It is for the most part some new variation of his familiar theme--the soul taken in the grip of a tragic crisis, and displaying its unsuspected deeps and voids.

Not all are of this kind, however; and while his keenness for intense and abnormal effects is as pronounced as ever, he seeks them in an even more varied field.

Italy, the main haunt of his song, yields--it can hardly be said to have inspired--one only of the _Idyls_--_Pietro of Abano_.

Old memories of Russia are furbished up in _Ivan Ivanovitch_, odd gatherings from the byways of England and America in _Ned Bratts, Halbert and Hob, Martin Relph_; and he takes from Virgil's hesitating lips the hint of a joyous pagan adventure of the gods, and tells it with his own brilliant plenitude and volubility.

The mythic treatment of nature had never appealed much to Browning, even as a gay decorative device; he was presently to signalise his rejection of it in _Gerard de Lairesse_, a superb example of what he rejected.