Thus it is that the literature of our day has steadily advanced towards a passionate simplicity, and we become more primeval as the world grows older, until Whitman writes huge and chaotic psalms to express the sensations of a schoolboy out fishing, and Maeterlinck embodies in symbolic dramas the feelings of a child in the dark.
Thus, Mr.Santayana is, perhaps, the most valuable of all the Browning critics.

He has gone out of his way to endeavour to realise what it is that repels him in Browning, and he has discovered the fault which none of Browning's opponents have discovered.

And in this he has discovered the merit which none of Browning's admirers have discovered.

Whether the quality be a good or a bad quality, Mr.
Santayana is perfectly right.

The whole of Browning's poetry does rest upon primitive feeling; and the only comment to be added is that so does the whole of every one else's poetry.