f the splendour
and vigour of the poetry; or of the subtle consistency and exquisite
truth of the character-painting. Small in amount as is this last in
proportion to the philosophy, it is of very notable kind and quality.
Not only the speaker, but Fifine, and still more Elvire, are quickened
into life by graphic and delicate touches. If we except Lucrezia in
_Andrea del Sarto_, in no other monologue is the presence and
personality of the silent or seldom-speaking listener so vividly felt.
We see the wronged wife Elvire, we know her, and we trace the very
progress of her moods, the very changes in her face, as she listens to
the fluent talk of her husband. Don Juan (if we may so call him) is a
distinct addition to Browning's portrait-gallery. Let no one suppose him
to be a mere mouthpiece for dialectical disquisitions. He is this
certainly, but his utterances are tinged with individual colour. This
fact which, from the artistic point of view, is an inestimable
advantage, is apt to prove, as in the case of Prince Hohenstiel,
somewhat of a practical difficulty. "The clearest way of showing where
he uses (1) Truth, (2) Sophism, (3) a mixture of both--is to say that
wherever he speaks of Fifine (whether as type or not) in relation to
himself and his own desire for truth, or right living with his wife, he
is sophistical: wherever he speaks directly of his wife's value to him
he speaks truth with an alloy of sophism; and wherever he speaks
impersonally he speaks the truth.[48]" Keeping this in mind, we can
easily separate the grain from the chaff; and the grain is emphatically
worth storing. Perhaps no poem of Browning's contains so much deep and
acute comment on life and conduct: few, such superabounding wealth of
thought and imagery. Browning is famed for his elaborate and original
similes; but I doubt if he has conceived any with more originality, or
worked them out with richer elaboration, than those of the Swimmer, of
the Carnival, of the Druid Monument, of Fifine herself. Nor has he often
written more original poetry than some of the more passionate or
imaginative passages of the poem. The following lines, describing an
imaginary face representing Horror, have all the vivid sharpness of an
actual vision or revelation:--

"Observe how brow recedes,
Head shudders back on spine, as if one haled the hair,
Would have the full-face front what pin-point eye's sharp stare
Announces;