In the most difficult form of verse, namely, blank verse, Browning has shown himself a great master, and has written some of the very best in the literature. And great as is the extent of his blank verse, the ‘Ring and the Book’ alone containing 21,116 verses, it never entirely lapses into prose. One grand merit of blank verse is in the SWEEP of it; another, in its pause-melody, which can be secured only by a skilful recurrence of an unbroken measure; without this, variety of pause ceases to be variety, and results in a metrical chaos; a third is in its lightsomeness of movement, its go, when well-freighted with thought. All these merits are found united in much of Browning’s blank verse, especially in that of ‘The Ring and the Book’. As an example of this, take the following passage from the monologue of the Canon Caponsacchi. It gives expression to his vision of Count Guido’s spiritual down-sliding; “in the lowest deep a lower deep still threatening to devour him, opens wide”:-- “And thus I see him slowly and surely edged Off all the table-land whence life upsprings Aspiring to be immortality, As the snake, hatched on hill-top by mischance, Despite his wriggling, slips, slides, slidders down Hill-side, lies low and prostrate on the smooth Level of the outer place, lapsed in the vale: So I lose Guido in the loneliness, Silence, and dusk, till at the doleful end, At the horizontal line, creation’s verge, From what just is to absolute nothingness-- Lo, what is this he meets, strains onward still? What other man, deep further in the fate, Who, turning at the prize of a foot-fall To flatter him and promise fellowship, Discovers in the act a frightful face-- Judas, made monstrous by much solitude! The two are at one now! Let them love their love That bites and claws like hate, or hate their hate That mops and mows and makes as it were love! There, let them each tear each in devil’s-fun, Or fondle this the other while malice aches-- Both teach, both learn detestability! Kiss him the kiss, Iscariot! Pay that back, That smatch o’ the slaver blistering on your lip-- By the better trick, the insult he spared Christ-- Lure him the lure o’ the letters, Aretine! Lick him o’er slimy-smooth with jelly-filth O’ the verse-and-prose pollution in love’s guise! The cockatrice is with the basilisk! There let him grapple, denizens o’ the dark, Foes or friends, but indissolubly bound, In their one spot out of the ken of God Or care of man for ever and ever more!” Browning has distinctly indicated the standard by which he estimates art-work, in the closing paragraph of his Essay ‘On the Poet objective and subjective; on the latter’s aim; on Shelley as man and poet’.