and new, a record of the same facts
but of independent impressions, to convey by means of each monologue a
sense of the speaker not less vivid and life-like than by the ordinary
dramatic method, with a yet more profound measure of analytic and
psychological truth, and finally to group all these figures with
unerring effect of prominence and subordination, to fuse and mould all
these parts into one living whole is, as a _tour de force_, unique, and
it is not only a _tour de force_. _The Ring and the Book_, besides being
the longest poetical work of the century, must be ranked among the
greatest poems in our literature: it has a spiritual insight, human
science, dramatic and intellectual and moral force, a strength and grip,
a subtlety, a range and variety of genius and of knowledge, hardly to be
paralleled outside Shakespeare.

It has sometimes been said that the style of Browning is essentially
undramatic, that Pompilia, Guido, and the lawyers all talk in the same
way, that is, like Browning. As a matter of fact nothing is more
remarkable than the variety of style, the cunning adjustment of language
and of rhythm to the requirements of every speaker. From the general
construction of the rhythm to the mere similies and figures of speech
employed in passing, each monologue is absolutely individual, and,
though each monologue contains a highly finished portrait of the
character whose name it bears, these portraits, so far from being
disconnected or independent, are linked together in as close an
interdependence as the personages of a regularly constructed drama. The
effect of the reiterated story, told in some new fashion by each new
teller of it, has been compared with that of a great fugue, blending,
with the threads of its crossing and recrossing voices, a single web of
harmony. The "theme" is Pompilia; around her the whole action circles.
As, in _Pippa Passes_, the mere passing of an innocent child, her
unconscious influence on those on whom her song breaks in at a moment
of crisis, draws together the threads of many stories, so Pompilia, with
hardly more consciousness of herself, makes and unmakes the lives and
characters of those about her. The same sweet rectitude and purity of
nature serve to call out the latent malignity of Guido and the
slumbering chivalry of Caponsacchi. Without her, the one might have
remained a "_petit maitre_ priestling;" the other merely a soured,
cross-grained, impecunious country squire: R