onventional stage.

The first is a drama of an idea, the second of the immediate and remote
consequences of a single act, the third of the tyranny of the passions.

I understand the general opinion among lovers and earnest students of
Browning's poetry to be that the highest peaks of his genius tower from
the vast tableland of "The Ring and the Book"; that thenceforth there
was declension. But Browning is not to be measured by common estimates.
It is easy to indicate, in the instances of many poets, just where the
music reaches its sweetest, its noblest, just where the extreme glow
wanes, just where the first shadows come leaping like greyhounds, or
steal almost imperceptibly from slow-closing horizons.

But with Browning, as with Shakspere, as with Victor Hugo, it is
difficult for our vision to penetrate the glow irradiating the supreme
heights of accomplishment. Like Balzac, like Shakspere again, he has
revealed to us a territory so vast, that while we bow down before the
sun westering athwart distant Andes, the gold of sunrise is already
flashing behind us, upon the shoulder of Atlas.

It is certain that "The Ring and the Book" is unique. Even Goethe's
masterpiece had its forerunners, as in Marlowe's "Faustus," and its
ambitious offspring, as in Bailey's "Festus." But is it a work of art?
Here is the only vital question which at present concerns us.

It is altogether useless to urge, as so many admirers of Browning do,
that "The Ring and the Book" is as full of beauties as the sea is of
waves. Undeniably it is, having been written in the poet's maturity.
But, to keep to the simile, has this epical poem the unity of ocean?
Does it consist of separate seas, or is it really one, as the wastes
which wash from Arctic to Antarctic, through zones temperate and
equatorial, are yet one and indivisible? If it have not this unity it is
still a stupendous accomplishment, but it is not a work of art. And
though art is but the handmaiden of genius, what student of Comparative
Literature will deny that nothing has survived the ruining breath of
Time--not any intellectual greatness nor any spiritual beauty, that is
not clad in perfection, be it absolute or relative--for relative
perfection there is, despite the apparent paradox.

The mere bulk of "The Ring and the Book" is, in point of art, nothing.
One day, after the publication of this poem, Carlyle hailed the author
with enthusiastic praise in which lurked damning irony: "Wh