It has been said of Carlyle, who may for many reasons be considered as
our poet's twin figure, that he laid the foundations of his world of
thought in _Sartor Resartus_, and never enlarged them. His _Orientirung_
was over before he was forty years old--as is, indeed, the case with
most men. After that period there was no fundamental change in his view
of the world; nothing which can be called a new idea disturbed his
outline sketch of the universe. He lived afterwards only to fill it in,
showing with ever greater detail the relations of man to man in history,
and emphasizing with greater grimness the war of good and evil in human
action. There is evidence, it is true, that the formulae from which he
more or less consciously set forth, ultimately proved too narrow for
him, and we find him beating himself in vain against their limitations;
still, on the whole, Carlyle speculated within the range and influence
of principles adopted early in life, and never abandoned for higher or
richer ideas, or substantially changed.

In these respects, there is considerable resemblance between Carlyle and
Browning. Browning, indeed, fixed his point of view and chose his
battleground still earlier; and he held it resolutely to his life's
close. In his _Pauline_ and in his Epilogue to _Asolando_ we catch the
triumphant tone of a single idea, which, during all the long interval,
had never sunk into silence. Like

"The wise thrush, he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Home Thoughts from Abroad_.]