ight say of him that there never
was another poet in whom there was so much of the obsession of love and
so little of the obsession of sex. Love was for him the crisis and test
of a man's life. The disreputable lover has his say in Browning's
monologues no less than Count Gismond. Porphyria's lover, mad and a
murderer, lives in our imaginations as brightly as the idealistic lover
of Cristina.

The dramatic lyric and monologue in which Browning set forth the
varieties of passionate experience was an art-form of immense
possibilities, which it was a work of genius to discover. To say that
Browning, the inventor of this amazingly fine form, was indifferent to
form has always seemed to me the extreme of stupidity. At the same time,
its very newness puzzles many readers, even to-day. Some people cannot
read Browning without note or comment, because they are unable to throw
themselves imaginatively into the "I" of each new poem. Our artistic
sense is as yet so little developed that many persons are appalled by
the energy of imagination which is demanded of them before they are
reborn, as it were, into the setting of his dramatic studies. Professor
Phelps's book should be of especial service to such readers, because it
will train them in the right method of approach to Browning's best work.
It is a very admirable essay in popular literary interpretation. One is
astonished by its insight even more than by its recurrent banality.
There are sentences that will make the fastidious shrink, such as:--

The commercial worth of _Pauline_ was exactly zero.

And:--

Their (the Brownings') love-letters reveal a drama of noble passion
that excels in beauty and intensity the universally popular
examples of Heloise and Abelard, Aucassin and Nicolette, Paul and
Virginia.

And, again, in the story of the circumstances that led to Browning's
death:--

In order to prove to his son that nothing was the matter with him,
he ran rapidly up three flights of stairs, the son vainly trying to
restrain him. Nothing is more characteristic of the youthful folly
of aged folk than their impatient resentment of proffered hygienic
advice.

Even the interpretations of the poems sometimes take one's breath away,
as when, discussing _The Lost Mistress_, Professor Phelps observes that
the lover:--

instead of thinking of his own misery ... endeavours to make the
awkward situation easier for th