ABSTRACT
Mr. Browning, the greater part of whose poetry shows strong tragic instincts, has never chosen a more dramatic, or, it may be added, a more terrible, subject than he has done in The Inn Album. In this he has displayed more than anywhere else the essentially dramatic power of concentration which he possesses in a marked degree. On some occasions he has been apt to disregard the value of this faculty; his imagination has seemed to be so full that it could not resist the various suggestions offered by things which should be merely episodical; and in letting it dwell at length upon these, he has thrown away the penetrating vigour which he might have gained by keeping closer to the telling of his story. The force of his new poem, which is appalling in the swift convergence of three histories of tragic passion, is little marred by any wandering into the realms of the speculative reflection that takes a reader’s attention away from the characters put before him. The four chief personages of the narrative, and even ‘the obsequious landlord’, are brought into distinct life, and with but few exceptions retain their individuality clearly throughout. The masterly way in which the situation that Mr. Browning has invented is grasped and handled recalls the works of another poet, Alfred de Musset,1 between whom and Mr. Browning there is in other respects no resemblance. But the vague presentiment of a coming terror, suggested in some indefinable manner from the first, the suddenness and completeness of its descent upon its victims, and the compression of a vast extent of passion into the speech and action of a few hours, are common to The Inn Album, and, to take one striking instance from the French poet’s productions, Les Caprices de Marianne.2
