than a poet: that his
poems not only are each inspired by some leading idea, but have grown up
in subservience to it; and those who hold this view both do him
injustice as a poet, and underrate, however unconsciously, the
intellectual value of what his work conveys. For in a poet's
imagination, the thought and the thing--the idea and its image--grow up
at the same time; each being a different aspect of the other.[86] He
sees, therefore, the truths of Nature, as Nature herself gives them;
while the thinker, who conceives an idea first, and finds an
illustration for it afterwards, gives truth only as it presents itself
to the human mind--in a more definite, but much narrower form. Mr.
Browning often _treats_ his subject as a pure thinker might, but he has
always _conceived_ it as a poet; he has always seen in one flash,
everything, whether moral or physical, visible or invisible, which the
given situation could contain.[87] This fact may be recognized in many
of the smaller poems, which, for that reason, I shall find it impossible
to class; but it is best displayed in a couple of longer ones, which I
have placed under the head "Romantic." They are distinct from the
majority of the "Dramatic Romances," although included in them. For with
these the word "romantic" denotes an imaginary experience, which may be
frankly supernatural, as in "The Boy and the Angel;" or only improbable,
as in "Mesmerism;" or semi-historical and local, as in "In a Gondola;"
or simply human, and possible anywhere and anywhen, as in "The Last Ride
Together;" or in "Dis aliter Visum," and "James Lee's Wife," which might
be classed with them. I am now using it to mark certain cases, in which
the author's imagination has not brought itself to the test of _any_
consistent experience, but simply presents us with certain groups of
material and mental--of real and ideal possibilities, which we may each
interpret for ourselves. They occur in

"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." ("Dramatic Romances."
Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"The Flight of the Duchess." ("Dramatic Romances." Published
in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)[88]

The first of these has been taken by some intelligent critics to be a
moralizing allegory; the second, a moralizing fairy-tale. They are,
therefore, a useful type both of Mr. Browning's poetic genius, and of
the misunderstanding, to which its constantly intellectual employment
has exposed hi