ore to the pathos of the delineation, and
gives rise to some of the finest speeches, notably the last great
colloquy between these two, which so effectively rounds and ends the
play. The fatal figure of Pym is impressive and admirable throughout,
and the portrait of the Countess of Carlisle, Browning's second portrait
of a woman, is a noble and singularly original one. Her unrecognised and
undeterred devotion to Strafford is finely and tenderly pathetic; it has
the sorrowful dignity of faithful service, rewarded only in serving.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 13: See _Robert Browning: Personalia_, by Edmund Gosse
(Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1890).]

4. SORDELLO.

[Published in 1840 (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. I., pp.
47-289).]

_Sordello_ is generally spoken of as being the most obscure and the
least attractive of Browning's poems; it has even been called "the most
illegible production of any time or country." Hard, very hard, it
undoubtedly is; but undoubtedly it is far from unattractive to the
serious student of poetry, who will find in it something of the
fascination of an Alpine peak: not to be gained without an effort,
treacherous and slippery, painfully dazzling to weak eyes, but for all
that irresistibly fascinating. _Sordello_ contains enough poetic
material for a dozen considerable poems; indeed, its very fault lies in
its plethora of ideas, the breathless crowd of hurrying thoughts and
fancies, which fill and overflow it. That this is not properly to be
called "obscurity" has been triumphantly shown by Mr. Swinburne in his
essay on George Chapman. Some of his admirable statements I have already
quoted, but we may bear to be told twice that Browning is too much the
reverse of obscure, that he is only too brilliant and subtle, that he
never thinks but at full speed. But besides this characteristic, which
is common to all his work, there are one or two special reasons which
have made this particular poem more difficult than others. The
condensation of style which had marked Browning's previous work, and
which has marked his later, was here (in consequence of an unfortunate
and most unnecessary dread of verbosity, induced by a rash and foolish
criticism) accentuated not infrequently into dislocation. The very
unfamiliar historical events of the story[14] are introduced, too, in a
parenthetic and allusive way, not a little embarrassing to the reader.

But it is also evident that the difficulties of a gigan