ly. Mr. Stedman in emphasizing this
characteristic of the poet says of _Pippa Passes_: "The usual fault is
present--the characters, whether students, peasants, or soldiers, all
talk like sages; Pippa reasons like a Paracelsus in pantalettes." It is,
of course, obvious at the first glance that there is a lack of
verisimilitude in Pippa's rich and beautiful soliloquies. Certainly no
fourteen-year-old mill girl could so describe a sunrise, or play so
brilliantly with a sunbeam in a water-basin, or outline so cleverly the
stories of the happiest four in Asolo. The same is true of Phene's long
speech to Jules; no untutored girl brought up in degradation, could
present such thoughts in such words. When we analyze Browning's way of
presenting a character, however, we find that the lack of verisimilitude
is usually external and has to do chiefly with expression. Browning
works on the fundamental assumption that he has a poetic right to make
all sorts of people articulate. He lends his mind out in the service of
their thoughts and feelings. He makes people reveal themselves by
putting into words their elusive, dim, tangled, and even unrecognized
motives and hopes and joys and despairs. He sums up in the speeches all
the potentialities of the situation. All the significance latent in the
type of character and environment is somehow heightened and symbolized.
All this is put in his own highly individual diction. Yet it can hardly
be said that he violates poetic realism in the deeper sense, for he
never puts a halo around a situation, never goes counter to its
potentialities. Instead he strikes fire from it. He shows what is
actually in the situation, but at white heat and laid bare to its
center. When this method has once been recognized, discomfort on the
score of lack of verisimilitude practically disappears, and the reader
yields himself to the joy of the rich, subtle, and stimulating analysis.

We may now turn to a consideration of the subject-matter and the main
ideas of Browning's poetry. From whatever point of view we regard his
work, we find that ultimately the emphasis rests on the same great
central fact, the supremacy of his interest in human nature. This
dominating interest is shown, for instance, by a study of his treatment
of physical nature. To be sure, no one can read his poems without
recognizing the truth that his use of natural facts is distinctive in
kind and very stimulating. A mere reference to the pictures of