From the instances already cited it is apparent that Browning's interest centered, not in abstract or theoretical discussions of human problems, but in the individuals who face the problems. In this point Browning is sharply distinguished from his poetic contemporaries as a class. They felt deeply "all the weary weight of this unintelligible world," so deeply that while they gave much thought to ideals of social amelioration, few of them presented individuals with any dramatic distinctness. Browning stands practically by himself in the nineteenth century as the poet who gives us both the "doubter and the doubt," who is able to join with an impressive statement of the hopes and fears of man, an equally impressive sequence of individual men and women. In this he harks back to the broad inclusiveness of the Elizabethan dramatists. In contemporary literature, his nearest congeners are in fiction, not in poetry.
The great number and variety of Browning's characters can be illustrated in different ways. We might, for instance, note how many nationalities are represented. The personages in "Stafford" and the "Cavalier Tunes" are Englishmen from the time of the Civil War. "Clive" is a true story of the Indian Empire. We have from Italian life the numerous characters in _Sordello_, "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Pictor Ignotus," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church," "My Last Duchess," _The Ring and the Book_, "A Grammarian's Funeral," "Up at a Villa--Down in the City," "In a Gondola," and many more. "Count Gismond" and "Hervé Riel" are French stories. _Paracelsus_ and "Abt Vogler" are of German origin. _Balaustion's Adventure_, _Aristophanes' Apology_, "Pheidippides," and "Echetlos" celebrate Greek thought and adventure. Very important poems such as "Saul" and "Rabbi Ben Ezra," have to do with Jewish life. And unlike Shakespeare, who is not concerned with making Julius Cæsar a Roman or Duke Theseus a Greek, Browning brings to the creation of each of these widely divergent characters, a detailed knowledge of the special habits of life and thought of the nation or race concerned. He represents also many kinds of human interest. We find in his poems seekers after knowledge such as Paracelsus, who takes all thought and fact as his domain; or such as the Grammarian, who found Greek particles too wide a realm; or such as the pedant Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis, whose learned rubbish cumbers the land. There are likewise those who grope after the truths of religion from Caliban on his island to the learned physician Karshish and the highly cultured Cleon; those who have the full vision from John to Rabbi Ben Ezra; those who juggle with terms and creeds as does Bishop Blougram; and out and out frauds like Sludge the Medium. The church is represented by many men dissimilar in endowments, tastes, spiritual experiences, and aims. There are Italian prelates of every sort, from the worldly-minded Bishop of St. Praxed's, occupied in death with vain thoughts of lapis-lazuli and pure Latin, to the "soldier-saint," Caponsacchi, who saved Pompilia, and the wise old Pope who pronounced Guido's doom; from the unworthy priest in the Spanish Cloister to the very human, kindly Pope in "The Bean Feast." And from all these it is far down the ages to the evangelical parish priest of _The Inn Album_, that "purblind honest drudge," who, the deeper to impress his flock, painted heaven dimly but "made hell distinct." There are many artists, many musicians. There are poets from Aprile in _Paracelsus_, and the troubadours Eglamour and Sordello, to Keats and Shelley. The extremes of social life are given. There are the street-girls in _Pippa Passes_ and there are kings and queens with royal retinues. There are statesmen, and warriors, and seekers after romantic adventure. There are haughty aristocrats of cold and cruel natures, and there are obscure but high-hearted doers of heroic deeds. Browning's dictum, "Study man, man, whatever the issue," led him into a world wider than that known by any other poet of his time, and akin, as has been pointed out, to that of the great writers of fiction. As an observer of human life he was not unlike his poor poet of Valladolid who, with his "scrutinizing hat," went about the streets, absorbed in watching all kinds of people, all sorts of occupations, "scenting the world, looking it full in the face." He chose to set forth "the wants and ways" of actual life. He summed up his work in the "Epilogue to Pacchiarotto":