errible little poem of _The
Laboratory_[25] in which a Brinvilliers of the _Ancien Regime_ is
represented buying poison for her rival; one of the very finest examples
of Browning's unique power of compressing and concentrating intense
emotion into a few pregnant words, each of which has its own visible
gesture and audible intonation.

It is in such poems that Browning is at his best, nor is he perhaps
anywhere so inimitable. The second poem under the general heading of
"France and Spain," _The Confessional_, in which a girl, half-maddened
by remorse and impotent rage, tells how a false priest induced her to
betray the political secrets of her lover, is, though vivid and
effective, not nearly so powerful and penetrating as its companion
piece. _Time's Revenges_ may perhaps be classified with these utterances
of individual passion, though in form it is more closely connected with
the poems I shall touch on next. It is a bitter and affecting little
poem, not unlike some of the poems written many years afterwards by a
remarkable and unfortunate poet,[26] who knew, in his own experience,
something of what Browning happily rendered by the instinct of the
dramatist only. It is a powerful and literal rendering of a certain
sordid and tragic aspect of life, and is infused with that peculiar grim
humour, the laugh that chokes in a sob, which comes to men when mere
lamentation is a thing foregone.

The octosyllabic couplets of _Time's Revenges_, as well as its similarly
realistic treatment and striking simplicity of verse and phrase,
connect it with the admirable little poem now know as _The Italian in
England_.[27] This is a tale of an Italian patriot, who, after an
unsuccessful rising, has taken refuge in England. It tells of his escape
and of how he was saved from the Austrian pursuers by the tact and
fidelity of a young peasant woman. Its chief charm lies in the
simplicity and sincere directness of its telling. _The Englishman in
Italy_, a poem of very different class, written in brisk and vigorous
anapaests, is a vivid and humorous picture of Italian country life. It is
delightfully gay and charming and picturesque, and is the most entirely
descriptive poem ever written by Browning. In _The Glove_ we have a new
version, from an original and characteristic standpoint, of the familiar
old story known to all in its metrical version by Leigh Hunt, and more
curtly rhymed (without any very great impressiveness) by Schiller.
Brown