If it takes a long time to cast a devil out, it takes a longer time to depose an angel.

And the devil may be utterly banished, but the angel never.

And though the devil of mere wit and the little devils of analytic exercise--devils when they usurp the throne in a poet's soul and enslave imaginative emotion--did get the better of Browning, it was only for a time.

Towards the end of his life he recovered, but never as completely as he had once possessed them, the noble attributes of a poet.

The evils of the struggle clung to him; the poisonous pleasure he had pursued still affected him; he was again and again attacked by the old malaria.
He was as a brand plucked from the burning.
_The Ring and the Book_ is the central point of this struggle.