nceive that
one of these women might attain it, but the other not. Both are examples
of a thing I have said is exceedingly rare in Browning's poetry--men
or women left without some pity of his own touched into their
circumstances or character.

_In a Laboratory_ is a full-coloured sketch of what womanhood could
become in a court like that of Francis I.; in which every shred of
decency, gentlehood and honour had disappeared. Browning's description,
vivid as it is, is less than the reality. Had he deepened the colours of
iniquity and indecency instead of introducing so much detailed
description of the laboratory, detail which weakens a little our
impression of the woman, he had done better, but all the same there is
no poet in England, living or dead, who could have done it so well. One
of the best things in the poem is the impression made on us that it is
not jealousy, but the hatred of envy which is the motive of the woman.
Jealousy supposes love or the image of love, but among those who
surrounded Francis, love did not exist at all, only lust, luxury and
greed of power; and in the absence of love and in the scorn of it, hate
and envy reign unchallenged. This is what Browning has realised in this
poem, and, in this differentiation, he has given us not only historical
but moral truth.

Apart from these lighter and momentary poems about women there are
those written out of his own ideal of womanhood, built up not only from
all he knew and loved in his wife, but also out of the dreams of his
heart. They are the imaginings of the high honour and affection which a
man feels for noble, natural and honest womanhood. They are touched here
and there by complex thinking, but for the most part are of a beloved
simplicity and tenderness, and they will always be beautiful. There is
the sketch of the woman in _The Italian in England_, a never to be
forgotten thing. It is no wonder the exile remembered her till he died.
There is the image we form of the woman in _The Flowers Name_. He does
not describe her; she is far away, but her imagined character and
presence fill the garden with an incense sweeter than all the flowers,
and her beauty irradiates all beauty, so delicately and so plenteously
does the lover's passion make her visible. There is _Evelyn Hope_, and
surely no high and pure love ever created a more beautiful soul in a
woman than hers who waits her lover in the spiritual world. There are
those on whom we have already dwe