form, many of the finest and most characteristic parts are in monologue;
and _The Inn Album_ is a series of slightly-linked dialogues which are
only monologues in disguise. Nearly all the lyrics, romances, idyls,
nearly all the miscellaneous poems, long and short, are monologues. And
even in the dramas, as will be seen later, there is visible a growing
tendency toward the monologue with its mental and individual, in place
of the dialogue with its active and outer interest.

Browning's aim, then, being to see how each soul conceives of itself,
and to exhibit its essential qualities, yet without complication of
incident, it is his frequent practice to reveal the soul to itself by
the application of a sudden test, which shall condense the long trial of
years into a single moment, and so "flash the truth out by one blow." To
this practice we owe his most vivid and notable work. "The poetry of
Robert Browning," says Pater, "is pre-eminently the poetry of
situations." He selects a character, no matter how uninteresting in
itself, and places it in some situation where its vital essence may
become apparent, in some crisis of conflict or opportunity. The choice
of good or evil is open to it, and in perhaps a single moment its fate
will be decided. When a soul plays dice with the devil there is only a
second in which to win or lose; but the second may be worth an eternity.
These moments of intense significance, these tremendous spiritual
crises, are struck out in Browning's poetry with a clearness and
sharpness of outline that no other poet has achieved. "To realise such a
situation, to define in a chill and empty atmosphere the focus where
rays, in themselves pale and impotent, unite and begin to burn, the
artist has to employ the most cunning detail, to complicate and refine
upon thought and passion a thousand fold.... Yet, in spite of this
intricacy, the poem has the clear ring of a central motive; we receive
from it the impression of one imaginative tone, of a single creative