Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/209

Rh plish their function in the choice and development of some special situation, which lifts or glorifies a character in itself not poetical. To realise this situation, to define in a chill and empty atmosphere the focus where rays, in themselves pale and impotent, unite and begin to burn, the artist has to employ the most cunning detail, to complicate and refine upon thought and passion a thousand-fold. The poems of Robert Browning supply brilliant examples of this. His poetry is pre-eminently the poetry of situations. The characters themselves are always of secondary importance; often they are characters in themselves of little interest; they seem to come to him by strange accidents from the ends of the world. His gift is shown by the way in which he accepts such a character and throws it into some situation, apprehends it in some delicate pause of life, in which for a moment it becomes ideal. Take an instance from 'Dramatis Personæ.' In the poem entitled 'Le Byron de nos Jours' we have a single moment of passion thrown into relief in this exquisite way. Those two jaded Parisians are not intrinsically interesting; they only begin to interest us when thrown into a choice situation. But to discriminate that moment, to make it appreciable by us, that we may 'find it,' what a cobweb of allusions, what double and treble reflections of the mind upon itself, what an artificial light is