many standpoints, are the very reverse of monotonous; each new relation tends to deepen and expand the impression left by all that preceded it. The persistent repetition is as that of the smith's hammer-strokes welding the red-hot iron into shape, or rather as that of the principal theme in a great Beethoven fugue, growing ever more and more potent and predominant as its vast capabilities are more and more developed through countless intricate variations, and transmutations of time and key and structure and accompaniment. Only, to adequately evolve these capabilities, we must have the consummate master; an imperial genius wielding unlimited resources; an insuppressible, irresistible fire fed with inexhaustible fuel. I know of but one other living English poet to whom we can turn for the like supreme analytic synthesis, the patient analysis of a most subtle and unappeasable intellect, the organic synthesis of a most vivid and dramatic imagination; which the better critics at length publicly recognised in the "Egoist," after almost ignoring or wholly underrating them in the "Modern Love," the "Ordeal of Richard Feverel," the "Emilia in England," the "Adventures of Harry Richmond," and other great original works of George Meredith.
Of course, I have no intention of reviewing in detail the several sections of this vast and multiplex achievement; on which, as many commentaries might be written, and I humbly opine to somewhat better purpose, as the Germans have lavished upon Goethe's "Faust." Our professional judges have not been slow to acknowledge the chivalrous splendour of the Caponsacchi and the exquisite pathetic beauty of the Pompilia. Indeed, one may remark of Browning and
