this would be much more difficult to do well than the confused situation he has not done well.  Moreover, the simplified situation would be effective on the stage; and it would give a great opportunity for fine poetry.  As it is, imaginative work is replaced by intellectual exercises, poetry is lost in his analysis of complex states of feeling.  However, this involved in-and-out of thought is entertaining to follow in one’s study if not on the stage.  It is done with a loose power no one else in England possessed, and our only regret is that he did not bridle and master his power.  Finally, with regard to this play, I should like to isolate from it certain imaginative representations of characters which embody types of the men of the time, such as the Prefect and the Nuncio.  The last interview between Loys and the Prefect, taken out of the drama, would be a little masterpiece of characterisation.

* * * * *

The Blot in the Scutcheon is the finest of all these dramas.  It might well be represented on the stage as a literary drama before those who had already read it, and who would listen to it for its passion and poetry; but its ill-construction and the unnaturalness of its situations will always prevent, and justly, its public success as a drama.  It is full of pathetic and noble poetry; its main characters are clearly outlined and of a refreshing simplicity.  It has few obtrusive metaphysical or intellectual subtleties—­things which Browning could not keep out of his dramas, but which only a genius like Shakespeare can handle on the stage.  It has real intensity of feeling, and the various passions interlock and clash together with some true dramatic interaction.  Their presentation awakens our pity, and wonder for the blind fates of men.  The close leaves us in sorrow, yet in love with human nature.  The pathos of the catastrophe is the most pathetic thing in Browning.  I do not even except the lovely record of Pompilia.  The torture of the human heart, different but equal, of Tresham and Mildred in the last scene, is exceedingly bitter in its cry—­too cruel almost to hear and know, were it not relieved by the beauty of their tenderness and forgiveness in the hour of death.  They die of their pain, but die loving, and are glad to die.  They have all of them—­Mildred, Tresham, and Mertoun—­sinned as it were by error.  Death unites them in righteousness, loveliness and love.  A fierce, swift storm sweeps out of a clear heaven upon them, destroys them, and saves them.  It is all over in three days.  They are fortunate; their love deserved that the ruin should be brief, and the reparation be transferred, in a moment, to the grave justice of eternity.

The first two acts bear no comparison with the third.  The first scene, with all the servants, only shows how Browning failed in bringing a number of characters together, and in making them talk with ease and connectedly.  Then, in two acts, the plot unfolds itself.  It is a marvel of bad construction, grossly improbable, and offends that popular common sense of what is justly due to the characters concerned and to human nature itself, to which a dramatist is bound to appeal.