Browning's dramatic instinct always attracted him to the stage. His tragedy, _Strafford_ (1837), was written for Macready, and put on at Covent Garden Theater, but without pronounced success. He wrote many fine dramatic poems, like _Pippa Passes, Colombe's Birthday_, and _In a Balcony_; and at least two good acting plays, _Luria_ and _A Blot in the Scutcheon._ The last named has recently been given to the American public, with Lawrence Barrett's careful and intelligent presentation of the leading role. The motive of the tragedy is somewhat strained and fantastic, but it is, notwithstanding, very effective on the stage. It gives one an unwonted thrill to listen to a play, by a contemporary English writer, which is really literature. One gets a faint idea of what it must have been to assist at the first night of _Hamlet_. 1. English Literature in the Reign of Victoria. Henry Morley. (Tauchnitz Series.) 2. Victorian Poets. E.C. Stedman. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1886. 3. Dickens. Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Tale of Two Cities. 4. Thackeray. Vanity Fair, Pendennis, Henry Esmond, The Newcomes. 5. George Eliot. Scenes of Clerical Life, Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Romola, Adam Bede, Middlemarch. 6. Macaulay. Essays, Lays of Ancient Rome. 7. Carlyle. Sartor Resartus, French Revolution, Essays on History, Signs of the Times, Characteristics, Burns, Scott, Voltaire, and Goethe. 8 The Works of Alfred Tennyson. London: Stranham & Co., 1872. 6 vols. 9. Selections from the Poetical Works of Robert Browning. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1880. 2 vols. APPENDIX. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. THE PRIORESS. [From the general prologue to the Canterbury Tales.]