The publication of _Sordello_ in 1840 closes the first phase of Browning's literary career. By the great majority of those who had hailed the splendid promise of _Paracelsus_, the author of _Sordello_ was frankly given up. Surprisingly few thought it worth while to wrestle with the difficult book. It was the day of the gentle literary public which had a few years before recoiled from _Sartor Resartus_, and which found in the difficulty of a book the strongest presumption against it. A later generation, leavened by Carlyle, came near to regarding difficulty as a presumption in its favour, and this more strenuous and athletic attitude towards literature was among the favouring conditions which brought Browning at length into vogue. CHAPTER III. MATURING METHODS. DRAMAS AND DRAMATIC LYRICS. Since Chaucer was alive and hale, No man hath walk'd along our roads with step So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue So varied in discourse. --LANDOR. The memorable moment when Browning, standing on the ruined palace-step at Venice, had taken Humanity for his mate, opened an epoch in his poetic life to which the later books of _Sordello_ form a splendid prelude. For the Browning of 1840 it was no longer a sufficient task to trace the epochs in the spiritual history of lonely idealists, to pursue the problem of existence in minds themselves preoccupied with its solution. "Soul" is still his fundamental preoccupation; but the continued play of an eager intellect and vivacious senses upon life has immensely multiplied the points of concrete experience which it vivifies and transfigures to his eyes. It is as if a painter trained in the school of Raphael or Lionardo had discovered that he could use the minute and fearless brush of the Flemings in the service of their ideals. He pursues soul in all its rich multiplicity, in the tortuosities and dark abysses of character; he forces crowds of sordid, grotesque, or commonplace facts to become its expressive speech; he watches its thought and passion projected into the tide of affairs, caught up in the clash and tangle of plot. In all these three ways the Dramas and Dramatic Lyrics and Romances, which were to be his poetic occupation during the Forties, detach themselves sharply from _Paracelsus_ and the early books of _Sordello_. A poem like _The Laboratory_ (1844), for instance, stands at almost the opposite pole of art to these. All that Browning neglected or veiled in _Paracelsus_ he here thrusts into stern relief. The passion and crime there faintly discerned in the background of ideally beautiful figures are here his absorbing theme. The curious technicalities of the chemist's workshop, taken for granted in _Paracelsus_, are now painted with a realism reminiscent of Romeo's Apothecary and _The Alchemist_. And the outward drama of intrigue, completely effaced in _Paracelsus_ by the inward drama of soul, sounds delusive scorn and laughter in the background, the