ieces as "Karshish," "The Arab Physician," "Fra Lippo Lippi,"
"Bishop Blougram," and "Cleon." It is amusing to note, if the
authority of the bibliographers is to be trusted, that these volumes
were reviewed, in the Roman Catholic paper called _The Rambler_, by no
less a person than Cardinal Wiseman, who was extremely complimentary
to "Bishop Blougram," and did not by any means despair of the writer's
conversion. After "Men and Women" the poet was silent for a long time.
His wife's health was failing, though at the time of the war in
Lombardy her burning energy burst out in the "Poems before Congress,"
and though she watched the course of the struggle with never-ceasing
excitement.

In 1861 the great grief of his life fell upon Mr. Browning, and he
published nothing new till 1864, when there appeared the volume called
"Dramatis Personae." It is pretty safe, however, to declare that in
this volume, with "The Ring and the Book," which was published in
1868, he reached his greatest height of performance. It is enough to
recall to the memory of readers that "Dramatis Personae" contains
"James Lea's Wife," "Rabbi Ben Ezra," and "Prospice." Then, four
years later, as we have said, appeared four volumes of that marvellous
performance, "The Ring and the Book," a poetic and psychological
grappling with the question suggested to the poet by the account of a
Roman trial that took place a couple of centuries ago. Whether anyone
else in any country has ever before ventured to publish a poem in four
simultaneous volumes, we cannot say; but, in spite of its length and
difficulty, "The Ring and the Book" was and is one of the most
successful of the author's works. It has every right to be so, for
nowhere does he exhibit in a manner so sustained, and yet so varied,
his own extraordinary insight into characters and motives entirely
dissimilar.

Since that remarkable work was given to the world, Mr. Browning has
attempted nothing approaching it in magnitude, or in the demand it
made upon the sustained exertion of high intellectual powers. But he
left his admirers no room to complain of diminished fecundity or of
decaying vigor. "Balaustion's Adventure," including a transcript from
Euripides, appeared in 1871, to prove his undiminished insight and
inexhaustible interest in spiritual analysis. It was followed by
"Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society," a book suggested by
the collapse of the French Empire, and recalling the scath