CHAPTER XIV.
_WOMANHOOD IN BROWNING_ (_THE DRAMATIC LYRICS AND POMPILIA_) No modern poet has written of women with such variety as Browning.
Coleridge, except in a few love-poems, scarcely touched them.

Wordsworth did not get beyond the womanhood of the home affections, except in a few lovely and spiritual sketches of girlhood which are unique in our literature, in which maidenhood and the soul of nature so interchange their beauty that the girl seems born of the lonely loveliness of nature and lives with her mother like a child.
What motherhood in its deep grief and joy, what sisterhood and wifehood may be, have never been sung with more penetration and exquisiteness than Wordsworth sang them.

But of the immense range, beyond, of womanhood he could not sing.

Byron's women are mostly in love with Byron under various names, and he rarely strays beyond the woman who is loved or in love.

The woman who is most vital, true and tender is Haidee in _Don Juan_.