ethical or scientific; that the latter are
nothing to him without the former; that the best efforts of the latter
for humanity are in his belief not only hopeless, but the stuff that
dreams are made of, without the former. In the combination of both is
Browning's message to mankind.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] He makes a simile of this in _Sordello_. See Book iii. before his
waking up in Venice, the lines beginning

"Rather say
My transcendental platan!"

* * * * *

CHAPTER VIII

_THE DRAMAS_

Of the great poets who, not being born dramatists, have attempted to
write dramas in poetry, Browning was the most persevering. I suppose
that, being conscious of his remarkable power in the representation of
momentary action and of states of the soul, he thought that he could
harmonise into a whole the continuous action of a number of persons, and
of their passions in sword-play with one another; and then conduct to a
catastrophe their interaction. But a man may be capable of writing
dramatic lyrics and dramatic romances without being capable of writing a
drama. Indeed, so different are the two capabilities that I think the
true dramatist could not write such a lyric or romance as Browning calls
dramatic; his genius would carry one or the other beyond the just limits
of this kind of poetry into his own kind. And the writer of excellent
lyrics and romances of this kind will be almost sure to fail in real
drama. I wish, in order to avoid confusion of thought, that the term
"dramatic" were only used of poetry which belongs to drama itself. I
have heard Chaucer called dramatic. It is a complete misnomer. His
genius would have for ever been unable to produce a good drama. Had he
lived in Elizabeth's time, he would, no doubt, have tried to write one,
but he must have failed. The genius for story-telling is just the genius
which is incapable of being a fine dramatist. And the opposite is also
true. Shakespeare, great as his genius was, would not have been able to
write a single one of the Canterbury Tales. He would have been driven
into dramatising them.

Neither Tennyson nor Browning had dramatic genius--that is, the power to
conceive, build, co-ordinate and finish a drama. But they thought they
had, and we may pardon them for trying their hand. I can understand the
hunger and thirst which beset great poets, who had, like these two men,
succeeded in so many different kinds of p