his tongue in his cheek. There are moments when he wounds us by
monstrous music. Nay, if he can only get his music by breaking the
strings of his lute, he breaks them, and they snap in discord, and no
Athenian tettix, making melody from tremulous wings, lights on the ivory
horn to make the movement perfect, or the interval less harsh. Yet, he
was great: and though he turned language into ignoble clay, he made from
it men and women that live. He is the most Shakespearian creature since
Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could
stammer through a thousand mouths. Even now, as I am speaking, and
speaking not against him but for him, there glides through the room the
pageant of his persons. There, creeps Fra Lippo Lippi with his cheeks
still burning from some girl's hot kiss. There, stands dread Saul with
the lordly male-sapphires gleaming in his turban. Mildred Tresham is
there, and the Spanish monk, yellow with hatred, and Blougram, and Ben
Ezra, and the Bishop of St. Praxed's. The spawn of Setebos gibbers in
the corner, and Sebald, hearing Pippa pass by, looks on Ottima's haggard
face, and loathes her and his own sin, and himself. Pale as the white
satin of his doublet, the melancholy king watches with dreamy treacherous
eyes too loyal Strafford pass forth to his doom, and Andrea shudders as
he hears the cousins whistle in the garden, and bids his perfect wife go
down. Yes, Browning was great. And as what will he be remembered? As a
poet? Ah, not as a poet! He will be remembered as a writer of fiction,
as the most supreme writer of fiction, it may be, that we have ever had.
His sense of dramatic situation was unrivalled, and, if he could not
answer his own problems, he could at least put problems forth, and what
more should an artist do? Considered from the point of view of a creator
of character he ranks next to him who made Hamlet. Had he been
articulate, he might have sat beside him. The only man who can touch the
hem of his garment is George Meredith. Meredith is a prose Browning, and
so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose.--_The