"Count Guido, left alone with his nameless and penniless wife, still hopes for the best. Pompilia is not guilty of her mock parents' sins. She has been honest enough to take part against them when writing to her brother-in-law in Rome.[26] He and she may still live in peace together. But now the old story begins again—that of the elderly husband and the young wife. Canon Caponsacchi throws comfits at Pompilia in the theatre; brushes against her in the street; has constantly occasion to pass under her window, or to talk to some one opposite to it. He, of course, looks up; Pompilia looks down; the neighbours say, 'What of that?' The Count is uncomfortable, but he is only laughed at for his pains; the fox prowls round the hen-roost undisturbed. He wakes one morning, after a drugged sleep, to find the house ransacked, and Pompilia gone, and everyone able to inform him that she has gone with Caponsacchi, and to Rome. He pursues them, and overtakes them where they have spent the night together. She brazens the matter out, covers her husband with invective, and threatens him with his own sword. He gives both in charge, and follows them to Rome, where he seeks redress from the law. But he does not obtain redress, though the couple's guilt is made as clear as day by a packet of love letters which they had left behind them. They swear that they did not write the letters, and the Court believes them. 'They have done wrong, of course, but there is no proof of crime;' and they are let off with a mere show of punishment."

"The Count returns to Arezzo to find the whole story known, and himself the laughing-stock of everybody. He is complimented on his patience under his wife's attack—congratulated on having come out of it with a whole skin. He pushes his claim for a divorce on the obvious ground of infidelity! is met by a counter-claim on the ground of—cruelty! One exasperating circumstance fellows another. At last he hears of the birth of a child, which will be falsely represented as his heir; and then the pent-up passion breaks forth, and in one great avenging wave it washes his name clear."

"Yet he gives the guilty one a last chance. He utters the name of Caponsacchi at her door. If she regrets her offence, that name will bar it. It proves a talisman at which the door flies open. The Count and his assistants must be tried for form's sake. But if they are condemned, there is no justice left in Rome. If he had taken his wife's life at the moment of provocation, he would have been praised for the act. But he called in the law to do what he was bound to do for himself; and the law has assessed his honour at what seemed to be his own price. The vengeance, too long delayed, has been excessive in consequence. It was clumsy into the bargain, since the Canon has escaped alive. Well, if harm comes, husbands who are disposed to take the new way instead of the old will have had a lesson; and the Count has only himself to thank."

THE OTHER HALF-ROME is chiefly impressed by the spectacle of a young wife and mother butchered by her husband in cold blood: and can only think of her as having been throughout a victim. It does not absolve Violante, but it allows something for honest parental feeling in the old couple's desire for a child; and something for the good done to this human waif by its adoption into a decent home. According to this version, it is the Count and his brother who lay the matrimonial trap, and the Comparini parents and child who fall into it. "The grim Guido is at first kept in the background. Abate Paolo makes the proposal. He is oily and deferential, and flatters poor foolish Violante, and dazzles her at the same time. 'His elder brother,' he says, 'is longing to escape from Rome and its pomps and glare. He wants his empty old palace at Arezzo, and his breezy villa among the vines,'—and here the emptiness of both is described so as to sound like wealth. 'Poor Guido! he is always harping upon his home. But he wants a wife to take there—a wife not quite empty-handed, since he is not rich for his rank—but above all, with a true tender heart and an innocent soul—one who will be a child to his mother, and fall into his own ways. Many a parent would be glad to welcome him as a son-in-law, but report tells him that Violante's daughter is just the girl he wants.'"

"The marriage takes place. Foolish Pietro is talked over and strips himself of everything he has. He and his wife have no choice but to go and live with their son-in-law and his mother and brother. They meet with nothing under his roof but starvation, insult, and cruelty, and return home after a few months, duped and beggared, to ask hospitality of those whom they had once entertained. Violante, overwhelmed by these misfortunes, confesses that Pompilia is not her child, and Pietro proclaims the fact; not that he wishes to leave Pompilia in the lurch, but because he thinks this a sure way of getting her back.—Count Guido is clearly not the man to wish to retain as his wife a base-born girl without a dowry, and whom he has never loved.—But the case must be settled by law, the law pronounces in Count Guido's favour so far as the actual marriage portion is concerned; and Count Guido clearly lays his plans so as to half-drive and half-tempt his wife into the kind of misconduct which will rid him of her without prejudicing his right to what she has brought him."

This half of Rome accepts Pompilia's story of all that led to her flight, and Caponsacchi's statement that he assisted in it simply to save her life. It thinks the husband's intrigues sufficiently proved by the fact that the Canon owns to having received letters which the wife denies having written, and which must, therefore, have been forged. Count Guido, it declares, has had no wrongs to avenge, and supposing he had wrongs, he has adopted too convenient a mode of avenging them. "He demands protection from the law, and the moment its balance trembles against him he flies out of court, declaring that wounded honour can only be cured by the sword. At all events he has given the law plenty to do: three courts at work for him, and an appeal to the Pope besides. If any law is binding on mankind it is that such as he shall be made an end of. He is the common enemy of his fellow-men."

TERTIUM QUID sees no reason for assuming that the wrong is altogether on either side, and reviews the circumstances in such a manner as to show that there is probably right on both. He lays stress on the expediency of judging the Comparini by the morals of their class, and Count Guido by the peculiarities of his own nature; admits the punishment of the wife and parents to have been excessive, and cannot admit it to have been unprovoked; does not pretend to decide between the conflicting statements, and does not consider that Pompilia's dying confession throws much light upon them; seeing that it may be equally true, or false, or neutralized by another reserved for the priest's ear. Does not regard putting the Count to the torture as the right mode of eliciting the truth: because he may be innocent. But declares that if he does not deserve to undergo the torture, no one ever did or will. Tertium Quid is sometimes flippant in tone, and his neutral attitude seems chiefly the result of indifference or of caution. He is addressing himself to a Highness and an Excellency, and is careful not to shock the prejudices of either. Still, his statement is the nearest approach to a judicial summing up of which the nature of the work admits.

Mr. Browning now enters on the constructive part of his work. He puts the personages of the drama themselves before us, allowing each to plead his or her own cause. The imaginary occasion is that of Count Guido's trial; and all the depositions which were made on the previous one are transferred to this. The author has been obliged in every case to build up the character from the evidence, and to re-mould and expand the evidence in conformity with the character. The motive, feeling, and circumstance set forth by each separate speaker are thus in some degree fictitious; but they are always founded upon fact; and the literal truth of a vast number of details is self-evident. We first hear:

COUNT GUIDO FRANCESCHINI. He has been caught red-handed from the murder of his wife. His crime is patent. He has himself confessed it under torture. His only hope of reprieve lies in the colour which he may be able to impart to it; and his speech is cunningly adapted to the nature of the Court, and to the moral and mental constitution of those of whom it is composed. His judges are churchmen: neutral on the subject of marriage; rather coarsely masculine in their idea of the destiny of women. He does not profess to have entertained any affection for his wife. He derides the idea of having ill-used her, and thinks she might have liked him better if he had done so, instead of threatening her into good behaviour like a naughty child, with hair powder for poison, and a wooden toy for a sword; has no doubt that, if she had cared to warm his heart, some smouldering embers within it might still have burst into flame; but admits once for all that there was no question of feeling in the case; it was a bargain on both sides, and a fair one as far as he was concerned.

Paternity, however, is a condition with which his hearers may be supposed to sympathize; and he is absolutely eloquent, when he describes the desire he has cherished for a son, and the burning pain which filled him when he knew that it had been defrauded. He tells the story of his wife's intrigue and flight, much as the opinion of Half-Rome has reflected it; but he laces the question of his child's legitimacy in such a manner as to extract an equal advantage from either view. In either case it was Pompilia's crowning iniquity that she gave birth to a child, and placed it beyond his reach; and in either case it was the outraged paternal feeling which inspired his act.

The whole monologue is leavened by a spirit of mock deference for religion, for the Church, and for the law which represents the Church. Count Guido is led in from the torture, a mass of mock-patient suffering: wincing as he speaks, but quite in spite of himself—grateful that his pains are not worse—begging his judges not to be too much concerned about him; "since, thanks to his age and shaken health, a fainting fit soon came to his relief—indeed, torture itself is a kind of relief from the moral agonies he has undergone." He reminds his judges that the Church was his only mistress for thirty years. He would have served her, he declares, to the end of his life, but that his fidelity had been so long ignored. He trusted to the law—in other words to the Church—to avenge his honour when he ought to have done so himself. She deceived his trust, and still he hoped and endured. When he came to Rome, in his last frenzy of just revenge, he still stayed his hand, because the Feast of the Nativity had begun: it was the period at which the Church enjoins peace and good-will towards men. The face of the heavenly infant looked down upon him; he prayed that he might not enter into temptation. But the days went by, and the Face withered and waned, and the cross alone confronted him. Then he felt that the hour had come, and he found his way to his wife's retreat.

The door opened to the name of Caponsacchi. His worst fears were thus confirmed. Even so, had he been admitted by Pompilia, weak from her recent sufferings, he might have paused in pity—by Pietro, he might have paused in contempt; but it was the hag Violante who opened to him: the cheat, the mock-mother, the source of all his wrongs. The impulse to stamp out that one detested life involved all three. And now he triumphs in the deed. He has cast a foul burden from his life. He can look his fellow-men in the face again. Far from admitting that he deserves punishment, he claims the sympathy and the approval of those who have met to judge him: for he has done their work—the work of Divine justice and of natural law. In a final burst of rhetoric he challenges his judges to restore to him his life, his name, his civil rights, and best of all, his son; and together, he declares, they will rebuild the family honour, and revive the old forgotten tradition of domestic purity and peace. And if one day the son, about to kiss his hand, starts at the marks of violence upon it, he will smile and say, "it was only an accident—

"... just a trip O' the torture-irons in their search for truth,— Hardly misfortune, and no fault at all." (vol. ix. p. 82.)

GIUSEPPE CAPONSACCHI next tells his story. It includes some details of his earlier life, which throw light on what will follow. He is not a priest from choice. He had interest in the Church, and grew up in the expectation of entering it. But when the time came for taking his vows, he recoiled from the sacrifice which they involved, and yielded only to the Bishop's assurance that he need make no sacrifice; there were two ways of interpreting such vows, and he need not select the harder; a man of polish and accomplishments was as valuable to the Church as a scholar or an ascetic. Her structure stood firm, and no one need now-a-days break his back in the effort to hold her up. Let him write his madrigals (he had a turn for verse-making) and not become a fixture in his seat in the choir through too close an attendance there. The terms were easy, and Caponsacchi became a priest, no worse and no better than he was expected to be; but with the feelings and purposes of a truer manhood lying dormant within him. These Pompilia was destined to arouse.

He relates that he first saw her at the theatre. His attention was attracted by her strange sad beauty: and a friend who sat by him, and was a connection of the husband's, threw comfits at her to make her return his gaze, warning him at the same time to do nothing which could compromise her. He accepted the warning, but could not forget the face. He felt a sudden disgust for the light women and the light pleasures which were alone within his reach, and determined to change his mode of life, and leave Arezzo for Rome.

At this juncture a love-letter was brought to him. It purported to come from the lady at whom he had flung the comfits;[27] offered him her heart, and begged an interview with him. The bearer was a masked woman, who owned to an equivocal position in Count Guido's household. Caponsacchi saw through the trick, declined the proposed interview on the ground of his priesthood, and completed his answer with an allusion to the husband, which would punish him in the probable case of its passing directly into his hands. The next day the same messenger appeared with a second letter, reproaching him for his cruelty; he answered in the same strain. But the letters continued, now dropped into his prayer-book, now flung down to him from a window. At length they changed their tone. He had been begged to come: he was now entreated to stay away. The husband, before absent, had returned: indifferent, had become jealous. His vengeance was aroused; and the sooner Caponsacchi escaped to Rome, the better. This challenge to his courage had the intended effect. He wrote word that the street was public if the house was not, and he would be under the lady's window that evening.

He went. She was standing there, lamp in hand, like Our Lady of Sorrows on her altar. She vanished, reappeared on a terrace close above his head, and spoke to him. He had sent her letters, she said, which she could not read; but she had been told that they spoke of love. She thought at first that he must be wicked, and then she felt that he could not be so wicked as to have meant what that woman said; and now that she saw his face she knew he did not write it. Still, he meant her well when no one else did. Her need was sore; he alone in the world could help her; she had determined to call to him. If he had some feverish fancy for what was not her's to give, he would be cured of it so soon as he knew all. She told him her story, and entreated him to take her to Rome, and consign her to her parents' care. He promised, and then his heart misgave him. Would it be right in him? Would it be good for her? He passed two days in a ceaseless internal conflict, and then determined to see her once more, but only to comfort and advise.

She stood again awaiting him at her window. Again she spoke, reproaching him for the suspense she had undergone. Her manner dispelled all doubt, and he did for her what she desired. The journey, which he describes in detail, was to him one spontaneous and continued revelation of her purity and truth. Then came the trial and his banishment. He was compelled to leave her to the protection of the law; to the good offices of the Court which confronts him now—of the men who, as he reminds them, laughed in their sleeve at the young priest's escapade, and at the transparent excuses with which he had taxed their credulity,—of the men who, in consideration for his youth, merely sent him to disport himself elsewhere, leaving the woman he had striven to protect, to the husband who was to murder her.

The news which summons him from Civita Vecchia has fallen on him like a thunderbolt. His being is shaken to its foundations. He strives to contain himself in outward deference to the Court, but a storm of suppressed sorrow and indignation rages beneath all his words: now uttering itself in pitying tender reverence for Pompilia's memory; now in scorn of those who would defame her; now in anger at himself, who is casting suspicion on her innocence by the very passion with which he defends it, now in defiance of those who choose to call the passion by the vulgar name of love. He tears up the flimsy calumnies which have been launched against her and himself; flinging them back in short, contemptuous utterances in the teeth of whosoever may believe them; begs his judges to forget his violence; and makes a last attempt to convince himself and them that no selfish desire underlies it. Pompilia is dying: he too is dead—to the world. What can she be to him but a dream—a thinker's dream—of a life not consecrated to the Church, but spent, as with her, in one constant domestic revelation of the eternal goodness and truth—a dream from which he will pass content.... And here the whole edifice of self-control and self-deception breaks down, and the agonized heart sends forth its cry:—

"O great, just, good God! Miserable me!" (vol. ix. p. 166.)

The third speaker is POMPILIA. Her evidence is the story of her life. It is given from her deathbed; and its half-dreamy reminiscences are uttered with the childlike simplicity with which she may have opened her heart to her priest. She is full of strange pathetic wonder at the mystery of existence; at the manner in which the thing we seem to grasp eludes us, and the seemingly impossible comes to pass. "Husbands are supposed to love their wives and guard them. See how it has been with her! That other man—that friend—they say he loves her; his kindness was all love! She is a wife and he a priest, and yet they go on saying it! Her boy, she imagined, would be hers for life: and he is taken from her. He, too, becomes a dream; and in that dream she sees him grown tall and strong, and tutoring his mother as an imprudent child, for venturing out of the safe street into the lonely house where no help could reach her. It all reminds her of the day when she and a child-friend played at finding each other out in the figures on the tapestry; and Tisbe recognized her in a tree with a rough trunk for body, and her five fingers blossoming into leaves. Things are, and are not at the same time."

One thing, however, is real amidst the unreality: her joy and pride in finding herself a mother. The event proved that when she left Arezzo the hope of maternity was already dawning upon her; and Mr. Browning has combined this fact with the latent maternal sentiment of all true women, and read it into every impulse of her remaining life. She was wretched. She had vainly sought for help. She had resigned herself to the inevitable. She had lain down at night with the old thought—

"... 'Done, another day! How good to sleep and so get nearer death!'— When, what, first thing at day-break, pierced the sleep With a summons to me? Up I sprang alive, Light in me, light without me, everywhere Change!" (vol. ix. p. 216.)

From this moment, as she tells us, everything was transformed. For days, for weeks, Caponsacchi's name had been ringing in her ears: in jealous explosions on her husband's part; in corrupting advice on the part of the waiting-woman who brought letters supposed to be sent to her by him; in declarations of love which her first glance at his face told her he could not have written. This, too, has all seemed a grotesquely painful dream. But when she awoke on the April morning in that bounding of the spirit towards an unknown joy, the name assumed a new meaning for her, and she said, "Let Caponsacchi come."

She remembers little after that, but the enfolding tenderness which secured the fulfilment of her hope. She describes nothing after the "tap" at the door, which was the beginning of the end. She has attained the crown of her woman's existence, and she can bear no resentment towards him whose cruelty embittered, and whose vengeance has cut it short. The motherly heart in her goes out to the wicked husband who was also once a child, and strives to palliate what he has done. "He was sinned against as well as sinning. Her poor parents were blind and unjust in their mode of retaliating upon him. She was blind and foolish in doing nothing to heal the breach. Her earthly goods have been a snare to Guido; she herself was an importunate presence to him. By God's grace he will be the better for having swept her from his path. She thanks him for destroying in her that bodily life which was his to pollute, and for leaving her soul free. Her infant shall have been born of no earthly father. It is the child of its mother's love."

And this love for her child overflows in gratitude to him who saved her for it—a gratitude which is also something more. She has recoiled from the idea of being united to a priest by any bond of earthly affection; but the knowledge is growing upon her that her bond to Caponsacchi is love, though it assumes an ideal character in her innocence, her ignorance, and the exaltation of feeling which denotes her approaching death. She has recalled the incidents of her flight, but only to bear witness to Caponsacchi's virtues: his watchful kindness, his chivalrous courage, the unselfishness which could risk life and honour without thought of reward, the priestly dignity which he never set aside. Her last words contain an invocation to himself which has all the passion of earthly tenderness, and all the solemnity of a prayer. She addresses him as her soldier-saint—as the friend "her only, all her own," who is closest to her now on her final journey; whose love shall sustain, whose strong hand shall guide her, on the unknown path she is about to tread. She thinks he would not marry if he could. True marriage is in heaven, where there is no making of contracts, with gold on one side, power or youth or beauty on the other, but one is "man and wife at once when the true time is." Would either of them wish the past undone? Her soul says "No."

"So, let him wait God's instant men call years; Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul, Do out the duty! Through such souls alone God stooping shows sufficient of His light For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise." (vol. ix. p. 241.)

We have now the written pleadings of two advocates who figure largely in the records of the case; the one enlisted on the Count's side, the other on Pompilia's They are

DOMINUS HYACINTHUS DE ARCHANGELIS (procurator of the poor)

JURIS DOCTOR JOHANNES BAPTISTA BOTTINIUS (fisc, or public prosecutor).

The subject of these pleadings is the possible justification of the crime for which Count Franceschini is on trial, but not otherwise the crime itself; for he has owned to its commission; and though the avowal has been drawn from him by torture, it is justly accepted as decisive. All the arguments for and against him hinge therefore on the evidence of Pompilia's guilt or innocence as established by the previous enquiry; and as we have seen, the formal result of this enquiry was unfavourable to her. The Count obtained his verdict, though the subsequent treatment of the offenders made it almost nugatory; and de Archangelis rings the changes on the stock arguments of his client's outraged honour, and his natural if not legal right to avenge it.

Bottinius, on the other hand, does not admit that the husband's honour has been attacked; but he defends the wife's conduct, more by extenuating the acts of which she is accused, than by denying them. His denials are generally parenthetic: and imply that the whether she did certain things is much less important than the why and the how; and though he professes to present her as a pearl of purity, he shows his standard of female purity to be very low.

Mr. Browning might easily have composed a more genuine defence from the known facts of the case; but he represents these quibblings and counter-quibblings as equally beside the mark. The question of the murderer's guilt was being judged on broader grounds; and the supposed talkers on either side are aware of this. De Archangelis and Bottinius both know that their cleverness will benefit no one but themselves, and for this reason they are as much concerned to show how good a case they can make out of a doubtful one, as to prove that their case is in itself good. Each is thinking of his opponent, and how best to parry his attack; and their arguments are relieved by a brisk exchange of personalities, in which "de Archangelis" includes his subordinate "Spreti"—"advocate of the poor"—whose learned contribution to this paper warfare has probably aroused his jealousy.

Mr. Browning has also displayed the hollowness of the proceedings by making "de Archangelis" the very opposite of his saturnine and blood-thirsty client: the last person we could think of as in sympathy with him. He is a coarse good-natured paterfamilias, whose ambitions are all centred on an eight-year-old son, whose birthday it is; and his defence of the murder is concocted under frequent interruptions, from the thought of Cinuncino (little Giacinto, or Hyacinth), and the fried liver and herbs which are to form part of his birthday feast. Bottinius is a vain man, occupied only with himself, and regretting nothing so much as that he may not display his rhetorical powers, by delivering his speech instead of writing it.

Count Guido, with his accomplices, has been condemned to death. His friends have appealed from the verdict, on the ground of his being, though in a minor degree, a priest. The answer to this appeal rests with the head of the Church. The next monologue is therefore that of

THE POPE. The reflections here imagined grow out of a double fact. Innocent the Twelfth refused to shelter Count Franceschini with his accomplices from the judgment of the law, and thus assumed the responsibility of his death. He had reached an age at which so heavy a responsibility could not be otherwise than painful. As Mr. Browning depicts him, his decision is made. From dawn to dark he has been studying the case, piecing together its fragmentary truths, trying its merits with "true sweat of soul." There is no doubt in his mind that Guido deserves to die. But he has to nerve himself afresh before he gives the one stroke of his pen, the one touch to his bell, which shall send this soul into eternity; and that is what we see him doing.

As he says to himself, he is weighed down by years. He lifts the cares of the whole world on a "loaded branch" for which a bird's nest were a "superfluous burthen." Yet this strong man cries to him for life: and he alone has the power to grant it. How easy to reprieve! How hard to deny to this trembling sinner the moment's respite which may save his soul. He wants precedent for such a deed; and he seeks it in the records of the Papacy. It is from the Popes his predecessors that he must learn how to dare, to suffer, and—to judge. But these records tell him how Stephen cursed Formosus; how Romanus and Theodore reinstated the sanctity of Formosus and cursed Stephen; and how John reinstated Stephen and cursed Formosus. They could not all be right. There is no guarantee for infallibility—no test of justice—to be found here.

How, then, would he defend his condemnation of Guido if he himself were now summoned to the judgment-seat? The question is self-answered: no defence would be needed; for God sees into the heart. He appraises the seed of act, which is its motive; not "leafage and branchage, vulgar eyes admire." The Pope knows that his motives will stand the scrutiny of God. How, finally, could he plead his cause with a man like himself: with the man Antonio Pignatelli, his very self? He must, once for all, marshal the facts, and let them plead for him.

Next follows the Pope's version of the story, which differs from those preceding it, in being the summing up of a spiritual judge, who deals not only with facts but with conditions, and who looks at the thing done, in its special reference to the person who did it. As seen in this light, the blacks of the picture are blacker, the whites, whiter, than they appear from the ordinary point of view. Guido has been doubly wicked because his birth, his breeding, and his connection with the Church, had surrounded him with incitements to good, and with opportunities for it. Pompilia is doubly virtuous because she is a mere "chance-sown," "cleft-nurtured" human weed, owing all her goodness to herself. With Guido, the bad end is secured by the worst means. Not satisfied to murder his wife, he must use a jagged instrument with which to torture her flesh. Not satisfied to torment her in the body, he must imperil her soul by placing desperate temptation in her way. With Pompilia the right virtue is always employed for the good end. She is submissive where only her own life is at stake; brave, when a life within her own calls on her for protection. Guido's accomplices: his brothers, his mother, the four youths who helped him to kill his wife: the Governor, and the Archbishop, who abetted his ill-treatment of her, have alike sinned against their age, their character, or their associations.

Caponsacchi has not been faultless. He has failed somewhat in the dignity of his office, somewhat in its decorum; his mode of rescuing the oppressed has had too much the character of an escapade. But the more disciplined soldier of the Church would have erred in the opposite direction. The ear which listens only for the voice of authority becomes obtuse to the cry of suffering. The spirit which only moves to command becomes unfit for spontaneous work. Caponsacchi, standing aloof like a man of pleasure, has proved himself the very champion of God, ready to spring into the arena, at the first thud of the false knight's glove upon the ground. He has shown himself possessed of the true courage which does not shrink from temptation, and does not succumb to it. Such transgressions as his reflect rather on the limits imposed than on the impatience which transgressed them. He must submit to a slight punishment. He must work—be unhappy—bear life. But he ranks next in grace to Pompilia—the "rose" which the old Pope "gathers for the breast of God." Of Count Guido's other victims, Pietro and Violante, the worst that can be said is this: they have halted between good and evil; and, as the way of the world is, suffered through both. The balance of justice once more confirms the Pope's decree.

Yet at this very moment his will relaxes. A sudden dread is upon him—a chill such as comes with the sudden clouding of a long clear sky. The ordeal of a deeper and stranger doubt is yet to be faced. He has judged, as he believed, by the light of Divine truth. Has he been mistaken?

Step by step he tests and reconstructs his belief, tracing it back to its beginning. God, the Infinite, exists. Man, the atom, comprehends him as the conditions of his intelligence permit, but so far truly. Man's mind, like a convex glass, reflects him, in an image, smaller or less small, adequate so far as it goes. As revealed in the order of nature, God is perfect in intelligence and in power; but not so in love; and there has come into the mouths and hearts of men, a tale and miracle of Divine love which makes the evidence of his perfection complete. The Pope believes that tale, whether true in itself, or like man's conception of the infinite, true only for the human mind. He accepts its enigmas as a test of faith: as a sign that life is meant for a training and a passage: as a guarantee of our moral growth, and of the good which evil may produce.

Christianity stands firm. And yet his heart misgives him; for it is not justified by its results. It is not that the sceptical deny its value: that those bent on earthly good reject it with open eyes. The surprise and terror is this: that those who have found the pearl of price—who have named and known it—will still grovel after the lower gain. Such the Aretine bishop who sent Pompilia back to her tormentor; the friar who refused to save her because he feared the world; the nuns who at first testified to her purity, and were ready to prove her one of dishonest life, when they learned that she possessed riches which by so doing they might confiscate to themselves.

Nor is the fault in humanity at large: for love and faith have leapt forth profusely in the olden time, at the summons of "unacknowledged," "uncommissioned" powers of good. Caponsacchi has shown that they do so still. Before Paul had spoken and Felix heard, Euripides had pronounced virtue the law of life, and, in his doctrine of hidden forces, foreshadowed the one God. Euripides felt his way in the darkness. He, the Pope, walking in the glare of noon, might ask support of him. Where does the fault lie? It lies in the excess of certainty—in the too great familiarity with the truth—in that encroachment of earthly natives on the heavenly, which is begotten by the security of belief. Between night and noonday there has been the dawn, with its searching illumination, its thrill of faith, the rapture of self-sacrifice in which anchorite and martyr foretasted the joys of heaven. Now Christianity is hard because it has become too easy; because of the "ignoble confidence," which will enjoy this world and yet count upon the next: the "shallow cowardice," which renders the old heroism impossible.

The Pope is discursive, as is the manner of his age; and his reflections have been, hitherto, rather suggested by the case before him than directly related to it. But he grasps it again in a burst of prophetic insight which these very reflections have produced. Heroism has become impossible,

"Unless ... what whispers me of times to come? What if it be the mission of that age My death will usher into life, to shake This torpor of assurance from our creed?" (vol. x. p. 137.)

What if earthquake be about to try the towers which lions dare no longer attack: if man be destined to live once more, in the new-born readiness for death? Is the time at hand, when the new faith shall be broken up as the old has been; when reported truth shall once more be compared with the actual truth—the portrait of the Divine with its reality? Is not perhaps the Molinist[28] himself thus striving after the higher light?

The Pope's fancy conjures up the vision of that coming time. He sees the motley pageant of the Age of Reason pushing the churchly "masque" aside, impatient of the slowly-trailing garments, in which he, the last actor in it, is passing off the scene. He beholds the trials of that transition stage; the many whose crumbling faith will land them on the lower platform of the material life; the few, who from habit, will preserve the Christian level; the fewer still, who, like Pompilia, will do so in the inspired conviction of the truth. He sees two men, or rather types of men, both priests, frankly making the new experiment, and adopting nature as their law. Under her guidance, one, like Caponsacchi acts, in the main, well; the other, like Guido Franceschini, wallows in every crime.... The "first effects" of the "new cause" are apparent in those murdering five, and in their victims.

But the old law is not yet extinct. He (the Church) still occupies the stage, though his departure be close at hand: so, in a last act of allegiance to Him who placed him there, he smites with his whole strength once more,

"Ending, so far as man may, this offence." (vol. x. p. 141.)

Yet again his arm is stayed. Voices, whether of friend or foe, are sounding in his ear. They reiterate the sophistries which have been enlisted in the Count's defence: the credit of the Church, the proprieties of the domestic hearth; the educated sense of honour which is stronger than the moral law; the general relief which will greet the act of mercy. The Pope listens. For one moment we may fancy that he yields. "Pronounce then," the imaginary speakers have said. A swift answer follows:

"I will, Sirs: but a voice other than your's Quickens my spirit...." (vol. x. p. 146.)

and the death-warrant goes out.

A favourite theory of Mr. Browning's appears in this soliloquy, for the first time since he stated it in "Sordello," and in a somewhat different form: that of the inadequacy of words to convey the truth. The Pope declares (p. 78) that we need

"Expect nor question nor reply At what we figure as God's judgment-bar! None of this vile way by the barren words Which, more than any deed, characterize Man as made subject to a curse."

and again (p. 79) that

"... these filthy rags of speech, this coil Of statement, comment, query and response, Tatters all too contaminate for use, Have no renewing: He, the Truth, is, too, The Word."

The scene changes to the prison-cell where Count Guido has received his final sentence of death. Two former friends and fellow-Tuscans, Cardinal Acciajuoli and Abate Panciatichi, have come to prepare him for execution; but the one is listening awe-struck to the only kind of confession which they can obtain from him, while the other plies his beads in a desperate endeavour to exorcise the spiritual enemy, "ban" the diabolical influences, it is conjuring up. The speaker is no longer Count Guido Franceschini, but

GUIDO. He is indeed another man than he was in his first monologue, for he has thrown off the mask. His tone is at first conciliatory, even entreating: for his hearers are men of his own class, and he hopes to persuade them to one more intercession in his behalf. But it changes to one of scorn and defiance, as the hopelessness of his case lays hold of him, and rises, at the end, to a climax of ferocity which is all but grand.

"Repentance! if he repent for twelve hours, will he die the less on the thirteenth? He has broken the social law, and is about to pay for it. What has he to repent of but that he has made a mistake? Religion! who of them all believes in it? Not the Pope himself; for religion enjoins mercy; it is meant to temper the harshness of the law: and he destroys the life which the law has given over to him to save. What man of them all shows by his acts that he believes; or would be treated otherwise than as a lunatic if he did? Let those who will, halt between belief and unbelief. It has not been in him to do so. Give him the certainty of another world, and he would have lived for it. Owning no such certainty, he has lived for this one; he has sought its pleasures and avoided its pains. Only he has carried the thing too far. The world has decreed limits to every man's pleasure; it limits this for the good of all; and it has made unlawful the excess of pleasure which turns to someone else's pain. He has exceeded the lawful amount of pleasure, and he pays for it by an extra dose of pain."

"There the matter ends. But his judges want more—a few edifying lies wherewith to show that he did not die impenitent, and stop the mouth of anyone who may hint, the day after the execution, that old men are too fond of putting younger ones out of the way. They shall have his confession; but it must be the truth."

"He killed his wife because he hated her; because, whether it were her fault or not, she was a stumbling-block in his path. He had been outraged by her aversion, exasperated by her patience, maddened by her never putting herself in the wrong. While her parents were with her, she resisted and clamoured, and then her presence could be endured; but they were left alone together, and then everything was changed. Day by day, and all day, he was confronted by her automatic obedience, by her dumb despair. She rose up and lay down—she spoke or was silent at his bidding; neither a loosened hair, nor a crumple in the dress, giving token of resistance; he might have strangled her without her making a sign. She eloped from him, yet he could not surprise her in the commission of a sin: and he returned from his pursuit of her, ridiculous when he should have been triumphant. He took his revenge at last. And now that he might tell his story and find no one to controvert it—how he came to claim his wife and child, and found no child, but the lover by the wife's side; was attacked, defended himself, struck right and left, and thus did the deed—she survives, by miracle, to confute him, to condemn him, and worst of all, to forgive him."

"He has been ensnared by his opportunities from first to last. He failed to save himself from retribution, only because he was drunk with the sudden freedom from this hateful load. And Pompilia haunts him still. Her stupid purity will freeze him even in death. It will rob him of his hell—where the fiend in him would burn up in fiery rapture—where some Lucrezia might meet him as his fitting bride—where the wolf-nature frankly glutted would perhaps leave room for some return to human form. For she cannot hate. It would grieve her to know him there; and—if there be a hell—it will be barred to him in consideration for her."

"The Cardinal, the Abate, they too are petrifactions in their way! He may rave another twelve hours, and it will be useless." Yet he makes one more effort to move them. He reminds the Cardinal of the crimes he has committed—of the help he will need when a new Pope is to be elected; of the possible supporter who may then be in his grave. Then fiercely turning on them both; "the Cardinal have a chance indeed, when there is an Albano in the case! The Abate be alive a year hence, with that burning hollow cheek and that hacking cough!—Well, he will die bold and honest as he has lived."

At this juncture he becomes aware that the fatal moment has arrived. Steps and lights are on the stairs. The defiant spirit is quenched. "He has laughed and mocked and said no word of all he had to say." In wild terror he pleads for life—bare life. A final vindication of his wife's goodness bursts from him in the words,

"Abate,—Cardinal,—Christ,—Maria,—God,— Pompilia, will you let them murder me?" (vol. x. p. 243.)

The concluding part of the work reverses the idea of the first, and is entitled

THE BOOK AND THE RING. It completes the record of the Franceschini case, and gives the concluding touches to the circle of evidence which now assumes its final dramatic form. We have first an account of the execution, conveyed in a gossiping letter from a Venetian gentleman on a visit to Rome, and who reports it as the last news of the week, and the occasion of his having lost a bet. The writer also discusses the Pope's health, the relative merits of his present physician and a former one; the relative chances of various candidates for the Papacy; and the Pope's possible motives for setting aside "justice, prudence, and esprit de corps," in the manner testified by his recent condemnation of a man of rank. His political likes and dislikes are thrown into the scale, but his predilection for the mob is considered to have turned it. "He allows the people to question him when he takes his walks; and it is said that some of them asked him, on the occasion of his last, whether the privilege of murder was altogether reserved for noblemen." "The Austrian ambassador had done his best to avert bloodshed, and pleaded hard for the life of one whom, as he urged, he 'may have dined at table with!' and felt so aggrieved by the Pope's answer, that he all but refused to come to the execution, and would barely look at it when he came." Various details follow, some of which my readers already know.

Mr. Browning next speaks of the three manuscript letters bound into the original book; selects one of these, written by the Count's advocate, de Archangelis, and gives it, first, in its actual contents, and next, in an imaginary postscript which we are to think of as destined for the recipient's private ear. The letter itself is written for the Count's family and friends; and states, in a tone of solemn regret, that the justifications brought forward by his correspondent arrived too late; that the Pope thought it inexpedient to postpone the execution, or to accept the plea of youth urged in favour of the four accomplices; and that they all died that day. It declares that the Count suffered in an exemplary manner, amidst the commiseration and respect of all Rome, and that the honour of his house will lose nothing through the catastrophe.

The supplement is conceived in a very different spirit. The writer laughs at their "pleas" and "proofs," coming, like Pisan help, when the man is already dead—"not that twenty such vindications would have done any good—

"When Somebody's thick head-piece once was bent On seeing Guido's drop into the bag." (vol. x. p. 256.)

Well, people enjoyed the show, but saw through it all the same; and meanwhile his (the writer's) superb defence goes for nothing; and though argument is solid and subsists

"While obstinacy and ineptitude Accompany the owner to his tomb;" (vol. x. p. 256.)

his hands and his pockets are empty. Ah well! little Cino will gain by it in the long run. He had been promised that if papa couldn't save the Count's head, he should go and see it chopped off: and when a patroness of his joked the child on his defeat, and on Bottini's ruling the roast, the clever rogue retorted that papa knew better than to baulk the Pope of his grudge, and could have argued Bottini's nose off if he had chosen. Doesn't the fop see that he (de Archangelis) can drive right and left horses with one hand? The Gomez case shall make it up to him."

The two other letters are in the same strain as the first. Both are written on the day of the execution. Both announce it in a condoling manner. Both allude to the justifications which arrived too late: and in one or both, the criminal is spoken of as "poor" Signor Guido. Mr. Browning has preferred, however, representing the other side; and the next which he gives is, like Don Hyacinth's supplement, only such as might have been written. It is supposed to be from Pompilia's advocate Bottinius (or Bottini), and is in keeping with the spirit of his defence. He is clearly jealous of not having had a worse case to plead. "He has won," he says. "How could he do otherwise? with the plain truth on his side, and the Pope ready to steady it on his legs again if he let it drop asleep. Arcangeli may crow over him, as it is, for having been kept by him a month at bay—though even this much was not his doing; the little dandiprat Spreti was the real man."

And this is not all. "Of course Rome must have its joke at the advocate with the case that proved itself: but here is a piece of impertinence he was not prepared for. The barefoot Augustinian, whose report of Pompilia's dying words took all the freshness out of the best points of his defence, has been preaching on the subject; and the sermon is flying about Rome in print." Next follows an extract from it. The friar warns his hearers not to trust to human powers of discovering the truth. "It is not the long trial which has revealed Pompilia's innocence; God from time to time puts forth His hand, and He has done so here. But earth is not heaven, nor all truth intended to prevail. One dove returned to the ark. How many were lost in the wave? One woman's purity has been rescued from the world. 'How many chaste and noble sister-fames' have lacked 'the extricating hand?' And we must wait God's time for such truth as is destined to appear. When Christians worshipped in the Catacomb, one man, no worse than the rest, though no less foolish, will have pointed to its mouth, and said, 'Obscene rites are practised in that darkness. The devotees of an execrable creed skulk there out of sight.' Not till the time was ripe, did lightning split the face of the rock, and lay bare a nook—

"Narrow and short, a corpse's length, no more: And by it, in the due receptacle, The little rude brown lamp of earthenware, The cruse, was meant for flowers, but held the blood, The rough-scratched palm-branch, and the legend left Pro Christo." (vol. x. p. 265)

"And how does human law, in its 'inadequacy' and 'ineptitude' defend the just? How has it attempted to clear Pompilia's fame? By submitting, as its best resource, that wickedness was bred in her flesh and bone. For himself he cannot judge, unless by the assurance of Christ, if he have not lost much by renouncing the world: for he has lost love, and knowledge, and perhaps the means of bringing goodness from its ideal conception into the actual life of man. But the bubble, fame—worldly praise and appreciation—he has done well to set these aside."

"And what is all this preaching," resumes Bottinius, "but a way of courting fame? The inflation of it! and the spite! and the Molinism! As its first pleasant consequence, Gomez, who had intended to appeal from the absurd decision of the Court, declines to ask the lawyers for farther help.[29] There is an end of that job and its fee. Nevertheless, his 'blatant brother' shall soon see if law is as inadequate, and advocacy as impotent, as he fancies. Providence is this time in their favour. Pompilia was consigned to the 'Convertite' (converted ones). She was therefore a sinner. Guido has been judged guilty: but there was no word as to the innocence of his wife. The sisterhood claims, therefore, the property which accrued to her through her parents' death, and which she has left in trust for her son. Who but himself—the Fisc—shall support the claim, and show the foul-mouthed friar that his dove was a raven after all." (He too can drive left and right horses on occasion.)

This he actually did. But once more the Pope intervened: and Mr. Browning proceeds to give the literal substance of the "Instrument" of justification as it lies before him. In this, Pompilia's "perfect fame" is restored, and her representative, Domenico Tighetti, secured against all molestations of her heir and his ward, which the Most Venerable Convent, etc. etc., may commit or threaten.

What became of that child, Gaetano, as he was called after the new-made saint? Did he live a true scion of the paternal stock, whose heraldic symbols Mr. Browning has described by Count Guido's mouth?—

"Or did he love his mother, the base-born, And fight i' the ranks, unnoticed by the world?" (vol. x. p. 277.)

This question Mr. Browning asks himself, but is unable to answer. He concludes his book by telling us its intended lesson, and explaining why he has chosen to present it in this artistic form. The lesson is that which we have already learned from his Pope's thoughts:—

"... our human speech is naught, Our human testimony false, our fame And human estimation words and wind." (vol. x. p. 277.)

Art, with its indirect processes, can alone raise up a living image of that truth which words distort in the stating.

And, lastly, he dedicates the completed work to the "Lyric Love," whose blessing on its performance he has invoked in a memorable passage at the close of his introductory chapter.

TRANSCRIPTS FROM THE GREEK, WITH "ARTEMIS PROLOGIZES."

Another group of works detaches itself from any possible scheme of classification: These are Mr. Browning's transcripts from the Greek.

The "Alkestis" of Euripides, imbedded in the dramatic romance called "Balaustion's Adventure." 1871.

The "Herakles" of Euripides, introduced into "Aristophanes' Apology." 1875.

The "Agamemnon" of AEschylus, published by itself. 1877.

They are even outside my subject because they are literal; and therefore show Mr. Browning as a scholar, but not otherwise as a poet than in the technical power and indirect poetic judgments involved in the work. All I need say about this is, that its literalness detracts in no way from the beauty and transparency of "Alkestis" or "Herakles," while it makes "Agamemnon" very hard to read; and that Mr. Browning has probably intended his readers to draw their own conclusion, which is so far his, as to the relative quality of the two great classics. Some critics contend that a less literal translation of the "Agamemnon" would have been not only more pleasing, but more true; but Mr. Browning clearly thought otherwise. Had he not, he would certainly have given his author the benefit of the larger interpretation; and his principal motive for this indirect defence of Euripides would have disappeared.

Mr. Browning has also given us an original fragment in the classic manner:—

"ARTEMIS PROLOGIZES." ("Men and Women,"[30] published in "Dramatic Lyrics," in 1842.) This was suggested by the "Hippolytos" of Euripides; and destined to become part of a larger poem, which should continue its story. For, according to the legend, Hippolytos having perished through the anger of Aphrodite (Venus), was revived by Artemis (Diana), though only to disappoint her affection by falling in love with one of her nymphs, Aricia. Mr. Browning imagines that she has removed him in secret to her own forest retreat, and is nursing him back to life by the help of Asclepios; and the poem is a monologue in which she describes what has passed, from Phaedra's self-betrayal to the present time. Hippolytos still lies unconscious; but the power of the great healer has been brought to bear upon him, and the unconsciousness seems only that of sleep. Artemis is awaiting the event.

The ensuing chorus of nymphs, the awakening of Hippolytos, and with it the stir of the new passion within him, had already taken shape in Mr. Browning's mind. Unfortunately, something put the inspiration to flight, and it did not return.[31]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 21: The song professedly refers to Catherine Cornaro, the Venetian Queen of Cyprus, and is the only one in the poem that is based on any fact at all.]

[Footnote 22: This pamphlet has supplied Mr. Browning with some of his most curious facts. It fell into his hands in London.]

[Footnote 23: The first hour after sunset.]

[Footnote 24: "Villa" is often called "vineyard" or "vigna," on account of the vineyard attached to it.]

[Footnote 25: It is difficult to reconcile this explicit denial of Pompilia's statements with the belief in her implied in her merely nominal punishment: unless we look on it as part of the formal condemnation which circumstances seemed to exact.]

[Footnote 26: A letter written in this strain was also produced on the trial; and Pompilia owned to having written it, but only in the sense of writing over in ink what her husband had traced in pencil—being totally ignorant of its contents.]

[Footnote 27: Count Guido thought, or affected to think, that these had been thrown by Caponsacchi.]

[Footnote 28: The disciple of Michael de Molinos, not to be confounded with Louis Molina, who is especially known by his attempt to reconcile the theory of grace with that of free will. Molinos was the founder of an exaggerated Quietism. He held that the soul could detach itself from the body so as to become indifferent to its action, and therefore non-responsible for it; and it was natural that all who defied the received laws of conduct, or were suspected of doing so, should be stigmatized as his followers. Molinism was a favourite bugbear among the orthodox Romanists of Innocent the Twelfth's day.]

[Footnote 29: A passing allusion is made to this Gomez case in one of the manuscript letters, the writer of which begs Cencini (clearly also an advocate), to send him the papers concerning it. The place it occupies in the thoughts of the two lawyers, as Mr. Browning depicts them, is very characteristic of the manner in which his imagination has embraced and vivified every detail of the situation.]

[Footnote 30: The poems to which I refer as now included in "Men and Women" will be found so in the editions of 1868 and 1888-9; though the redistribution made in 1863 has much curtailed their number.]

[Footnote 31: It was in this poem that Mr. Browning first adopted the plan of spelling Greek names in the Greek manner. He did so, as he tells us in the preface to his "Agamemnon," "innocently enough;" because the change commended itself to his own eye and ear. He has even assured his friends that if the innovation had been rationally opposed, or simply not accepted, he would probably himself have abandoned it. But when, years later, in "Balaustion's Adventure," the new spelling became the subject of attacks which all but ignored the existence of the work from any other point of view, the thought of yielding was no longer admissible. The majority of our best scholars now follow Mr. Browning's example.]



CLASSIFIED GROUPS.

ARGUMENTATIVE POEMS. SPECIAL PLEADINGS.

The isolated monologues have a special significance, which is almost implied in their form, but is also distinct from it. Mr. Browning has made them the vehicle for most of the reasonings and reflections which make up so large a part of his imaginative life: whether presented in his own person, or, as is most often the case, in that of his men and women. As such, they are among those of his works which lend themselves to a rough kind of classification; and may be called "argumentative."

They divide themselves into two classes: those in which the speaker is defending a preconceived judgment, and an antagonist is implied; and those in which he is trying to form a judgment or to accept one: and the supposed listener, if there be such, is only a confidant. The first kind of argument or discussion is carried on—apparently—as much for victory as for truth; and employs the weapons of satire, or the tactics of special-pleading, as the case demands. The second is an often pathetic and always single-minded endeavour to get at the truth. Those monologues in which the human spirit is represented as communing with itself, contain some of Mr. Browning's noblest dramatic work; but those in which the militant attitude is more pronounced throw the strongest light on what I have indicated as his distinctive intellectual quality: the rejection of all general and dogmatic points of view. His casuistic utterances are often only a vindication of the personal, and therefore indefinite quality of human truth; and their apparent trifling with it is often only the seeking after a larger truth, in which all seeming contradictions are resolved. It was inevitable, however, that this mental quality should play into the hands of his dramatic imagination, and be sometimes carried away by it; so that when he means to tell us what a given person under given circumstances would be justified in saying, he sometimes finds himself including in the statement something which the given person so situated would be only likely to say.

The first of these classes, or groups, which we may distinguish as SPECIAL PLEADINGS, contains poems very different in length, and in literary character; and to avoid the appearance of confusion, I shall reverse the order of their publication, and place the most important first:—

"Aristophanes' Apology;[32] or The Last Adventure of Balaustion." (1875.)

"Fifine at the Fair." (1872.)

"Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society." (1871.)

"Bishop Blougram's Apology" (Men and Women). (1855.)

"Mr. Sludge, the Medium." (Dramatis Personae.) (1864.)

"ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY" is, as its second title shows, a sequel to "Balaustion's Adventure" (1871). Both turn on the historical fact that Euripides was reverenced far more by the non-Athenian Greeks than by the Athenians; and both contain a transcript from him. But the interest of "Aristophanes' Apology" is independent of its "Herakles," while that of "Balaustion's Adventure" is altogether bound up with its Alkestis; and in so far as the "adventure" places Balaustion herself before us, it will be best treated as an introduction to her appearance in the later and more important work.

Balaustion is a Rhodian girl, brought up in a worship for Euripides, which does not, however, exclude the appreciation of other great Greek poets. The Peloponnesian War has entered on its second stage. The Athenian fleet has been defeated at Syracuse. And Rhodes, resenting this disgrace, has determined to take part against Athens, and join the Peloponnesian league. But Balaustion will not forsake the mother-city, the life and light of her whole known world; and she persuades her kinsmen to migrate with her to it, and, with her, to share its fate. They accordingly take ship at Kaunus, a Carian sea-port belonging to Rhodes. But the wind turns them from their course, and when it abates, they find themselves in strange waters, pursued by a pirate bark. They fly before it towards what they hope will prove a friendly shore—Balaustion heartening the rowers by a song from AEschylus, which was sung at the battle of Salamis—and run straight into the hostile harbour of Syracuse, where shelter is denied them.

The captain pleads in vain that they are Kaunians, subjects of Rhodes, and that Rhodes is henceforward on Sparta's side. "Kaunian the ship may be: but Athenians are on board. All Athens echoed in that song from AEschylus which has been ringing across the sea. The voyagers may retire unhurt. But if ten pirate ships were pursuing them, they should not bring those memories of Salamis to the Athenian captives whom the defeat of Nicias has left in Syracusan hands." The case is desperate. The Rhodians turn to go.

Suddenly a voice cries, "Wait. Do they know any verses from Euripides?" "More than that, they answer, Balaustion can recite a whole play—that strangest, saddest, sweetest song—the 'Alkestis.' It does honour to Herakles, their god. Let them place her on the steps of their temple of Herakles, and she will recite it there." The Rhodians are brought in, amidst joyous loving laughter, among shouts of "Herakles" and "Euripides." The recital takes place;[33] it is repeated a second day and a third; and Balaustion and her kinsmen are dismissed with good words and wishes, for, as she declares:

"... Greeks are Greeks, and hearts are hearts, And poetry is power,...." (vol. xi. p. 14.)

The story of Alkestis scarcely needs repeating. Apollo had incurred the anger of Jupiter by avenging the death of his son AEsculapius on the Cyclops whose thunder-bolt had slain him; and been condemned to play the part of a common mortal, and serve Admetus, King of Thessaly, as herdsman. The kind treatment of Admetus had made him his friend: and Apollo had deceived the Fate sisters into promising that whenever the king's life should become their due, they would renounce it on condition of some other person dying in his stead. When the play opens, the fatal moment has come. Alkestis, wife of Admetus, has offered herself to save him; and Admetus, though he does so with a heavy heart, has been weak enough to accept the sacrifice. Death enters the palace, from which even Apollo can no longer turn him away.

But just as Alkestis has breathed her last, Herakles appears; and his great cheery voice is heard on the threshold of the house of mourning, inquiring if the master be within. Admetus suppresses all signs of emotion, that he may receive him as hospitality demands; and Herakles, hearing what has happened from a servant of the house, is moved to gratitude and pity. He wrestles with Death; conquers him; and brings back Alkestis into her husband's presence, veiled, and in the guise of a second companion. Admetus will at first neither touch nor look at her. He has promised his dying wife to give her no successor; and her memory is even dearer to him than she herself has been. The god however reasons, persuades, and insists; and at length, very reluctantly, Admetus gives his hand to the stranger, whom he is then told to unveil. Herakles has delayed the recognition, that Alkestis might be enabled to probe her husband's fidelity, and convince herself that sorrow had made him worthier of her.

Balaustion half recites the play, half describes it, "as she has seen it at Kameiros this very year," occasionally compressing an unimportant scene, but always closely adhering to the original. She knows that she is open to the reproach of describing more than the masked faces of the actors could allow her to see; but she meets it in these words:—

"What's poetry except a power that makes? And, speaking to one sense, inspires the rest, Pressing them all into its service:" (vol. xi. pp. 17, 18.)

The whole work is a vindication of the power of poetry, as exerted in itself, and as reproduced in those who have received its fruits (pages 110, 111); and Balaustion herself displays it in this secondary form, by suggesting a version of the story of Alkestis, more subtly, if less simply, beautiful than the original. She makes Love the conqueror of Death. According to her, the music made by Apollo among Admetus's flocks has tamed every selfish passion in the King's soul; and when the time comes for his wife to die, he refuses the sacrifice. "Zeus has decreed that their two lives shall be one; and if they must be severed, he must go who was the body, not she, who was the soul, of their joint existence." But Alkestis declares that the reality of that existence lies not in her but in him, and she bids him look at her once more before his decision is made. In this look, her soul enters into his; and, thus subduing him, she expires. But when she reaches the nether world she is rejected as a deceiver. "The death she brings to it is a mockery, since it doubles the life she has left behind." Proserpine sends her back to her husband's side; and the "lost eyes" re-open beneath his gaze, while it still embraces her.

Apollo smiles sadly at the ingenuousness of mortals, who thus imagine that the chain of eternal circumstance could snap in one human life; at their blindness to those seeds of pity and tenderness which the crushed promise of human happiness sets free. Yet he seems to think they lose nothing by either. "They do well to value their little hour. They do well to treasure the warm heart's blood, of which no outpouring could tinge the paleness or fill the blank of eternity, the power of love which transforms their earthly homes, their

... hopes and fears, so blind and yet so sweet With death about them." (p. 115.)

"Balaustion" means wild pomegranate flower; and the girl has been so called on account of her lyric gifts. She recalls the pomegranate tree, because its leaves are cooling to the brow, its seed and blossom grateful to the sense, and because the nightingale is never distant from it. She will keep the name for life—so she tells her friends—and with it a better thing which her songs have gained her. One youth came daily to the temple-steps at Syracuse to hear her. He was at her side at Athens when she landed. They will be married at this next full moon.

"Alkestis" failed "to get the prize" when its author was competing with Sophocles. "But Euripides has had his reward: in the sympathies which he has stirred; in the genius which he has inspired. His crown came direct from Zeus."

We need not name the poetess whom Mr. Browning quotes at the close of this poem. The painter so generously eulogized is F. Leighton.

When we meet Balaustion again, in "Aristophanes' Apology," many things have happened. She has seen her poet in his retirement (this was mentioned in her "adventure"), kissed his hand, and received from it, together with other gifts, his tragedy of Herakles. Euripides has died; Athens has fallen; and Balaustion, with her memories in her heart, and her husband, Euthykles, by her side, is speeding back towards Rhodes. She is deeply shocked by the fate of her adoptive city, to which her fancy pays a tribute of impassioned reverence, too poetic to be given in any but Mr. Browning's words. Yet she has a growing belief that that fate was just. Sea and air and the blue expanse of heaven are full of suggestion of that spirit-life, with its larger struggles or its universal peace, which is above the world's crowd and noise. And she determines that sorrow for what is fleeting shall not gnaw at her heart.

But in order to overcome the sorrow, she must loosen it from her. The tragedy she has witnessed must enact itself once more for Euthykles and her, he writing as she dictates. It will have for prologue a second adventure of her own, which he also has witnessed; and this adventure will constitute the book. It is prefaced in its turn by a backward glance at the circumstances, (so different from the present) in which she related the first.

It was the night on which Athens received the news that Euripides was dead: Euthykles had brought this home to her from the theatre. They were pondering it gravely, but not sadly, for their poet was now at rest, in the companionship of AEschylus, safe from the petty spites which had frothed and fretted about his life. He had lived and worked, to the end, true to his own standard of right, heedless of the reproach that he was a man-hater and a recluse, without regard for civic duty, and with no object but his art. He had left it to Sophocles to play poet and commander at the same time, and be laughed at for the result. He had first taken the prize of "Contemplation" in his all but a hundred plays; then, grasping the one hand offered him which held a heart, had shown at the court of Archelaus of Macedon whether or not the power of active usefulness was in him. His last notes of music had also been struck for that one friend.

Even Athens did him justice now. The reaction had set in; one would have his statue erected in the theatre; another would have him buried in the Piraeus; etc. etc. Not so Euthykles and Balaustion. His statue was in their hearts. Their concern was not with his mortal vesture, but with the liberated soul, which now watched over their world. They would hail this, they said, in the words of his own song, his "Herakles."

The reading was about to begin, when suddenly there was torch-light—a burst of comic singing—and a knocking at the door; Bacchus bade them open; they delayed. Then a name was uttered, of "authoritative" sound, of "immense significance;" and the door was opened to—Aristophanes. He was returning from the performance of his "Thesmophoriazusae,"[34] last year a failure, but this time, thanks to some new and audacious touches, a brilliant success. His chorus trooped before him—himself no more sober than was his wont—crowned, triumphant, and drunk; a group of flute-boys and dancing-girls making up the scene. All these, however, slunk away before Balaustion's glance, Aristophanes alone confronting her. And, as she declares, it was "no ignoble presence." For the broad brow, the flushed cheek, the commanding features, the defiant attitude, all betokened a mind, wantoning among the lower passions, but yet master of them.

He addresses Balaustion in a tone of mock deference; banters her on her poetic name, her dignified mien, and the manner in which she has scared his chorus and its followers away; "not indeed that that matters, since the archon's economy and the world's squeamishness will soon abolish it altogether."[35] Then struck by a passing thought, he stands grave, silent—another man in short—awaiting what she has to say.

In this sober moment, Balaustion welcomes him to her house. She welcomes him as the Good Genius: as genius of the kindly, though purifying humour, which, like summer lighting, illumines, but does not destroy. She knows and implies that he is not only this. But she greets the light, no matter to what darkness it be allied. She reverences the god who forms one half of him, so long as the monster which constitutes the other, remains out of sight; a poetic myth is made to illustrate this feeling. The gravity, however, is short-lived. The lower self in Aristophanes springs up again, and his "apology" begins.

"Aristophanes' APOLOGY" is a defence of comedy, as understood and practised by himself: that is, as a broad expression of the natural life, and a broad satire upon those who directly or indirectly condemn it. It is addressed to Euripides in the person of his disciple. It is at the same time an attack upon him; and in either capacity it covers a great deal of ground. For the dispute does not lie simply between comedy and tragedy—which latter, with the old tragedians, was often only the naturalism of comedy on a larger scale—but between naturalism and humanity, as more advanced thinkers understood it; between the old ideas of human and divine conveyed by tragedy and comedy alike, and the new ones which Euripides, the friend of Socrates, had imported into them; and the question at issue involved, therefore, not only art and morals, but the entire philosophy of life. The "Apology" derives farther interest and significance from the varied emotions by which it is inspired. The speaker (as is the case in "Fifine at the Fair") is answering not only his opponent, but his own conscience. How the conscience of Aristophanes has been aroused he presently tells: first struggling a little with the false shame which the experience has left behind. This is the scene which he describes.

A festive supper had followed the successful play. Jollity was at its height. The cup was being crowned to Aristophanes as the "Triumphant," when a knock came to the door: and there entered no "asker of questions," no casual passer-by, but the pale, majestic, heavily-draped figure of Sophocles himself. Slowly, solemnly, and with bent head, he passed up the hall, between two ranks of spectators as silent as himself; raised his eyes as he confronted the priest,[36] and announced to him, that since Euripides was "dead to-day," and as a fitting spectacle for the god, his chorus would appear at the greater feast, next month, clothed in black and ungarlanded. Then silently, and amidst silence, he passed out again.

This, then, was the purport of the important news which was known to have arrived in port, but which every one had interpreted in his own way. Euripides was no more! But neither the news nor he who brought it could create more than a momentary stupor; and the tipsy fun soon renewed itself, at the expense of the living tragedian and the dead. Aristophanes alone remained grave. The value of the man whom he had aspersed and ridiculed stood out before him summed up by the hand of Death. He recalled the failure which had marked the now hopeless limitation of his own genius, and those last words addressed to him by Euripides which brought home its lesson.[37] The archon, "Master of the Feast," judging that its "glow" was "extinct," had risen to conclude it by crowning the parting cup. He had crowned it with judicious reserve to the "Good Genius;" and Strattis (the comic poet) had burst forth in an eulogium of the Comic Muse which claimed the title of Good Genius for her—when yielding to this new and over-mastering impulse, he (Aristophanes) checked the coming applause, and demanded that the Tragic Muse and her ministrant Euripides should receive the libation instead; justifying the demand by a noble and pathetic tribute to the memory of the dead poet, and to the great humanities which only the tragic poet can represent.

But he found no response. The listeners mistook his seriousness for satire, and broke out afresh at the excellence of such a joke; and recovering his presence of mind as quickly as he had lost it, he changed his tone, thanked those alike who had laughed with him, and who had wept with the "Lord of Tears;" and desired that the cup be consecrated to that genius of complex poetry which is tragedy and comedy in one. It was sacrilege, he declared, to part these two; for to do so was to hack at the Hermai[38]—to outrage the ideal union of the intellectual and the sensuous life in man. And from this new vantage-ground he launched another bolt at Euripides, whose coldness, he asserted, had belied this union, and made him guilty of a crime inexpiable in the sight of the gods.

Yet he could not dismiss him from his thoughts. He wanted to go over the old ground with him, and put himself in the right. Balaustion and her husband were in a manner representatives of the dead tragedian. That was why he had come. He was not sure that he expressed, or at the moment even felt, all that he had just repeated. "Drunk he was with the good Thasian, and drunk he probably had been." Nevertheless, the impulse he had thus obeyed sprang perhaps from some real, if hitherto undiscovered depths in his soul.

Up to this moment his defence has been carried on in a disjointed manner, and consists rather in defying attack than in resisting it: the defiant mood being only another aspect of the perturbed condition which has brought him to Balaustion's door. It finds its natural starting-point in the coarse treatment of things and persons which his "Thesmophoriazusae," with its "monkeying" of Euripides,[39] has so recently displayed. But he reminds Balaustion that the art of comedy is young. It is only three generations since Susarion gave it birth. (He explains this more fully later on.) It began when he and his companions daubed their faces with wine lees, mounted a cart, and drove by night through the villages: crying from house to house, how this man starved his labourers, that other kissed his neighbour's wife, and so on. The first comedian battered with big stones. He, Aristophanes, is at the stage of the wooden club which he has taken pains to plane smooth, and inlay with shining studs. The mere polished steel will be for his successors.

"And is he approaching the age of steel?" Balaustion asks, well knowing that he is not. "His play failed last year. Was his triumph to-night due to a gentler tone? Is he teaching mankind that brute blows are not human fighting, still less the expression of godlike power; and that ignorance and folly are convicted by their opposites, not by themselves?"

"Not he, indeed," he replies; "he improves on his art: he does not turn it topsy-turvy. He does not work on abstractions. His power is not that of the recluse. He wants human beings with their approbation and their sympathy, and his Athens, to be pleased in her own way. He leaves the rest to Euripides. Real life is the grist to his mill. It is clear enough, however, that the times are against him. Every year more restrictions; Euripides with his priggishness; Socrates with his books and his moonshine, and his supercilious ways: never resenting his (Aristophanes') fun, nor seeming even to notice it[40], not condescending to take exception to any but the 'tragedians;' as if he, the author of the 'Birds,' was a mere comic poet!" Then follows a tirade on the variety of his subjects; their depth, their significance, and the mawkishness and pedantry which they are intended to confute.

"Drunk! yes, he owns that he is." This in answer to a look from Balaustion, which has rebuked a too hazardous joke—"Drink is the proper inspiration. How else was he beaten in the 'Clouds,' his masterpiece, but that his opponent had inspired himself with drink, and he this time had not?[41] Purity! he has learned what that is worth"—With more in the same strain. Now, however, that his adventure is told, the tumult of feeling in some degree subsides, and the more serious aspects of the apology will come into play.

Balaustion and her husband, seeing the sober mood return, once more welcome "the glory of Aristophanes" to their house, and bid him on his side share in their solemnity, and commemorate Euripides with them. This calls his attention to the portrait of the dead poet; those implements of his work which were his tokens of friendship to Balaustion; the papyrus leaf inscribed with the Herakles itself; and he cannot resist a sneer at this again unsuccessful play. His hostess rebukes him grandly for completing the long outrage on the living man by this petty attack on his "supreme calm;" and as supreme calmness means death, he begins musing on the immunities which death confers, and their injustice. "Give him only time and he will pulverize his opponents; he will show them whether this work of his is unintelligible, or that other will not live. But let them die; and they slink out of his reach with their malice, stupidity, and ignorance, while survivors croak 'respect the dead' over the hole in which they are laid. At all events, he retorts on them when he can—unwisely perhaps, since those he flings mud at are only immortalized by the process. Euripides knew better than to follow his example."

Again Balaustion has her answer. "He has volleyed mud at Euripides himself while pretending to defend the same cause: the cause of art, of knowledge, of justice, and of truth;" and she makes his cheek burn by reminding him of what petty and what ignoble witticisms that mud was made up. At last he begins in real earnest. "Balaustion, he understands, condemns comedy both in theory and in practice, from the calm and rational heights to which she, with her tragic friend, has attained. Here are his arguments in its favour."

"It claims respect as an institution, because as such it is coeval with liberty—born of the feast of Bacchus, and therefore of the good gifts of the earth—a mode of telling truth without punishment, and of chastising without doing harm. It claims respect by its advance from simple objects to more composite, from plain thumping to more searching modes of attack. The men who once exposed wrong-doing by shouting it before the wrong-doer's door, now expose it by representing its various forms. The comic poets denounce not only the thief, the fool, the miser, but the advocates of war, the flatterers of the populace, the sophists who set up Whirligig[42] in the place of Zeus, the thin-blooded tragedian in league with the sophists, who preaches against the flesh. Where facts are insufficient he has recourse to fancy, and exaggerates the wronged truth the more strongly to enforce it (here follows a characteristic illustration.) To those who call Saperdion the Empousa, he shows her in a Kimberic robe;[43] in other words, he exposes her charms more fully than she does it herself, the better to convict those who malign them."

And here lies his grudge against Euripides. Euripides is one of those who call Saperdion a monster—who slander the world of sense with its beauties and its enjoyments, or who contemptuously set it aside. "Born on the day of Salamis—when heroes walked the earth; and gods were reverenced and not discussed—when Greeks guarded their home with its abundant joys, and left barbarian lands to their own starvation—he has lived to belie every tradition of that triumphant time. He has joined himself with a band of starved teachers and reformers to cut its very foundations away. He exalts death over life, misery over happiness; or, if he admits happiness, it is as an empty name."

"Moreover, he reasons away the gods; for they are, according to him, only forms of nature. Zeus is the atmosphere. Poseidon is the sea. Necessity rules the universe. Duty, once the will of the gods, is now a voice within ourselves bidding us renounce pleasure, and giving us no inducement to do so."

"He reasons away morality, for he shows there is neither right nor wrong, neither 'yours' nor 'mine,' nor natural privilege, nor natural subjection, that may not be argued equally for or against. Why be in such a hurry to pay one's debt, to attend one's mother, to bring a given sacrifice?"

"He reasons away social order, for he declares the slave as good as his master, woman equal to man, and even the people competent to govern itself. 'Why should not the tanner, the lampseller, or the mealman, who knows his own business so well, know that of the State too?'"