Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/289

Rh man; and he won his audience finally by this fact, that he had something to say that was ethical and religious. The development, however, of both the theory and practice of his mind had to be realized in far more definite and striking forms than the earlier poems before the attention of the world could be secured.

It would seem natural that a man with such convictions as Browning acknowledged, should be preëminently an idealist, and that his point of weakness should prove to be the tendency to metaphysical and vague matter not easily putting on poetical form. But he was, in fact, a realist,—one who is primarily concerned with things, and uses the method of observation. His sense for actual fact is always keen. In that poem of Paracelsus, which is a discussion in the air if ever a poem was, it is significant to find him emphasizing the circumstance that he had taken very few liberties with his subject, and bringing books to show evidence of historical fidelity. But, little of the dramatic spirit as there is in Paracelsus, there was much in Browning when it should come to be released, and it belongs to the dramatist to be interested in the facts of life, the flesh