Browning turned the doctrine into imaginative speech equalled in impressiveness by that of Carlyle and by that of Emerson, but distinguished from both by an eager articulating concrete sensibility which lifts into touch with supreme Good all the labyrinthine multiplicity of existence which Carlyle impatiently suppressed, while it joyously accentuates the sharp dissonances which Emerson's ideality ignored.
[Footnote 92: _Easter-Day_, xxx.] VI.
3.

JOY IN POWER.
Browning was thus announced, we have seen, even by his splendour of colouring and his rich and clear-cut plasticity, as something more than a feaster upon colour and form.

In his riot of the senses there was more of the athlete than of the voluptuary.

His joy was that of one to whom nervous and muscular tension was itself a stimulating delight.

In such a temperament the feeling of energy was an elementary instinct, a passionate obsession, which projected itself through eye and ear and imagination into the outer world, filling it with the throbbing pulsations or the clashing conflict of vehement powers.