Men and Women

(Published in 1855, in two vols.; now dispersed in vols. iii., iv. and v. of Poetical Works , 1868.) The poems included under this general title were fifty-one in number. Vol. 1. contained the following:—“Love among the Ruins,” “A Lovers’ Quarrel,” “Evelyn Hope,” “Up at a Villa—Down in the City,” “A Woman’s Last Word,” “Fra Lippo Lippi,” “A Toccata of Galuppi’s,” “By the Fireside,” “Any Wife to any Husband,” “An Epistle of Karshish,” “Mesmerism,” “A Serenade at the Villa,” “My Star,” “Instans Tyrannus,” “A Pretty Woman,” “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” “Respectability,” “A Light Woman,” “The Statue and the Bust,” “Love in a Life,” “Life in a Love,” “How it Strikes a Contemporary,” “The Last Ride Together,” “The Patriot,” “Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha,” “Bishop Blougram’s Apology,” “Memorabilia.” Vol. II.: “Andrea del Sarto,” “Before,” “After,” “In Three Days,” “In a Year,” “Old Pictures in Florence,” “In a Balcony,” “Saul,” “De Gustibus——,” “Women and Roses,” “Protus,” “Holy-Cro Day,” “The Guardian Angel,” “Cleon,” “The Twins,” “Popularity,” “The Heretic’s Tragedy,” “Two in the Campagna,” “A Grammarian’s Funeral,” “One Way of Love,” “Another Way of Love,” “Transcendentalism,” “Misconceptions,” “One Word More.” In the six-volume edition of Poetical Works the poems comprised under the title of Men and Women are the following, and it is these which are generally understood now by the Men and Women poems:—“Transcendentalism,” “How it Strikes a Contemporary,” “Artemis Prologuises,” “An Epistle containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish the Arab Physician,” “Pictor Ignotus,” “Fra Lippo Lippi,” “Andrea del Sarto,” “The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church,” “Bishop Blougram’s Apology,” “Cleon,” “Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli,” “One Word More.” Unquestionably in these works we have the very flower of Mr. Browning’s genius. There is not one of them which the world will willingly let die. As Mr. Symons says, their distinguishing feature is “the monologue brought to perfection. Such monologues as Andrea del Sarto , or The Epistle of Karshish , never have been, and probably never will be, surpa ed, on their own ground, after their own order.”