No poet was ever more interested in life than Browning, and whatever else may be said of his poetry it must be admitted that it is very interesting. He touches all sides of human activity and peers into the secret places of knowledge. He enters into the life of musicians in _Abt Vogler_, _Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha_, _A Toccata of Galuppi’s_, and _Charles Avison_; into the life of painters in _Andrea del Sarto_, _Pictor Ignotus_, _Fra Lippo Lippi_, _Old Pictures in Florence_, _Gerard de Lairesse_, _Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper_, and _Francis Furini_; into the life of scholars in _A Grammarian’s Funeral_ and _Fust and his Friends_; into the life of politicians in _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ and _George Bubb Dodington_; into the life of ecclesiastics in the _Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister_, _Bishop Blougram’s Apology_, _The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church_, and _The Ring and the Book_; and he makes excursions into all kinds of byways and crooked corners of life in such poems as _Mr. Sludge, the Medium_, _Porphyria’s Lover_, _Mesmerism_, _Johannes Agricola in Meditation_, _Pietro of Abano_, _Ned Bratts_, _Jochanan Hakkadosh_, and so forth. Merely to read a list of such titles is to have evidence of Browning’s insatiable curiosity. It is evident also that he has a fondness for out-of-the-way places. He wants to know, even more than he wants to enjoy. If Wordsworth is the poet of the common life, Browning is the poet of the uncommon life. Extraordinary situations and eccentric characters attract him. Even when he is looking at some familiar scene, at some commonplace character, his effort is to discover something that shall prove that it is not familiar, not commonplace,—a singular detail, a striking feature, a mark of individuality. This gives him more pleasure than any distant vision of an abstraction or a general law. “All that I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower hangs furled; They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world? Mine has opened its soul to me, therefore I love it.” One consequence of this penetrating, personal quality of mind is that Browning’s pages teem with portraits of men and women, which are like sculptures and paintings of the Renaissance. They are more individual than they are typical. There is a peculiarity about each one of them which almost makes us forget to ask whether they have any general relation and value. The presentations are so sharp and vivid that their representative quality is lost.