Finally comes that throbbing, terrible last “book” where the murderer finds himself brought to bay and knows that all is lost.  Who can forget its unparalleled close, when the wolf-like Guido suddenly, in his supreme agony, transcends his lost manhood in one despairing cry—­

     “Abate,—­Cardinal,—­Christ,—­Maria,—­God, ... 
      Pompilia, will you let them murder me?”

Lastly, the Epilogue rounds off the tale.  But is this Epilogue necessary?  Surely the close should have come with the words just quoted?

It will not be after a first perusal that the reader will be able to arrive at a definite conviction.  No individual or collective estimate of to-day can be accepted as final.  Those who come after us, perhaps not the next generation, nor the next again, will see “The Ring and the Book” free of all the manifold and complex considerations which confuse our judgment.  Meanwhile, each can only speak for himself.  To me it seems that “The Ring and the Book” is, regarded as an artistic whole, the most magnificent failure in our literature.  It enshrines poetry which no other than our greatest could have written; it has depths to which many of far inferior power have not descended.  Surely the poem must be judged by the balance of its success and failure?  It is in no presumptuous spirit, but out of my profound admiration of this long-loved and often-read, this superb poem, that I, for one, wish it comprised but the Prologue, the Plea of Guido, “Caponsacchi,” “Pompilia,” “The Pope,” and Guido’s last Defence.  I cannot help thinking that this is the form in which it will be read in the years to come.  Thus circumscribed, it seems to me to be rounded and complete, a great work of art void of the dross, the mere debris which the true artist discards.  But as it is, in all its lordly poetic strength and flagging impulse, is it not, after all, the true climacteric of Browning’s genius?

“The Inn Album,” a dramatic poem of extraordinary power, has so much more markedly the defects of his qualities that I take it to be, at the utmost, the poise of the first gradual refluence.  This analogy of the tidal ebb and flow may be observed with singular aptness in Browning’s life-work—­the tide that first moved shoreward in the loveliness of “Pauline,” and, with “long withdrawing roar,” ebbed in slow, just perceptible lapse to the poet’s penultimate volume.  As for “Asolando,” I would rather regard it as the gathering of a new wave—­nay, again rather, as the deep sound of ocean which the outward surge has reached.

But for myself I do not accept “The Inn Album” as the first hesitant swing of the tide.  I seem to hear the resilient undertone all through the long slow poise of “The Ring and the Book.”  Where then is the full splendour and rush of the tide, where its culminating reach and power?

I should say in “Men and Women”; and by “Men and Women” I mean not merely the poems comprised in the collection so entitled, but all in the “Dramatic Romances,” “Lyrics,” and the “Dramatis Personae,” all the short pieces of a certain intensity of note and quality of power, to be found in the later volumes, from “Pacchiarotto” to “Asolando.”