Much of the same power is shown in Cristina and Monaldeschi,[58] a dramatic monologue with all the old vigour of Browning’s early work of that kind; not only keen and subtle, but charged with a sharp electrical quality, which from time to time darts out with a sudden and unexpected shock.  The style and tone are infused with a peculiar fierce irony.  The metre is rapid and stinging, like the words of the vindictive queen as she hurries her treacherous victim into the hands of the assassins.  There is dramatic invention in the very cadence: 

      “Ah, but how each loved each, Marquis! 
          Here’s the gallery they trod
          Both together, he her god,
          She his idol,—­lend your rod,
      Chamberlain!—­ay, there they are—­’Quis
          Separabit?’—­plain those two
          Touching words come into view,
          Apposite for me and you!”

Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli, a dramatic lyric of three verses, the pathetic utterance of an unloved loving woman’s heart, is not dissimilar in style to Cristina and Monaldeschi.  It would be unjust to Fuseli to name him Bottom, but only fair to Mary Wollstonecraft to call her Titania.

Of the remaining poems, Donald ("a true story, repeated to Mr. Browning by one who had heard it from its hero, the so-called Donald, himself,"[59]) is a ballad, not at all in Browning’s best style, but certainly vigorous and striking, directed against the brutalising influences of sport, as Tray was directed against the infinitely worse brutalities of ignorant and indiscriminate vivisection.  Its noble human sympathies and popular style appeal to a ready audience. Solomon and Balkis, though by no means among the best of Browning’s comic poems, is a witty enough little tale from that inexhaustible repository, the Talmud.  It is a dialogue between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, not “solely” nor at all “of things sublime.” Pambo is a bit of pointed fun, a mock-modest apology to critics.  Finally, besides a musical little love-song named Wanting is—­What? we have in Never the Time and the Place one of the great love-songs, not easily to be excelled, even in the work of Browning, for strength of spiritual passion and intensity of exultant and certain hope.

      “NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE.

      Never the time and the place
        And the loved one all together! 
      This path—­how soft to pace! 
        This May—­what magic weather! 
      Where is the loved one’s face? 
      In a dream that loved one’s face meets mine,
        But the house is narrow, the place is bleak
      Where, outside, rain and wind combine
        With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak,
        With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek,
      With a malice that marks each word, each sign! 
      O enemy sly and serpentine,
        Uncoil