ronment. For once and all Browning has demonstrated that there
are riches and depths in small things that are often denied to what we
think is greater.

'It is an epic round a sordid police court case.' 'The essence of "The
Ring and the Book" is that it is the great epic of the nineteenth
century, because it is the great epic of the importance of small
things.' Browning says, 'I will show you the relation of man to heaven
by telling you a story out of a dirty Italian book of criminal trials,
from which I select one of the meanest and most completely forgotten.'

It is then that Chesterton sees that this poem is more than a mere poem;
it is a natural acknowledgment of the monarchy of small things, the same
idea that made Dickens believe that common men could be kings--that is,
in the same category as the Divine care of the hairs of the head. It
gives the lie to the rather popular fallacy that events are important by
their size. It is once more a position that the stone on the hillside is
as mighty as the mountain of which it is only a small part.

Again, 'The Ring and the Book' is an embodiment of the spiritual in the
material, the good that can be contained in a sordid story; it is the
typical epic of our age, 'because it expresses the richness of life by
taking as a text a poor story. It pays to existence the highest of all
possible compliments, the great compliment of selecting from it almost
at random.'

There is a second respect, he feels, which makes this poem the epic of
the age. It is that every man has a point of view. And, what is more,
every man probably has a different point of view at least in something.

'The Ring and the Book,' to sum up briefly why Chesterton thinks so
highly of it, is an epic; it is a national expression of a
characteristic love of small things, the germination of great truths; it
pays a compliment to humanity by asserting the value of every opinion,
it demonstrates that even in so sordid a thing as a police court there
is a spiritual spark; in a word, it is an attempt to see God, not on the
hill-tops or in the valleys, but in the back streets teeming with common
men.

It is now time to turn to two qualities of Browning that are full of the
deepest interest, and which are dealt with by Chesterton with the
greatest skill and judgment. These two qualities may be described as
Browning as a literary artist and Browning as a philosopher. For our
purpose it will be useful to take Brownin