Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/491

"THE RING AND THE BOOK 475 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 transmuta- tions of time and key and structure and accompani- ment. 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 Eng- land," 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