TURING METHODS. DRAMAS AND DRAMATIC LYRICS.

Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walk'd along our roads with step
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse.
--LANDOR.

The memorable moment when Browning, standing on the ruined palace-step
at Venice, had taken Humanity for his mate, opened an epoch in his
poetic life to which the later books of _Sordello_ form a splendid
prelude. For the Browning of 1840 it was no longer a sufficient task to
trace the epochs in the spiritual history of lonely idealists, to pursue
the problem of existence in minds themselves preoccupied with its
solution. "Soul" is still his fundamental preoccupation; but the
continued play of an eager intellect and vivacious senses upon life has
immensely multiplied the points of concrete experience which it vivifies
and transfigures to his eyes. It is as if a painter trained in the
school of Raphael or Lionardo had discovered that he could use the
minute and fearless brush of the Flemings in the service of their
ideals. He pursues soul in all its rich multiplicity, in the
tortuosities and dark abysses of character; he forces crowds of sordid,
grotesque, or commonplace facts to become its expressive speech; he
watches its thought and passion projected into the tide of affairs,
caught up in the clash and tangle of plot. In all these three ways the
Dramas and Dramatic Lyrics and Romances, which were to be his poetic
occupation during the Forties, detach themselves sharply from
_Paracelsus_ and the early books of _Sordello_. A poem like _The
Laboratory_ (1844), for instance, stands at almost the opposite pole of
art to these. All that Browning neglected or veiled in _Paracelsus_ he
here thrusts into stern relief. The passion and crime there faintly
discerned in the background of ideally beautiful figures are here his
absorbing theme. The curious technicalities of the chemist's workshop,
taken for granted in _Paracelsus_, are now painted with a realism
reminiscent of Romeo's Apothecary and _The Alchemist_. And the outward
drama of intrigue, completely effaced in _Paracelsus_ by the inward
drama of soul, sounds delusive scorn and laughter in the background, the
more sinister because it is not seen. These lyrics and romances are
"dramatic" not only in the sense that the speakers express, as Browning
insisted, other minds and sentiments than his own, but in the more
legitimate sense that they are