And in most of these "idyls" there emerges a trait always implicit in Browning but only distinctly apparent in this last decade--the ironical contrasts between the hidden deeps of a man's soul and the assumptions or speculations of his neighbours about it.

The two worlds--inner and outer--fall more sharply apart; stranger abysses of self-consciousness appear on the one side, more shallow and complacent illusions on the other.

Relph's horror of remorse--painted with a few strokes of incomparable intensity, like his 'Get you behind the man I am now, you man that I used to be!'-- is beyond the comprehension of the friendly peasants; Clive's "fear" is as much misunderstood by his auditor as his courage by the soldiers; the "foolishness" of Muleykeh equally illudes his Arab comrades; the Russian villagers, the Pope, and the lord have to fumble through a long process of argument to the conclusion which for Ivan had been the merest matter of fact from the first.

Admirable in its quiet irony is the contrast between the stormy debate over his guilt or innocence and his serene security of mind as he sits cutting out a toy for his children:-- "They told him he was free As air to walk abroad; 'How otherwise ?' asked he." With the "wild men" Halbert and Hob it is the spell of a sudden memory which makes an abrupt rift between the men they have seemed to be and the men they prove.

Browning in his earlier days had gloried in these moments of disclosure; now they served to emphasise the normal illusion.
"Ah me!" sounds the note of the proem to the second series, scornful and sad:-- "Ah me! So ignorant of man's whole, Of bodily organs plain to see-- So sage and certain, frank and free, About what's under lock and key-- Man's soul!" The volume called _Jocoseria_ (1883) contains some fine things, and abounds with Browning's invariable literary accomplishment and metrical virtuosity, but on the whole points to the gradual disintegration of his genius.