His poems, always difficult, grew dry as well.
But Browning was true to himself. He had all his life loved converse
with men and women, and still enjoyed it. He wrote constantly and to his
uttermost. It was not for him to know that his work was done. He wrote
on manfully to the end, showing, occasionally, his old power, and always
his old spirit. And on his death-bed it was not only his doctrine, but
his life that blazed out in the words:--
"One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph.
Held, we fall to rise--are baffled to fight better--
Sleep to wake."
* * * * *
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
In the early eighties, and in an epoch when the ideals of George Eliot
were still controlling, the figure of Stevenson rose with a sort of
radiance as a writer whose sole object was to entertain. Most of the
great novelists were then dead, and the scientific school was in the
ascendant.
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