She flashes forth a metaphor which embodies some mystery of feeling in an image entirely vital; he, with a habit of mind of which he was conscious and which often influences his poetry, fastens intensely on a single point and proceeds to muffle this in circumstance, assured that it will be all the more vividly apparent when the right instant arrives and requires this; but meanwhile some staying-power is demanded from the reader.

Neither correspondent has the art of etching a person or a scene in a few decisive lines; the gift of Carlyle, the gift of Carlyle's brilliant wife is not theirs, perhaps because acid is needed to bite an etcher's plate.

And, indeed, many of the minor notabilities of 1845, whose names appear in these letters, might hardly have repaid an etcher's intensity of selective vision.

Among the groups of spirits who presented themselves to Dante there were some wise enough not to expect that their names should be remembered on earth; such shades may stand in a background.

It is, however, strange that Browning who created so many living men and women should in his letters have struck out no swift indelible piece of portraiture; even here his is the inferior touch.