instinct that one would have thought only a woman could have for women.
And his women, good or bad, are always real women, and they are
represented without bias. Browning is one of the very few men (Mr.
Meredith, whose women are, perhaps, the consummate flower of his work,
is his only other English contemporary) who can paint women without
idealisation or degradation, not from the man's side, but from their
own; as living equals, not as goddesses or as toys. His women live, act,
and suffer, even think; not assertively, mannishly (for the loveliest of
them have a very delicate charm of girlishness) but with natural
volition, on equal rights with men. Any one who has thought at all on
the matter will acknowledge that this is the highest praise that could
be given to a poet, and the rarest. Browning's women are not perhaps as
various as his men; but from Ottima to Pompilia (from the "great white
queen, magnificent in sin," to the "lily of a maiden, white with intact
leaf") what a range and gradation of character! These are the two
extremes; between them, as earth lies between heaven and hell, are
stationed all the others, from the faint and delicate dawn in Pauline,
Michal and Palma, through Pippa and Mildred and Colombe and Constance
and the Queen, to Balaustion and Elvire, Fifine and Clara and the
heroine of the _Inn Album_, and the lurid close in Cristina. I have
named only a few, and how many there are to name! Someone has written a
book on _Shakespeare's Women_: whoever writes a book on _Browning's
Women_ will have a task only less delightful, a subject only less rich,
than that.

When Browning was a boy, it is recorded that he debated within himself
whether he should not become a painter or a musician as well as a poet.
Finally, though not, I believe, for a good many years, he decided in the
negative. But the latent qualities of painter and musician have
developed themselves in his poetry, and much of his finest and very much