. DRAMATIC LYRICS.[17]

[Published in 1842 as No. III. of _Bells and Pomegranates_
(_Poetical Works_, 1889, dispersedly in Vols. IV., V., and
VI.).]

_Dramatic Lyrics_, Browning's first volume of short poems, contains some
of his finest, and many of his most popular pieces. The little volume,
it was only sixteen pages in length, has, however, an importance even
beyond its actual worth; for we can trace in it the germ at least of
most of Browning's subsequent work. We see in these poems for the first
time that extraordinary mastery of rhyme which Butler himself has not
excelled; that predilection for the grotesque which is shared by no
other English poet; and, not indeed for the first time, but for the
first time with any special prominence, the strong and thoughtful
humour, running up and down the whole compass of its gamut, gay and
hearty, satirical and incisive, in turn. We see also the first formal
beginning of the dramatic monologue, which, hinted at in _Pauline_,
disguised in _Paracelsus_, and developed, still disguised, in
_Sordello_, became, from the period of the _Dramatic Lyrics_ onward, the
staple form and special instrument of the poet, an instrument finely
touched, at times, by other performers, but of which he is the only
Liszt. The literal beginning of the monologue must be found in two
lyrical poems, here included, _Johannes Agricola_ and _Porphyria's
Lover_ (originally named _Madhouse Cells_), which were published in a
magazine as early as 1836, or about the time of the publication of
_Paracelsus_. These extraordinary little poems reveal not only an
imagination of intense fire and heat, but an almost finished art: a
power of conceiving subtle mental complexities with clearness and of
expressing them in a picturesque form and in perfect lyric language.
Each poem renders a single mood, and renders it completely. But it is
still only a mood: _My Last Duchess_ is a life. This poem (it was at
first one of two companion pieces called _Italy and France_) is the
first direct progenitor of _Andrea del Sarto_ and the other great blank
verse monologues; in it we see the form, save for the scarcely
appreciable presence of rhyme, already developed. The poem is a subtle
study in the jealousy of egoism, not a study so much as a creation; and
it places before us, as if bitten in by the etcher's acid, a typical
autocrat of the Renaissance, with his serene self-composure of
selfishness, quiet uncompromising