simple fact that when the subject-matter he handles is beautiful or
sublime, his style is usually adequate to the situation. Browning
had no difficulty in writing melodiously when he placed the posy in
the Ring,

O lyric Love, half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire,

although just a moment before, when he was joking about his lack of
readers, he was anything but musical. _The Ring and the Book_ is
full of exquisite beauty, amazing felicity of expression, fluent
rhythm and melody; full also of crudities, jolts, harshness, pedantry,
wretched witticisms, and coarseness. Why these contrasts? Because it
is a study of human testimony. The lawyers in this work speak no
radiant or spiritual poetry; they talk like tiresome, conceited
pedants because they were tiresome, conceited pedants; Pompilia's
dying speech of adoring passion for Caponsacchi is sublime music,
because she was a spiritual woman in a glow of exaltation. Guido
speaks at first with calm, smiling irony, and later rages like a
wild beast caught in a spring-trap; in both cases the verse fits his
mood. If Pompilia's tribute to Caponsacchi had been expressed in
language as dull and flat as the pleas of the lawyers, then we
should be quite sure that Browning, whatever he was, was no poet.
For it would indicate that he could not create the right diction for
the right situation and character. Now, his picture of the triple
light of sunset in _The Last Ride Together_ is almost intolerably
beautiful, because such a scene fairly overwhelms the senses. I hear
the common and unintelligent comment, "Ah, if he had only always
written like that!" He would have done so, if he had been interested
in only the beautiful aspects of this world. "How could the man who