Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/282

 266 CRITICAL STUDIES His meditation at the best is that of a good leading- article ; he is a pensioner on the thought of his age. He is continually petty with that littleness of the second degree which makes a man brag aloud in avoiding some well-known Uttleness of the first degree. His nerves are so weak that any largish event — a Crimean War or a Volunteer movement — sets him off in hysterics. Nothing gives one a keener insight into the want of robustness in the educated English intellect of the age than the fact that nine-tenths of our best-known literary men look upon him as a profound philosopher. When wax- flowers are oracular oaks, Dodona may be discovered in the Isle of Wight, but hardly until then. Mr. Matthew Arnold's definition of " distilled thought in distilled words " was surely suggested by the pro- cesses and productions of a fashionable perfumer. A great school of the poets is dying out : it will die decently, elegantly, in the full odour of respecta- bility, with our Laureate. Robert Browning, a really great thinker, a true and splendid genius, though his vigorous and rest- less talents often overpower and run away with his genius so that some of his creations are left but half redeemed from chaos, has this simplicity in abundant measure. In the best poems of his last two works, " Men and Women " and " Dramatis Personge," its light burns so clear and steadfast through the hurrying clouds of his language (Tenny- son's style is the polished reflector of a lamp) that one can only wonder that people in general have not yet recognised it. I cannot recommend a finer study of a man possessed by the spirit of which I