Sometimes he even goes so far as to toss Nature aside altogether, as unworthy to be thought of in comparison with humanity.

That joy in Nature herself, for her own sake, which was so distinguishing a mark of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron and Keats, is rarely, if ever, found in Browning.

This places him apart.

What he loved was man; and save at those times of which I have spoken, when he conceives Nature as the life and play and wrath and fancy of huge elemental powers like gods and goddesses, he uses her as a background only for human life.

She is of little importance unless man be present, and then she is no more than the scenery in a drama.