the stage? and where is it? and who is the actor? and what have you had in the play? It is when we examine these points that the want of clearness in critical estimates of this poetry becomes plain. Such poetry, it is said, is not drama, nor is it really dramatic. And if the essence of all dramatic expression be action and strictly objective statement, this must be allowed. But is not that too narrow a conception ? Is not the very principle of dramatic expression in such work? For, to put the matter in phrases of the poet's own, not "action in character" only, but also "character in action," must be held dramatic. But where is the "action"? it may be said. When the soul is in question, expression is action. It is thinking and feeling made objective; it is the character in motion and presenting itself. Inward and outward facts are combined, but only to present the "soul." Its relations to other lives are involved in the play of the lyric, but only to define itself. Of this drama the "soul" is the stage, and the soul the single or leading dramatis persona. Other persons and facts come in, but only through it, and the whole world is seen for the time from its point of view. The man and the life are seen as related to and lighted up by something that shows the very principle and quality of both.

And this has been called "dramatic thinking" or "dramatic apology," as if the primary and final interest were intellectual, or as if the poems were only cases of "special pleading," only thought, stating itself in terms

and combinations of life, or argument so vivid that it has dramatic force and a voice like the voice of life, though the work all the same is intellectual, not vital; abstract, not concrete. And I admit that some of the lyrics have that look, and some of them that quality mainly. But almost everywhere the work has true dramatic quality, and involves the person, not the mind only; character, not "thoughts about man and life" only. The conception is dramatic, the statement vital, and even in work where the leading matter is argument there is a body of dramatic detail. and suggestion that gives you the man or the type as a dramatic image.

In the old sense, then, Browning's work is not dramatic; in the above sense it is distinctly so. Action and active relations are not its sphere, but the mind itself. Its aim is to represent the man, not merely what he did or would do in given circumstances, nor merely what he said or would have said in active life. Its scope is thought and passion, not speech and conduct. Its field is the soul and its forces, not the world and its actions.

And this is its charm and its worth for us. The new dramatic poetry cannot be as the old drama. A new spirit and view of man and a new aim animate and command it-a more subtle and searching spirit, a deeper curiosity, a fuller effort. The art that deals with man in our time must, in fact, express the modern interest and thought. You may, of course, prefer a simpler, a more unconscious and outward presentation

of life; but at this time, and amid its science and philosophy and spiritual debate, you are not likely to get it, except, it may be, by forcible suppression or by languor and weakness. The same thoughtful and inward quality is in all our work dealing with human life -in George Eliot as in Robert Browning. The great novelist, in her interest and in her way of looking at men and human life, shows the same tendency and presents similar results. As compared with earlier novelists, there is the same kind of difference between their work and hers that there is between the older drama and Browning's poetry, while George Meredith shows still closer affinities of aim and result. In fact, such art is the fit exponent of the modern spirit in its human interests and insights, and even Shakspere, in whom all things of the modern world of man seem to be expressed or implicit, made "Hamlet" and "Lear."

Still, granting the dramatic quality of the poetry and its relation to modern life, are these poems a proper form of art, and what is it we get by their method? Is it possible to represent the "souls" of men? The phrase is easily spoken, and it pleases certain minds, but has it any solid meaning, and can its claim be made good? To do what Shakspere did asked genius enough, but this seems a higher claim and a harder task. Let it, then, be frankly said that we make no deep mystery of the matter. If it be done, it is done within the laws and by the means of art. And how? It is done from the new point of view and with the new field of vision, as Shakspere did his

work from the older standpoint. Through his own humanity and resources of nature and knowledge, through vital sympathy and identifying imagination, the poet takes his stand within his dramatis persona, and feels with and thinks for them. He animates and moves them so that they present themselves. He takes some critical moment or situation, and from that point the character is set in action, that keenest action of the mind within and on itself, and so the man is given with an intimacy and truth no drama dare use or could reach by its proper means.

We have said the "man" is presented. But, looking closely at many of these dramatic lyrics, is it so? The poet speaks of the "soul," but that, you will say, is only part of the man; and in dramatic art, which must be audible, if not visible, it is a smaller part of the man in action than some appear to think. And again, you say, many of these poems are strictly "lyrical," dealing with purely imaginary persons and situations, and only conceived to express some part of the poet's own mind; while many of the poems are even worse, regarded from our present point of view, for they are simply meditations in character, or arguments from an assumed dramatic standpoint. And all you can have in such work, it may be thought, is dramatic form without dramatic truth or reality. It is only the poet's mind, and his view of what may be said of and for certain "persons." His soul animates and overflows the men and women presented. And as in part proof of this, it is urged that you can't

imagine any one save

Browning talking as all his
The poet is not only behind

men and women talk.

them; he is through them and before them.

And yet the men and women are there in some sense, and their " cases are put with vital fulness. That seems to be the fact; but for greater clearness on an important matter let us meet the points just stated. The men given us in these poems would not, and in many cases could not, have said the things here said for them; but were such things in them, do such things express them, even if consciousness and thought must have been raised to higher powers ere they could have uttered them-for if these things and this speech of our poet rightly interpret them in that inner sense, then his method is justified and its results are vital. But around all the persona and in all the style you are aware of the poet-his mind runs through and qualifies all; or, in other words, his dramatic expression is not purely objective. You have the men and women always plus Browning. It is so.

But is not that part of the charm and value, and part of the means, is it not the necessary medium, of such work? You could not have such dramatic studies without this. The men and women and the questions of their lives are seen in the light and amid the spaces of the poet's mind.

It is not easy to say what it is you have in this matter, what this "subjective medium" quite exactly is. It is not a "judgment " passed on the "persons," nor a deliverance of the "opinions" or "preferences"