he published at his own charges a little
book of two hundred and fifty pages, which even such of them
as were then able to read could not understand."

With 'Sordello,' however, ended for many years--until he may perhaps be
said to have taken it up in a greatly disciplined and more powerful form
in 'The Ring and the Book' and others--this type and this length of the
psychological poem for Browning; and now began that part of his work
which is his best gift to English literature.

Four years before the publication of 'Sordello' he had written one play,
'Strafford,' of which the name sufficiently indicates the subject, which
had been put upon the stage with some success by Macready;--the
forerunner of a noble series of poems in dramatic form, most
conveniently mentioned here together, though not always in chronological
order. They were 'The Blot on the 'Scutcheon,' perhaps the finest of
those actually fitted for the stage; 'Colombe's Birthday'; 'King Victor
and King Charles'; 'The Return of the Druses'; 'Luria'; 'A Soul's
Tragedy'; 'In a Balcony'; and,--though less on the conventional lines of
a play than the others,--perhaps the finest dramatic poem of them all,
'Pippa Passes,' which, among the earlier (it was published in 1841), is
also among the finest of all Browning's works, and touches the very
highest level of his powers.

Interspersed with these during the fifteen years between 1840 and 1855,
and following them during the next five, appeared the greater number of
the single shorter poems which make his most generally recognized, his
highest, and his unquestionably permanent title to rank among the first
of English poets. Manifestly, it is impossible and needless to recall
any number of these here by even the briefest description; and merely to
enumerate the chief among them would be to repeat a familiar catalogue,
except as they illustrate the points of a later general consideration.

Finally, to complete the list of Browning's works, reference is
necessary to the group of books of his later years: the two self-called
narrative poems, 'The Ring and the Book,' with its vast length, and 'Red
Cotton Nightcap Country,' its fellow in method if not in extent. Mr.
Birrell (it is worth while to quote him again, as one who has not merged
the appreciator in the adulator) calls 'The Ring and the Book' "a huge
novel in 20,000 lines--told after the method not of Scott, but of
Balzac; it tears the hearts out of a d