re the predominating
themes of _Dramatis Personae._ A slight metrical complication--the
internal rhyme in the second line of each stanza of _Dis aliter visum_
and in the third line of the quatrains of _May and Death_--may be noted
as indicating Browning's love of new metrical experiments. In the former
of these poems the experiment cannot be called a success; the clash of
sounds, "a mass of brass," "walked and talked," and the like, seems too
much as if an accident had been converted into a rule.

_Mr Sludge, "the Medium_" the longest piece in the volume, has been
already noticed. The story of the poor girl of Pornic, as Browning in a
letter calls her, attracted him partly because it presented a
psychological curiosity, partly because he cared to paint her hair in
words,--gold in contrast with that pallid face--as much as his friend
Rossetti might have wished to display a like splendour with the strokes
of his brush:

Hair such a wonder of flix and floss,
Freshness and fragrance--floods of it too!
Gold, did I say? Nay, gold's mere dross.

The story, which might gratify a cynical observer of human nature, is
treated by Browning without a touch of cynicism, except that ascribed to
the priest--good easy man--who has lost a soul and gained an altar. A
saint _manque_, whose legend is gruesome enough, but more pathetic than
gruesome, becomes for the poet an involuntary witness of the Christian
faith, and a type of the mystery of moral evil; but the psychological
contrasts of the ambiguous creature, saint-sinner, and the visual
contrast of

that face, like a silver wedge
'Mid the yellow wealth,

are of more worth than the sermon which the writer preaches in
exposition of his tale. Had the form of the poem been Browning's
favourite dramatic monologue, we can imagine that an ingenious apologia,
convincing at least to Half-Pornic, could have been offered for the
perversity of the dying girl's rifting every golden tress with gold.

No poem in the volume of _Dramatis Personae_ is connected with pictorial
art, unless it be the few lines entitled _A Face_, lines of which Emily
Patmore, the poet's wife, was the subject, and written, as Browning
seldom wrote, for the mere record of beauty. That "little head of hers"
is transferred to Browning's panel in the manner of an early Tuscan
piece of ideal loveliness; in purity of outline and of colour the
delicate profile, the opening lips, the neck, the chin so na