_THE TREATMENT OF NATURE_ In the previous chapter, some of the statements made on Browning as a poet of Nature were not sufficiently illustrated; and there are other elements in his natural description which demand attention.

The best way to repair these deficiencies will be to take chronologically the natural descriptions in his poems and to comment upon them, leaving out those on which we have already touched.

New points of interest will thus arise; and, moreover, taking his natural description as it occurs from volume to volume, we may be able--within this phase of his poetic nature--to place his poetic development in a clearer light.
I begin, therefore, with _Pauline_.

The descriptions of nature in that poem are more deliberate, more for their own sake, than elsewhere in Browning's poetry.

The first of them faintly recalls the manner of Shelley in the _Alastor_, and I have no doubt was influenced by him.