(though now that so many ladies read Euclid, it ought, in common justice to them, to be at least sometimes called the ’Pons Asinarum’), will agree that though it may be more difficult to prove that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal, and that if the equal sides be produced, the angles on the other side of the base shall be equal, than it was to describe an equilateral triangle on a given finite straight line; yet no one but an ass would say that the fifth proposition was one whit less intelligible than the first.  When we consider Mr. Browning in his later writings, it will be useful to bear this distinction in mind.

Looking then at the first period, we find in its front eight plays:—­

1.  ‘Strafford,’ written in 1836, when its author was twenty-four years old, and put upon the boards of Covent Garden Theatre on the 1st of May, 1837; Macready playing Strafford, and Miss Helen Faucit Lady Carlisle.  It was received with much enthusiasm, but the company was rebellious and the manager bankrupt; and after running five nights, the man who played Pym threw up his part, and the theatre was closed.

2.  ‘Pippa Passes.’

3.  ‘King Victor and King Charles.’

4.  ‘The Return of the Druses.’

5.  ’A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon.’

This beautiful and pathetic play was put on the stage of Drury Lane on the 11th of February, 1843, with Phelps as Lord Tresham, Miss Helen Faucit as Mildred Tresham, and Mrs. Stirling, still known to us all, as Guendolen.  It was a brilliant success.  Mr. Browning was in the stage-box; and if it is any satisfaction for a poet to hear a crowded house cry “Author, author!” that satisfaction has belonged to Mr. Browning.  The play ran several nights; and was only stopped because one of Mr. Macready’s bankruptcies happened just then to intervene.  It was afterwards revived by Mr. Phelps, during his “memorable management” of Sadlers’ Wells.

6.  ‘Colombe’s Birthday.’  Miss Helen Faucit put this upon the stage in 1852, when it was reckoned a success.

7.  ‘Luria.’

8.  ‘A Soul’s Tragedy.’

To call any of these plays unintelligible is ridiculous; and nobody who has ever read them ever did, and why people who have not read them should abuse them is hard to see.  Were society put upon its oath, we should be surprised to find how many people in high places have not read ‘All’s Well that Ends Well,’ or ‘Timon of Athens’; but they don’t go about saying these plays are unintelligible.  Like wise folk, they pretend to have read them, and say nothing.  In Browning’s case they are spared the hypocrisy.  No one need pretend to have read ’A Soul’s Tragedy’; and it seems, therefore, inexcusable for any one to assert that one of the plainest, most pointed and piquant bits of writing in the language is unintelligible.  But surely something more may be truthfully said of these plays than that they are comprehensible.