Alongside this perversion of the lyric, he created a looser and freer form, the dramatic monologue, in which most of his most famous poems, _Cleon, Sludge the Medium, Bishop Blougram's Apology_, etc., are cast.

In the convention which Browning established in it, all kinds of people are endowed with a miraculous articulation, a new gift of tongues; they explain themselves, their motives, the springs of those motives (for in Browning's view every thought and act of a man's life is part of an interdependent whole), and their author's peculiar and robust philosophy of life.

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.