than that of any of the formal dramas. It has a strong and
fine harmony, a weight and measure, and above all that pungent
naturalness which belongs to the period of _Andrea del Sarto_ and the
other great monologues.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 29: The picture which Lippo promises to paint (ll. 347-389) is
an exact description of his _Coronation of the Virgin_, in the Accademia
delle Belle Arti at Florence.]

[Footnote 30: Mrs Foster's translation (Bohn).]

[Footnote 31: Baldassarre Galuppi, surnamed Buranello (1706-1785), was a
Venetian composer of some distinction. "He was an immensely prolific
composer," says Vernon Lee, "and abounded in melody, tender, pathetic,
brilliant, which in its extreme simplicity and slightness occasionally
rose to the highest beauty."--_Studies of the Eighteenth Century in
Italy_, p. 101.]

[Footnote 32: _Handbook_, p. 266. The poem was written at Paris, January
3, 1852.]

[Footnote 33: Mrs Orr, _Handbook_, p. 201.]

[Footnote 34: The poem was suggested by the opening of the third ode of
the third Book of Horace: "Justum et tenacem propositi virum."]

[Footnote 35: It will be more convenient to treat _In a Balcony_ in a
separate section than under the general heading of _Men and Women_, for
it is, to all intents and purposes, an independent work of another
order.]

16. DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

[Published in 1864 (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. VII., pp.
43-255).]

_Dramatis Personae_, like _Men and Women_ (which it followed after an
interval of nine years) is a collection of dramatic monologues, in each
of which it is attempted to delineate a single character or a single
mood by setting the "imaginary person" in some revealing situation. Of
the two possible methods, speech and soliloquy, Browning for the most
part prefers the former. In _Dramatis Personae_, however, he recurs,
rather more frequently than usual, to the latter; and the situations
imaged are usually suggestive rather than explicit, more incomplete and
indirect than those in the _Men and Women_. As an ingenious critic said,
shortly after the volume was published, "Mr Browning lets us overhear a
part of the drama, generally a soliloquy, and we must infer the rest.
Had he to give the story of _Hamlet_, he would probably embody it in
three stanzas, the first beginning, 'O that this too too solid flesh
would melt!' the second 'To be or not to be, that is the question;' and
the third, 'Look here upon this picture, and o