7.  DRAMATIC LYRICS.[17]

    [Published in 1842 as No.  III. of Bells and Pomegranates
    (Poetical Works, 1889, dispersedly in Vols.  IV., V., and
    VI.).]

Dramatic Lyrics, Browning’s first volume of short poems, contains some of his finest, and many of his most popular pieces.  The little volume, it was only sixteen pages in length, has, however, an importance even beyond its actual worth; for we can trace in it the germ at least of most of Browning’s subsequent work.  We see in these poems for the first time that extraordinary mastery of rhyme which Butler himself has not excelled; that predilection for the grotesque which is shared by no other English poet; and, not indeed for the first time, but for the first time with any special prominence, the strong and thoughtful humour, running up and down the whole compass of its gamut, gay and hearty, satirical and incisive, in turn.  We see also the first formal beginning of the dramatic monologue, which, hinted at in Pauline, disguised in Paracelsus, and developed, still disguised, in Sordello, became, from the period of the Dramatic Lyrics onward, the staple form and special instrument of the poet, an instrument finely touched, at times, by other performers, but of which he is the only Liszt.  The literal beginning of the monologue must be found in two lyrical poems, here included, Johannes Agricola and Porphyria’s Lover (originally named Madhouse Cells), which were published in a magazine as early as 1836, or about the time of the publication of Paracelsus.  These extraordinary little poems reveal not only an imagination of intense fire and heat, but an almost finished art:  a power of conceiving subtle mental complexities with clearness and of expressing them in a picturesque form and in perfect lyric language.  Each poem renders a single mood, and renders it completely.  But it is still only a mood:  My Last Duchess is a life.  This poem (it was at first one of two companion pieces called Italy and France) is the first direct progenitor of Andrea del Sarto and the other great blank verse monologues; in it we see the form, save for the scarcely appreciable presence of rhyme, already developed.  The poem is a subtle study in the jealousy of egoism, not a study so much as a creation; and it places before us, as if bitten in by the etcher’s acid, a typical autocrat of the Renaissance, with his serene self-composure of selfishness, quiet uncompromising cruelty, and genuine devotion to art.  The scene and the actors in this little Italian drama stand out before us with the most natural clearness; there is some telling touch in every line, an infinitude of cunningly careless details, instinct with suggestion, and an appearance through it all of simple artless ease, such as only the very finest art can give.  But let the poem speak for itself.

      “My LAST DUCHESS.