every equation he seemed to establish. He played, and made Blougram
play, upon the elusive resemblance between the calm of effortless
mastery and that of hardly won control.

The rich and varied poetry reviewed in the last three sections occupies
less than half of _Men and Women_, and leaves the second half of the
title unexplained. In that richer emotional atmosphere which breathes
from every line of his Italian work, the profound fulfilment of his
spiritual needs which he found in his home was the most vital and potent
element. His imaginative grasp of every kind of spiritual energy, of
every "incident of soul," was deepened by his new but incessant and
unqualified experience of love. His poetry focussed itself more
persistently than ever about those creative energies akin to love, of
which art in the fullest sense is the embodiment, and religion the
recognition. It would have been strange if the special form of
love-experience to which the quickening thrill was due had remained
untouched by it. In fact, however, the title of the volume is
significant as well as accurate; for Browning's poetry of the love
between men and women may be said, save for a few simple though
exquisite earlier notes, to begin with it.


VII.


The love-poetry of the _Men and Women_ volumes, as originally published,
was the most abundant and various, if not the most striking, part of its
contents. It was almost entirely transferred, in the collected edition
of his Poems issued in 1863, to other rubrics, to the _Dramatic
Lyrics_, of which it now forms the great bulk, and to the _Dramatic