7. 'Luria.'

8. 'A Soul's Tragedy.'

To call any of these plays unintelligible is ridiculous; and nobody
who has ever read them ever did, and why people who have not read them
should abuse them is hard to see. Were society put upon its oath, we
should be surprised to find how many people in high places have not
read 'All's Well that Ends Well,' or 'Timon of Athens;' but they don't
go about saying these plays are unintelligible. Like wise folk, they
pretend to have read them, and say nothing. In Browning's case they
are spared the hypocrisy. No one need pretend to have read 'A Soul's
Tragedy;' and it seems, therefore, inexcusable for anyone to assert
that one of the plainest, most pointed, and piquant bits of writing in
the language is unintelligible. But surely something more may be
truthfully said of these plays than that they are comprehensible.
First of all, they are _plays_, and not _works_--like the dropsical
dramas of Sir Henry Taylor and Mr. Swinburne. Some of them have stood
the ordeal of actual representation; and though it would be absurd to
pretend that they met with that overwhelming measure of success our
critical age has reserved for such dramatists as the late Lord Lytton,
the author of 'Money,' the late Tom Taylor, the author of 'The
Overland Route,' the late Mr. Robertson, the author of 'Caste,' Mr. H.
Byron, the author of 'Our Boys,' Mr. Wills, the author of 'Charles
I.,' Mr. Burnand, the author of 'The Colonel,' and Mr. Gilbert, the
author of so much that is great and glorious in our national drama; at
all events they proved themselves able to arrest and retain the
attention of very ordinary audiences. But who can deny dignity and
even grandeur to 'Luria,' or withhold the meed of a melodious tear