5 NOVEMBER 1898, Page 15

ROBERT BROWNING.

[To THE EDITOR OF TRII " SPECTATOR:9

SIE,—In the notice of "Studies of the Mind and Art of Robert Browning" in the Spectator of October 29th, your reviewer remarks that in Goethe's "Death cannot be an evil because it is universal" "we see what intellectual degrees separate" the latter from the former. It may perhaps be interesting to recall the fact that Swift in his "Thoughts on Religion" says : "It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind."—I am, Sir, &c., Nowton Rectory, October 31st. H. T. OSBORNE.