watches its thought and passion projected into the tide of affairs,
caught up in the clash and tangle of plot. In all these three ways the
Dramas and Dramatic Lyrics and Romances, which were to be his poetic
occupation during the Forties, detach themselves sharply from
_Paracelsus_ and the early books of _Sordello_. A poem like _The
Laboratory_ (1844), for instance, stands at almost the opposite pole of
art to these. All that Browning neglected or veiled in _Paracelsus_ he
here thrusts into stern relief. The passion and crime there faintly
discerned in the background of ideally beautiful figures are here his
absorbing theme. The curious technicalities of the chemist's workshop,
taken for granted in _Paracelsus_, are now painted with a realism
reminiscent of Romeo's Apothecary and _The Alchemist_. And the outward
drama of intrigue, completely effaced in _Paracelsus_ by the inward
drama of soul, sounds delusive scorn and laughter in the background, the
more sinister because it is not seen. These lyrics and romances are
"dramatic" not only in the sense that the speakers express, as Browning
insisted, other minds and sentiments than his own, but in the more
legitimate sense that they are plucked as it were out of the living
organism of a drama, all the vital issues of which can be read in their
self-revelation.

A poet whose lyrics were of this type might be expected to find in drama
proper his free, full, and natural expression. This was not altogether
the case with Browning, who, despite an unquenchable appetency for
drama, did better work in his dramatic monologues than in his plays. The
drama alone allowed full scope for the development of plot-interest. But
it was less favourable to another yet more deeply rooted interest of
his. Not only did action and outward event--the stuff of drama--interest
Browning chiefly as "incidents in the development of soul," but they
became congenial to his art only as projected upon some other mind, and