What changes took place in them were wrought, first, by the natural growth of their own character; secondly, by the natural development of their art-power; and thirdly, by the slow decaying of that power.

They were, in comparison with the rest, curiously uninfluenced by the changes of the world around them.

The main themes, with which they began, they retained to the end.

Their methods, their instruments, their way of feeling into the world of man and of nature, their relation to the doctrines of God and of Man, did not, though on all these matters they held diverse views, alter with the alteration of the world.

But this is more true of Browning than of Tennyson.