tcies happened just then to intervene. It was
afterwards revived by Mr. Phelps, during his "memorable management" of
Sadlers' Wells.

6. 'Colombe's Birthday.' Miss Helen Faucit put this upon the stage in
1852, when it was reckoned a success.

7. 'Luria.'

8. 'A Soul's Tragedy.'

To call any of these plays unintelligible is ridiculous; and nobody who
has ever read them ever did, and why people who have not read them
should abuse them is hard to see. Were society put upon its oath, we
should be surprised to find how many people in high places have not read
'All's Well that Ends Well,' or 'Timon of Athens'; but they don't go
about saying these plays are unintelligible. Like wise folk, they
pretend to have read them, and say nothing. In Browning's case they are
spared the hypocrisy. No one need pretend to have read 'A Soul's
Tragedy'; and it seems, therefore, inexcusable for any one to assert
that one of the plainest, most pointed and piquant bits of writing in
the language is unintelligible. But surely something more may be
truthfully said of these plays than that they are comprehensible. First
of all, they are _plays_, and not _works_--like the dropsical dramas of
Sir Henry Taylor and Mr. Swinburne. Some of them have stood the ordeal
of actual representation; and though it would be absurd to pretend that
they met with that overwhelming measure of success our critical age has
reserved for such dramatists as the late Lord Lytton, the author of
'Money,' the late Tom Taylor, the author of 'The Overland Route,' the
late Mr. Robertson, the author of 'Caste,' Mr. H. Byron, the author of
'Our Boys,' Mr. Wills, the author of 'Charles I.,' Mr. Burnand, the
author of 'The Colonel,' and Mr. Gilbert, the author of so much that is
great and glorious in our national drama; at all events they proved
themselves able to arrest and retain the attention of very ordinary
audiences. But who can deny dignity and even grandeur to 'Luria,' or
withhold the meed of a melodious tear from 'Mildred Tresham'? What
action of what play is more happily conceived or better rendered than
that of 'Pippa Passes'?--where innocence and its reverse, tender love
and violent passion, are presented with emphasis, and yet blended into a
dramatic unity and a poetic perfection, entitling the author to the very
first place amongst those dramatists of the century who have labored
under the enormous disadvantage of being poets to start with.

Passing from the plays