we leave the mansion with a feeling of having seen one of the great masterpieces of poetic architecture, and with an abiding sense of the high achievement and higher aspirations of the master builder.
But enough of allegory, though the one we give may serve as well as another to suggest the total impression made by Browning's work. The extent of his achievements is the most striking quality. Seventeen volumes represent the poet's legacy to his countrymen. And what volumes! Crammed with thought, suffused with imagination, crowded with figures with life more real than half the people we meet, filled with suggestion, historic, ethical, artistic, and contemporary, they represent at least fifty volumes, if their full meaning were drawn out and displayed. Nor has this huge bulk been attained by harping on a limited set of themes. On the contrary, his topics are bewildering in their variety. The players in Hamlet had not a more varied répertoire. No one could ever guess what a new volume of Browning would contain—whether it would be sportive or melodramatic, speculative or soul-searching. And the range of treatment was as extensive as that of subject. He was not a great metrical artist, but he at least utilised the metrical themes open to the English poet, with the
