to pieces the machinery. Presently he begins to reconstruct, before our
eyes, the whole series of events, the whole substance of the soul, but,
so to speak, turned inside out. We watch the workings of the mental
machinery as it is slowly disclosed before us; we note the specialties
of construction, its individual character, the interaction of parts,
every secret of it. We thus come to see that, considered from the
proper point of view, everything is clear, regular and explicable in
however entangled an action, however obscure a soul; we see that what is
external is perfectly natural when we can view its evolution from what
is internal. It must not be supposed that Browning explains this to us
in the manner of an anatomical lecturer; he makes every character
explain itself by its own speech, and very often by speech that is or
seems false and sophistical, so only that it is personal and individual,
and explains, perhaps by exposing, its speaker.

This, then, is Browning's consistent mental attitude, and his special
method. But he has also a special instrument, the monologue. The drama
of action demands a concurrence of several distinct personalities,
influencing one another rapidly by word or deed, so as to bring about
the catastrophe; hence the propriety of the dialogue. But the
introspective drama, in which the design is to represent and reveal the
individual, requires a concentration of interest, a focussing of light
on one point, to the exclusion or subordination of surroundings; hence
the propriety of the monologue, in which a single speaker or thinker can
consciously or unconsciously exhibit his own soul. This form of
monologue, learnt perhaps from Landor, who used it with little
psychological intention, appears in almost the earliest of Browning's
poems, and he has developed it more skilfully and employed it more
consistently than any other writer. Even in works like _Sordello_ and
_Red Cotton Night-cap Country_, which are thrown into the narrative