly quarrel with him.

For ourselves, trying to combine what we think just in all this adverse criticism with our already expressed agreement with Mr. Browning's highest admirers on the ground of his general merits, the final judgment is still immensely more on the side of admiration than on that of dissatisfaction or criticism.

As regards the objections popularly taken to the quality of his thought and to his strange choice of themes and materials, these, it seems to us, are not properly objections at all, but rather indications of his peculiar place and rank among British poets. That, for the reasons so stated, much of Mr. Browning's poetry is and must always remain 'caviare to the general' must of course be admitted; but we have yet to learn that a man may not be a great poet, and yet be 'caviare to the general.' It may be that the greatest poets of all are those whose genius enables them to thrill the most universal human emotions, and so to command the largest constituencies; but surely, if the select and most cultured minds of a time can have a poet all to themselves, or nearly so, handling the questions which they handle, and leading them out in new tracks which have for them all the interest of blended curiosity and familiarity, that is also a great gain to the community. Nay, if the same man, besides showing his power in the general region of thought and fact where intellectual men meet in common, can also deviate into side-regions of technical art or knowledge, and still seem a true poet to those who can

follow him there and understand his lectures, what harm is done? Finally, if the man himself has some peculiar tastes, if he likes a rich and foreign garb for his thoughts, even where substantially the same thoughts might be presented in a plain tissue of British associations, may not this serve to make him more impressive and effective? The pleasure we have in seeing a simple and handsome English dress is one thing; that which we have in seeing a bright Greek or Spanish dress, or a gorgeous Turkish one, is another. We allow foreign costumes, architecture, and scenery in our pictures, and find a reason why our painters should not always paint our own grey skies, our own English landscapes, and our own fair-haired peasantry. Why should it not be so with our poets? Nay, just as, if a painter will always paint Italian pictures, we may regret that Britain has so little of him, and still not let this regret interfere with our notion of his powers as a painter, why should we not allow a poet to work with Italian materials and circumstance, and still admire him as a poet? We may be sure that in these cases the genius obeys the law of its own instincts.

As regards the objections made to Mr. Browning's style, to his minute mechanical execution and taste as an artist, we cannot say that we are equally disposed to take his part. It may be, indeed, that he has framed for himself higher and more complex notions of literary harmony than those by which simple folks judge. What seems rough discord to the common reader may be to him but a phrase of richer music. What is called harshness, crabbedness, or even coarseness in his words and allusions, may seem to him only the assertion of healthy, manly taste, against a feeble and insipid conventionalism. We do not think that it is quite so, however. Even his own peers, or highest brother-poets, being judges, we believe that Mr. Browning would not be acquitted from the charges in question. Certainly, knowing many of his most enthusiastic admirers, we have never met one who did not always append to his encomiums on Mr. Browning's extraordinary powers as a thinker and a man of poetical genius, an admission of his imperfections as an artist. To us it seems that his art is more perfect the nearer he keeps to blank verse, and the other kinds of verse suited to narration, description, and exposition, and the less he ventures on purely lyrical measures, except for a bold or grand occasional purpose.

ART. VII.-(1.) The Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, Galatians, Romans. With Critical Notes and Dissertations. By BENJAMIN JOWETT, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford. 2 vols. Murray. 1855.

(2.) The Epistles of St. Paul to the Corinthians. With Critical Notes and Dissertations. By ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, M.A., Canon of Canterbury: late Fellow and Tutor of University College, Oxford, and Author of the Life of Dr. Arnold,' and 'Bishop Stanley.' 2 vols. Murray. 1855.

THE tide of rationalism, which has for some time been ebbing on the German shores, where first it flowed, is still rising on our own. The brilliant paradoxes and eloquent sham-profundities of certain writers whose works have been issued by the active press of Mr. Chapman are not without effect on a large circle of intelligent readers. Through these and other channels, German theological ideas are becoming popularized, as German philosophical ideas had already been, first by Coleridge for the few, and afterwards, for the many, by Carlyle.

Pure German rationalism, however, like pure German philosophy, is a thing too completely foreign to our English soil ever to take deep root and thrive robustly, when transplanted bodily. The few minds that are completely pervaded with either the one or the other, must be so de-Anglicised as to lose hold of the sympathies of the mass of their countrymen. The earnest practical sense of the English mind will never take much interest in any speculations that are only destructive, negative, hypothetical, not constructive and demonstrative. As we do not like war, and have no taste for playing at war,-but if we are to have war, we must have victory, and practical, tangible, indubitable success,so we do not like philosophy, speculation, criticism, especially in the most practical of matters-religion: but if we have them at all, we must have the best sort, not mere talk for talking' sake, but proof, conclusion, and settlement of the matter. The English mind has no love for paths that lead nowhither; it abhors to feel the ground shake under its tread; and it is apt to suspect that the lights which lead over morasses and into mists must be nothing but ignes fatui after all.

Nor has the spirit of destructive, negative criticism, in application to theology, the same artificial stimulus in England which has provoked it to such extraordinary activity in Germany. In that land of rival universities, where the fame of the university depends on the fame of its professors, and not the fame merely,

but the bread of the professors depend on the number of their students an intense spirit of competition has been engendered, happily unknown among English theologians. Originality is the passport to celebrity. As a new philosopher would be nothing without a new system, so a new professor is nothing without a new 'view' of Christian doctrine, or a new method of Scripture exegesis. He need not be right, but he must be original, or he starves in neglect. The latest novelty carries all before it. 'Views' on the deepest and gravest topics come into fashion and go out again like florists' flowers, or ladies' bonnets. To speak of an interpretation, or criticism, or dogma, as old,' is the same thing as to condemn it as exploded and obsolete. During the last ten years, the expansion of German commerce under the influence of the Zollverein, and other causes, have opened more inviting paths to many young men from the universities who might formerly have aspired to the professor's chair; and as competition has decreased, the spasmodic straining after originality has been subsiding, and the vigour of rationalism has proportionably declined.

More danger is to be apprehended, in our own country (danger not unmixed with good), from the indirect and derived influence of the great rationalistic movement, than from its direct propagation. Although the transplanted tree will not grow, its winged seeds will. And they appear to have found, chiefly in the Established Church, an order of minds prepared to receive them. Acute, thoughtful, brilliant minds some of them are; too earnest to take up any view merely because it is new, yet too restless to be satisfied without novelty; discontented and sick at heart with the evils they behold around them in Church and State, but wanting rather in judgment, perhaps, than in courage, to probe them to their core, and believing themselves far better qualified than they really are to be the harbingers of a purer theology and a more vigorous spiritual life.

It would be a great mistake, and what is worse, an injustice, to speak of these writers as 'rationalists.' Although the influence of foreign thought is everywhere traceable in their views and modes of expression, they have made it English; smelted it in their own furnace, and coined it in their own mint. The question is, not of the originality, but of the worth of the views now sought to be rendered current among us; not where the ore was dug, but whether it is true gold or only counterfeit. Careful examination will show it to be an alloy, of which the baser part is German (with distinct traces, as the chemists say, of Parker and Emerson), and the better part is English, its chief elements being found in the writings of Coleridge, and the personal in