Not directly, then, but indirectly, as the dramatic poet ever
reveals himself, does the sophisticated face of the subtle poet of
"Men and Women" appear as the source of power behind both of the
poets of this poem, prepossessing the reader of the verity and
beauty of the theory of poetic art therein exemplified. Such an
interpretation of "Transcendentalism," and such a conception of it
as a key to the art of the volume it opens, chimes in harmoniously
with the note sounded in the next following poem, "How it Strikes a
Contemporary." Here again a typical poet is personified, not,
however, by means of his own poetic way of seeing, but of the
prosaic way in which he is seen by a contemporary, the whole, of
course, being poetically seen and presented by the
over-poet. Browning himself, and in such a manifold way that the
reader is enabled to conceive as vividly of the talker and his
mental atmosphere and social background--the people and habitudes of
the good old town of Valladolid--as of the betalked-of Corregidor
himself; while by the totality of these concrete images an
impression is conveyed of the dramatic mode of poetic expression
which is far more convincing than any explicit theoretic statement
of it could be, because so humanly animated.
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