Again and again Browning here dwells upon the magic of love,--as if love still retained for the ageing poet an isolated and exceptional irradiating power in a world fast fading into commonplace and prose.

The brief, exquisite snatches of song, _Natural Magic, Magical Nature_, are joyous tributes to the power of the charm, paid by one who remains master of his heart.

_Numpholeptos_ is the long-drawn enchanted reverie of one in the very toils of the spell--a thing woven of dreams and emotions, dark-glowing, iridescent to the eye, languorous to the ear, impalpable to the analytic intellect.

In _Bifurcation_ he puts again, with more of subtlety and of detachment, the problem of the conventional conflict of love with duty, so peremptorily decided in love's favour in _The Statue and the Bust_.

_A Forgiveness_ is a powerful reworking of the theme of _My Last Duchess_, with an added irony of situation: Browning, who excels in the drama of silent figures, has drawn none more effective than this guilty priest, who grinds his teeth behind the confessional grating as he listens perforce to the story of his own crime from the lips of the wronged husband, still cherishing the hope that he is unrecognised, or at the worst may elude vengeance in his cloister's solitude; until the avenger's last words throw off the mask:-- "Hardly, I think! As little helped his brow The cloak then, Father--as your grate helps now!" From these high matters of passion and tragedy we pass by easy steps into the jocular-colloquial region in which the volume opened.