may do when he works in a vehicle--if I may borrow a term from
painting--for which he has no natural capacity, but for which he thinks
he has. He is then like those sailors, and meets justly the same fate,
who think that because they can steer a boat admirably, they can also
drive a coach and four. The love scene in _Becket_ between Rosamund and
Henry illustrates my meaning. It was a subject in itself that Tennyson
ought to have done well, and would probably have done well in another
form of poetry; but, done in a form for which he had no genius, he did
it badly. It is the worst thing in the play. Once, however, he did a
short drama fairly well. _The Cup_ has some dramatic movement, its
construction is clear, its verse imaginative, its scenery well
conceived; and its motives are simple and easily understood. But then,
as in _Becket_, Irving stood at his right hand, and advised him
concerning dramatic changes and situations. Its passion is, however,
cold; it leaves us unimpressed.

On the contrary, Browning's smaller dramatic pieces--I cannot call them
dramas--are much better than those of Tennyson. _Pippa Passes_, _A Soul's
Tragedy_, _In a Balcony_, stand on a much higher level, aim higher, and
reach their aim more fully than Tennyson's shorter efforts. They have
not the qualities which fit them for representation, but they have those
which fit them for thoughtful and quiet reading. No one thinks much of
the separate personalities; our chief interest is in following
Browning's imagination as it invents new phases of his subject, and
plays like a sword in sunlight, in and out of these phases. As poems of
the soul in severe straits, made under a quasi-dramatic form, they reach
a high excellence, but all that we like best in them, when we follow
them as situations of the soul, we should most dislike when represented
on the stage.

* * * * *

_Strafford_ is, naturally, the most immature of the dramas, written
while he was still writing _Paracelsus_, and when he was very young. It
is strange to compare the greater part of its prosaic verse with the
rich poetic verse of _Paracelsus_; and this further illustrates how much
a poet suffers when he writes in a form which is not in his genius.
There are only a very few passages in _Strafford_ which resemble poetry
until we come to the fifth Act, where Browning passes from the jerky,
allusive but rhythmical prose of the previous acts into that talk