doubt Carlyle had something of it. It is of wide capacity, and ranges
from the effervescence of pure fun and freak to that salt and briny
laughter whose taste is bitterer than tears. Its full extent will be
seen by comparing _The Pied Piper of Hamelin_ with _Confessions_, or in
the contrast of the two parts of _Holy-Cross Day_. We find the simplest
form of humour, the jolly laughter of an unaffected nature, the
effervescence of a sparkling and overflowing brain, in such poems as _Up
at a Villa--Down in the City_, or _Pacchiarotto_, or _Sibrandus
Schafnaburgensis_. _Fra Lippo Lippi_ leans to this category, though it
is infused with biting wit and stinging irony; for it is first and
foremost the bubbling-up of a restless and irrepressibly comic nature,
the born Bohemian compressed but not contained by the rough rope-girdle
of the monk. He is Browning's finest figure of comedy. _Ned Bratts_ is
another admirable creation of true humour, tinged with the grotesque. In
_A Lovers' Quarrel_ and _Dîs aliter Visum_, humour refines into passion.
In _Bishop Blougram_ it condenses into wit. The poem has a well-bred
irony; in _A Soul's Tragedy_ irony smiles and stings; in _Mr. Sludge,
the Medium_, it stabs with a thirsty point. In _Caliban upon Setebos_ we
have the pure grotesque, an essentially noble variety of art, admitting
of the utmost refinement of workmanship. The _Soliloquy of the Spanish
Cloister_ attains a new effect of grotesque: it is the comic tragedy of
vituperative malevolence. _Holy-Cross Day_ heightens the grotesque with
pity, indignation and solemnity: _The Heretic's Tragedy_ raises it to
sublimity. Browning's satire is equally keen and kindly. It never
condescends to raise laughter at infirmity, or at mere absurdities of
manners; it respects human nature, but it convicts falsity by the
revealing intensity of its illumination. Of cynicism, of the wit that
preys upon carrion, there is less than nothing.

Of all poets Browning is the healthiest and manliest; he is one of