and tormentor. So as we read Robert Browning we become aware that a process of self-revelation is going on. We seem to have naked souls before us. We look into the heart of man and into the day of judgment. Now, granting to our author his peculiar and chosen department, namely, man; his aspect of that segment of the universe, namely, thought; and, finally, his method of treatment, the dramatic; we ask once more: Is Browning a great creative genius? I think no one who has attentively and sympathetically read such poems as "Karshish," "Andrea del Sarto," "The Flight of the Duchess," "Dis Aliter Visum," "The Statue and the Bust," "By the Fireside," "Master Hugues,” “Evelyn Hope," can refrain from answering in the affirmative. But none of these, after all, give more than fragmentary evidences of his power. The greatest work of Robert Browning is unquestionably "The Ring and the Book." A sort of personality invests this acknowledgment of mine, and I make it partly by way of reparation; for, fifteen years ago, I began to read this production of the poet, but allowed myself to be daunted by the roughness and obscurity of its opening pages. I threw it down, determined to read no more. For ten years I kept my vow. Beginning then with something easier, I found to my surprise that Browning was comprehensible. A summer vacation devoted to "The Ring and the Book" converted me to a qualified admirer of the poet. Now, after further study of his writings, I regard this poem as the greatest work of creative imagination that has appeared since the time of Shakespeare. STRUCTURE OF "THE RING AND THE BOOK 385 I wish to justify this statement, which to many will seem so extraordinary. I can only do so by briefly describing "The Ring and the Book." It is founded upon the story of an old Italian murder. of an old Italian murder. Count Guido, after having passed his youth in the service of the pope. and having failed to secure the advancement that he sought, determines in disgust to retire to his dilapidated castle and his ancestral estate. He bethinks him, however, that an addition to his meagre income will be desirable, and he manages, with that end in view, to marry the reputed daughter of an aged and well-to-do couple of the middle class and to take her with him. Her parents follow her and, being ill-treated by him, leave his house in wrath. They then make known the fact that their reputed daughter is no daughter of theirs, but the offspring of a courtesan. Count Guido, in revenge, pursues toward his wife a course of relentless cruelty. He would drive her from him, yet in such a way as to throw the blame on her. A young priest is filled with pity for this double victim of avarice and malice-so young, so pure, so miserable -and he helps her to escape and to make her way to her so-called father's house in Rome. Thither Count Guido pursues her, and on a certain Christmas eve bursts in with hired assassins and fatally stabs the father, the mother, and herself. The count is apprehended, tried, and executed. It is this story upon which Browning has rung the changes in "The Ring and the Book." First, we have the bare facts narrated-fourteen hundred lines. Secondly, we have the story as one-half of Rome tells it, said one-half taking the part of the husband-fifteen hundred lines. Thirdly, what the other half of Rome said, taking the side of the wife-seventeen hundred lines. Fourthly, Tertium quid-what the few, the élite, the cultured, the cardinals, said-sixteen hundred lines. Fifthly, what Count Guido himself said-two thousand lines. Sixthly, what the brave priest said who fled with the count's wife-twenty-one hundred lines. Seventhly, what the young wife herself said during the short hours between the attack and her death-eighteen hundred lines. Eighthly, what the counsel for the defense said at the trial-eighteen hundred lines. Ninthly, what the counsel for the prosecution said at that same trial— sixteen hundred lines. Tenthly, what the pope said, to whom the case was referred for final decision-twentyone hundred lines. Eleventhly, what Count Guido said in prison before he was beheaded-twenty-four hundred lines. Twelfthly, what the world said when all was over -nine hundred lines. A most audacious and wearisome specimen of literary trifling, the reader will be apt to say. Not so. Each new telling of the story adds new incident and sheds new light. The effect is stereoscopic-you see the facts from ever new points of view. Little by little the real truth is evolved from the chaos of testimony; little by little the real motives of the actors become manifest. As the process goes on you catch yourself speculating about each of the dramatis persona, as if he were a character in real life. The complexity of human motive, the wonderful interaction of character and circumstance, the vastness of the soul, all these begin to dawn upon you. Men are both better and worse than they know; only God can judge the heart. I know of no THE IDEAL ELEMENT IN POETRY 387 poem in all literature in which the greatness of human nature so looms up before you, or which so convinces you that a whole heaven or a whole hell may be wrapped up in the compass of a single soul. And as for the separate figures, I know not where to find characters more original or more distinct than that of Guido, with a selfishness that makes sun, moon, and stars revolve about him, and when foiled turns to desperate malignity; or Pompilia, the white lily grown out the horsepond scum, unstained even in the midst of cruelty and misery; or Caponsacchi, the pleasure-loving soul turned to a hero by one resolve of daring and selfsacrifice; or the grand old pope, rounding out a just life and preparing to go before God's judgment bar by doing one last act of justice and judgment upon earth. There are those who think this poem great only in its length, and it cannot be denied that it gives the impression of inexhaustible fertility. But such critics can scarcely have read the poem through. The learning, the thought, the general conception-these are as remarkable as the length; and taking them all together, I am persuaded that the generations to come will regard "The Ring and the Book," in the mere matter of creative genius, as the greatest poetical work of this generation. The strongest and most flattering thing that can be said about Robert Browning has been said already. We have found him to possess in an eminent degree the first and most important characteristic of the true poet, creative genius. But by which he must be tried. as highly developed in him? there is a second standard Is the idealizing element Poetry is the imaginative reproduction, not of the actual, but of the ideal universe. The great poet then must be able to idealize. His imagination, creative though it may be, must not find its affinities in the bad, the morally indifferent, or the merely actual. It must hold high converse with the true, the beautiful, and the good. The poet must be one of The immortal few Who to the enraptured soul and ear and eye Imagina Let me make this plain by a few contrasts. tion is not enough to make a poet. I once had a classmate who had a vivid imagination-the trouble was that his imagination all ran to snakes. Of words descriptive of creeping and slimy things centipedes, scorpions, and toads he had a rare supply; and the imaginative power displayed in his occasional objurgations was something impressive. But I never called him a poet. Somewhat similarly there is an imagination that runs by instinct to the morally bad, that seems to love the low and the vile for its own sake; or, if not this, is possessed with the notion-a notion born of a pantheistic philosophy that everything that is has a sort of sacredness and value, and therefore is to be faithfully represented in literature. And so we have Zola's studies of morbid anatomy, and his minute depicting of the festering plague-spots of humanity. Of a somewhat better sort are the novels of Henry James-novels with no moral purpose; novels, in fact, that scout a moral purpose as foreign to true art. Mr. James seems to fancy that his business is simply to set before us studies of |