Excerpt from Two Essays on Robert Browning: I. Robert Browning and the Poetry of the Future, an Address Before the Browning Society of Philadelphia; II. Robert Browning and the Arabesque in Art, a Lecture Delivered to the Senior Class in Arts of the University of Pennsylvania

The following words were completed some days before the recent news of Mr. Browning's death. Of Mr. Browning, the man, it becomes us not yet to speak; the memory of him belongs to those into whose personal grief it would be only an impertinence for a stranger to in quire. Time has not yet made the author's life the inheritance of the public. Mr. Browning's life has been all that could be wished, and here is neither time nor place for an obtrusive eulogy of that life. But Robert Browning, the author, has been long the common property of us all. His works have been so long before us, and his name has been so landed and linked with the immortals that have gone before, that death can add little to an apotheosis already so complete. To speak of him in praise or in dispraise has been long a fashion among us, and the ac eident of his recent demise can assuredly make no further utterance nu fitting. It is yet too soon to attempt an estimate of this life of pro longed literary activity, or to seek for the explanation of a contemporary reputation almost unexampled in the annals of literature; but it can never be impertinent to add - if not to the adulation that streams from a thousand altars - at least a word to the better understanding of a figure, which, however taste may change, must always be regarded as one of the most prominent and interesting of our century. Moreover, the ex traordinary prominence which Mr. Browning's followers have long claimed for him, a claim which has sought to dethrone all the poets of our tongue, save the prince of poets himself, is in itself a challenge to all men to speak; and if, as has been said, Mr. Browning has divided the critics into two hostile camps, so portentous a power may well stand for a subject of attention at any time.

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