piece, he was lured towards the drama again, and also to
try his hand at those short lyrics--records of transient emotion on
fanciful subjects--or records of short but intense moments of thought or
feeling. It is a pity that he did not give to dramatic lyrics (in which
species of poetry he is quite our first master) the time he gave to
dramas, in which he is not much better than an amateur. Nevertheless, we
cannot omit the women in the dramas. I have already written of Lady
Carlisle. Polyxena, in _King Victor and King Charles_, is partly the
political woman and partly the sensible and loving wife of a strangely
tempered man. She is fairly done, but is not interesting. Good womanly
intelligence in affairs, good womanly support of her man; clear womanly
insight into men and into intrigue--a woman of whom there are hundreds
of thousands in every rank of life. In her, as in so much of Browning's
work, the intellect of the woman is of a higher quality than the
intellect of the man.

Next, among his women, is Anael in the _Return of the Druses_, She is
placed in too unnatural a situation to allow her nature to have fair
play. In the preternatural world her superstition creates, she adores
Djabal, murders the Prefect, and dies by her own hand. She is, in that
world, a study of a young girl's enthusiasm for her faith and her
country, and for the man she thinks divine; and were the subject, so far
as it relates to her character, well or clearly wrought, she might be
made remarkable. As it is wrought, it is so intertwisted with complex
threads of thought and passion that any clear outline of her character
is lost. Both Djabal and she are like clouds illuminated by flashes of
sheet lightning which show an infinity of folds and shapes of vapour in
each cloud, but show them only for an instant; and then, when the
flashes come again, show new folds, new involutions. The characters are
not allowed by Browning to develop themselves.

Anael, when she is in the preternatural world, loves Djabal as an
incarnation of the divine, but in the natural world of her girlhood her
heart goes out to the Knight of Malta who loves her. The in-and-out of
these two emotional states--one in the world of religious enthusiasm,
and one in her own womanhood, as they cross and re-cross one another--is
elaborated with merciless analysis; and Anael's womanhood appears, not
as a whole, but in bits and scraps. How will this young girl, divided by
two contempora