e Roland" and "The Statue and the
Bust"--from their more complex companions, which were almost
altogether in blank verse, and, in general, markedly personified a
typical man in his environment, a Cleon or Fra Lippo, a Rudel or a
Blougram. These boldly sculptured figures he set apart from the
others as the fit components of the more closely related group which
ever since has constituted the division now known as "Men and
Women."
Possibly the poet took some pleasure in thus bringing to confusion
those critics who, beginning first to take any notice of his work
after the issue of these volumes of 1855, discovered therein poems
they praised chiefly by means of contrasting them with foregoing
work they found unnoticeable and later work they declared
inscrutable. Their bland discrimination, at any rate, in favor of
"Men and Women" became henceforth inapplicable, since the poet not
only cast out from the division they elected to honor the little
lyrical pieces that caught their eye, but also brought to the front,
from his earlier neglected work of the same kind as the monologues
retained, his Johannes Agricola of 1836, Pictor Ignotus of 1845, and
Rudel of 1842. Later criticism, moreover, that even yet assumes to
ring the old changes of discrimination against everything but "Men
and Women," is made not merely inapplicable by this re-arrangement,
but uninformed, a meaningless echo of a borrowed opinion which has
had the very ground from under it shifted.
The self-criticism of which this re-arrangement gives a hint is more
valuable.
All the shorter poems accumulated up to this period, various as they
are in theme and metrical form, are uniform in the fashioning of
their contour and color. As soon as this underlying uniformity of
make is recognized it may be seen to be the coloring and relief
belonging to any sort of poetic material, whether ordinarily
accounted dramatic material or not, which is imaginatively
externalized and made concrete. This peculiarity of make Browning
early acknowledged in his estimate of his shorter poems as
characteristic of his touch, when he called his lyrics and romances
dramatic. He became consciously sensitive later to slight variations
effected by his manipulation in shape and shade which it yet takes a
little thought to discern, even after his own redivision of his
work has given the clew to his self-judgments.
Not only events, deeds, and characters--the usual subject-matter
moulded an
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