It is worth noting that Browning was one of those wise men who can perceive the terrible and impressive poetry of the police-news, which is commonly treated as vulgarity, which is dreadful and may be undesirable, but is certainly not vulgar.

From _The Ring and the Book_ to _Red-Cotton Night-Cap Country_ a great many of his works might be called magnificent detective stories.

The story is somewhat ugly, and its power does not alter its ugliness, for power can only make ugliness uglier.

And in this poem there is little or nothing of the revelation of that secret wealth of valour and patience in humanity which makes real and redeems the revelation of its secret vileness in _The Ring and the Book_.

It almost looks at first sight as if Browning had for a moment surrendered the whole of his impregnable philosophical position and admitted the strange heresy that a human story can be sordid.