d aims. There are Italian
prelates of every sort, from the worldly-minded Bishop of St. Praxed's,
occupied in death with vain thoughts of lapis-lazuli and pure Latin, to
the "soldier-saint," Caponsacchi, who saved Pompilia, and the wise old
Pope who pronounced Guido's doom; from the unworthy priest in the
Spanish Cloister to the very human, kindly Pope in "The Bean Feast." And
from all these it is far down the ages to the evangelical parish priest
of _The Inn Album_, that "purblind honest drudge," who, the deeper to
impress his flock, painted heaven dimly but "made hell distinct." There
are many artists, many musicians. There are poets from Aprile in
_Paracelsus_, and the troubadours Eglamour and Sordello, to Keats and
Shelley. The extremes of social life are given. There are the
street-girls in _Pippa Passes_ and there are kings and queens with royal
retinues. There are statesmen, and warriors, and seekers after romantic
adventure. There are haughty aristocrats of cold and cruel natures, and
there are obscure but high-hearted doers of heroic deeds. Browning's
dictum, "Study man, man, whatever the issue," led him into a world wider
than that known by any other poet of his time, and akin, as has been
pointed out, to that of the great writers of fiction. As an observer of
human life he was not unlike his poor poet of Valladolid who, with his
"scrutinizing hat," went about the streets, absorbed in watching all
kinds of people, all sorts of occupations, "scenting the world, looking
it full in the face." He chose to set forth "the wants and ways" of
actual life. He summed up his work in the "Epilogue to Pacchiarotto":

Man's thoughts and loves and hates!
Earth is my vineyard, these grew there:
From grape of the ground I made or marred
My vintage.

It is further apparent that Browning's characters are never merely
types, but must always be reckoned with as individuals. It was his
belief that no two beings were ever made similar in head and heart;
hence, even where there are external similarities the essential elements
are strongly differentiated. Take, for instance, three poems in which
the situations are not unlike. In "My Last Duchess," "The Flight of the
Duchess," and _The Ring and the Book_, we have a portrayal of three men
of high lineage, but cold, egotistic, cruel, who have married very young
and lovely women over whom the custom of the times gives them absolute
power. But there the likeness ends. We cann