the inner supports are gradually giving way, Arab mystic and Frank
schemer lose their hold, and

"A third and better nature rises up,
My mere man's nature."

Anael, a simpler character than any previous woman of the plays, thus
has a more significant function. Lady Carlisle fumbles blindly with the
dramatic issues without essentially affecting them; Polyxena furthers
them with loyal counsel, but is not their main executant. Anael, in her
fervid devotion, not only precipitates the catastrophe, but emancipates
her lover from the thraldom of his lower nature. In her Browning for the
first time in drama represented the purifying power of Love. The
transformations of soul by soul were already beginning to occupy
Browning's imagination. The poet of _Cristina_ and _Saul_ was already
foreshadowed. But nothing as yet foreshadowed the kind of spiritual
influence there portrayed--that which, instead of making its way through
the impact of character upon character, passion upon passion, is
communicated through an unconscious glance or a song. For one who
believed as fixedly as Browning in the power of these moments to change
the prevailing bias of character and conduct, such a conception was full
of implicit drama. A chance inspiration led him to attempt to show how
a lyric soul flinging its soul-seed unconsciously forth in song might
become the involuntary _deus ex machina_ in the tangle of passion and
plot through which she moved, resolving its problems and averting its
catastrophes.

The result was a poem which Elizabeth Barrett "could find it in her
heart to envy" its author, which Browning himself (in 1845) liked better
than anything else he had yet done.[17] It has won a not less secure