ABSTRACT
Numpholeptos seems to Mr. Browning to resemble the majority of its companions in the volume in its general characteristics in its lack of beauty and finish, in a certain aggressiveness, a certain tendency to paradox, combined with real, fundamental interest and importance of subject-matter. He had puzzled over Numpholeptos a good deal, and had at last made out an interpretation, which not only made the poem itself clear to him but also threw light on that extremely interesting subject which is generally spoken of comprehensively as Browning's Women. Indeed, Mr. Browning himself repeatedly insists on that faculty of women for taking men as they are, for loving in spite of faults on their constancy, in fine. The man was his whole world, all the same, with his flowers to praise or his weeds to blame, says James Lee's clear-sighted, intellectual wife. The whole theme of that very pathetic poem, Any Wife to any Husband, is the superior constancy of the woman.
