ct even
the subtlest analyst to adequately depict other souls than his own. It
is Browning's high distinction that he has this soul-depictive
faculty--restricted as even in his instance it perforce is--to an extent
unsurpassed by any other poet, ancient or modern. As a sympathetic
critic has remarked, "His stage is not the visible phenomenal England
(or elsewhere) of history; it is a point in the spiritual universe,
where naked souls meet and wrestle, as they play the great game of life,
for counters, the true value of which can only be realised in the
bullion of a higher life than this." No doubt there is "a certain
crudeness in the manner in which these naked souls are presented," not
only in "Strafford" but elsewhere in the plays. Browning markedly has
the defects of his qualities.

As part of his method, it should be noted that his real trust is upon
monologue rather than upon dialogue. To one who works from within
outward--in contradistinction to the Shaksperian method of striving to
win from outward forms "the passion and the life whose fountains are
within"--the propriety of this dramatic means can scarce be gainsaid.
The swift complicated mental machinery can thus be exhibited infinitely
more coherently and comprehensibly than by the most electric succinct
dialogue. Again and again Browning has nigh foundered in the morass of
monologue, but, broadly speaking, he transcends in this dramatic method.

At the same time, none must take it for granted that the author of the
"Blot on the 'Scutchcon," "Luria," "In a Balcony," is not dramatic in
even the most conventional sense. Above all, indeed--as Mr. Walter Pater
has said--his is the poetry of situations. In each of the _dramatis
personae_, one of the leading characteristics is loyalty to a dominant
ideal. In Strafford's case it is that of unswerving devotion to the
King: in Mildred's and in Thorold's, in the "Blot on the 'Scutcheon," it
is that of subservience respectively to conventional morality and family
pride (Lord Tresham, it may be added, is the most hopelessly
monomaniacal of all Browning's "monomaniacs"): in Valence's, in
"Colombe's Birthday," to chivalric love: in Charles, in "King Victor and
King Charles," to kingly and filial duty: in Anael's and Djabal's, in
"The Return of the Druses," respectively to religion and unscrupulous
ambition modified by patriotism: in Chiappino's, in "A Soul's Tragedy,"
to purely sordid ambition: in Luria's, to noble steadfa