Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/302

272 alone; it needs must drain its portion of anguish, failure, wrong. It would set, like the nightingale, its breast against the thorn. Its greatest victory is when it is most agonized. When all is lost, when the dark tower is reached, then Childe Roland dauntless winds his blast upon the slug-horn. Its arms scattered, its armor torn away, the soul, "the victor-victim," slips from mortal encumbrance and soars freer than ever. Victor atque victima, atque ideo victor quia victima. This is the constant lesson of the lyrics and plays and studies of Browning, the most red-blooded and impassioned of modern dramatic poets; a wise and great master, whose imagination, if it be less strenuous than his insight and feeling, was yet sufficient to derive from history and experience more types of human passion than have been marshalled by any compeer. I have been struck by a critic's quotation of a passage from Beyle (written in 1817) which says that, after centuries of artificiality, it must be the office of the coming artist to express "states of soul,"—that that is what a Michelangelo would do with modern sculpture. In truth the potent artist, the great poet, is he who makes us realize the emotions of those who experience august extremes of fortune. For what can be of more value than intense and memorable sensations? What else make up that history which alone is worth the name of life?

The most dramatic effects are often those which indicate suppressed passion—that the hounds are