, we are next attracted by a number of splendid
poems, on whose base the structure of Mr. Browning's fame perhaps rests
most surely,--his dramatic pieces; poems which give utterance to the
thoughts and feelings of persons other than himself, or as he puts it
when dedicating a number of them to his wife:--

"Love, you saw me gather men and women,
Live or dead, or fashioned by my fancy,
Enter each and all, and use their service,
Speak from every mouth the speech--a poem;"

or again in 'Sordello':--

"By making speak, myself kept out of view,
The very man as he was wont to do."

At a rough calculation, there must be at least sixty of these pieces.
Let me run over the names of a very few of them. 'Saul,' a poem beloved
by all true women; 'Caliban,' which the men, not unnaturally perhaps,
often prefer. The 'Two Bishops': the sixteenth-century one ordering his
tomb of jasper and basalt in St. Praxed's Church, and his
nineteenth-century successor rolling out his post-prandial _Apologia_.
'My Last Duchess,' the 'Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister,' 'Andrea del
Sarto,' 'Fra Lippo Lippi,' 'Rabbi Ben Ezra,' 'Cleon,' 'A Death in the
Desert,' 'The Italian in England,' and 'The Englishman in Italy.'

It is plain truth to say that no other English poet, living or dead,
Shakespeare excepted, has so heaped up human interest for his readers as
has Robert Browning....

Against these dramatic pieces the charge of unintelligibility fails as
completely as it does against the plays. They are all perfectly
intelligible; but--and here is the rub--they are not easy reading, like
the estimable writings of the late Mrs. Hemans. They require the same
honest attention as it is the fashion to give to a lecture of Professor
Huxley's or a sermon of Canon Liddon's; and this is just what too many
persons will not give to poetry. They

"Love to hear
A soft pulsation in their easy ear;
To turn the page, and let their senses drink
A lay that shall not trouble them to think."

* * * * *

Next to these dramatic pieces come what we may be content to call
simply poems: some lyrical, some narrative. The latter are
straightforward enough, and as a rule full of spirit and humor; but this
is more than can always be said of the lyrical pieces. Now, for the
first time in dealing with this first period, excluding 'Sordello,' we
strike difficulty. The Chinese