Browning is not so broadly representative of the movement of the age. He gave dramatic expression to one aspect of its experience; but that aspect was of thrilling interest. Tennyson did not miss the significance of individual impulse; but he saw men in ordered ranks, in social relations. He felt and expressed the collective experience of his age. Browning felt and expressed the experience of individual souls, of “Paracelsus,” “Luria.” He is the interpreter of exceptional experiences and natures, of “Abt Vogler,” Andrea del Sarto, the Renaissance Bishop. He knew secrets of great and mean souls, of Pompilia and the Pope, of “Half Rome” and Caponsacchi (kah´´-pahn-sock´-kee), in “The Ring and the Book,” of “The Patriot,” and of the husband of “The Last Duchess.” He was a psychologist of penetrating intelligence, and his passion for analysis and dealing with problems sometimes ran away with him, to use a colloquialism; hence the perplexities which beset the student of some of his work and the organization of clubs to interpret him. [Illustration: THE PALACE IN VENICE WHERE BROWNING DIED It was in this house, surrounded by all the beauties of Venice, that the poet breathed his last on December 12, 1889.] [Illustration: ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING From a portrait painted at Rome in 1859 by Field Talfourd.] Browning was often a very effective artist; but he was often very indifferent to form, and there are long productions of his which are intensely interesting but are not in any proper sense poetry. Time will separate the experiments in psychology from the achievements in art, and there will remain a body of poetry which appeals powerfully to men and women of intellectual interests and habits; a poetry notable for its reading of the secrets of individuality, its splendid optimism based on faith in the individual soul and in the purpose and power behind the universe, in the sense of freedom to take and use life daringly, in the impulse to action and spiritual venture, for its bold imagery and strong phrasing. Such poems as “Prospice,” “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” are not only impressive poetry, but have the note of the bugle in them. [Illustration: MRS. BROWNING’S TOMB IN FLORENCE, ITALY Elizabeth Barrett Browning was herself a poet of exceptional genius; she was born in 1806, married to Robert Browning in 1846, and died in 1861.]