In this opening monologue the much-admired song, “All service ranks the same with God,” is no song at all, properly, but simply a beautiful short poem.  From the dramatist’s point of view, could anything be more shaped for disaster than the second of the two stanzas?—­

     “Say not ‘a small event!’ Why ‘small’? 
      Costs it more pain than this, ye call
      A ‘great event,’ should come to pass,
      Than that?  Untwine me from the mass
      Of deeds which make up life, one deed
      Power shall fall short in or exceed!”

The whole of this lovely prologue is the production of a dramatic poet, not of a poet writing a drama.  On the other hand, I cannot agree with what I read somewhere recently—­that Sebald’s song, at the opening of the most superb dramatic writing in the whole range of Victorian literature, is, in the circumstances, wholly inappropriate.  It seems to me entirely consistent with the character of Ottima’s reckless lover.  He is akin to the gallant in one of Dumas’ romances, who lingered atop of the wall of the prison whence he was escaping in order to whistle the concluding bar of a blithe chanson of freedom.  What is, dramatically, disastrous in the instance of Mertoun singing “There’s a woman like a dewdrop,” when he ought to be seeking Mildred’s presence in profound stealth and silence, is, dramatically, electrically startling in the mouth of Sebald, among the geraniums of the shuttered shrub-house, where he has passed the night with Ottima, while her murdered husband lies stark in the adjoining room.

It must, however, be borne in mind that this thrilling dramatic effect is fully experienced only in retrospection, or when there is knowledge of what is to follow.

A conclusive objection to the drama as an actable play is that three of the four main episodes are fragmentary.  We know nothing of the fate of Luigi:  we can but surmise the future of Jules and Phene:  we know not how or when Monsignor will see Pippa righted.  Ottima and Sebald reach a higher level in voluntary death than they ever could have done in life.

It is quite unnecessary, here, to dwell upon this exquisite flower of genius in detail.  Every one who knows Browning at all knows “Pippa Passes.”  Its lyrics have been unsurpassed, for birdlike spontaneity and a rare high music, by any other Victorian poet:  its poetic insight is such as no other poet than the author of “The Ring and the Book” and “The Inn Album” can equal.  Its technique, moreover, is superb.  From the outset of the tremendous episode of Ottima and Sebald, there is a note of tragic power which is almost overwhelming.  Who has not known what Jakob Boehme calls “the shudder of a divine excitement” when Luca’s murderer replies to his paramour,

                            “morning? 
      It seems to me a night with a sun added.”