="Prize Poems."= Dining one day last year at Trinity College, Cambridge, with that enthusiastic young Browning scholar, Mr. E. H. Blakeney (himself a poet of great promise), we discussed the question of the comparative popularity of Browning's shorter poems, and it was decided that he should ask the editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ to put it to the vote in his columns. A prize was offered for the list of fifty poems which came nearest to the standard list obtained by collating the lists of all the competitors. The fifty "prize poems" selected by the _plébiscite_ as Browning's best, arranged in the order of the votes they severally received, were the following:--
1. How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.
27. A Death in the Desert. A Woman's Last Word.
37. The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's Church.
44. Holy Cross Day. The Italian in England.
48. James Lee's Wife. Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.
=Prologue to Dramatic Idyls.= (_Second Series._) When we are suffering from bodily illness, doctors often disagree as to the diagnosis of our complaint. We go from specialist to specialist, and each physician declares that we are suffering from that disorder which he makes his special study: the brain doctor says it is all brain trouble; the heart man, the liver and lung specialists, are all pretty certain to diagnose their own favourite malady. And so even the wisest are ignorant of man's body. But when we come to soul, there is no difficulty at all: they pounce on our malady in a trice. They can see the body, and cannot tell what is the matter with it; the soul, which they cannot see, presents no difficulties whatever to their wise heads! Mr. Sharp, in his paper on _Dramatic Idyls_ II., says this Epilogue is the key to the leading idea of each poem in the volume. _Echetlos_ deals with patriotic action. We think Miltiades and Themistocles true patriots, but history shows that they only served their own turn. _Clive_ dreaded death less than a lie, yet committed suicide: was this due to courage or fear? _Mulyekeh_ loved his mare, but sacrificed her to his pride. _Pietro of Abano_ did benevolent actions, yet had no love in his heart. _Doctor ----_ did good actions from a motive of hate. _Pan and Luna_: this poem deals with an act of love from opposite extremes--Pan gross and brutal, Luna pure and modest; yet she does not spurn Pan. This was not due to want of modesty, but to the power of love, and Pan was not actuated by brute passion. _The Epilogue_ is to oppose the idea that poets sing spontaneously about anything. Browning says his rocks are hard and forbidding, yet they hold, like Alpine crags, pine seeds of truth.