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o as to bring about the catastrophe; hence the propriety of the dialogue. But the introspective drama, in which the design is to represent and reveal the individual, requires a concentration of interest, a focussing of light on one point, to the exclusion or subordination of surroundings; hence the propriety of the monologue, in which a single speaker or thinker can consciously or unconsciously exhibit his own soul. This form of monologue, learnt perhaps from Landor, who used it with little psychological intention, appears in almost the earliest of Browning's poems, and he has developed it more skilfully and employed it more consistently than any other writer. Even in works like Sordello and Red Cotton Night-cap Country, which are thrown into the narrative form, many of the finest and most characteristic parts are in monologue; and The Inn Album is a series of slightly-linked dialogues which are only monologues in disguise. Nearly all the lyrics, romances, idyls, nearly all the miscellaneous poems, long and short, are monologues. And even in the dramas, as will be seen later, there is visible a growing tendency toward the monologue with its mental and individual, in place of the dialogue with its active and outer interest.
Browning's aim, then, being to see how each soul conceives of itself, and to exhibit its essential qualities, yet without complication of incident, it is his frequent practice to reveal the soul to itself by the application of a sudden test, which shall condense the long trial of years into a single moment, and so "flash the truth out by one blow." To this practice we owe his most vivid and notable work. "The poetry of Robert Browning," says Pater, "is pre-eminently the poetry of situations." He selects a character, no matter how uninteresting in itself, and places it in some situation where its vital essence may become apparent, in some crisis of conflict or opportunity. The choice of good or evil is open to it, and in perhaps a single moment its fate will be