can say with certainty, "Here I catch the poet, there lies his
material." The identification of the work and worker is too intimate,
and the realization of the imaginary personage is too complete.

[Footnote B: Pref. to _Pauline_, 1888.]

In regard to the dramatic interpretation of his poetry, Browning has
manifested a peculiar sensitiveness. In his Preface to _Pauline_ and in
several of his poems--notably _The Mermaid_, the _House_, and the
_Shop_--he explicitly cuts himself free from his work. He knew that
direct self-revealment on the part of the poet violates the spirit of
the drama. "With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart," said
Wordsworth; "Did Shakespeare?" characteristically answers Browning, "If
so, the less Shakespeare he!" And of himself he asks:

"Which of you did I enable
Once to slip inside my breast,
There to catalogue and label
What I like least, what love best,
Hope and fear, believe and doubt of,
Seek and shun, respect--deride?
Who has right to make a rout of
Rarities he found inside?"[A]

[Footnote A: _At the Mermaid_.]

He repudiates all kinship with Byron and his subjective ways, and
refuses to be made king by the hands which anointed him. "He will not
give his woes an airing, and has no plague that claims respect." Both as
man and poet, in virtue of the native, sunny, outer-air healthiness of