ABSTRACT
What a wonderful work this is of Browning’s. I tore through the first volume in a day of careful study, with a sense of absolute possession. I have not felt so strongly that delightful sense of being mastered-dominated-by another man’s imaginative work since I was a small boy. I always except, of course, Victor Hugo’s which has the same force and insight and variety of imagination together with that exquisite bloom and flavour of the highest poetry which Browning’s has not: though it has perhaps a more wonderful subtlety at once and breadth of humourous invention and perception. As for interest, it simply kills all other matters of thought for the time. This is his real work-big enough to give him breathing space, whereas in play or song he is alike cramped. It is of the mixed-political composite-dramatic order which alone suits him and serves him.
