Rarely has he treated any subject that has already been treated poetically unless we except the transcripts from the classics soon to be considered. Wherever he saw an interesting historical personage, interesting, not on account of his brilliant achievements in the eyes of the world, but on account of potentialities of character, such a one he has set before us to reveal himself. There are between twenty and thirty portraits of this nature in his work, chosen from all sorts and conditions of men--men who stand for some phase of growth in human thought; and always in developing a personality he gives the kernel of truth upon which their peculiar point of view is based. Thus, among the musical poems, Abt Vogler speaks for the intuitionalist--he who is blessed by a glimpse of the absolute truth. Charles Avison, on the other hand, is the philosopher of the relative in music and the arts generally. Among the art poems, Fra Lippo Lippi is the apostle of beauty in realism, Andrea del Sarto the attainer of perfection in form. In the religious poems the Jewish standpoint is illustrated in "Saul" and "Rabbi Ben Ezra," the Christian in the portrait of John in "The Death in the Desert"; the empirical reasoner in "Paracelsus." This is only one of Browning's methods in the choice and use of subject-matter. The characters and incidents in his stories are frequently the result of pure invention, but he sets them in an environment recreated from history, developing their individualities in harmony with the environment, thus giving at one stroke the spirit of the time and the individual qualities of special representatives of the time. Examples of this are: "My Last Duchess," where the Duke is an entirely imaginary person and the particular incident is invented, but he is made to act and talk in a way perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the time--mediæval Italy. "Hugues of Saxe-Gotha" is another being of Browning's fancy, who yet represents to perfection the spirit of the old fugue writers. "Luria," "The Soul's Tragedy," "In a Balcony," all represent the same method. Another plan pursued by the poet is either to invent or borrow a historical personage into whose mouth he puts the defence of some course of action or ethical standard that may or may not be founded upon the highest ideals. Sludge, the hero of "Fifine at the Fair," Bishop Blougram, Hohenstiel-Schwangau, range themselves in this group. There are comparatively few cases where he has taken a complete story and developed its spiritual possibilities without much change in external detail, but how adequate his art was to such ends, "The Ring and the Book," "Inn Album," "Two Poets of Croisic," "Red Cotton Nightcap Country," the historical dramas of "Strafford," and "King Victor and King Charles" fully prove, including, as they do, some of his finest masterpieces.