xpect as the result of it all, that there
should come

"A bolt from heaven to cleave roof and clear place,
. . . . then flood
And purify the scene with outside day--
Which yet, in the absolutest drench of dark,
Ne'er wants its witness, some stray beauty-beam
To the despair of hell."[C]

[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 996-1003.]

The superabundant strength of Browning's conviction in the supremacy of
the good, which led him in _The Ring and the Book_ to depict criminals
at their worst, forced him later on in his life to exhibit evil in
another form. The real meaning and value of such poems as _Fifine at the
Fair, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Red Cotton Nightcap Country,
Ferishtah's Francies_, and others, can only be determined by a careful
and complete analysis of each of them. But they have one characteristic
so prominent, and so new in poetry, that the most careless reader cannot
fail to detect it. Action and dramatic treatment give place to a
discussion which is metaphysical; instead of the conflict of motives
within a character, the stress and strain of passion and will in
collision with circumstances, there is reflection on action after it has
passed, and the conflict of subtle arguments on the ethical value of
motives and ways of conduct, which the ordinary moral consciousness
condemns without hesitation. All agree that these poems represent a new
departure in poetry, and some consider that in them the poet, in thus
dealing with metaphysical abstractions, has overleapt the boundaries of
the poetic art. To such critics, this later period seems the period of
his decadence, in which the casuistical tendencies, which had already
appeared in _Bishop Blougram's Apology, Mr. Sludge the Medium_, and
other poems, have overwhelmed his art, and his intellect, in its pride
of strength, has grown wanton. _Fifine at the Fair is_ said to be "a
defence of inconstancy, or of the right of experiment in love." Its
hero, who is "a modern gentleman, a refined, cultured, musical, artistic
and philosophic person, of high attainments, lofty aspirations, strong
emotions, and capricious will," produces arguments "wide in range, of
profound significance and infinite ingenuity," to defend and justify
immoral intercourse with a gipsy trull. The poem consists of the
speculations of a libertine, who coerces into his service truth and
sophistry, and "a superabounding wealth of thought and imager