his Pompilia, as of Dante and his Beatrice, that whenever she is brought in, however austere or terrible or vile the surroundings, immediately an ineffable sweetness, a Divine tenderness, suffuses and thrills the verse. The marvellous power and insight of the two Guido sections have been equally acknowledged. The excellent critic of the Westminster Review gave his verdict against the couple devoted to the lawyers; "the malt is the best in England, but the beer is bad." In this I cannot concur. To me they represent the grinning gargoyles and grotesque carvings of the Gothic cathedral; the "noble grotesque" of Ruskin, the sport of a strong and earnest, not the serious business of a weak and frivolous mind. In the passage from which I have already quoted, Mr. Swinburne, referring to such pieces as the two Guidos, writes: "This work of exposition by soliloquy, and apology by'analysis, can only be accomplished or undertaken by the genius of a great special pleader, able to fling himself with all his heart and all his brain, with all the force of his intellect and all the strength of his imagination, into the assumed part of his client; to concentrate on the cause in hand his whole power of illustration and illumination, and bring to bear upon one point at once all the rays of his thought in one focus." But what infinite contempt, genial and jolly in the first case, acrid in the other, Browning pours out upon these professional hireling special pleaders! His own object in such pieces as "Bishop Blougram's Apology," "Mr. Sludge, 'the Medium,"" the "Prince of Hohenstiel-Schwangau," is by no means to prove black white and white black, to make the worse appear the better reason, but to bring a seeming monster and

perplexing anomaly under the common laws of nature, by showing how it has grown to be what it is, and how it can with more or less of self-illusion reconcile itself to itself. The one great section to which I think less than justice has been done is that of the Pope, with its awful prelude:

"Ere I confirm or quash the Trial here
Of Guido Franceschini and his friends,
Read, how there was a ghastly Trial once
Of a dead man by a live man, and both, Popes:
Thus-in the antique penman's very phrase."

I know nothing that surpasses the wisdom, the true saintliness, the invincible firmness of the great good old Pope in this decisive monologue.

An author whom we should love for that sole sentence, wrote of his wife, "To love her was a liberal education." It would be scarcely rash to say the like of this one greatest work of our poet, who has wrought so much else that is only less great.

BROWNING'S "PACCHIAROTTO" *

MR. BROWNING, as he ages, seems but to work the more strenuously and produce the more abundantly, having, since the colossal "The Ring and the Book," issued no less than six volumes, of which two at least, "Balaustion's Adventure" and "Aristophanes' Apology," may be accounted of first-rate importance. He has accumulated such immense stores of knowledge, and much of it recondite knowledge, of literature, of art, and of things in general; he has gathered such wealth of manifold reflections on some of the abstrusest problems of life, that he appears to be anxious to disburthen himself of as much as possible ere death overtake him, that the treasures of his learning and thought may not perish with him. The present volume differs from the others of recent date in being written almost wholly in rhyme instead of blank verse, and differs from all previous ones in dealing much with personal matters, and these the author's relations to the public and the critics, instead of being mainly dramatic. During about thirty years the bulk of the critics pronounced him unintelligible,

* "Pacchiarotto and How he Worked in Distemper: with other Poems." By Robert Browning. London Smith, Elder, and Co., 1876.

and the mass of the public ignored him, yet he possessed his soul in patience; but during the last dozen years or so the poor puzzled critics (I mean the professional book-tasters) have treated him with respect if not with understanding, and the poor bewildered public (I mean the small public that reads poetry) has looked into his books, though for the most part with glances of mere despair, yet now he bursts out upon both with almost savage scorn. One cannot say that he has no right to be angry, supposing that mere human stupidity ought ever to move to anger; one cannot help thinking that the anger is postdated. It would not have been surprising had he lashed out merrily and fiercely when a fatuous Edinburgh Reviewer, among other choice grievances, complained that he had not rendered the burning of the last Master of the Templars in a pleasing manner! But the time is past when any reviewers, Edinburgh, Quarterly, or other, could venture such imbecility; yet here we have the poet castigating them with a will:

"This Monday is what else but May-day;
And these in the drabs, blues and yellows,
Are surely the privileged fellows;

So, saltbox and bones, tongs and bellows!
(I threw up the window) 'Your pleasure?'

"Then he who directed the measure-
An old friend-put leg forward nimbly,
'We critics as sweeps out your chimbly!
Much soot to remove from your flue, sir!
Who spares coal in kitchen an't you, sir!
And neighbours complain it's no joke, sir,
-You ought to consume your own smoke, sir!'

Ah, rogues, but my housemaid suspects you—
Is confident oft she detects you

In bringing more filth into my house
Than ever you found there! I'm pious
However: 'twas God made you dingy."

And so on through several more pages of infinite contempt, quite justifiable, but scarcely worth the while of so great a thinker and poet to fling at such pigmies.

As for the public which complains that though he brews stiff drink, the deuce a flavour of grape is there, and alleges against him Shakespeare and Milton, whose wines are both strong and sweet, he turns on it with bitter disdain, and reminds it that it drinks only the leakage and leavings of these, sups the single scene, sips the single verse :—

"There are forty barrels with Shakespeare's brand.

Some five or six are abroach; the rest

Stand spigoted, fauceted.

There are four big butts of Milton's brew.

How comes it you make old drips and drops
Do duty, and there devotion stops?"

And he concludes his rough rasping with the following stanza :

"Don't nettles make a broth

Wholesome for blood grown lazy and thick?
Maws out of sorts make mouths out of taste.

My Thirty-four Port-no need to waste
On a tongue that's fur and a palate-paste !

A magnum for friends who are sound! the sick
I'll posset and cosset them, nothing loth,
Henceforward with nettle-broth!"