; the giant mountain range,
all the peaks alive, as if in a nature myth; the crowd of Roland's
predecessors turned to stone by their failure; the sudden revealing of
the tower where no tower had been, might all be matched out of
folk-stories. I think I have heard that Browning wrote the poem at a
breath one morning; and it reads as if, from verse to verse, he did not
know what was coming to his pen. This is very unlike his usual way; but
it is very much the way in which tales of this kind are unconsciously
up-built.

Men have tried to find in the poem an allegory of human life; but
Browning had no allegorising intention. However, as every story which
was ever written has at its root the main elements of human nature, it
is always possible to make an allegory out of any one of them. If we
like to amuse ourselves in that fashion, we may do so; but we are too
bold and bad if we impute allegory to Browning. _Childe Roland_ is
nothing more than a gallop over the moorlands of imagination; and the
skies of the soul, when it was made, were dark and threatening storm.
But one thing is plain in it: it is an outcome of that passion for the
mystical world, for adventure, for the unknown, which lies at the root
of the romantic tree.

The _Flight of the Duchess_ is full of the passion of escape from the
conventional; and no where is Browning more original or more the poet.
Its manner is exactly right, exactly fitted to the character and
condition of the narrator, who is the Duke's huntsman. Its metrical
movement is excellent, and the changes of that movement are in harmony
with the things and feelings described. It is astonishingly swift,
alive, and leaping; and it delays, as a stream, with great charm, when
the emotion of the subject is quiet, recollective, or deep. The
descriptions of Nature in the poem are some of the most vivid and true
in Browning's work. The sketches of animal life--so natural on the lips
of the teller of the story--are done from the keen observation of a
huntsman, and with his love for the animals he has fed, followed and
slain. And, through it all, there breathes the romantic passion--to be
out of the world of custom and commonplace, set free to wander for ever
to an unknown goal; to drink the air of adventure and change; not to
know to-day what will take place to-morrow, only to know that it will be
different; to ride on the top of the wave of life as it runs before the
wind; to live with those who live, a