was so near and dear.

The grouping of the works produced by Browning from the date of the
publication of _The Ring and the Book_ (1868) to the publication of _La
Saisias_ (1878), which is founded upon the occasions that suggested
them, has only an external and historical interest. The studies in the
Greek drama and the creations to which these gave rise extend at
intervals over the whole decade. _Balaustion's Adventure_ was published
in 1871, _Aristophanes' Apology_ in 1875, the translation of _The
Agamemnon of AEschylus_ in 1877. Two of the volumes of this period,
_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ (1871) and _Fifine at the Fair_ (1872) are
casuistical monologues, and these, it will be observed, lie side by side
in the chronological order. The first of the pair is concerned with
public and political life, with the conduct and character of a man
engaged in the affairs of state; the second, with a domestic question,
the casuistry of wedded fidelity and infidelity, from which the scope of
the poem extends itself to a wider survey of human existence and its
meanings.[108] Two of the volumes are narrative poems, each tending to a
tragic crisis; _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_ (1873) is a story
entangled with questions relating to religion; _The Inn Album_ (1875) is
a tragedy of the passion of love. The volume of 1876, _Pacchiarotto with
other Poems_, is the miscellaneous gathering of lyrical and narrative
pieces which had come into being during a period of many years. Finally
in _La Saisiaz_ Browning, writing in his own person, records the
experience of his spirit in confronting the problem of death. But it was
part of his creed that the gladness of life may take hands with its
grief, that the poet who would live mightily must live joyously; and in
the volume which contained his poem of strenuous and virile sorrow he
did not refrain from including a second piece, _The two Poets of
Croisic_, which has in it much matter of honest mirth, and closes with
the declaration that the test of greatness in an artist lies in his
power of converting his more than common sufferings into a more than
common joy.

_Balaustion's Adventure_, dedicated to the Countess Cowper by whom the
transcript from Euripides was suggested, or, as Browning will have it,
prescribed, proved, as the dedication declares, "the most delightful of
May-month amusements" in the spring of 1871. It was the happiest of
thoughts to give the version of Euripides' play that