ersons of his stage, were made to
pour out their speech in rhyme as Johannes Agricola in the earlier
volume uttered his creed and Rudel his love-message, as if the heat
of their emotion-moved personality required such an outlet. Some
such general notion as this of the scope of this volume, and of the
design of the poet in the construction, classification, and orderly
arrangement of so much of his briefer work as is here contained
seems to be borne out upon a closer examination. On the threshold
of this new poetic world of personality stands the Poet of the poem
significantly called "Transcendentalism," who is speaking to another
poet about the too easily obvious, metaphor-bare philosophy of his
opus in twelve books. That the admonishing poet is stationed there
at the very door-sill of the Gallery of Men and Women is surely not
accidental, even if Browning's habit of plotting his groups of poems
symmetrically by opening with a prologue-poem sounding the right
key, and rounding the theme with an epilogue, did not tend to prove
it intentional. It is an open secret that the last poem in "Men and
Women," for instance, is an epilogue of autobiographical interest,
gathering up the foregoing strains of his lyre, for a few last
chords, in so intimate a way that the actual fall of the fingers may
be felt, the pausing smile seen, as the performer turns towards the
one who inspired "One Word More." The appropriateness of
"Transcendentalism" as a prologue need be no more of a secret than
that of "One Word More" as an epilogue, although it is left to
betray itself. Other poets writing on the poet, Emerson for
example, and Tennyson, place the outright plain name of their
thought at the head of their verses, without any attempt to make
their titles dress their parts and keep as thoroughly true to their
roles as the poems themselves. But a complete impersonation of his
thought in name and style as well as matter is characteristic of
Browning, and his personified poets playing their parts together in
"Transcendentalism" combine to exhibit a little masque exemplifying
their writer's view of the Poet as veritably as if he had named it
specifically "The Poet." One poet shows the other, and brings him
visibly forward; but even in such a morsel of dramatic workmanship
as this, fifty-one lines all told, there is the complexity and
involution of life itself, and, as ever in Browning's monologues,
over the shoulder of the poet more obviou