ng to wit, are often quite ungoverned, allowed to disport
themselves as they please. Such matters delight the unpoetic readers of
Browning, and indeed they are excellent entertainment. But let us call
them by their true name; let us not call them poetry, nor mistake their
art for the art of poetry. Writing them in blank verse does not make
them poetry. In _Half-Rome_, in _The Other Half-Rome_, and in _Tertium
Quid_, these elements of analysis and wit are exhibited in three-fourths
of the verse; but the other fourth--in description of scenes, in vivid
portraiture, in transient outbursts out of which passion, in glimpses,
breaks--rises into the realm of poetry. In the books which sketch the
lawyers and their pleadings, there is wit in its finest brilliancy,
analysis in its keenest veracity, but they are scarcely a poet's work.
The whole book is then a mixed book, extremely mixed. All that was
poetical in Browning's previous work is represented in it, and all the
unpoetical elements which had gradually been winning power in him, and
which showed themselves previously in _Bishop Blougram_ and _Mr.
Sludge_, are also there in full blast. It was, as I have said, the
central battlefield of two powers in him. And when _The Ring and the
Book_ was finished, the inferior power had for a time the victory.

To sum up then, there are books in the poem where matter of passion and
matter of thought are imaginatively wrought together. There are others
where psychological thought and metaphysical reasoning are dominant, but
where passionate feeling has also a high place. There are others where
analysis and wit far excel the elements of imaginative emotion; and
there are others where every kind of imagination is absent, save that
which is consistent throughout and which never fails--the power of
creating men and women into distinct individualities. That is left, but
it is a power which is not special to a poet. A prose writer may possess
it with the same fulness as a poet. Carlyle had it as remarkably as
Browning, or nearly as remarkably. He also had wit--a heavier wit than
Browning's, less lambent, less piercing, but as forcible.

One thing more may be said. The poem is far too long, and the subject
does not bear its length. The long poems of the world (I do not speak of
those by inferior poets) have a great subject, are concerned with
manifold fates of men, and are naturally full of various events and
varied scenery. They interest us wit