To Browning belongs the credit of having created a new poetic
form,--the dramatic monologue. In this form the larger number of his
poems are cast. Among the best examples in this volume are _My
Last Duchess_, _The Bishop Orders his Tomb_, _The Laboratory_, and
_Confessions_. One person only is speaking, but reveals the
presence, action, and thoughts of the others who are in the scene at
the same time that he reveals his own character, as in a conversation
in which but one voice is audible. The dramatic monologue has in a
peculiar degree the advantages of compression and vividness, and is,
in Browning's hands, an instrument of great power.

The charge of obscurity so often made against Browning's poetry must
in part be admitted. As has been said above he is often led off by his
many-sided interests into irrelevancies and subtleties that interfere
with simplicity and beauty. His compressed style and his fondness
for unusual words often make an unwarranted demand upon the reader's
patience. Such passages are a challenge to his admirers and a repulse
to the indifferent. Sometimes, indeed, the ore is not worth the
smelting; often it yields enough to reward the greatest patience.

Browning, like all great poets, knew life widely and deeply through
men and books. He was born in London, near the great centres of the
intellectual movements of his time; he travelled much, especially in
Italy and France; he read widely in the literatures and philosophies
of many ages and many lands; and so grew into the cosmopolitanism of
spirit that belonged to Chaucer and to Shakespeare.

In all art human life is the matter of ultimate interest. To Browning
this was so in a peculiar degree. In the epistolary preface to