Before entering upon a discussion of Browning's poetry it will be of interest to note briefly some of the more striking general characteristics of the English literature contemporary with his work. From _Pauline_ to _Asolando_ is over half a century, but as a central and especially significant portion of Browning's career we may take the three decades from 1841, when he began the _Bells and Pomegranates_ series, to 1869, when _The Ring and the Book_ appeared, for these years include all of his dramas and most of the poetry on which his fame rests. A survey of this period at once reveals the predominance of fiction. Within these years come nearly all the novels of Charles Dickens, of William Makepeace Thackeray, of Charlotte Bronte, of Wilkie Collins, of Charles Kingsley, of Mrs. Gaskell, of Anthony Trollope, of George Macdonald, of Charles Reade, much of the work of Bulwer Lytton, all the novels of George Eliot except _Middlemarch_ and _Daniel Deronda_, and the earliest of George Meredith's books. This is a notable showing. No previous period in English literature had presented anything like so wide a range in fiction or had brought forward so large a number of novels of the first rank. These years were equally rich in essays, including much of Carlyle's work, all of Macaulay's except the early "Essay on Milton," the religious polemics of Frederick Dennison Maurice and John Henry Newman, nearly all of Ruskin's discussions of art and social history, most of Leigh Hunt's literary criticism, and Matthew Arnold's important early critical essays. This, too, is a notable showing. But if we turn to the two realms in which Browning excelled, poetry and drama, we find different conditions. During the central period of his career, there was, aside from his own work, not a single important drama published. The theaters were prosperous, but they brought out only old plays or new ones of inferior rank. In poetry, too, if we set aside the great names of Tennyson and Browning, the period was neither rich nor varied. During Browning's first great productive period, 1841-46, the only other poems of note were Tennyson's two volumes in 1842. In the nine years from 1846 to _Men and Women_ in 1855, the chief poems were Tennyson's _The Princess_, _In Memoriam_, and _Maud_, for though Wordsworth's _Prelude_ was one of the greatest publications of the mid-century, it was written years before, and can hardly be counted as belonging to this era. There are, during the decade, many poems of secondary rank, the most important of them being Mrs. Browning's _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ and _Aurora Leigh_, but besides Tennyson and Browning, the only poet of high rank is Matthew Arnold, whose slender volumes voice the doubts and difficulties of the age as Browning's poems voice its optimism. In the fourteen years between _Men and Women_ and _The Ring and the Book_ poets of a new kind appear; William Morris's _Defense of Guinevere_, _The Life and Death of