308

SUPPLEMENT.

Ferishtah's Fancies 331

Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their day:
To wit: Bernard de Mandeville, Daniel Bartoli, Christopher
Smart, George Bubb Dodington, Francis Furini, Gerard de
Lairesse, and Charles Avison. Introduced by a Dialogue
between Apollo and the Fates: concluded by Another between
John Fust and his Friends. 339

NOTE 363

BIBLIOGRAPHY 365

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF BROWNING'S WORKS 395

INDEX TO FIRST LINES OF POEMS 411

INDEX 417

HANDBOOK TO BROWNING'S WORKS

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.

THE NATURE OF MR. BROWNING'S GENIUS.

If we were called upon to describe Mr. Browning's poetic genius in one
phrase, we should say it consisted of an almost unlimited power of
imagination exerted upon real things; but we should have to explain that
with Mr. Browning the real includes everything which a human being can
think or feel, and that he is realistic only in the sense of being never
visionary; he never deals with those vague and incoherent fancies, so
attractive to some minds, which we speak of as coming only from the
poet's brain. He imagines vividly because he observes keenly and also
feels strongly; and this vividness of his nature puts him in equal
sympathy with the real and the ideal--with the seen and the unseen. The
one is as living to him as the other.

His treatment of visible and of invisible realities constitutes him
respectively a dramatic and a metaphysical poet; but, as the two kinds
of reality are inseparable in human life, so are the corresponding
qualities inseparable in Mr. Browning's work. The dramatic activity of
his genius always includes the metaphysical. His genius always shows
itself as dramatic and metaphysical at the same time.

Mr. Browning's genius is dramatic because it always expresses itself in
the forms of real life, in the supposed experiences of men and women.
These men and women are usually in a state of mental disturbance or
conflict; indeed, they think much more than they act. But their thinking
tends habitually to a practical result; and it keeps up our sense of
their reality by clothing