There are fireflames noondays kindle,
  Whereby piled-up honors perish. 
    Whereby swol’n ambitions dwindle,
  While just this or that poor impulse
    Which for once had play unstifled
  Seems the sole work of a lifetime,
    That away the rest have trifled.”

More impersonal and dramatic than George Eliot, Browning introduces his doctrines less often.  It is not easy to discover what are his theories as distinguished from those of his characters, for he makes no comments, and is faithful in developing the unity and integrity of his dramatis personae, whether in his monologues or dramas.  Great as his other faults maybe, he surpasses George Eliot in his power to reveal character, but not in his power to make his characters stand out distinctly and unprejudiced from his own mind.  His obscurity of expression and his involved style are serious defects in much of his work; and to most readers his thoroughly dramatic manner is puzzling.  He gives but faint clue to the situation in his monologues, little explanation of the person, time or place.  All is to be discovered from the obscurest allusions and hints.  Defective as this method is in Browning’s treatment, it is the true psychologic method, wherein motive and character are developed dramatically and without labored discussion.  It is a more vital and constructive process than that followed by George Eliot, because nothing of the meaning and fulness of life is lost in the process of analysis.  That Browning can never be read by more than a few, indicates how great are his faults; but in lyric passion, dramatic power and psychologic analysis he is one of the greatest poets of the century.  The value and range of the new method are well illustrated in its use by two such thinkers and poets.

The analytic method as applied by George Eliot regards man as a social being, studies him as a member of society.  All that he is, and all the influences working upon him, are understood only as affected by his connection with the life of the race.  This fact gives the most distinguishing characteristic to her literary methods.  Her imitators may not, and nearly all of them do not, follow her into positivism; but they all study man as a social being.  They deal with him as affected by heredity, education, and social characteristics.  Even here it is not her theories, but her artistic methods, which are imitated.  The novel is no longer regarded as a story to be told dramatically and with moving effect, but as a study of character, as an analysis of situations and motives.  The advocates of the new method say that “in one manner or another the stories were all told long ago; and now we want merely to know what the novelist thinks about persons and situations.” [Footnote:  W.D.  Howells in the Century for November, 1882.] This interpretation of the mission of the novelist well describes George Eliot’s work, for she never hesitated to tell her reader what she thought about the situations and the persons of whom she wrote.