The appearance of “Strafford” coincides so closely with at least the conception of “Sordello” as to afford a strong proof of the variety of the author’s genius.  The evidence is still stronger in “Pippa Passes,” in which he leaps directly from his most abstract mode of conception to his most picturesque; and, from the prolonged strain of a single inward experience, to a quick succession of pictures, in which life is given from a general and external point of view.  The humour which found little place in the earlier work has abundant scope here; and the descriptive power which was so vividly apparent in all of them, here shows itself for the first time in those touches of local colour which paint without describing.  Mr. Browning is now fully developed, on the artistic and on the practical side of his genius.

Mr. Browning was walking alone, in a wood near Dulwich, when the image flashed upon him of some one walking thus alone through life; one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his or her passage, yet exercising a lasting though unconscious influence at every step of it; and the image shaped itself into the little silk-winder of Asolo, Felippa, or Pippa.

“PIPPA PASSES” represents the course of one day—­Pippa’s yearly holiday; and is divided into what is virtually four acts, being the occurrences of “Morning,” “Noon,” “Evening,” and “Night.”  Pippa rises with the sun, determined to make the best of the bright hours before her; and she spends them in wandering through the town, singing as she goes, and all the while thinking of its happiest men and women, and fancying herself they.  These happy ones are four, each the object of a different love.  Ottima, whose aged husband is the owner of the silk mills, has a lover in Sebald.  Phene, betrothed to the French sculptor Jules, will be led this morning to her husband’s home.  Luigi (a conspiring patriot) meets his mother at eve in the turret.  The Bishop, blessed by God, will sleep at Asolo to-night.  Which love would she choose?  The lover’s?  It gives cause for scandal.  The husband’s?  It may not last.  The parent’s? it alone will guard us to the end of life.  God’s love?  That is best of all.  It is Monsignore she decides to be.

Ottima and her lover have murdered her husband at his villa on the hillside.  She is the more reckless of the two, and she is striving by the exercise of her attractions to silence Sebald’s remorse.  She has succeeded for the moment, when Pippa passes—­singing.  Something in her song strikes his conscience like a thunderbolt, and its reviving force awakens Ottima’s also.  Both are spiritually saved.

Jules has brought home his bride, and is discovering that some students who owed him a grudge have practised a cruel cheat upon him; and that the refined woman by whom he fancied himself loved is but an ignorant girl of the lowest class, of whom also his enemies have made a tool.  Her remorse at seeing what man she has deceived disarms his anger, and marks the dawning of a moral sense in her; and he is dismissing her gently, with all the money he can spare, when Pippa passes—­singing.[21] Something in her song awakens his truer manhood.  Why should he dismiss his wife?  Why cast away a soul which needs him, and which he himself has called into existence?  He does not cast Phene away.  Her salvation and his happiness are secured.