when well-freighted with thought. All these merits are found
united in much of Browning's blank verse, especially
in that of `The Ring and the Book'. As an example of this,
take the following passage from the monologue of the Canon Caponsacchi.
It gives expression to his vision of Count Guido's
spiritual down-sliding; "in the lowest deep a lower deep still
threatening to devour him, opens wide": --

"And thus I see him slowly and surely edged
Off all the table-land whence life upsprings
Aspiring to be immortality,
As the snake, hatched on hill-top by mischance,
Despite his wriggling, slips, slides, slidders down
Hill-side, lies low and prostrate on the smooth
Level of the outer place, lapsed in the vale:
So I lose Guido in the loneliness,
Silence, and dusk, till at the doleful end,
At the horizontal line, creation's verge,
From what just is to absolute nothingness --
Lo, what is this he meets, strains onward still?
What other man, deep further in the fate,
Who, turning at the prize of a foot-fall
To flatter him and promise fellowship,
Discovers in the act a frightful face --
Judas, made monstrous by much solitude!
The two are at one now! Let them love their love
That bites and claws like hate, or hate their hate
That mops and mows and makes as it were love!
There, let them each tear each in devil's-fun,
Or fondle this the other while malice aches --