_Apologia_. 'My Last Duchess,' the 'Soliloquy in a Spanish
Cloister,' 'Andrea del Sarto,' 'Fra Lippo Lippi,' 'Rabbi Ben Ezra,'
'Cleon,' 'A Death in the Desert,' 'The Italian in England,' and 'The
Englishman in Italy.'

It is plain truth to say that no other English poet, living or dead,
Shakespeare excepted, has so heaped up human interest for his readers
as has Robert Browning.

Fancy stepping into a room and finding it full of Shakespeare's
principal characters! What a babel of tongues! What a jostling of
wits! How eagerly one's eye would go in search of Hamlet and Sir John
Falstaff, but droop shudderingly at the thought of encountering the
distraught gaze of Lady Macbeth! We should have no difficulty in
recognising Beatrice in the central figure of that lively group of
laughing courtiers; whilst did we seek Juliet, it would, of course, be
by appointment on the balcony. To fancy yourself in such company is
pleasant matter for a midsummer's night's dream. No poet has such a
gallery as Shakespeare, but of our modern poets Browning comes nearest
him.

Against these dramatic pieces the charge of unintelligibility fails as
completely as it does against the plays. They are all perfectly
intelligible; but--and here is the rub--they are not easy reading,
like the estimable writings of the late Mrs. Hemans. They require the
same honest attention as it is the fashion to give to a lecture of
Professor Huxley's or a sermon of Canon Liddon's: and this is just
what too many persons will not give to poetry. They

'Love to hear