Finally, to complete the list of Browning's works, reference is necessary to the group of books of his later years: the two self-called narrative poems, 'The Ring and the Book,' with its vast length, and 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country,' its fellow in method if not in extent. Mr. Birrell (it is worth while to quote him again, as one who has not merged the appreciator in the adulator) calls 'The Ring and the Book' "a huge novel in 20,000 lines--told after the method not of Scott, but of Balzac; it tears the hearts out of a dozen characters; it tells the same story from ten different points of view. It is loaded with detail of every kind and description: you are let off nothing." But he adds later:--"If you are prepared for this, you will have your reward; for the style, though rugged and involved, is throughout, with the exception of the speeches of counsel, eloquent and at times superb: and as for the matter--if your interest in human nature is keen, curious, almost professional; if nothing man, woman, or child has been, done, or suffered, or conceivably can be, do, or suffer, is without interest for you; if you are fond of analysis, and do not shrink from dissection--you will prize 'The Ring and the Book' as the surgeon prizes the last great contribution to comparative anatomy or pathology." This is the key of the matter: the reader who has learned, through his greater work, to follow with interest the very analytic exercises, and as it were _tours de force_ of Browning's mind, will prize 'The Ring and the Book' and 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country'; even he will prize but little the two 'Adventures of Balaustion,' 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau,' 'The Inn Album,' and one or two others of the latest works in the same _genre_. But he can well do without them, and still have the inexhaustible left.