They do not.

Nor has their intellectual work the same force, unexpectedness and certainty it had of old.

Nevertheless, these _Parleyings_, at the close of the poet's life, and with biographical touches which give them vitality, enshrine Browning's convictions with regard to some of the greater and lesser problems of human life.

And when his personality is vividly present in them, the argument, being thrilled with passionate feeling, rises, but heavily like a wounded eagle, into an imaginative world.
The sub-consciousness in Browning's mind to which I have alluded--that these later productions of his were not as poetical as his earlier work and needed defence--is the real subject of a remarkable little poem at the end of the second volume of the _Dramatic Idyls_.

He is thinking of himself as poet, perhaps of that double nature in him which on one side was quick to see and love beauty; and on the other, to see facts and love their strength.