te _The Ring and the Book_. His poetic powers resisted their
enemies for many years, and had the better in the struggle. If it takes
a long time to cast a devil out, it takes a longer time to depose an
angel. And the devil may be utterly banished, but the angel never. And
though the devil of mere wit and the little devils of analytic
exercise--devils when they usurp the throne in a poet's soul and enslave
imaginative emotion--did get the better of Browning, it was only for a
time. Towards the end of his life he recovered, but never as completely
as he had once possessed them, the noble attributes of a poet. The evils
of the struggle clung to him; the poisonous pleasure he had pursued
still affected him; he was again and again attacked by the old malaria.
He was as a brand plucked from the burning.

_The Ring and the Book_ is the central point of this struggle. It is
full of emotion and thought concentrated on the subject, and commingled
by imagination to produce beauty. And whenever this is the case, as in
the books which treat of Caponsacchi and Pompilia, we are rejoiced by
poetry. In their lofty matter of thought and feeling, in their
simplicity and nobleness of spiritual beauty, poetry is dominant. In
them also his intellectual powers, and his imaginative and passionate
powers, are fused into one fire. Nor is the presentation of Guido
Franceschini under two faces less powerful, or that of the Pope, in his
meditative silence. But in these books the poetry is less, and is
mingled, as would naturally indeed be the case, with a searching
analysis, which intrudes too much into their imaginative work.
Over-dissection makes them cold. In fact, in fully a quarter of this
long poem, the analysing understanding, that bustling and self-conscious
person, who plays only on the surface of things and separates their
elements from one another instead of penetrating to their centre; who is
incapable of seeing the whole into which the various elements have
combined--is too masterful for the poetry. It is not, then, imaginative,
but intellectual pleasure which, as we read, we gain.

Then again there is throughout a great part of the poem a dangerous
indulgence of his wit; the amusement of remote analogies; the use of
far-fetched illustrations; quips and cranks and wanton wiles of the
reasoning fancy in deviating self-indulgence; and an allusiveness which
sets commentators into note-making effervescence. All these, and more,
which belo