t to ideals of social
amelioration, few of them presented individuals with any dramatic
distinctness. Browning stands practically by himself in the nineteenth
century as the poet who gives us both the "doubter and the doubt," who
is able to join with an impressive statement of the hopes and fears of
man, an equally impressive sequence of individual men and women. In this
he harks back to the broad inclusiveness of the Elizabethan dramatists.
In contemporary literature, his nearest congeners are in fiction, not in
poetry.

The great number and variety of Browning's characters can be illustrated
in different ways. We might, for instance, note how many nationalities
are represented. The personages in "Stafford" and the "Cavalier Tunes"
are Englishmen from the time of the Civil War. "Clive" is a true story
of the Indian Empire. We have from Italian life the numerous characters
in _Sordello_, "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Pictor Ignotus," "The Bishop Orders
His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church," "My Last Duchess," _The Ring and the
Book_, "A Grammarian's Funeral," "Up at a Villa--Down in the City," "In
a Gondola," and many more. "Count Gismond" and "Herve Riel" are French
stories. _Paracelsus_ and "Abt Vogler" are of German origin.
_Balaustion's Adventure_, _Aristophanes' Apology_, "Pheidippides," and
"Echetlos" celebrate Greek thought and adventure. Very important poems
such as "Saul" and "Rabbi Ben Ezra," have to do with Jewish life. And
unlike Shakespeare, who is not concerned with making Julius Caesar a
Roman or Duke Theseus a Greek, Browning brings to the creation of each
of these widely divergent characters, a detailed knowledge of the
special habits of life and thought of the nation or race concerned. He
represents also many kinds of human interest. We find in his poems
seekers after knowledge such as Paracelsus, who takes all thought and
fact as his domain; or such as the Grammarian, who found Greek particles
too wide a realm; or such as the pedant Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis,
whose learned rubbish cumbers the land. There are likewise those who
grope after the truths of religion from Caliban on his island to the
learned physician Karshish and the highly cultured Cleon; those who have
the full vision from John to Rabbi Ben Ezra; those who juggle with terms
and creeds as does Bishop Blougram; and out and out frauds like Sludge
the Medium. The church is represented by many men dissimilar in
endowments, tastes, spiritual experiences, an