duke and the lady are simpler and slighter Hamlets--Hamlets who have no
agonies of self-questioning and self-reproach; intervening in the long
pageant of the famous lovers of romantic tradition with the same
disturbing shock as he in the bead-roll of heroic avengers. The poet's
indignant denunciation of his lovers at the close, apparently for not
violating the vows of marriage, is puzzling to readers who do not
appreciate the extreme subtlety of Browning's use of figure. He was at
once too much and too little of a casuist,--too habituated to fine
distinctions and too unaware of the pitfalls they often present to
others,--to understand that in condemning his lovers for wanting the
energy to commit a crime he could be supposed to imply approval of the
crime they failed to commit.

Lastly, in the outer periphery of his love poetry belong his rare and
fugitive "dreams" of love. _Women and Roses_ has an intoxicating
swiftness and buoyancy of music. But there is another and more sinister
kind of love-dream--the dream of an unloved woman. Such a dream, with
its tragic disillusion, Browning painted in his poignant and original
_In a Balcony_. It is in no sense a drama, but a dramatic incident in
three scenes, affecting the fates of three persons, upon whom the entire
interest is concentrated. The three vivid and impressive character-heads
stand out with intense and minute brilliance from a background
absolutely blank and void. Though the scene is laid in a court and the
heroine is a queen, there is no bustle of political intrigue, no
conflict between the rival attractions of love and power, as in
_Colombe's Birthday_. Love is the absorbing preoccupation of this
society, the ultimate ground of all undertakings. There is vague talk of
diplomatic victories, of dominions annexed, of public thanksgivings; but
the statesman who has achieved all this did it all to win the hand of a
girl, and the aged queen whom he has so successfully served has secretly