, or simply
not accepted, he would probably himself have abandoned it. But when,
years later, in "Balaustion's Adventure," the new spelling became the
subject of attacks which all but ignored the existence of the work from
any other point of view, the thought of yielding was no longer
admissible. The majority of our best scholars now follow Mr. Browning's
example.]

CLASSIFIED GROUPS.

ARGUMENTATIVE POEMS. SPECIAL PLEADINGS.

The isolated monologues have a special significance, which is almost
implied in their form, but is also distinct from it. Mr. Browning has
made them the vehicle for most of the reasonings and reflections which
make up so large a part of his imaginative life: whether presented in
his own person, or, as is most often the case, in that of his men and
women. As such, they are among those of his works which lend themselves
to a rough kind of classification; and may be called "argumentative."

They divide themselves into two classes: those in which the speaker is
defending a preconceived judgment, and an antagonist is implied; and
those in which he is trying to form a judgment or to accept one: and the
supposed listener, if there be such, is only a confidant. The first kind
of argument or discussion is carried on--apparently--as much for victory
as for truth; and employs the weapons of satire, or the tactics of
special-pleading, as the case demands. The second is an often pathetic
and always single-minded endeavour to get at the truth. Those monologues
in which the human spirit is represented as communing with itself,
contain some of Mr. Browning's noblest dramatic work; but those in which
the militant attitude is more pronounced throw the strongest light on
what I have indicated as his distinctive intellectual quality: the
rejection of all general and dogmatic points of view. His casuistic
utterances are often only a vindication of the personal, and therefore
indefinite quality of human truth; and their apparent trifling with it
is often only the seeking after a larger truth, in which all seeming
contradictions are resolved. It was inevitable, however, that this
mental quality should play into the hands of his dramatic imagination,
and be sometimes carried away by it; so that when he means to tell us
what a given person under given circumstances would be justified in
saying, he sometimes finds himself including in the statement something
which the given person so situated would be only likel