'Prospice' is another instance of melodious verse, expressing thought exalted, philosophical and spiritual.
Who is not impressed with the strength and sweep of 'Cristina'?
"There are flashes struck from mid-nights, there are fire-flames noon-days kindle,
Whereby piled-up honors perish, Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle."
We cannot ignore the graceful flow of 'Confessions':
"How sad and bad and mad it was--
But then, how it was sweet!"
I must also quote what seems to me a very vital tribute to his genius:
"Browning is one of the very few men--Mr. Meredith excepted--who can paint women without idealization or degradation, not from the man's side, but from their own; as living equals, not as goddesses or as toys." His poetry has been described as "superb landscape painting in verse." Swinburne differentiates Browning's work as marked by decisive and incisive faculty of thought, sureness and intensity of perception, rapid and trenchant resolution of aim. 'The Ring and the Book' is the masterpiece of this great Victorian master.
If then it be remembered that Browning ranks high as a humorist, that he has brilliant and subtle qualities, that he could appreciate and translate into poetry the stirring events of both sacred and profane history; that he drew Religion in all shapes to his side, that Mythology and Orientalism were his boon companions; that he moulded Art to his purpose, allured Music by his call, won Philosophy by his gaze, looked Truth in the eyes; there can be little or no doubt that he was the greatest of all the poets of the Victorian School and in his single person united all the highest characteristics of his literary contemporaries. Through him the Victorian School was raised to a height and deepened to a depth that without him it never would have had.