But in one point Landor and Browning stood at opposite poles.  Landor, far beyond any contemporary English example, had the classic sense and mastery of style; Browning’s individuality of manner rested on a robust indifference to all the traditional conventions of poetic speech.  The wave of realism which swept over English letters in the early ’Forties broke down many barriers of language; the new things that had to be said demanded new ways of saying them; homely, grotesque, or sordid life was rendered in sordid, grotesque, and homely terms. Pickwick in 1837 had established the immense vogue of Dickens, the Heroes in 1840 had assured the imposing prestige of Carlyle; and the example of both made for the freest and boldest use of language.  Across the Channel the stupendous fabric of the Comedie Humaine was approaching completion, and Browning was one of Balzac’s keenest English readers.  Alone among the greater poets of the time Browning was in genius and temperament a true kinsman to these great romantic realists; his poetry, as it emerged in the rich dramatic harvest of the ’Forties, is the nearest counterpart and analogue of their prose.

I.

Browning’s first drama, as is well known, was the result of a direct application from Macready.  Introduced in November 1835 by his “literary father” Fox, Browning immediately interested the actor.  A reading of Paracelsus convinced him that Browning could write, if not a good play, yet one with an effective tragic role for himself.  Strained relations with his company presently made him eager to procure this service.  Browning, suddenly appealed to (in May 1836), promptly suggested Strafford.  He was full of the subject, having recently assisted his friend Forster in compiling his life.  The actor closed with the suggestion, and a year later (May 1, 1837) the play was performed at Covent Garden.  The fine acting of Macready, and of Helen Faucit, who was now associated with him, procured the piece a moderate success.  It went through five performances.

Browning’s Strafford, like his Paracelsus, was a serious attempt to interpret a historic character; and historic experts like Gardiner have, as regards the central figure, emphatically indorsed his judgment.  The other persons, and the action itself, he treated more freely, with evident regard to their value as secondary elements in the portrayal of Stafford; and it is easy to trace in the whole manner of his innovations the well-marked ply of his mind.  The harsh and rugged fanaticisms, the splendid frivolities, of the seventeenth century, fade and lose substance in an atmosphere charged with idealism and self-consciousness.  Generous self-devotion is not the universal note, but it is the prevailing key, that in which the writer most naturally thinks and most readily invents.  Strafford’s devotion to Charles and Pym’s