ring the decade
which produced 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau', 'Fifine at the Fair', and
'Red Cotton Nightcap Country', he could give us 'The Inn Album', with
its expression of the higher sexual love unsurpassed, rarely equalled,
in the whole range of his work: or those two unique creations of airy
fancy and passionate symbolic romance, 'Saint Martin's Summer', and
'Numpholeptos'. It was no ground for astonishment that the creative
power in him should even ignore the usual period of decline, and defy,
so far as is humanly possible, its natural laws of modification. But in
the 'Dramatic Idyls' he did more than proceed with unflagging powers on
a long-trodden, distinctive course; he took a new departure.

Mr. Browning did not forsake the drama of motive when he imagined and
worked out his new group of poems; he presented it in a no less
subtle and complex form. But he gave it the added force of picturesque
realization; and this by means of incidents both powerful in themselves,
and especially suited for its development. It was only in proportion to
this higher suggestiveness that a startling situation ever seemed to
him fit subject for poetry. Where its interest and excitement exhausted
themselves in the external facts, it became, he thought, the property
of the chronicler, but supplied no material for the poet; and he often
declined matter which had been offered him for dramatic treatment
because it belonged to the more sensational category.

It is part of the vital quality of the 'Dramatic Idyls' that, in them,
the act and the motive are not yet finally identified with each other.
We see the act still palpitating with the motive; the motive dimly
striving to recognize or disclaim itself in the act. It is in this that
the psychological poet stands more than ever strongly revealed. Such at
least is the case in 'Martin Relph', and the idealized Russian legend,
'Ivan Ivanovitch'. The grotesque tragedy of 'Ned Bratts' has also its
marked psychological aspects, but they are of a simpler and broader
kind.

The new inspiration slowly subsided through the second series of
'Idyls', 1880, and 'Jocoseria', 1883. In 'Ferishtah's Fancies', 1884,
Mr. Browning returned to his original manner, though carrying into it
something of the renewed vigour which had marked the intervening change.
The lyrics which alternate with its parables include some of the most
tender, most impassioned, and most musical of his love-poems.

The moral and