Read it through once

-- St. 49. “Those periods of life which appear most full of moral purpose to Mr. Tennyson, are periods of protracted self-control, and those moments stand eminent in life in which the spirit has struggled victoriously in the cause of conscience against impulse and desire. With Mr. Browning the moments are most glorious in which the obscure tendency of many years has been revealed by the lightning of sudden passion, or in which a resolution that changes the current of life has been taken in reliance upon that insight which vivid emotion bestows; and those periods of our history are charged most fully with moral purpose, which take their direction from moments such as these. . . . In such a moment the somewhat dull youth of ‘The Inn Album’ rises into the justiciary of the Highest; in such a moment Polyxena with her right woman’s-manliness, discovers to Charles his regal duty, and infuses into her weaker husband, her own courage of heart {‘King Victor and King Charles’}; and rejoicing in the remembrance of a moment of high devotion which determined the issues of a life, the speaker of ‘By the Fireside’ exclaims,-- ‘How the world is made for each of us!’” etc.--Edward Dowden.