Out of the dramatic monologues he devised the scheme of _The
Ring and the Book_, a narrative poem in which the episodes, and not the
plot, are the basis of the structure, and the story of a trifling and
sordid crime is set forth as it appeared to the minds of the chief
actors in succession. To these new forms he added the originality of an
extraordinary realism in style. Few poets have the power by a word, a
phrase, a flash of observation in detail to make you see the event as
Browning makes you see it.
Many books have been written on the philosophy of Browning's poetry.
Stated briefly its message is that of an optimism which depends on a
recognition of the strenuousness of life. The base of his creed, as of
Carlyle's, is the gospel of labour; he believes in the supreme moral
worth of effort. Life is a "training school" for a future existence,
and our place in it depends on the courage and strenuousness with which
we have laboured here. Evil is in the world only as an instrument in the
process of development; by conquering it we exercise our spiritual
faculties the more. Only torpor is the supreme sin, even as in _The
Statue and the Bust_ where effort would have been to a criminal end.
"The counter our lovers staked was lost
As surely as if it were lawful coin:
And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
Was, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
Though the end in sight was a crime, I say.
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