ABSTRACT
It appears very strange and unreasonable that a writer so intensely dramatic in the spirit of all his writings as Mr Browning undoubtedly is, should have obtained such moderate success on the stage. There can be no question as to the leading characteristic of his poetry. Whether or not he assumes the form, the dramatic spirit is there. If it be a romance, or a lyric, or a play, the same process is going on. Somebody is talking to himself, or exchanging talk with another, or, in collision with a number of persons, eliciting the workings and counterworkings of individual mind or passion. There is the least possible of the descriptive in Mr Browning’s poems. With him, those things are in process of doing, in the heat of vivid creation, in projection as the alchemist would say, which it becomes the task of others to describe. His people never go out of their way to narrate their situation, or their feelings, or to explain themselves, for the benefit of others, the peculiarities of their position or disposition. All this is only to be inferred from what they say to the matter they have more immediately in hand; and whatever breaks or intervals of explanation may thus be left, the intelligence of the reader must supply.
