morals and in faith. In two other cases, _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ and _A Death in the Desert_, Browning has given similar glimpses of his own ideal, but they are less full than the view we get in _The Pope_. To Browning's middle period belong likewise many of his love-poems, and these are unique in the English language. Others, like Shakespeare and Burns and Shelley, have given a more purely captivating expression to the ardour of love; no one else has so worked out its philosophy. Not that Browning's poems are deficient in feeling; the expressions of his own love for his wife, 'O lyric love' and _One Word More_, would suffice to refute such a criticism. But he prefers to take an aspect of passion and to explain it by the way of thought. He is analytical. The best example is _James Lee's Wife_, which goes through a whole drama of passion, and might be described, like Tennyson's _Maud_, as 'a lyrical mono-drama.' This, for good or evil, is another method from that of 'Take, oh take those lips away,' or 'I arise from dreams of thee,' or 'Of a' the airts.' There is both gain and loss in Browning's way of treatment. On the one hand, the lyric strain is less pure. If poetry ought to be 'simple, sensuous and impassioned,' and it has been generally thought that lyric poetry in particular should be so, then is Browning's less in harmony with the ideal. On the other hand, because his is a new way Browning impresses the reader with his originality; and because it is a thoughtful way he has a wide range. Moreover, it is a purifying and ennobling way. No poet free, as Browning is, from the taint of asceticism has ever treated the passion of love in a manner so little physical as he. There are in his works errors of taste that cause a shudder; but they are not here. It was likewise during this period that Browning was at his dramatic best. Nearly all his best pieces are dramatic in conception, though sometimes, as in the love-poems, we are confined to single aspects of character. Not to speak of the great figures of _The Ring and the Book_, there is ample variety in _Men and Women_ and in _Dramatis Personæ_. There are few figures more clearly drawn or more easily remembered than _Andrea del Sarto_; and _My Last Duchess_ is equally fine. In these two pieces Browning has succeeded better than elsewhere in keeping himself in the background. _Fra Lippo Lippi_ has likewise the stamp of dramatic truth, and is rich in humour; and _Bishop Blougram_ is at once an excellent character, and, though a satirical conception, the mouthpiece of some serious thought.