ingites; its name has passed into almost contempt.
Chesterton has done much to give the true meaning of this strange work.
With his next poem Browning spoke with a voice that, as our critic says,
proved that he had found that he was not Robinson Crusoe, which is to
say that he had found that the world contained a great number of people.
Despite the 1,500 millions amongst whom we 'live and move and have our
being' we are apt to think that we alone are important, which is not
conceit but a mere proposition demonstrating that man is a universe in
himself while being but an infinitesimal part of the universe.

'Pippa Passes' is a poem which expresses a love of humanity; it is an
epic of unconscious influence which, no doubt, Browning felt was the key
to all that is best and noble in human activity. 'The whole idea of the
poem lies in the fact that "Pippa Passes" is utterly remote from the
grand folk whose lives she troubles and transforms.'

Browning's poetry in the poetical sense was now nearing its zenith. The
'Dramatic Lyrics' were published in 1842, possibly about the time that
Dickens was returning from his triumphant American tour. These showed,
Chesterton thinks, the two qualities most often denied to Browning,
passion and beauty. They are the contradiction to critics, other than
ours, who regard Browning as wholly a philosophic poet, which is to say
a poet who wrote poetry not for its own sake but for purely utilitarian
purpose; not that poetry of the emotions is not useful--it is on a
different plane.

The poems were those that 'represent the arrival of the real Browning of
literary history'; for in these he discovered what was, for Chesterton,
Browning's finest achievement, his dramatic lyrical poems.

Critics have said that Browning's poetry lacks passion and the most
poignant emotion of human nature, love. Chesterton, on the other hand,
considers that Browning was the finest love poet of the world. It is
real love poetry, because it talks about real people, not ideals; it
does not muse of the Prince Charming meeting the Fairy Princess, and
forget the devoted wife meeting her husband on the villa doorstep with
open arms and a nice dinner in the parlour. Sentiment must be based on
reality if it is to have worth. This is the strong point, for our
critic, of Browning's love poetry.

The next work of importance that came from Browning's pen was the
'Return of the Druses,' which shows Browning's interest in the st