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But as the great silence draws upon Jerome, his voice rings out in challenge:

That is de Vere's high-water mark in the dramatic monologue; there are less felicitous instances. Browning's method in the soliloquy was, it will be remembered, to reproduce the broken sentences, the seemingly irrelevant thoughts, the passionate outbursts of a soul communing with itself; hence his dramatic truthfulness—hence, also, a measure of ambiguity. With de Vere the tendency was rather to be too clear, too