logue. From _A Blot
in the 'Scutcheon_ to _Colombe's Birthday_ is a step; from _Colombe's
Birthday_ to _A Soul's Tragedy_ and _Luria_ another step; and in these
last we are not more than another step from _Men and Women_ and its
successors. In _A Soul's Tragedy_ the action is all internalized.
Outward action there is, and of a sufficiently picturesque nature; but
here, considerably more than even in _Colombe's Birthday_, the interest
is withdrawn from the action, as action, and concentrated on a single
character, whose "soul's tragedy," not his mere worldly fortunes,
strange and significant as these are, we are called on to contemplate.
Chiappino fills and possesses the scene. The other characters are
carefully subordinated, and the impression we receive is not unlike that
received from one of Browning's most vivid and complete monologues, with
its carefully placed apparatus of sidelights.

The character of Chiappino is that of a Djabal degenerated; he is the
second of Browning's delineations of the half-deceived and
half-deceiving nature, the moral hybrid. Chiappino comes before us as a
much-professing yet apparently little-performing person, moody and
complaining, envious of his friend Luitolfo's better fortune, a soured
man and a discontented patriot. But he is quite sure of his own complete
probity. He declaims bitterly against his fellow-townsmen, his friend,
and the woman whom he loves; all of whom, he asseverates, treat him
unjustly, and as he never could, by any possibility, treat them. While
he is thus protesting to Eulalia, his friend's betrothed, to whom for
the first time he avows his own love, a trial is at hand, and nearer
than he or we expect. Luitolfo rushes in. He has gone to the Provost's
palace to intercede on behalf of his banished friend, and in a moment of
wrath has struck and, as he thinks, killed the Provost: the guards are
after him, and he is lost. Is this the moment of test? Apparently; and
apparently Chiappino proves his nobility. For, with truly heroic
unselfishness, he exchanges dress with his friend, induces him, in a
sort of stupefaction of terror, to escape, and remains in his place, "to
die for him." But the harder test has yet to come. Instead of the
Provost's guards, it is the enthusiastic populace that bursts in upon
him, hailing him as saviour and liberator. The people have risen in
revolt, the guards have fled, and the people call on the striker of the
blow to be their leader. Chia