Chiappino is Browning's Werle; the reverse side of a type which he had drawn with so much indulgence in the Luigi of _Pippa Passes_.
Plainly, it was a passing mood; as plainly, a mood which, from the high and luminous vantage-ground of 1846, he could look back upon with regret, almost with scorn.

His intercourse with Elizabeth Barrett was far advanced before she was at length reluctantly allowed to see it.
"For _The Soul's_ _Tragedy_," he wrote (Feb.

11)--"that will surprise you, I think.

There is no trace of you there,--you have not put out the black face of _it_--it is all sneering and disillusion--and shall not be printed but burned if you say the word." This word his correspondent, needless to add, did not say; on the contrary, she found it even more impressive than its successor _Luria_.

This was, however, no tribute to its stage qualities; for in hardly one of his plays is the stage more openly ignored.