volution and the more sensual side of the
French temperament.

This is the period in Browning's life when he produced his most
characteristic work. It was that time when he was nearly middle aged,
when the lamp of youth was just flickering, and when the lamp of old age
was about to be lighted.

Chesterton treats the whole of this period with a calm
straightforwardness that we are not accustomed to in his writings. There
is no doubt, I think, of all our critic's books, that his work on
Browning is the least Chestertonian, which is not in any way to
disparage it, but rather to state that the book might have been written
by any biographer who knew Browning's works and had the sense to see
that his characteristics were such that many of his critics were unfair
to him. Chesterton will never allow for an instant that Browning
suffered from anything but an evident 'naturalness,' which expressed
itself in a rugged style, concealing charity in an original
grotesqueness of manner.

It is now convenient to turn to Browning's greatest work, 'The Ring and
the Book,' and see what Chesterton has to say about it.

Rumour is really distorted truth, or rather very often originates from a
different standpoint being taken of the same thing. Thus a man may say
that another man is a good fellow but borrows money too often; another
may say of the same man he is a good fellow but talks too much; a third
that he is a good fellow but would be better without a moustache. The
essential man is the same, but his three critics make really a different
person, or, at least, each sees him from a different angle.

As Chesterton so finely points out, the conception of 'The Ring and the
Book' is the studying of a single matter from nine different
standpoints. In successive monologues Browning is endeavouring to depict
the various strange ways a fact gets itself presented to the world.

Further, the work indicates the extraordinary lack of logic used by
those who would be ashamed to be denied the name of dialectician.
Probably, thinks Chesterton, very many people do harm in their cause,
not by want of propaganda, but by the fallaciousness of their arguments
for it.

There have been critics who have denied to this work the right of
immortality. Chesterton is not one of these; rather he contends such a
criticism is a gross misunderstanding of the work. For our critic the
greatness of this poem is the very point upon which it is attacked, that
of envi