ve is a
phase of that selfish passion over which this hour, touched by the
larger thought of the infinite world, should have uplifted the woman.
Still, what she says is in nature, and Browning's imagination has closed
passionately round his subject. But he has left us with pity for the
woman rather than with admiration of her.

Perhaps the subtlest part of the poem is the impression left on us that
the woman knows all her pleading will be in vain, that she has fathomed
the weakness of her husband's character. He will not like to remember
that knowledge of hers; and her letting him feel it is a kind of
vengeance which will not help him to be faithful. It is also her worst
bitterness, but if her womanhood were perfect, she would not have had
that bitterness.

In these two poems, and in others, there is to be detected the
deep-seated and quiet half-contempt--contempt which does not damage
love, contempt which is half pity--which a woman who loves a man has for
his weakness under passion or weariness. Both the wives in these poems
feel that their husbands are inferior to themselves in strength of
character and of intellect. To feel this is common enough in women, but
is rarely confessed by them. A man scarcely ever finds it out from his
own observation; he is too vain for that. But Browning knew it. A poet
sees many things, and perhaps his wife told him this secret. It was like
his audacity to express it.

This increased knowledge of womanhood was probably due to the fact that
Browning possessed in his wife a woman of genius who had studied her own
sex in herself and in other women. It is owing to her, I think, that in
so many poems the women are represented as of a finer, even a stronger
intellect than the men. Many poets have given them a finer intuition;
that is a common representation. But greater intellectual power allotted
to women is only to be found in Browning. The instances of it are few,
but they are remarkable.

It was owing also to his wife, whose relation to him was frank on all
points, that Browning saw so much more clearly than other poets into the
deep, curious or remote phases of the passions, thoughts and vagaries of
womanhood. I sometimes wonder what women themselves think of the things
Browning, speaking through their mouth, makes them say; but that is a
revelation of which I have no hope, and for which, indeed, I have no
desire.

Moreover, he moved a great deal in the society where women, not hav