ot for a moment class
together the polished, aesthetic, well-bred aristocrat of the first
poem, the absurd little popinjay of the second, and the "tiger-cat" of
the third. Less strongly, but as clearly are the wives differentiated.
To the innocent gaiety of heart, the bright, sweet friendliness of the
hapless lady in "My Last Duchess" must be added for the lady in "The
Flight of the Duchess" a native force of character which, when roused by
the call of the gypsy-queen, enables her to break the yoke imposed on
her by the Duke and his mother and go forth into a life of adventure,
freedom, and love. The delicate, flower-like Pompilia in _The Ring and
the Book_ has also power to initiate and carry through a plan of escape,
but her incentive is no call to romantic freedom. Her passive endurance
changes to active revolt only when motive and energy are supplied by her
love for her child. Or take Pippa and Phene in _Pippa Passes_, two
beautiful young girls brought up in dangerous and evil surroundings, but
both innately pure. In character and experience they are, however, as
unlike as two girls could be. Phene, undeveloped in mind and heart, the
easily duped agent of a cruel trick, appeals to us by her slow,
incredulous, but eager response to goodness and aspiration, the
tremulous opening of her soul to love. But Pippa, with her observant
love of nature, her gay, sportive, winsome fancies, her imaginative
sympathy with the lives of others, her knowledge of good and evil, her
poise, her bright steadiness of soul, carries us into a different and
much more highly evolved world of thought and feeling. So we might go
through the great assemblage of Browning's characters to find that each
one stands out by himself as a person with his own qualities,
possibilities, and problems.

In all this portrayal of individuals the emphasis is on things of the
mind and heart. In these realms Browning found nothing alien or
uninteresting. From point to point his poetry illustrates what he said
in his comment on _Sordello_, "My stress lay on the incidents in the
development of a human soul; little else is worth study." In all his
poetry environment is of importance only in so far as it is the stuff on
which the soul works. It is "the subtle thing called spirit," it is "the
soul's world" to which he devotes himself.

It is only from a study of Browning's many characters that we may arrive
at a statement of some of the distinguishing features of his