tino, and of life in the streets of Florence. And
every piece of description is so filled with the character of the
"Italian person of quality" who describes them--a petulant, humorous,
easily angered, happy, observant, ignorant, poor gentleman--that
Browning entirely disappears. The poem retains for us in its verse, and
indeed in its light rhythm, the childlikeness, the _naivete_, the simple
pleasures, the ignorance, and the honest boredom with the solitudes of
nature--of a whole class of Italians, not only of the time when it was
written, but of the present day. It is a delightful, inventive piece of
gay and pictorial humour.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIII

_WOMANHOOD IN BROWNING_

The first woman we meet in Browning's poetry is Pauline; a twofold
person, exceedingly unlike the woman usually made by a young poet. She
is not only the Pauline idealised and also materialised by the selfish
passion of her lover, but also the real woman whom Browning has
conceived underneath the lover's image of her. This doubling of his
personages, as seen under two diverse aspects or by two different
onlookers, in the same poem, is not unfrequent in his poetry, and it
pleased his intellect to make these efforts. When the thing was well
done, its cleverness was amazing, even imaginative; when it was ill
done, it was confusing. Tennyson never did this; he had not analytic
power enough. What he sees of his personages is all one, quite clearly
drawn and easy to understand. But we miss in them, and especially in his
women, the intellectual play, versatility and variety of Browning.
Tennyson's women sometimes border on dulness, are without that movement,
change and surprises, which in women disturb mankind for evil or for
good. If Tennyson had had a little more of Browning's imaginative
analysis, and Browning a little less of it, both would have been better
artists.

The Pauline of the lover is the commonplace woman whom a young man so
often invents out of a woman for his use and pleasure. She is to be his
salvation, to sympathise with his ideals, joys and pains, to give him
everything, with herself, and to live for him and him alone. Nothing can
be more _naif_ and simple than this common selfishness which forgets
that a woman has her own life, her own claim on the man, and her own
individuality to develop; and this element in the poem, which never
occurs again in Browning's poetry, may be the record of a