Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/139

Rh at his prime, But why is this? Because Shakespeare's style has unapproachable beauty, strength, flexibility, within the natural method of English verse; his inimitableness is due not to eccentricity, but to a grandeur of quality. His tone, characterization, and dialogue are as varied as nature. Browning's method hardly suggests either our native order of thought or nature's universality. It seems the result of a decision to compose in a peculiar way, but more likely is the honest reflex of his analytic mental processes. That at times it is great, and above that of his contemporaries, must be acknowledged, for his intellect was of a high order.

Swinburne calls his plays "monodramas, or soliloquies of the spirit." The subjectivity Dramatic lyrics and monologues. which blends their various personages in a common atmosphere does not detract from the effect of his powerful dramatic lyrics and monologues, each the study of a single character. The most striking of these pieces,—their abundance is prodigal, and not one is without excuse for being, from "My Last Duchess," "Bishop Blougram," "Childe Roland," "Saul," to "A Forgiveness," including nearly all the "Dramatic Lyrics," and "Men and Women," place him among the century's foremost masters. In such studies, and in certain of his dramas, he has created a new type of English poetry that is second only to the Elizabethan. His eminence is taken for granted when we begin to measure him, if only in contrast, by Shakespeare himself: a tribute rendered to scarcely any other