present peril, something of a zest and a piquant pleasure
to them. The sudden tragic ending, anticipated yet unexpected, rounds
the whole with a dramatic touch of infallible instinct. I know nothing
with which the poem may be compared: its method and its magic are alike
its own. We might hear it or fancy it perhaps in one of the Ballades of
Chopin, with its entrancing harmonies, its varied and delicate
ornamentation, its under-tone of passion and sadness, its storms and
gusts of wind-like lashing notes, and the piercing shiver that thrills
through its suave sunshine.

It is hardly needful, I hope, to say anything in praise of the last of
the _Dramatic Lyrics_, the incomparable child's story of _The Pied
Piper of Hamelin_,[20] "a thing of joy for ever," as it has been well
said, "to all with the child's heart, young and old." This poem,
probably the most popular of Browning's poems, was written for William
Macready, the son of the actor, and was thrown into the volume at the
last moment, for the purpose of filling up the sheet.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 17: It should be stated here that the three collections of
miscellaneous poems published in 1842, 1845 and 1855, and named
respectively _Dramatic Lyrics_, _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_, and _Men
and Women_, were in 1863 broken up and the poems re-distributed. I shall
take the volumes as they originally appeared; a reference to the list of
contents of the edition of 1863, given in the Bibliography at the end of
this book, will enable the reader to find any poem in its present
locality.]

[Footnote 18: See _Robert Browning and Alfred Domett_. Edited by F.G.
Kenyon. (Smith, Elder & Co., 1906).]

[Footnote 19: It is worth noticing, as a curious point in Browning's
technique, that in the stanza (_ababcc_) in which this and some of his
other poems are written, he almost always omits the pause customary at
the end of the fourth line, running it into the fifth, and thus
producing a novel metrical effect, such as we find used with success in
more than one poem of Carew.]

[Footnote 20: Browning's authority for the story, which is told in many
quarters, was North Wanley's _Wonders of the Little World_, 1678, and
the books there cited.]

8. THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES: A Tragedy in Five Acts.

[Published in 1843 as No. IV. of _Bells and Pomegranates_
(_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. III., pp. 167-255). Written in
1840 (in five days), and named in MS. _Mansoor the