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 The ring and the boolc":its moral spirit 
 
 3 1924 013 443 233 
 
The) Rin(| ^m>: th| Sook ; 
 
 Its Moral Spirit and ]V{~b||Y:e. 
 
 CHABLgS W. HODELi. 
 
 sis-presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of 
 Doctor of Philospphy, , ' 
 
 Major subject, English Literature. 
 
 Minors, ^^"gl'^h Bhilotegy. 
 ' \ Ethics. 
 
 CORNELL tpNIVEIlSITYi 
 Ithaca, N?w York, May i, iS94- 
 
 SHBLBTVILLE, INDIANA. 
 The y. H. Peitzer Print. 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013443233 
 
INDRX. 
 
 Intl-oduction i 
 
 PART ONE : The Organic Life of the Poem as a Whole 3 
 
 PART TWO : The Monologues 16 
 
 y Half Rome ' .... 17 
 
 The Other Half Rome , ... 20 
 
 Tertium Quid .■■.).':'. .22 
 
 X3ount Guido F^rancheschini . . '. 25 
 
 I Giuseppe Caponsacchi ; 29 
 
 J^'Pompiha ,. ,. 35 
 
 Dominus.Hyacinthus de Archangelis 41 
 
 Johannes-Baptista Bottinius 43 
 
 VThe Pope ..../. , 47 
 
 .jGuido . . 1. 54 
 
 The Book and the Ring 60 
 
 General Statement 64 
 
 PART THREE : The Plastic Power of Passion in Moulding 
 
 the Rhetoric and Versificatioti Orgajiipally . .65 
 
"THE RING AND THE BOOK": 
 
 Its Moral Spirit anil Motive, 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 t Perhaps no poem of the nineteenth century has at once so 
 
 challenged the ■wonder and admiration of readers, and at the same 
 time suffered such criticism on its artistic managemerit, as has the 
 Ring and the Book. It is nothing uncommon for critiques to pre- 
 sent the remarkable flashes of poetic fire, found here and' there, 
 detached as specimens to receive laudation, while they find the 
 poem as a whole insufferably tedious and lacking in structural 
 arrangement. We may quote from Sharp's life in the Great Writ- 
 er's Series: "To me it seems that the Ring and the Book is, regard- 
 ed as an artistic whole, the most magnificent failure in our litera- 
 ture. It enshrines poetry that no other than our greatest poet could 
 have written, it has depths to which many of far inferior power 
 have not descended. It is in no presumptuous splirit, but out of my 
 profound love of this long loved and often read, this superb poem, 
 that I, for one, wish it comprised but the Prologue, Count Guido , 
 Francheschini, Caponsacchi, Pompilia, the Pope, and Guido. I 
 cannot help thinking that this is the form in which it will be read 
 
in years to come. Thus circumscribed it seems to me to be rounded 
 and complete, a great work of art, void of the dross, the mere debris 
 which the true artist discards. But as it is in all its poetic strength 
 and flagging impulse is it not after all the true characteristic of 
 Browning's genius?" With all deference to our respectable critic, 
 we can by no means agree with him in his strictures. We prefer 
 the workmanship of Browning in discarding " debris." This refer- 
 ence to a troublesome ma.is of debris reminds us of the kind offices 
 offered by another critic to reduce Mr. Browning's poem one-half 
 by the judicious use of scissors in his own hands. 
 
 It is characteristic of all of Brownings's longer poems that 
 they center in some thought or teaching which interpenetrates the 
 whole work. Long poems, composed of detached fragments of 
 thought, each one good in itself, are no part of his genius. Detail 
 never absorbs him to the neglect of his main theme. If there is 
 any general error we feel it to be a carelessness of detail. Now the 
 characteristic of a poem highly polished in every detail is that it 
 can appeal to any grade of mind. For if one fails to make the 
 general synthesis which gives the bearing of the work as a whole, 
 he will at least be pleasantly entertained by the m6re succession of 
 pretty things, as a child is more easily entertained with a string of 
 glass buttons than by a building of magnificent architecture. So 
 he will read such a poet as Tenn^'son for detachable sweetmeats. 
 Now w'hen our author speaks of the " lily-white squI- which angels 
 fear to touch untenderly,'' ther6 will immediately arise from such a 
 loud exclamation that "that is poetry;" because it mlakes an imme- 
 diate appeal to such minds. To these readers the Ring and the 
 Book would be a scanty field of sweets. And they might travel 
 laboriously and in a great cloud of dust, through the gossip and 
 lawyers' pleadings, with little satisfaction. Yet what dramatic 
 place could such bits have in these speeches? For in spite of Arch- 
 angeli's ready belief in his poetic powers, we should consider any 
 poetry, in the sense of such detached bits, as highly improbable pro- 
 ducts of his loquacity. But if the Ring and the Book does not 
 continually offer these bits in its parts, we still assert that it is a 
 poetic whole, and that all its parts are made to bear on the general 
 structure of the poem. And where the synthetic powers are care- 
 fully exercised along with the regular flow of appreciation, we believe 
 that no part of the poem will be pronounced common or worthless. 
 
 To understand this general bearing of the poem is a much 
 more difficult thing, but as it is the finest efflorescence of poetic 
 
genius, so we claim that it is able to give the highest pleasure to 
 him who comprehends it. Hence in these pages, it shall be our ob- 
 ject to search out, so far as possible, this general intention of the 
 poem. We will not cast out anything; not even the wordiness of 
 the lawyers shall be rejected, but they too, will be shown to 
 have their place in the general structure of the poem. In fact we 
 are firmly convinced that far from being a magnificent failure struc- 
 turally, the Ring and the Book is the consummate triumph of artistic 
 genius as exhibited in arrangement by the longer poems of this 
 century. The mere difficulty in volume of thus interpenetrat- 
 ing twenty-one thousand verses, as it shows the artist's power, so it 
 demands the reader's strongest attention in synthesis. It is, no little 
 thing for the critic to subdue such wealth of detail to, the central 
 aim; but in doing that, the best criticism of the poem will find its 
 work. This once accomplished the parts will all be of interest. 
 St. Paul has said: "The eye cannot say unto the hand I have no 
 need of thee: nor again the head of the feet, I have no need of you. 
 There should be no schism in the body; but the members should 
 have the same care one of another. And whether one member suf- 
 fer, all members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all mem- 
 bers rejoice with it." So is the body of this poem one body; and 
 each part has its I'elation to the whole, which gives it an importance 
 above its isolated meaning. 
 
 PART ONE. 
 
 " So British Public^" says the poet, " learn one lesson hence 
 of many which whatever lives should teach: This lesson, that our 
 human speech is naught, and human estimation words and wind." 
 This was perhaps the moral that made itself immediately patent to 
 Browning as he turned from the steps of the Palazzo Riccardi and 
 lost himself in the interest of his new-found treasure. The wit- 
 
nessings, the pleadings, the story itself, — all told of such a clear 
 moral to any eye that would expend a glance on them. It was no 
 new thing that a center of tpwn-talk should arouse testimonies ot 
 all sorts and champions for all sides. Every eddy in which the, 
 gossip of Rome had paused and circled throughout its history, had 
 illustrated this same moral. The story of Guido and his beautiful, 
 sad young wife uttered this more emphatically. In it were sharp 
 contrasts of guilt with innocence, burgess life with nobility, strong 
 incitements to passion and prejudices, — everything to bring into its 
 clearest lights and shades the falsity of men's testimony as they at- 
 tempt to figure forth this tragedy in speech. Yet this lesson need- 
 ed no long poem to make itself evident to men, and if this were all 
 of Browning's moral, we might well say how much ado about noth- 
 ing, what verbosity over a trite fact. For whatever the theme of 
 talk, one can find division, even among good and well meaning 
 men. All good men have never belonged to one party as opposed 
 to all bad men. The church' itself has not succeeded in making 
 such a division of the sheep from the goats. But men become opin- 
 ionated; the part truth they see is made the whole truth by them, 
 and thus rendered false; or they see with a swerving that prejudices 
 them against a right seeing of the truth. 
 
 ' Then comes the further question of the nature and reason of 
 this falsity. It is not a mere disagreement of the facts reported to 
 the senses. For experimentation upon the false witnessing of the 
 senses, and upon differing perceptions by direct witnesses of the 
 same facts, can be more forcibly presented in the work of the psy- 
 chologist or pathologist. It is in that men, with the same facts 
 before them, from reasons lying deep in their own moral natures, 
 will form differing judgments, will form judgments other than the 
 clearest moral insight ^ould see. The first three speakers of the 
 poem have not been direct witnesses of any part of Pompilia's 
 career. They have seen the shattered remnants of Guide's work; 
 but of the years back of this, which lead to and explain the scene 
 in San Lbrenzo, they have nothing more than a hearsay knowledge. 
 They have gathered the same facts from the divorce trial and the 
 common gossip, and yet they have given us three testimonies that 
 differ utterly. So the facts laid before the two lawyers and the 
 Pope are the same, — each gets the same depositions of the witness- 
 es; — yet their own witnessings to us of this tragedy which had just 
 happened in their midst differ as widely as the poles. Even when we 
 
5 
 
 get the testimony of the direct actors inihe trijgedy, the mere facts 
 do not make up the importance of each testimony. We had learn- 
 ed the chief points of Po'mpilia's life before she ppokfc from the 
 -convent couch, but the moral bearing of the Various acts of this 
 'tragedy is told, with an entirely novel truth. So we see it is rather 
 the deeper falsity of witnessing, — a falsity growing out of the 
 character itself, which is the unifying moral of the poem. 
 
 Each monologue also presents a true witnessing, — a witness- 
 ing of the character of the speaker, at the same time that the words 
 are bearing witness to the tragedy of which they speak. The two 
 lawyers cannot conceal their natures from us, even though they 
 do fail to emit the faintest ray of light upon the truth of Pompilia 
 and Guido. Even Guide's two speeches evince the truth, (in this 
 sense) of Guido; for as his wife says " hate vvas the truth of him." 
 They differ and the first seems to be ati effective attempt at draw- 
 ing the sheep's fleece around the wolfish form; but in very truth, 
 he is self betrayed, to one who reads the tragedy now. This truth, 
 the necessary truth of a character to itself, has nothing to do with 
 the moral of the poem; for such truth lies deep in the constitution 
 of human nature, and in the poem is worthy of no further discus- 
 sion, than as a matter of the artistic skill and careful ob'gervation 
 of the artist. 
 
 To reveal an essential false witnessing, if we might so 
 term it, the story found in the old book was well fitted. No wit- 
 ness was left in doubt of the external fact to raise a quibble there- 
 upon. Every necessary fact of Pompilia's. career had been laid 
 open to the general eye. Hef"l)irth, her marriage, her Arezzo life, 
 her flight, and finally her murder, are indisputable facts. But the 
 whole wealth of fact that lay hidden in the motives of the actors 
 was withheld, so that these talkers might show their skill in judg- 
 ing the inner by the outer, the thing signified by the sign that lay 
 open to the world. And their attitude toward and insight into this 
 outward body of fact as revealing the inner, is wherein the falsity 
 or truth of tjie various testimonies lies. 
 
 Christ has said: "but those things which proceed out of the 
 mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man." So 
 the untruth of these testimonies shows the untruth of the hearts 
 from which they proceed. As one becomes out of sympathy with 
 the true, which is also the good, his heart is wrong. He may not 
 be conscious of his error, and may display a great parade of knowl- 
 edge of such cases, as does the jealous husband. And he jnay as 
 
sincerely believe that he has pierced to the Very core of motive. 
 But as long as the heart of the , man is wrong, he will not be able 
 to see, hb\^ever honestly he may try. The lily-whiteness and purity 
 of Pompilia are beyond the range of the farthest comprehension of 
 Half Rome.' Even the conscious falsehood and self-sophistication 
 of Bottini weigh little as causes of his seeing Pompilia falsely, 
 when compared with his own darkness of soul. We see also that 
 whatever, swerving fz-om the truth there is in the' stories told by 
 Caponsacchi and Pompilia, grows from the excess of love over all 
 other considerations. If they err anywhere, it is in the dazzling 
 light of the love and purity of each other's souls. "So we -are 
 made," says Pompilia, such difference in minds. Such differerice in 
 eyes too that see the minds!" 
 
 This inner life, the " what is" of the Death in the Desert, 
 gives rise to the whole outward man — that is the man that the 
 world sees — in his attitude toward spiritual truth. One may know 
 a theorem in geometry apart from his inner life, but he cannot thus 
 see motives and interpret events. If he loves darkness rather than 
 light, he 'will find darkness in the lives of others. This is the 
 spring of difference between the Pope's judgment and those of the 
 lawyers. The Pope was a second St. John, whose " what is " had 
 survived and found triumph to an extreme old age over the powers- 
 of evil. He was the tried spiritual athlete, drawing nearer the end 
 of the course which Caponsacchi was just beginning. i Hence he 
 could tell cjearly what the blindness of the lawyers could not fig- 
 ure. Far Trom the lawyers being superfluous in the poem, however, 
 they thus form the most striking and most teaching contrast of the 
 moral lesson of the poem. 
 
 But it is an added trouble that men who are thus spiritually 
 blind will not content themselves with the fact that they caniiot 
 sec, will not even be convinced that it is a fact. And so 
 each of the speakers of this type in the poem is loud 
 in the assertion of his opinion. The insight of the moral nature is 
 substituted by " the bumptiousness of the intellect." rfThey become 
 motive-mongers, and try all motives by their own pair of balances. 
 They assert " the what knows," and they even go so far as to think -^ 
 that this knowing faculty can juggle away whatever of the truth it 
 desires to remove. Their truth becomes no more than a splendid 
 fabrication, the " plausible'' of Guido, or the finely and cunningly 
 constructed theories of the innocence of Guido or of Pompilia in 
 the mouths of the lawyers. It may advance even to the fear ex- 
 
 Q 
 
pressed by Archangeli, — that the truth might " undo his whole 
 
 speech,^^and what is worse, his son and heir." " Their right is 
 
 wrong, eyes have they, yet are blind." 
 
 In these facts the Augustine could only see the " one proof 
 
 more that 'God is true. 
 
 And ever^; man a liar' — that who trusts 
 To human testimony for a fact 
 Gets this sole fact^himself is pj-oved'a fool; 
 Man's speech being false, if but by consequence 
 That only strength is true! while man is weak,' 
 And, since truth seems reserved for heaven not earth, 
 P^agued here b}' earth's prerogative of lies, 
 Should learn to love and long for what, one day, 
 Approved by life's probation, he may s^eak." 
 
 Pompilia also when she " found that such as are untrue could 
 only take the tiuth in through a lie," turned to "speak truth to the 
 Truth's self, God will len'd credit to my words this time." It is possi- 
 ble that the fact that all men may err from the truth, — that we have 
 not yet come to enjoy our highest soul-heritage of truth, was in Brown- 
 ing's mind, as is emphasized by many of the critics; but I rather think 
 the teaching of the poem centers in the nature of man's essential 
 truth or falsity, even here in the life of probation. J Stress has been 
 laid by one critic' on those speeches of the Pope in which he speaks 
 doubtfully of his own testimony, as a proof of this universality of 
 the untruthfulness of speech. But to me, it seems that the truth- 
 fulness of the Pope's speech is the characteristic which the author 
 wishes especially to impress. We tnay add a,lso that it is the truth- 
 fulness of the speeches of Pompilia and Caponsacchi that are ac- 
 cented. They rather illustrate how the clarifying of the spiritual 
 nature, the regeneration of the man, the ascendency of truth in the 
 " what is," may really speak the truth for whosoever is rfeady to 
 hear. Thus we might state as the- general moral of the poem, not 
 the unqualified general proposition that our human testimony is 
 false, — which it is, insomuch as perfection of knowledge, goodness 
 and truth exist only in God,— but as the relativity of truth speak- 
 ing to the truth of the essential man. 
 
 ■'Biit Browning has a yet further teaching, — as to how the 
 essential man may be changed, may be regenerated, "may be 
 wheeled into a new orbit, becoming helio-centric instead of geo- 
 centric." Thomas a Kempis has said : "Let not, then, Moses 
 speak to me, but Thou, O Lord, My God, Eternal Truth, lest, if I 
 only hear with the outward ear, and aiTi not inwardly enkindled, I 
 die and become unfruitful, lest the word heard but not acted on, 
 known but not loved, believed but not kept, be turned to my con- 
 
demnation." Also in speaking of the wayS of the Spirit of Go,d 
 he says : "He to whoi'rt I speak will soon become wise and wax 
 strong in the spirit. I in a moment can lift up the humble mind, 
 arid make it enter more deeply into the principles of Eternal Truth, 
 than if one had studied ten years in the schools. I teach without 
 the sound of words, without the strife of opinions, without the am- 
 bition of honor, without the contention of controversy, — and he 
 to whom the Eternal Word speak is set free from a multitude of 
 opinions." Thus it is that a man is to be raised above his former 
 self; the Divine Word shall speak to him and he will be changed 
 from his former self to a new man. " Old things shall pasff away, 
 all things shall become new. The things he once loved he shall 
 now hate, and the things he once hated he shall now love." This 
 is Christ's message to the world; he came that men migKt receive 
 the Divine Spirit through his mediation, and thus be raised; for the 
 Spirit can neither be purchased, nor exorcised, nor earned. 
 
 As Christ came to mediate between the Spirit of God and 
 the spirit of man, so came the prophets; and as Carlyle shows us in 
 his Heroes and Hero-Worship, every great man is a prophet, a 
 leader of the people. In his essay on The Oversoul, Emerson has 
 given an especial attention to how the Divine Spirit enters the 
 hearts of men, and makes them great, and powerful for good 
 through His own power. " I desire and look up,'" he says, " and put 
 myself into the attitude of reception, but from some alien energy 
 the vision comes." " One mode of the divine teaching is the incar- 
 nation in a form, in forms like my own. I live in society; with 
 persons who answer to thoughts in my own mind, or express a cer- 
 tain obedience to the great instincts to which I live. I see its pres- 
 ence in them. I am certified of a cGmmon nature ; and these other 
 souls, these separate selves, draw me as nothing else can. They stir 
 in me the new emotions we call passion. Persons are supplemen- 
 tary to the primary teaching of the soul." So his conception of a 
 great man is one who is mOre constantly filled with the Spirit. This 
 Spirit, from its ver^y nature, must make itself felt, and lead others 
 onward and upward to its own height. This is the power of every 
 spiritual leader among men. Carlyle has .said " The noble, God- 
 inspired man is a symbol of perennial, infinite character ;" and else- 
 where : " For the great man I have ever had the greatest predelec- 
 tion. Great men are the inspired text of that Divine book of 
 Revelations, whereof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, 
 and by some named history. In fact the use of a great man as he 
 
points out is incalculable. It is not the mere sum of his good 
 deeds, his charities, his discoveries in the knowledge of clothing 
 men and feeding them, nor his faculty of mere physica^l leadership. 
 All of these may be done in a degree by mere talenti and industry. 
 But if the man is great in Spirit, he v/ill be a prophet to raise men 
 to greater heights. He will lead them out into new paths. He 
 will show the possibilities of their higher nature and make tht-m 
 aware of the goodly heritage they possess. 
 
 / But the great lesson which Browning has to teach in this 
 regard, and which is later taught by Whitman, is, that not the 
 great alone are trusted as mediators of this Divina Power, but that 
 whoever has been regenerated and raised, can in turn exercise the 
 power over those around him. This power of the regenerated per- 
 sonality to quicken and make alive the unregenerated is one of the 
 cardinal doctrines of Browning's philosophy of the souL/ The wife 
 Alcestis is thus able to raise her husband; the shepherd boy rouses 
 'the spirit of the great sad king of Israel. And here, in the very 
 center of this poem, we have Pompilia, unlearned except in sor- 
 ro\vs, unexperienced save how bitterly cruel thb heart of man can 
 grow, beconhing unconsciously the power to summon forth the 
 Isitent saint and Jiero in Caponsacchi. This point will be more 
 fully dealt with in the discussion of that monologue. And it may 
 be well to add, that Pompilia acknowledges that Caponsacchi had 
 exercised a like power over her : 
 
 " Through such souls alone, 
 
 God stooping shows SuiBcient of his light 
 
 For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise." 
 
 She too had been staid in ber trust in God by seeing this ope bold 
 champion of the truth here on the earth. And the Story of such an in- 
 fluence is only what might have figured in the stories of any of earth's 
 saints; th,e humble ones who have suffered here and there, and left their 
 lives a rich, but unknown legacy for the inspiration of those w-hq- 
 come after. No doubt the leavening power of such obscure, yet 
 spiritually clear personalities is an untold influence for good among 
 tbe evil tendencies of the masses of "evil men. The family or vil- 
 lage saint may find as narrow a sphere as Pompilia did in her day, 
 but they may be the mediators to raise those around them. The 
 unconscious power of their personalities works for good with u 
 quiet, but resistless power. 
 
 The reason of this influence of personality is not far to seek. 
 It has been yery aptly put in her essay on The Education of the 
 Emotions by Francis Power Cbbbe. "We may now approach our 
 
lO 
 
 proper feubject of the Education of the Emotions, carrying with us 
 the important fact, that no means are so efficacious in promoting 
 good ones as the wise employment of the great agency of Contag- 
 ion of Emotions; and further, that this cor^tagion works only by 
 exhibiting the genuine emotion to the persons we desire to influ- 
 ence. Only by being brave can we inspire couraige. Only by 
 being tender and loving can we move other hearts to pity and 
 affection." It has often been said that th^ power of the orator lies 
 in his profound belief in the justicfe and I'ight of his own cause. 
 Where conviction is lacking in the speaker, it will in consequence 
 be lacking in the audience. So the reformer who preaches from a 
 core of demagoguery falls to the earth, while a Phillips, inspired by 
 the confidence that he was standing for God, even though he were 
 standing alone, made himself irresistible. H^nce the foolishness of 
 ascribing one's own petty disbeliefs to. him who is swaying the 
 secret hearts of men. But every word from every mouth, and every 
 act of every person teaches its truth. It pleads for righteousness 
 or it pleads against it; for " all spirit is mutually attractive," and 
 every incident which is an embodiment of the spirit is interesting. 
 As Carlyle has pointed out in his essay on Biography, every inci- 
 dent illustrates the man and is interesting to wh(»sOever may read. 
 
 Thus it is we see that man is the mediator for man, and that 
 the higher ever reaches down to help the lower. Such a power in 
 the Incarnate Son of God raised the thief ori the cross. And so it 
 is that men are led by the small tender hand, or the soft warm 
 hand, or the strong rough hand, — by any hand of spiritual power ' 
 up to the higher life. And the saint may yet conie who will levi- 
 gate the unctuous paternal lawyer, Archangeli, into his possible 
 • better sel'f. 
 
 But the direct power (^f great personalities is so limited. Its 
 perennial fountaihheads are personally accessible to but few. Only 
 the shadow of them is left us in the story of their lives. How 
 much does every orator lose when his personal presence is subtract- 
 ed from what he says; how we yearn for fuller communion with 
 great souls who have left but a meager record of themselves in 
 what is called history. But greatness seems to have found one 
 means of perpetuating itself which may imprison for a time at 
 least the essence of the great departed soul. This is art, and art, 
 we may say, is the embodiment of a great soul to be left as a legacy 
 to men who come after. As Emerson says in his essay on Art: " it 
 is the spirit's voluntary use of things to serve its own end. Art 
 
universally is the spirit creative." Thus the spirit selepts and ar- 
 ranges its embodiment, so that all men may be reached by this 
 direct power of sympathy with what is great and good in the 
 artist. Thus it wj-11 carry the teaching of the artfst to'liis fellows. 
 
 So whenr^rowning wished to convey the truth of this falsi- 
 ty of buttian'' testimony, he did not take the direct way, to tell his 
 neighbor^' 
 
 " Thy right is wrong, eyes hast thou yet art blind; 
 Thine ears are stuffed despite their length." 
 
 This mten would not bear; and would still believe their untruths 
 
 " But Art, wherein man nowise speaks to men, 
 
 Only to mankind, — art ma^- tell a truth * 
 
 Obliqueh', do the thing shall breed the thought, ' 
 
 Nor wrong the thought missing the mediate word." 
 
 That is, art will not speak to men's opinions, but their hearts; it 
 
 will arouse and stir them with the' educating power, of a goodly 
 
 emotional contagion, till they aspire to better things. By reaching 
 
 the truth obli^quely, it will avoid the stubborn resistance of know- 
 
 ingness. It will cause hearts to become as little children that they 
 
 may receive the truth. 
 
 " So may you paint a picture, twice shows truth, 
 Be3'ond mere imagery on the wall, — i 
 
 So note b^' note, bring music from 3'our mind, 
 Deeper than ever e'en Beethoven dived, ^ 
 So write a^book shall mean beyond the facts, 
 Suffice the eye and save the soul beside." 
 
 So our author believed in the saving efficacy of a book, of his book. He 
 believed that t;he great truth, he had thus tried to communicate 
 sympathetically, \*'ould nowise fail, but would be the salvation of 
 the souls of many. Where he fails the failure must He in the re- 
 ceiver; for he has made his truth plain in the lives and stories of 
 those people of old Rofne. And we are raised not only by the 
 life of his own creations, but by the reflex of his own soul. 
 
 Perhaps no great creative artist has explained as muqh of the 
 secret of his great works as Browning has given us in the Ring 
 and the Book. The very title, as he explains it, figures forth the 
 part the artist is to play in his work of art. The ring-maker Cas- 
 tellani, as he shapes his fine rings, gives the suggestion for the name 
 of this, his crowning work. In the first book the .artist celebrates 
 his art as well as his facts. He says: There is but one trick. 
 
 One approved device 
 And but one, fits such slivers of pure gold 
 As this was, — to be;ir files tooth and hammer's tap: 
 Since hammer needs must widen out the round; 
 
 And file emboss it fine with lily-fiowers, < 
 
 Ere the sti.;fE grow a ring-thing right to wear. 
 That trick is: the artificer melts up wax 
 
12 
 
 With hone}', so to speak; he mingles gold 
 
 With gold's alloy, and, dufv tempering both, ' 
 
 Affects a manageable mass, then works; 
 
 But his work ended, once the thing a ring. 
 
 Oh, there's repristination ! Just a spirt 
 
 O' the proper fiery acid o'er its face, 
 
 And forth the alloy unfastened flies in fume. ■ 
 
 While, self-sufficient now, the shape remains. 
 
 The rondure brave, the lilied loveliness, 
 
 Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore: 
 
 Prime nature with an added artistry — 
 
 No carat lost, and 3'ou have gained a ring 
 
 'Tis a figure, a symbol say: 
 
 A thing's sign: now for the thing signified." 
 
 The gold which Browning used he tells us was found in the 
 
 " Small quarto size, .part print, part manuscript: 
 A book in shape but, reallj-, pure crude fact 
 Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard. 
 
 And brains, high blooded, ticked two centuries since 
 
 A pretty pifece of narrative, enough, 
 
 Which scarce ought so to drop out, one would think, 
 
 From the more curious annals of our kind." 
 
 He gathers his facts directly from where they had been de- 
 posited; the pure crude fact as it had been secreted from Roman life 
 of the closing years of the seventeenth century. Nor did he have 
 a literary prototype with which to work, and which he could raise 
 by his art. Shakespeare had his novel, play, or chronicle before him 
 as he worked his material, to remake it into the f^rm of his art; 
 Milton found the story of the Fall a common literary topic; and in 
 our own century Tennyson made himself famous by re-writing the 
 Arthurian legends, which occupied English literary artists for hun- 
 dreds of years. But in gathering the gold for the Ring and the 
 Book, the method of the novelist was used, — discovering the metal 
 directly in the lives of men. 
 
 " From the book, j'es; thence bit by bit I dug 
 The lingot truth, that memorable day, 
 Assayed and knew my piecemeal gain was gold, — 
 Yes; but from something else surpassing that. 
 Something of mine' which, mixed up with the mass, 
 Made it bear hammer and be firm to file. 
 Fancy with fact is just one fact the more; 
 Towit, that fancy has informed, transpierced, 
 Thridded and so thrown fast the fact else free. 
 As right through ring and ring runs the djereed 
 And binds the loose, one bar without a break. 
 I fused my live soul and that inert stuff. 
 Before attempting smithcraft, " 
 
 It was then his own live soul, that enabled him to make 
 the crude hard fact into a work of art. The life in him "abolished 
 the death of things." By the interfusion pf his own great person- 
 ality he was able to do this. Hence the impossibility of mere tal- 
 
13 
 
 ^nt doing such work; from the great heart of the great man only 
 
 will }t be possible for such a power to come. And this essential 
 
 power of the personality which made" him great in his, personal 
 
 dealings with men, makes his other self, that finds embodiment in' 
 
 his works of art, likewise great. * 
 
 He does' not create, as he explains, so much as he resuscitates: i 
 
 " No less, man, bounded, yearning to be free. 
 
 May so project his surplusage of soul 
 
 In search of body, so add self to self 
 
 By owning what la^' ownerless before, — 
 
 So find, so fill full, so appropriate forms — 
 
 That, although nothing which had never life 
 
 Shall get lite from him," be, not having been, 
 
 Yet, something dead may get to live again, 
 
 Something with too much life or not enough, ' 
 
 Which, either way imperfect, ended once." 
 
 This bringing to life of old facts comprises nearly the whole; 
 of Brownipg's poetry. The occasions of his poems were seldom 
 sought within himself, subjective poetry; they came from without 
 as variolis stimuli. But when he did take them into his attention, 
 he quickened them from the life within him. Paracelsus' life at- 
 tracted him when he was a young man; so when he had gathered 
 the facts from history, he breathed into them the breath of his own 
 life and resuscitated the man to speak to a modern audience. 
 Later, in the same way, the lives of Sarto and Lippi were made to 
 yield their materials for his plastic imagination. The dying St. 
 John was also given voice by the same ipower, that he might speak 
 his message to this nineteenth century. And even the chance fact 
 of the little morgue beside the Seine, with its recovered dead, was 
 thus transfused with a new life. The poet continues: 
 
 " Yet by a specific gift, an art of arts. 
 
 More insight and more outsight and much more 
 
 Will to use both of these than boast m^' mates, 
 
 I can detach from me, cornmls'sion forth 
 
 Half of my soul; which in its pilgrimage 
 
 O'er old unwandered waste ways of the world, 
 
 May chance upon some fragment of a whole,.. 
 
 Rag of flesh, scrap of bone in dim disuse, 
 
 Smoking flax that fed fire once: prompt therein 
 
 I enter, spark-like, put old powers to play " 
 
 This recreative power of the personality is '^ b a t every 
 speaker of the King and the Book, in a more modest wa^i%ies to 
 exercise. Each one tries to' bring the life again into the facts o'f the 
 immediate past by imparting a portion of his own spirit. Where 
 the self ,is pure and the life is good, the resuscitated life will be the 
 same. But where the life-giving soul is false and evil, whei'e life is 
 only simulated, where jugglery, trickery, and galvanism are made to 
 
'4 
 
 do the duty of spiritual life, then the product is only such simula- 
 tion of life as we find in the Fisc's sketch of Pompilia. 
 
 The Ring and the Book will ever stand as a witness of the 
 gigantic surplusage of life that Browning possessed in his inner 
 man. He found an old murder case, that bad died out from the 
 minds of men and was utterly forgotten, only the "entablature 
 left," an old book, in which were found the fragments into which 
 he was to breath a new life. The nine chief figures, who once 
 played their part in Rome, beside the many others of less and less 
 importance, are all re-created for the modern reader. Pompilia's 
 pure, sad woman's soul is once more set forth to do its work of 
 healing on the hearts of men. She had done a good work to some 
 of the hearts of her day, she had raised a Caponsacchi,, had caused 
 the good old friar to weep compassionate tears; and now she is 
 brought by the poet's power to a perennial life for English readers; 
 she is henceforth to speak her story from a bed of mingled pain 
 and bliss to every heart of ready sympathy. As his name lay 
 among the rubbish and shards after having been bandied about 
 Rome so actively for so many months, it had taken taint; but the 
 new life lent by the artist, as the artist causes the essential Capon- 
 sacchi once more to shine out, leaves us in no doubt whether we 
 had here a champion for God or for the devil. But it took no less 
 artistic power to bring the three speakers from out the noise and 
 bustle of old Rome as it gathered on the bank, trying to tell "what 
 were figure and substance by their splash." Perhaps the shreds of 
 gold here, left but the faintest trace of what had been; but yet, by 
 the plastic power of his own soul. Browning was able to place 
 before us a picture of contemporary talkers which we cannot for a 
 moment doubt. And even to the remotest incidents, this same 
 transfusing life pierces; even to the remote darkness of the decayed 
 palace at Arpzzo, where the she-pard watches 
 
 " Her playsome whelps 
 
 Trying their milk teeth on the soft o' the throat 
 
 O' the iirst fawn, flung, with those beseeching eves 
 
 Flat in the covert ! " 
 Nothing is left crude, but everything is transformed to fit the pur- 
 pose of the artist. Rome's whole life, as it circled around one of 
 its centers of interest, is once more restored in its fullness for us 
 latter-4ay readers. 
 
 Browning has his reply ready for those who urge that this 
 new thing, interfused with the gold, is not truth: 
 
 " Lovers of dead truth, did ye fare the woise ? 
 
 Lovers of live truth,' found )e false my tale ? 
 
15 
 
 AVell, now; there's nothing in nor out o' the world 
 
 Good except truth; j-et this, and something else, 
 
 What's this then, which proves good j'et seems untrue ? 
 
 This that I mixed with truth, motions of mine 
 
 That quickened, made inertness malleolable 
 
 O' the gold was not mine, — what's your name for this ? 
 
 Are means to end, themselves in part the end ? 
 
 Is fiction which makes fact alive, fact too ? 
 
 The somehow may be this how." 
 
 And it was "this how" with Browning. His creative activity was i 
 as much a fact to him, a fact of spiritual life, as the outward fact 
 he worked with, and was truth, just as the gold he worked with. 
 The lover of dead truth might pick out his dead truth and. reject 
 the life of the artist; but the lover- of live truth had an inestimable 
 benefit done him, for the author had quickened into a new life, none 
 other than its former self. This is the answer our author would ! 
 give to all sneers at the poetic power of the artist: It too is a fact, 
 and a fact necessary to our again understanding what has grown 
 away from the sympathies of men. If we are to get the best fact 
 in the old murder case, we must get the proper attitude of spirit 
 toward it. This is more than all dates and places. And this the 
 author gives by bringing the old things into a form where they can ' 
 make direct appeal to the sympathies; where they can assert a truth 
 that cannot be proved by law or logic. 
 
 What finally is meant by the repristination, the wash of the \ ■ 
 work of art which is to remove the interfusion of the artist ? By \ 
 this is meant nothing more than the cessation of the active revivi- : 
 fying agency. The new life quickened in the fact does not need to 
 be withdrawn. It is onlj' cut off" from the parent mind to live its 
 own life independently. ' The Ring and the Book was sent forth 
 into the world as a finished product of this excess of life; but it 
 still lives by virtue of the connection it once had with the mind of 
 the artist. So every work of art has an independent life of its 
 own; for every painting, every sculpture, every strain of music, as 
 it leaves the master workman's hands, is but beginning to exercise 
 the long continued influence it will wield over tbe minds of men. 
 Emerson has said of a work of art that " it differs from works of 
 nature in this, that they are organically reproductive. This is not, 
 but it is spiritually prolific by its powerful actions on the intellects 
 of men. This then, is the similarity of the influence of a great 
 poem to that of the great poet. The life of the poem is spiritually 
 prolific, just as we found the character of the poet to be. In fact, 
 art seems to be little more than the piecing out of personal influ- 
 ence accessible to the multitudes in all ages. So while it rises from 
 
the people, it returns to the people as a benevolent gospel of truth. 
 Thus through the mediatorship of Art, Browning would illustrate 
 and force upon the people this one further truth that "our human 
 testimony is false." And to show this mediatorship of art is a part 
 of the acknowledged purpose of the poem as stated by' the artist. 
 
 To summarize: the artist found the common place truth that 
 human testimony is false, but he went deep into human nature to 
 find the cause and the remedy of that falseness. He saw that this 
 grew from the moral degeneracy, and that moral life alone could 
 restore it. , And finally it brought back to him again the great 
 cause of his own pursuit of art, that he might raise men through 
 its mediation. Around this core of thought the moral life of the 
 poem seems to center, and viewed from this standpoint, it no long- 
 er presents itself as a hopeless jumble of excellencies contradicted 
 by most serious faults. 
 
 PART TWO. 
 
 We shall now turn our attention to the various monologues. 
 There we shall, see how the speech of each speaker grows from the 
 nature of the inner man. We shall not study the monologues as 
 separate poems, but as carefully executed parts which contribute to 
 the organic life of the whole.: They shall not be discussed, as has 
 sometimes been done, for the number of beautiful lines and beauti- 
 ful thoughts stattered here and there, nor with a critical eye to 
 reject the disagreeable. But we shall rather consider their general 
 bearing, and' their relation to the general theme of the poem. 
 
17 
 
 HALF ROME. 
 
 We may first turn our attention to-Half Rome's 
 
 "Feel after the vanished truth; 
 Honest enough, as the way is: all the^ame, 
 Harboring in the center of its sense 
 A hidden germ of failure, shy but sure, 
 To neutralize that honestj' and leave 
 That feel for truth at fault, as the way is too." 
 
 He, perhaps one of the ordinary middle class of Rome, had been 
 picking up the facts as they had been bandied through the law- 
 courts and about Rome for the past four years; and now, at the 
 occasion which calls them forth, was rea^y tdtell them to whatever 
 friend would lend an ear, especially if"the telling might subserve 
 some ulterior purpose. So far as the story was concerned-, hcknew 
 no more than fragments, — facts here, facts there, — which he took 
 and mingled with his own personal bent of mind to fill out and 
 give life to the story of the murder. He built in a whole vital 
 organism as well as he could upon these bits that were offered him. 
 Hence it is all important to see by what prepossession and swerve 
 in that self his final reconstruction of the story was vitiated. 
 
 The reader is almost immediately struck with the narrator's 
 lack of sympathy with the situation. He looks upon this tragedy 
 as little more than a farce, and takes his place among the other 
 curious sight-seers and excitement-hunters of the city. He had 
 pressed through the crowd into San Lorenzo with no further motive 
 than his love of sensationalism. " Listen and estimate what luck 
 they've had" shows his perfect indifference at heart to this murder 
 — a mere bit of luck for the church which held the spectacle. He 
 was one of the numberless crowd in Rome who had been formulat- 
 ing their versions of this latest piece of city gossip. Like all such 
 interest in mere sensationalism, it had failed to arouse the inner 
 man of passion at all. • He gave no heed to the pain of the suffer- 
 ers' in the tragedy; he could catch no glimpse of light in the pass- 
 ing pleasures of the story. Nor does Pompilia the child get one 
 word of sympathy; she is'a bit of vermin with no right to have her 
 feelings considered; there is only a need of her immediate abolish- 
 ment. He says of Violante: 
 
 " So, with an angler's mercy for the bait. 
 
 Her minnow was set wriggling on its barb 
 
 And tossed to midstream; which means this grown girl 
 
i8 
 
 With the great eves and bountv of black hair 
 
 And first crisp j-outh that tempts a jaded taste, 
 
 Was whisked i' the \fsty of a certain man, who snapped." 
 
 All this while, though seeing the poor Pompilia used thus to her 
 own destruction, not a heart-string of the man is touched. He 
 works all these facts through his head by the quick flash of wit 
 and fancy; and then, in this mere intellectual arrogancy, he pro- 
 poses to set forth the truth of this tragedy. 
 
 Lacking thus in heart-interest for the storj', he turned to a 
 personal bias of mind, — one that fitted this series of occurrences to 
 his minds prepossession. He gives this very interpretation in his 
 own words when he sees in it nothing more than a moral to empha- 
 size bis own prejudices. 
 
 " How can we fail to learn 
 This crowd of miseries.make the man a mark, 
 Accumulate on one devoted head 
 For our example ? — Yours and mine who read 
 Its lesson thus — ' Henceforward let none dare 
 Stand, like a natural in the public war, 
 Letting the verv urchins twitch his beard 
 And tweak his nose, to earn a nickname so. 
 Be styled male-Grissel or else modern Job." 
 And again • 
 
 '• All which is worse for Guido, but, be frank — 
 The better for you and me and all the world, 
 Husbands of wives, especially in Rome." ' 
 
 This side of the story attracted his own interest, and this it was, 
 that led him to narrate the story to the cousin of the one who had 
 been playing the lute too freely under his own wife's window. 
 And to this cousin he commends the story's appended moral, that 
 there is a rod in pickle behind the door for whoever should try to 
 treat him as Guido had been treated. This conscious direction of 
 the story to his own personal ends appears throughout the whole 
 course of the monologue, and is given a special clearness in the 
 asides. 
 
 But corresponding to this conscious adaptation, is a mental 
 prepossession lying below his consciousness^ apd which is the hid- 
 den source of error sure, that vitiates the whole trend of his story. 
 He has his previous hint that the husband's side is the safer, and 
 hence he champions Guido'-s right and wrong rather than Pompilia's 
 wrong and right. He himself is a jealous husband, with some fear 
 that his own wife may play him false; and so he is ready almost 
 unconsciously to take the husband's side of any family quarrel. 
 This hidden cause of failure forecloses against all chance of getting 
 from him a judgment, revealing the real truth. 
 
19 
 
 Alorlg with this feai; of his wife, there is, either as cause or 
 result of it, a general distrust in and disrespect tor wonjen. 
 Woman is typifyed before his mind by Eve who lured her Adam 
 Guido to his fall. Violante is to him a meddling shrew, a constant 
 contriver of trouble for men in general. His ideal of woman is 
 we'll shown in his 
 
 " Ply the wife's trade, play off the sex's trick 
 
 And, alternating worry with' quiet qualms, 
 
 Bravado with submissiveness, prettily fool ^ 
 
 Her Pietro into' patience:" 
 
 And again in speaking of Guido's way of governing Pomilia he says: 
 " Admire the man's simplicity, I'll not have that, I'll_punish and pre- 
 vent." All these show that the speaker considered woman a work- 
 er by craft and deceit, to be met by strength and cruelty in man. 
 In his mind, wifely unfaithfulness was a chronic disorder, to* be 
 suppressed by watchful and severe measures. This character of 
 the man comes out excellently in. his description of Guido's suffer- 
 ings from his wife's unfaithfulness. The twitting of Guido's. 
 friends from time to time is -incomparably well put by him; it could 
 only come from a man who had some fears of such a fate for him- 
 self. " Well, thank G^ ypu're safe and sound, have kept the Sixth 
 commafidment whether or no the lady broke the Seventh;" is one 
 of the many instances of the keen appreciation of the husband's 
 unpleasant part. .■ 
 
 Yet along with this hidden source of failure, is a great belief 
 in the success of his own insight. 
 
 " And, after all, we have the main o' the fact : 
 
 Case couldri't well be simpler, — mapped as it were, 
 
 We follow the murder's maze from source to sea. 
 
 By the red line, past mistake : one sees indeed " , 
 
 Not only how all was and must have been. 
 
 But cannot other than be to the end of time."' 
 
 Nowhere isi there the least consciousness of failure; he is one whose 
 " understanding is darkened," but knows it not. This arrogancy of 
 knowledge before the. clearer light allowed the eye of the reader, 
 furnishes a fine underlying' current of irony. He sees and laughs 
 at Luca Cini as a poor old fool who knows so very little and yet is 
 so ready to have his word. But he fails to see that his own light 
 may be darkness compared with the rays of the sun of truth; and 
 that he too is calling forth on the faces of so many who come after 
 a grim smile which would broaden into laughter were it not for the 
 terrible surroundings. 
 
THE OTHER HALF ROME. 
 
 '■ Next, from Rome's other half, the opposite feel 
 For truth with a like swerve, like unsiiccess, — 
 Or if success, by no skill but more luck." 
 
 And this leaning to the wife's cause, adds the author, is from 
 " some fancy fit that way." He, the unmarried man, perhaps some 
 young bachelor artist or clerk — at least one who would " withdravr 
 out of the motley merchandizing multitude " — wished likewise to 
 have his say on this most interesting topic of town-gossip. He is 
 drawn by the beauty of face and character that may be gleaned by 
 a hurried glance at Pompilia. He catches up at once the extremest 
 superlative of goodness in Pompilia, he pronounces her saint and 
 martyr. He too fails to gain the heart of the truth, because he has 
 not a sympathy with the truth but with his own chance preposses- 
 sion. His words also illustrate the mere intellectual arrogance of 
 power to judge things. 
 
 The very first failure of this swerve is its failure to convince 
 us of the sainthood of Pompilia. His account is not adequate to 
 his purpose. For he makes her seem little more than the lamb 
 whose " curly calm unconscious head "' knows nothing of the 
 " shambles ready around the corner." She is the mere child, who 
 suffers a great deal, but whose own moral energv is nowise involv- 
 ed in struggle. We are all well enough convinced of her spotless- 
 ness; but even purity may be weak, and call out pity, rather than 
 self-sustained for demanding reverence; this latter characteristic is 
 never pictured Ijy the. speaker. Hence his whole story bears the 
 impression of a butchery rather than an heroic triumph. He saw 
 nothing, save that all had failed; that Pompilia had seized 
 
 " Just the plume 
 O' the popinjay, not a respite there 
 From tooth and claw of something in the dark ;" 
 
 that her flight had been of no avail and had ended in terrible loss. 
 
 We know however that Pompilia did not consider it a failure. 
 
 Yet this sympathy with the good on the part of the speaker, 
 
 even though it is half blind, bears good fruit at least in such bits of 
 
 tenderness as found no place in the last story. Instead of unendino- 
 
 wit at the Count's expense, we have bits here and there, such as the 
 
 story of Pompilia's growth like a well protected flower, until it 
 
 showed its beauty above the coping stone; or the hope expressed bv 
 
21 
 
 Fietro of having his daughter back when Guido would cast her 
 
 out: 
 
 "Then the girl's self, my pale Pompilia child 
 ' That used to' be my own with her great eyes — 
 
 Will she Come back, with nothing changed at all ?" 
 
 It is only in such fugitive bits of tenderness that he succeeds any 
 
 better than his predecessors. For he could not rise to the plane of 
 
 the one he was picturing; his unregenerated self had not been 
 
 brought to a height from which he could even apprehend her 
 
 career. 
 
 His degree of success in dealing with Guido, if greater, is 
 only so by this same accident of his fancy-fit that way. Perhaps it 
 is easier to assign an evil cha,racter to its category of general bad- 
 ness, requires less moral magnitude in the judge. But the judgment 
 pf the Other Half Rome is rather a pre-judgment: he can see noth- 
 ing of motive in Gufdo's actions except unscrupulous avarice. 
 Avarice leads him to his place in the priesthood, leads him to aban- 
 don it for matrimony, induced him to retain his vvife after the ol(d 
 couple flee, caused his cruelty to his wife, and finally led him to 
 commit the murder when he thought all was safe through the birth 
 of a common son and heir in the babe Gaetano. This is, in general, 
 true, as is slft)wn by Guido's confession; yet it lacks the peculiar 
 personal traits that characterize Guido's selfishness. We get none 
 of that wolf-like cruelty and calculation of events which are so 
 characteristic; only the general anathema of villain deep dyed. 
 And perhaps we may say that forjudging the individual character- 
 istics of villainy, a no less sound and broadly sympathetic moral 
 nature is needed than in judging the saint; for the mystery of its 
 vital movement is just as difficult to discover. So here too is fail- 
 ure, through the common clay of the speaker's composition. 
 
 He fails too in estimating .the part of the Comparini. As 
 with his opponent, so he lays too much stress on the part they 
 should assume. The independency of Pompilia's woman-soul was 
 not sufficiently realized, to detach her pain from the sin of her fos- 
 ter-parents. Hence he proceeds with a lengthy justification .of 
 their crooked pathway in pursuing their oWn unclouded happiness. 
 Pietro is less of the asinine dupe and more of the kind and pliant 
 nature. Violante too, is 'pictured as erring rather than cunning 
 with an evil cunning. She had had' her good motives in supplying 
 the natural want of Pietro, to ha,ve a child on whom to bestow his 
 care and give evidence that he had lived. And whatever else of 
 evil her conduct might have brought, it had at least saved the child. 
 
Then in the marriage, instead of the figure of the fisherman's cruel- 
 ty to the bait as he plies Ms trade, we have Violante's blind belief 
 in the good things glossed over by the shrewd Paolo. Thus at a]l 
 times the old couple are cleared, in fact the moral tone of the justi- 
 fication is about what we might have received from the mouth of 
 Violante, had she been permitted to speak. And when the con- 
 cealed birth of the child is finally used to injure Guido, even here, 
 the speaker rather enjoys the discomfort its revelation is able to 
 bring upon the detested Guidp. There is not the least fairminded- 
 ness exhibited to lead us to give assent to his account of the rela- 
 tions of Guido and the Comparini. 
 
 The moral degeneracy of the speaker is well illustrated in 
 his account of Caponsacchi's relation to Pompilia. He could not 
 see how Sir Priest could have kept himself spotless throughout it 
 all; for were not priests men too? He must have loved Pompilia, 
 as who could help but do; and he must have moved as champion of 
 his love rather than as a holder to high moral truth. The assertions 
 in regard to the letters are also looked Upon as a weak shrinking 
 from just the too much shame which he was unable to bear. 'And 
 even if he were telling the truth, 
 
 V Why should man tell truth no*-. 
 When lying meets such ready shrift ?" 
 
 And finally the speaker falls back on assigning it all to Guido's 
 villainy because of his prejudice against Guido, rather than because 
 of a well grounded judgment. For lofty, stainless' characters, with 
 their high motives, are so far above him, that he gets no glimpse 
 of the true relation of these two young soldiers of Christ. The 
 higher spiritual relations ^had never been opened before his eyes. 
 Hence he could get very little of the truth. So our Other Half 
 Rome likewise fails to elucidate the truth. He too sees only what 
 he went to see, and thus fails at nearly every point where he touch- 
 es the story. • 
 
 TERTIUM QUID. 
 
 , Tertium Quid in speaking of the crowd watching the Punch 
 and Judy show says: 
 
 " The crowd or clap or hiss 
 Accordingly— as disposed for man or wife." 
 
 This is the way of the mob on which he looks down so scornfully. 
 
23 
 
 They form hasty sympathies over every farce, and judge all in the 
 
 light of those poorly founded prejudices. But he heartijy despises • 
 
 this, as. he does all other characteristics of the mob. And the very 
 
 persons of whom he is to judge are a part of this mob: 
 
 / " This is an episode 
 
 In biirges^ife, — why seek to aggrandize, 
 Idealize, denaturalize the class ? 
 People talk just asvif they had to do 
 With a noble pair." 
 
 So Quality will take this happening as an indifferent bit, fit to be 
 
 tossed about in his logic-choppings, giving him a chance to show 
 
 off his own remarkable sagacity before the Cardinal whom he 
 
 wished to ingratiate. The mob are now crying out for the verdict 
 
 of the Vw, to take their clue of the right and wrong in the case 
 
 from that, — " to have the truth hammered into their rioodles." / 
 
 " Why, Excellency, we and his Highness here 
 Would settle the matter as sufficiently . .... 
 And nothing hinders that we lift the case 
 Out of the shade into the shine, allow 
 Qualified persons to pronounce at last. 
 Nay, edge in an authoritative word 
 Between this rabble's-brabble of dolts and fools 
 . Who make up reasonless, unreasoning Rome." 
 
 With this ulterior object in his narrative, namely to curry 
 
 favor, he takes up the matter; not with the thought of proving 
 
 either side in the right, or to vent sympathy for the good against 
 
 the evil. He would rather give ' 
 
 " A reasoned statement. 
 Eventual verdict of the curious few 
 Who care to sift a business to the bran;" 
 
 He would be " history's soul, the critical mifld." He would show 
 his own much felt intelligence, and how keenly his own mind 
 could divide judgment; how he could keep far above the least 
 swerve that so vitiated the opinions of the mob and thus keep to a 
 happy middle. This says the author is " history's authenticated 
 way." That is, every fact is given a clear exposition and all opin- 
 ions on it are quoted; individual opinion is shunned as a crime 
 against truth, — as if the truth were in knowing all such disjointed 
 facts, and not in a sympathetic synthesis of these facts in the inner 
 life of the speaker. Authority this opposes authority that, and as 
 they have no life, they will stir no dangerous conflict. It is 
 such standing up of the puppets of dead fact, and knocking them 
 down again, that occupies the whole mind of Tertium Quid, and is 
 the consummation of his ideal of mental candor and acumen. 
 
 This indifferency of -moral attitude does not have so marked 
 an effect on the reader in the earlier part of the monologue; for at 
 
24 
 
 this time there is perhaps some ground for indifferency. Tertium's 
 way of setting forth the barter by which the old couple and Guido, 
 each cheat the other and yet obtain what they really sought, is ad- 
 mirably adapted to such materials for judgment: 
 
 " Which of the two here sinned most ? A nice point ! 
 
 Which brownness is least black, decide who can, 
 
 Wager-bj'-battle-of-cheating ? " 
 
 As long as these only, dupers and dupes, are affected, this kind of 
 judgment is only an outgrowth of the facts of the case. And per- 
 haps he is right as he goes on to show how each side had used Pom- 
 pilia as a mere means of their own eiijoyment. But as the tragedy 
 deepens, and we see the innocent child is being crushed by a ruth- 
 less hand, we cannot put up with such disinterest; the vital need of 
 the truth has become too importunate. But the balancing of the 
 tw^o sides is Repeated again and again. Pompilia's friends say that 
 she was tortured and cruelly used in every way for the sole purpose 
 of driving her into crime, driving her to the loss of both soul and 
 body to answer the ends of her husband who is a monster; while on 
 the other hand, Guido asserts that his cruelty was aroused by well 
 grounded jealousy of Caponsacchi; as if such thing were needed to 
 drive awaj- a young spouse from the side of her old and unattrac- 
 tive husband? And then, Caponsacchi claimed that he had been 
 called by the sufferings of a helpless woman to champion her rights, 
 that he bad been perfect pure throughout: to which as readily is 
 Guido's answer given in the evidence furnished by his ^voman, that 
 she had ministered for weeks to the love of Caponsacchi and the 
 lady. And as for the letters which Guido says he found in the 
 
 room, Caponsacchi responds: 
 
 " he . 
 Whose whole career was lie entailing lie sought to be sealed bv the worst 
 lie last." 
 
 And so the speaker continues to perhaps the most remarkable bal- 
 ancing of all, in the double opinion quoted by each side, of the fact 
 that Pompilia still lived: either that she was a martyred saint, hop- 
 ing to deliver her truth; or a brazen sinner, hoping to save her part- 
 ner in sin and wreak her vengance on the one they had wronged. 
 And so he continues balancing this and that until his audience turn 
 from him unenlightened, uninterested, and with no vital insio^ht 
 into the tragedy. 
 
 Despite all this show of evidence, there is no such thing as 
 opinion either in the speaker or hearer. It is a remarkably fine 
 irony with which the author makes Tertium turn to his audience 
 for their judgment; and they are unable to give it. And at the last 
 
^5- 
 
 V 
 
 he says: 
 
 " In truth you look as puzzled as ere I preached !" 
 And it is no wonder tbat they were. For no such heterogenous 
 heaping of facts can- ever induce mental clarity in the hearers; the 
 transfusing power of a good and healthy personality is needed for 
 that. But there is a failure which is still worse for the hopes of 
 TertiuJn. For with all his display of mental candor, there has 
 been no sympathy with the truth, and hence he is unable to excite 
 an interest in the minds -of his hearers. His logic-choppings prove 
 an unpalatable dish from which Her Eminency turns away. And 
 the elegant Tertium is left to curse their stupidity which has made 
 them blind to the sagacity he has been exerting so energeticaHy, 
 that he might make their mental darkness light. 
 
 COUNT GUIDO FRANCHESCHINI. 
 
 Guido's defense of himself is a splendid proof of Brown- 
 ing's art power. 
 
 " There's anyhow a child 
 
 Of seventeen years, whether flower or weed, 
 
 Ruined: who did it shall account to Christ — 
 
 Having no pity of the harmless life , 
 
 And gentle face and girlish form he found, , 
 
 And thus flings back.", 
 That was his evident work; now what of the account to render for 
 it. Guido's head had iiow the task of saving his neck, and he 
 surely made a well calculated effort. We have now come to one 
 who had no hearsay knowledge of, this tragedy — one of its actors; 
 and we might here begin to gef truth, were it not that Guido had 
 another far more important thing than revealing the truth as he 
 saw it. He frames the best narrative he can to the end of saving 
 his own life. He relates the plausible, rather than the true; and so 
 well does his craftiness do his work that at the end of the story' we 
 are first led to say — ifno t that he was fJ ceeLJrom^guilt. — yet at least 
 that he acted upon the"' best 'light his own debased nature afforded 
 him in a path of pain and injury. 
 
 Guido's narrative, so far as the facts of it are concerned, is 
 that of the general testimony of the book. All these facts had 
 been made evident. So he saw the part of wisdom was to take 
 
26 
 
 them and interweave them with the something not fact, — his own 
 
 conscious self-rescuing fancj'. He gives us the same facts as 
 
 regards his priestly life, the marriage, the outcry of the old couple, 
 
 his wife's plea before the magistrates, down to the last test of Pom- 
 
 pilia's guilt, Violante's appearance at the door and the flight from 
 
 the scene of the murder. All these things could be established by 
 
 other witnesses independent of Guido's word. Seeing this, Guido 
 
 said to the court: 
 
 " You want no more 
 Than right interpretation of the same." 
 
 That is, what are the motives behind these outward manifestations 
 of fact ? Is the murder the outgrowth of malignancy and unscru- 
 pulous greed, or a rightous zeal for honor and hatred of sin ? In 
 this field it would be hard to prove Guido's falsehood. He was an 
 actor in this tragedy, and the motives hidden within his own heart 
 ought certainly to be better known by himself than any other, — for 
 with others, a knowledge of them could be nothing more than a 
 guess, founded upon external appearances. Guido recognized his 
 power in this regard. His entire plea rests on his inner world of 
 motive. In early life he had been 
 
 '■ The enviable ^outh, with the old name. 
 Wide chest, stout arms, sound brow and pricking veins, 
 A heartful of desire, man's natural load; 
 A brainful of belief, the noble's lot;" 
 
 and this youth had been foiled on every side by hindering 
 circumstances. He faces and justifies his motive in the marriage, 
 however others may be inclined to criticise it. If he had been 
 cruel to his wife, he could at least show ample grounds for such 
 cruelty in her disobedience and unfaithfulness. The assaults on 
 the old family name too were to be repaid. And finally be had 
 been moved to the murder by motives proper to husband, father, 
 and noble. Even then he had paused at hearing the Christmas 
 bells, and might have had pity if another than Violante had appear- 
 ed at the door. So by this interweaving of motive and fact, Guido 
 gives us his account, the strongest defense that could possibly have 
 been given for his deed. 
 
 This defense presents a very forcible climax. It begins witli 
 the selfish man's acknowledgement of his selfishness, with no other 
 excuse for it than that which is to be urged in a law court, namely 
 that it has used legal means. And this is enough for the earlier 
 part of Guido's career. The picture of the defeated gambler well 
 illustrates this part of his life. He was trying to wMn his own way 
 and make things easy for himself; hence there is no thought of pre- 
 
27 
 
 tending a higher call to the priesthood than this. But his marriage 
 best, illustrates this acknowledged sordidness of 'heart; lie would 
 make no apology for having trucked his old nariie for an amount of 
 money he was so much in need of; it had been a bargain, under- 
 stood on' both sides, and so carried to Completion;- and 
 
 "The thing is, those my offer mott concerned, 
 ^ Pietro, Violante, cried they foul or fair." 
 
 Yet from the wife thrown in with the bargain, the Count had ex- 
 pected all wifeliness and obedienqe. 
 
 je^^ " The obligation I inpurred was just 
 
 To practice mastery, — prove my mastership: 
 Pompilia's duty was — submit herself. 
 Afford me pleasure, perhaps cure my. bile. 
 
 It I was over harsh, — the worse i' the wife 
 
 Who did not win from harshness as she ought, 
 Wanted the patience and persuasion, lore 
 '- ~ Of love, should cure rae and console herself." 
 
 "I'Guido makes no effort here to cover up his selfishness. He cared 
 not at present for the reputation of a kind and good disposition. 
 He was willing to face that charge before the court; for harsh dis- 
 position is not amenable to law.. /Pompilia's sad, beautiful face 
 might plead as much as it cpuld ; but it was his own property, and 
 he bad used it as his ownership gave him right. ' 
 
 But in the next step of the narrative Guido begins skillfully 
 to introduce another element iti the argument. He begins to dra;w 
 pity for his own lot, not on the ground of his virtues, but that he^; 
 had been wronged, — one injustice after another heaped upon him. J 
 
 " Pompilia needs must find herself '^ 
 
 Launching her looks forth', letting looks reply 
 
 As arrows to a challenge." 
 Against all charges of cruelty now he can urge his own great 
 wrongs. His cruelty proves inefficient in. that greater wrongs recoil 
 upon him: Hi^ wife flees from him, he is left to feel the husband's 
 
 bitter sting. 'vlP' 
 
 "Flat lay my fortune, — tes.sellated floor, *^ 
 
 Imperishable tracery devils should foot 
 ' And frolic it on, around my broken Qods, 
 
 Over my desecrated hearth." 
 We begin to feel almost pity for the unfortunate Guido. Ai^d as 
 things turn against him here and there, he assures us 
 
 , " I was in humble frame' of mind, be sure ! " -^ 
 
 .And with these ' mental pangs ever' within me, why should I be 
 afraid of being plied with , your instruments of torture. But even 
 worse was to follow him; the divorce goes against him; Paul leaves 
 him with no champion ,of his cause at Rbmei. Then to increase 
 this commiseration toward himself and to show his simulated forti- 
 
28 
 
 tude in bearing it, Guido says: 
 
 '' " Now, they judge, 
 
 The fiery titillation urged my flesh 
 
 Break through the bonds." 
 No, claims Guido, he had done nothing of the kind. He had bow- 
 ed his head before his miseries; and had only been roused by later 
 and greater ills. Then immediately before the beginning of the 
 murder he gives the strongest color to his own misery, in his 
 account of his despair in Arezzo, of the painful home associations, 
 of the broken spirit. If anything could, arouse the sympathies of 
 the reader, it is this picture. The misery is strong enough to ejccite 
 pity without consideration of the moral quality of the one pitied. 
 It may have had no ground in fact, but the disproof of, its ground 
 was irnpossible; and so it could be thus skillfully used in Guide's 
 defense. It provides him with a show of the strongest reason for 
 uncontrollable rage to burst on the mother of his new born heir. 
 
 But supported by th^ confidence that he is carrying his 
 judges with him, Guido even goes a step farther in recounting this 
 the consummation of the tragedy. He rises from the mere motive 
 of his own wrongs to assert that his conduct now followed the call 
 of duty and religion. This is a bold step forward in his own justi- 
 fication, but it is taken with much shrewdness and careful study of 
 effect. Its added weight would be needed to clear him of his own 
 unlawful course, now when the tragedy mounted to its height. It 
 challenged judgment to approve of. his championirig the right. It 
 was the one thing that would give him release from the condemna- 
 tion of the law. 
 
 " No more law; a voice beyond the law 
 Enters my heart, ^ ^iit's est pro Domino ?' 
 
 I arrived at Rome on Christmas eve. 
 
 Festive bells— every where the Feast of the Babe, 
 Joy upon earth, peace and good will to man ! 
 I am baptized, I started and let drop 
 The dagger. 'Where is it. His promised peace .'' 
 Nine days o' the Birth Feast did I pause and pray 
 
 To enter into no temptation more 
 
 I stopped m^' ears even to the inner call 
 Of the dread duty, only heard the song 
 ' Peace upon Earth,' saw nothing but the face 
 O' the Holy Infant and the halo there " 
 
 But as these died away, he finally went forth: 
 " And so all yet uncertain save the will 
 To do right, and the daring aught save leave 
 Right undone, I did find myself at last 
 I' the dark before the villa with my friends."' 
 
 And finally he demands: 
 
 " Absolve, then, me, law's mere executant, 
 Protect you own defender, save me Sirs ! " 
 
'29 
 
 Thus Guido carries his arguiiient to this height of the self-assertion 
 of moral uprightness. He, th^ one worthy of praise, is in danger 
 of blame; and the courts must\i-ight him. He demanded justice in 
 the light of this array of facts; for he had worked for righteous- 
 ness. This is the acme of his cliinax. His dfefense stands firm, it 
 is the triumph of that assumed self who is speaking throughout the 
 monologue. 
 
 This swerve from the truth, held as it is in a crafty con- 
 sciousness, gives a stronger face to the story than any of the narra- 
 tives we have yet had. Here certainly, might we say, i's a self- 
 consisten^t account throughout. In fact the reader is surprised as he 
 reads through the rest of the poem, to find how much of this 
 assumed person Guido is belied by the later versions of the murder. 
 Had he been dealing with a mixed and spotted virtue in Pompilia 
 and Caponsacchi, his plea would have carried his cause. But its 
 falsehood was shrivelled down to the bare fact before their evident 
 candor and truth. And Guido himself was given to show what 
 the other man, the real Guido, was, as he faces death. 
 
 GIUSEPPE CAPONSACCHI.; 
 
 Caponsacchi is next placed before the judges, and now at 
 last we shall have a glimpse at the truth. His fine clear soul, so 
 ready to receive God's word and respond to human cry for help, 
 comes in the conscious assurance of its truth. A soul of less con*'" 
 scious purity would have taken this as a mere occasion of clearing 
 itself. But the spiritual vitality of this speaker could not be con- 
 fined in such pettiness. He had come back to make the truth 
 known to the court, and such was the strength of his righteousness, 
 that the judges were troubled before his accusation; for the 
 
 " Seeming-solitary man, 
 
 Speaking for God, may have an audience too, 
 
 Invisible, no discreet judge provokes." 
 
 This noble hero soul, in -^vhom the author takes such pride, has 
 be^n so intricately interwoven in the tragedy, that he can speak on>. 
 its turns with authority. He has had in it the place of an actor, an 
 eye-witness; but he has h^d the still greater place of soul -witness. 
 He, the strong, noble, high-purposed, fearing always' his God, but 
 
30 
 
 man not at all, — he is opposed to Guide's blackness; he is to save, 
 before God and man, 
 
 " The snow-white soul that angels fear to take 
 
 U ntenderl V," — 
 save her from the besmirching venom of Guido. And now that 
 his success seems such bitter failure, he can onh- burn his soul out 
 in showing them the truth, 
 
 " Use the very snuff 
 
 O' the taper in one last spark shall show truth 
 
 For the moment, shoAv Pompilia who was true. 
 
 Many a man of blood. 
 
 Many a man of guile will clamor yet. 
 
 Bid you redress his griei-ance, — as he clutched 
 
 The prey, forsooth a stranger stepped between. 
 
 And there's the good gripe in pure waste ! " 
 
 And so, with the assurance of his own luminous spiritual nature, 
 
 which could discern the truth with such unshakable confidence, he 
 
 says: 
 
 " You see the truth, — ' 
 
 I'm glad I helped you; she helped me just so." 
 
 For with his own heart so full of the truth, it was not difficult for 
 him to set the truth clearly before the judges. 
 
 He is the first witness who does not attempt to trace this 
 Hragedy back to the old sins of Pietro and Violante. He had never 
 seen the old couple, but he well knew that they had nothing to do 
 w-ith the present case. The whole course of the tragedy was wrap- 
 ped for him in: 
 
 " That he. (Guido) from the beginning pricked at heart 
 
 By some lust, letch of hate against his wife. 
 
 Plotted to plague her into overt sin 
 
 And shame, would slay Pompilia body and soul, 
 
 And save his mean self — miserably caught 
 
 I' the quagmire of Jiis own tricks, cheats and lies." 
 
 But much more important to the latter development of this 
 tragedy is what he substitutes for the part of the old couple, — his 
 own entrance upon the priestly function. Without the character 
 sketched us in these lines, we could have had no valiant, truth-lov- 
 ing Caponsacchi to rescue Pompilia. In the facts of his hesitancy 
 in taking the oath and his " blamable regularity" in his church 
 duties, we get the germs of his character. And his soul quickly 
 unfolds itself, and throws off mere wrappages as the light of truth 
 stimulates it to life. He lay ready for the regenerating influence 
 soon to come upon him. 
 
 This regeneration of Caponsacchi's spiritual nature is one of 
 the finest things of the book. Here again, Browning portrays how 
 sucli regeneration is to be accomplished by the touch of one soul to 
 
31 
 
 another; life giving life. Caponsacchi was not lifted to this new 
 self by philosophies, nor by reasonings on the summum honum, nor 
 the careful adjustment of ethical opinions; these can give nothing 
 more than direction, — they have no life in themselves. But the 
 lovely soul of simple Pompilia could do this greatest of miracles; 
 for it had life. And so when Caponsacchi was thinking carelessly 
 on Lightskirts, there entered a lady, — -^ 
 
 --""Young, tall, beautiful, strange and sad -J-'*'^ 
 
 That night and next day did the gaze endure 
 Burnt to my brain as 'sunbeam through shut eyes. 
 And not once changed the beautiful sad strange smile.'' 
 
 In the course of the next month we see how powerful was the sight 
 
 of that face for effecting change in him. That griefTul smile did^ 
 
 not invite him to the loose flirtation, so common among his fellow's 
 
 in the priesthood; but it had a call as if from' heaven, — ^a call for 
 
 him to be raised to the higher plane on which she stood. Ere the 
 
 week was out he saw " That Lightskirts hides teeth would make a 
 
 dog sick," — began to doubt if " Marino were a better bard than 
 
 Dante," — preferred to go pace at eve in the Duomo, rather than 
 
 " eat the Archbishop's ortolans, digest his jokes;" for the future "he 
 
 would be faithful to his duties at the church;" and constant to the 
 
 faith " never to write a canzonet any more." His patron could not 
 
 help seeing the change; and on his criticism, we get another indica- 
 
 tibn in the reply of Caponsacchi, of how deeply that look had 
 
 wrought: 
 
 " Sir, what if I turned Christian .' It might be. ""f^ 
 
 Tlie fact is, am trouble^ in my mind, 
 
 Beset and pressed hard by some novel thoughts — 
 
 I will live alone, one does so in a crowd. 
 
 And look into my heart a little." 
 
 Then he goes on: I was 
 
 " Thinking how my life 
 Had shaken under me, — broke short indeed 
 And showed the gap twixt what is, what should be, — 
 And into what abysm the .soul may slip 
 Leave aspiration here, achievement there. 
 Lacking omnipotence to connect extremes;" — 
 
 as he was thinking of all this he received the first call to duty, 
 new-found in the very source of his Hfe, — found in the thought 
 that his superfluous strength ought to go somehow to rescue Pom- 
 pilia. Thus we see what a deep seated change had taken place, 
 was taking place in Caponsacchi. And it is after this change is 
 begun, that he is first called to combat Guido's falsehood and save 
 Pompilia's spotlessness. That grave, griefTul smile made too evi- 
 dent the fact of Guido's plotting, and Guido received rebuff at 
 
each new point of attack. The lies qonveyed in the letters were 
 
 repelled by this new life of the spirit.^He himself says that these 
 
 letters might have provoked him once to meet Guide's lie with a 
 
 trick; but there was nothing more of that left in him. He had no 
 
 more proof than his insight of the spirit, and jet he was confident 
 
 of the truth thus seen. Then for a second time he saw 
 
 " The tame great, grave, griefful air, 
 As stands i' the dusk, on altar that I know. 
 Left alone with one moonbeam in her cell. 
 Our Lady of all the Sorrow." 
 
 That face had for him now, the unblemished suffering and 
 
 ineffable power of the Madonna, who looked down from the wall 
 
 of his church. And as he stood there, still as stone, she told her 
 
 story, told her need, told her former fear of his advances, declared 
 
 her clearer vision of his own pure self. 
 
 •'Pompilia spoke, and I at once received, 
 Accepted, my own fact, my miracle. 
 Self-authorized and self-explained." 
 
 The return of life had brought with it a new duty, stamped with 
 self-authoritativeness; his strength was indeed to be used for rescu- 
 ing Pompilia. And this call to the duty of helping her stimulated 
 still farther the change begun by the first look in the theater; after 
 this conversation came that night when " not thought," but some- 
 thing transcending thought occupied his soul. His whole spiritual 
 nature was being expanded to full flower; he was converted, lifted 
 into the higher plane on which Pompilia stood. 
 
 " Into another state, under new rule 
 
 I knew myself was passing swift and sure; 
 
 Whereof the initiator}' pang approached 
 
 Felicitous annoy, as bitter sweet 
 
 As when the virgin-band, the victors chaste. 
 
 Feel at the end the earthly garments drop, 
 
 And rise with something of a rosy shame 
 
 Into immortal nakedness: So I 
 
 Lay, and let come the proper throe would thrill 
 
 Into the ecstasy and out-throb pain." 
 
 And on account of this change in himself it was that 
 
 "The church changed tone — 
 Now when I found out first that life and death 
 Are means to an end, that passion uses both, 
 Indisputably mistress of the man 
 Whose form of worship is self-sacrifice." 
 And he adds, 
 
 " Obedience was too strange, — - 
 This new thing that had been struck into me 
 By the look o' the lady, — to dare disobey 
 The first authoritative word. 'Twas God's, 
 I had been lifted to the level of her, 
 
33 
 
 I see the function Here; 
 ' I thought the other way self-sacrifice: 
 
 This is the true, seals up the perfect sum. 
 I pay it, sit down, silently obey." 
 
 So did Caponsacchi think and ponder on the new life, the 
 new sense of duties here and there. He was conscious of the pres- 
 ence of this new life in the relations to all about him, and he being 
 a pri6st, it would naturally be more evident in his relation to the 
 church. It needed however, one more look to confirm all this 
 spiritual energy in the new and strange path of duty. But when 
 that look came he answered it; and so his wh.ole 'advancement of 
 soul was saved to him as a permanent good, — he was confirmed in 
 his new spiritual power. From this on he is the Caponsacchi of 
 finest spiritual sense; ther.e is no wavering henceforth. He is the 
 champion for God, and fears nothing for his own course from thif 
 time. And it is this man who finally stands before Rome's judges 
 to make them feel abashed at his words. 
 
 Through this' new consciousness of spiritual life he was first 
 assured that this duty was imposed* upon him by God. It was a 
 claim cpnsistent with his priesthood, worthy Christ that he endeav- 
 ored to save Pompilia. From this too arose the conscious purity 
 that could say: ^ 
 
 " I too am taintless, and I bare my breast:'' SA' 
 and • 
 
 " I have done with being judged. 
 
 I Eland here guiltless in thought word and deed." 
 
 If Caponsacchi errs at all in his testimony, it is in regard to 
 Pompilia, erring as the eye may in gazing on a dazzling' brilliance. 
 She, as the personality through whom he had been raised into this, 
 new spiritual life, could only be the saint to him; he 
 '- Assuredly did bow, was blessed 
 Bj' the revelation of Pompilia." 
 He associated her with the picture of the Madonna when he saw her 
 the second time, and then began to kneel. She was to him 
 
 " The glorjkof life, the beauty of the world, — -^ 
 
 The splendor of heaven." 
 
 For she had been all these to him in the quickening of his soul. He 
 
 fell on his knees before the ineffable whiteness he had rescued from 
 
 Guidok She, the uninstructed child of seventeen, had gained such 
 
 an unshakable power over him; and this power was, strong to keep' 
 
 him, throughout his difficult task, pure in thought as well as deed. 
 
 Opposed to this was his strong repulsion from Guido, in whom he 
 
 could see nothing but the destructive villain, not the immortal soul 
 
 which was seen by Pompilia and the good old, Pope, The whole 
 
34 
 
 course of Guide's persecution of his wife was very evident to 
 
 Caponsacchi. The truth made itself so parent that it could not be 
 
 doubted: 
 
 '■ It seems to fill the universe with sight." 
 
 He also says to the court: 
 
 " You might at the beginning stop my mouth. 
 So none would be to speak for her that knew." 
 
 He was assured that he, who had seen her but three short times be- 
 fore the flight, knew her life. His sympathy and love gave him an 
 insight into her woman's heart that made him confident in his 
 knowledge of it. He had ga ined the Truth , and '• thetruthhad 
 made hijn^free." But in his Jespair at this new outburst of false- 
 hood the cry broke from his strong heart: 
 
 " I thirst for truth, 
 But shall not drink it till I reach the source." 
 
 Coordinated with this worship of Pompilia, are touches of the 
 lover's love. The man, Caponsacchi, in his great warm heart, 
 gained over the worshipper. Xor is this allowed to go beyond due 
 bounds of his position; it is simply a delicate whiff" of the strong 
 humanity of his nature. It was a love, to quote from Words- 
 worth: 
 
 " Love that adores but on the knees of praj-er. 
 By heaven inspired; that frees from chains the soul 
 Lifted in union with the purest, best 
 Of earth born passions, on the wings of praise 
 Bearing a tribute to the Almighty throne." 
 
 It manifests itself inobtrusively in his comments on Pompilia's 
 
 speeches in the carriage, — how he like her speech that showed her 
 
 satisfaction in his presence. But it finds its culmination in that 
 
 last paragraph of the monologue, where he imagines what life 
 
 could have been to him if Pompilia and himself had met before they 
 
 were bound away from each other. How he would 
 
 " Have to do with nothing but the true. 
 
 The good, the eternal — and these not alone , 
 
 In the main current of^eneral life. 
 
 But small experiences of every dav. 
 
 Concerns of the particular hearth and home." 
 
 And it is in turning away from this picture that those great clos- 
 ing words burst from his heart: 
 
 " O, great, just, good God ! miserable me ! " 
 
35 
 
 POMPILIA. 
 
 After all these many opinions concerning the one woman's 
 soul, Pompilia who has been the center of the whole tragedy is 
 brought forward to speak. She^ who had been bandied around' 
 from this side to that, was allowed to tell what was her part and 
 thought in' all this trouble. After the four days dying in the con- 
 vfent, surrounded with kind ministrations of religious women, " she 
 speaks to the common kindliness;" she endeavors to explain her 
 life. Her whole life long had been very strange; her parentage, 
 her marriage, her rescue, rwere all so different from what happens 
 in the' lives of other girls. And she was none of the 
 
 " Lucias, Marias, Sophias, who titter or blush." 
 She' had an older look, born of her undue knowledge, through 
 Guido, of the wickedness of the world. She, the wife and mother, 
 herself but a child, lay there with a calm preparedness for death 
 and a ready acceptance of her lot from the hand of God. 
 
 The past 
 
 " Dwindles fast to that, 
 ' Sheer dreaming and impossibility.' 
 
 The active and careful intellect and feelings, that play so accurate- 
 ly while life lies before in unbroken vistas, are gone when death 
 immediately fronts one. This fact and that fact, which once had 
 significance in interpreting^ the good or evil of the world, have 
 become so faded Their magnitude, as measured by the standards 
 of time, becomes naught as the soul faces the opening out of eter- 
 nity. The soul grows confident in its own spiritual greatness; it 
 looks no longer at appai'ent failure, but thinks on the attaipment of 
 its own absolute being. So to Pompilia, many things were forgot- 
 ten, ^' became changed." Her childish pleasures, the horror of the 
 Arezzo life, even her joy in her cfiild, grew indistinct. She rea- 
 lized too that this change would affect her judgment of the world's 
 truth (that is accuracy of fact) in what she was trying to tell to 
 her sympathizing listeners: 
 
 " One cannot judge 
 Of what has been the ill or well of life, i 
 
 The day that one is dying, — sorrows change 
 Into not altogether sorrow like; 
 I do see strangeness but scarce misery, 
 Now it is over, and no danger more. 
 My child is safe; there seems not so much pain. 
 It comes, most like, that I am just absolved, 
 
36 
 
 I Purged of the past, the foul in me, washed fair, — 
 
 Being right now, I am happy and color things. 
 
 Yes, everybody that leaves life sees all 
 
 Softened and bettered." 
 The being right now was of vastly more importance, than the 
 painful ways which had brought her right, and now lay hidden in 
 the past. 
 
 This softened and bettered view of her own ending by vio- 
 lence is revealed to no one as it is to Pompilia. One Half Rome 
 has seen her as the serpent, cut through and through its coils; the 
 other half made her a martyred saint; even Caponsacchi himself 
 could see nothing but the triumph of evil in her murder. But she 
 
 Would 
 
 " not have the service fail ! 
 I say, the angel saved me: I am safe ! 
 Others may want and wish, I wish nor want *■ 
 
 One point o' the circle plainer where I stand 
 Traced round about with white to front the world. 
 What of the calumny I came across. 
 
 What o' the way to end ? — the end crowns all 
 
 Therefore, because this man restored my sOul, 
 
 All has been righf. I have gained ray gain, enjoyed 
 
 As well as suffered." / 
 
 Even for her babe, left without his mother's hand to guide, she 
 
 feels that the ending has been well. This is the most marvellous 
 
 manifestation of how powerfully she was buoyed up by her fuith 
 
 in God: She says: 
 
 " Shall not God stoop the kindlier to his work. 
 His marvel of creation, foot would crush. 
 Now that the hand He trusted to receive 
 And hold it, lets the treasure fall perforce .' 
 , The better; He shall have in orphanage 
 His own way all the clearlier." 
 
 Caponsacchi coUld only say *' I thought that I had saved her,'' and 
 
 turn in agony from this sudden taking away of one of earth's purest 
 
 souls. But she was fast leaving behind earth's hovel where " dogs' 
 
 bit and cats' scratched," fast getting outside in the 
 
 1 " Lone field, moon and such peace — 
 ~~ Flowing in, filling up as with a sea " 
 
 Of the vanished life of her four years suffering " but one or 
 two truths remained " on which to support it. 
 " So, what I hold by, are my prayer to God, 
 My hope, that came in answer to the prayer, 
 Some hand would interpose and save me — hand 
 Which proved to be my friend's hand: and, blest bliss, — 
 That fancy which began so faint at first, 
 That thrill of dawn's suffusion through my dark, 
 Which I perceived was promise of my child, * 
 The light his unborn face sent long before, — 
 God's way of breaking the good news to flesh. 
 That is all left now of those four bad veai's." 
 
>37 
 
 These things in fact, were all that had affected the development of 
 her spiritual life. They had been the facts out 'of those years on 
 which rested her present state of blessed assurance.. The fear and 
 suffering, the hunger and lack of love in her Arezzo life, had been 
 the nightmare which almost lead her to suicide, but now that they 
 were dispelled they could have no further place in her memory. 
 The hateful things had fallen away; she would never see Guido in 
 this life nor in another. It was only the love that had touched her 
 life, that had raised her; and it only could be given a place in her 
 soul's history. The love of God, the love of her " friend," the love 
 of her babe born only of love, — these were her permanent treas- 
 ures. These had led her from the child's despair under suffering, 
 out into the strong earnest confidence of her woman's soul as it 
 faced death. 
 
 Pompilia's antipathy to Guido rested on the same sensitive- 
 ness of her spiritual nature. She had felt from the first that there 
 was no tie of the spirit between them. Their imion had been 
 
 " With gold so much, — birth, power, repute so much." 
 Such a contract seemed good enough to her child's eyes. But 
 
 " I felt there was just one thing Guide claimed 
 
 I had no right to give nor he to take; 
 
 We being in estrangement, soul from soul:" 
 
 Thus she felt her first ground of resistance to her husband.-^ It had 
 
 not come through ethical reasonings, but through the influence of 
 
 her unconscious self in her aversion for Guido. So 
 
 " When he spoke as plain — 
 Dreadfully h6nest also — ' since our souls 
 
 Stand each from each, a whole world's width between I 
 
 Give me the fleshly vesture I can reach i' 
 
 And rend and leave just fit for hell to burn !' — 
 Why, in God's name, for Guido's soul's own sake 
 
 Imperilled by polluting mine, — I say y 
 
 I did resist; would I had overcome !" 
 
 But her sense of the wrojig of any mingling between herself and 
 
 Guido was soon overpowered by the Archbishop, and Pompilia had 
 
 to submit to this desecration of body, this sin against which her 
 
 whole nature rebelled. ' 
 
 " And my last staj' and comfort in mj'self 
 
 Was forced from me: henceforth I looked to God 
 
 Only, nor cared m}' desecrated soul 
 
 Should have fair walls, gay windows tor the world. 
 
 God's glimmer, that came through the ruin to. 
 
 Was witness ^.hy all lights were quenched inside: 
 
 Henceforth I asked God counsel, not mankind." 
 
 Tills pollution of body ended all life for her ; there would be 
 
 no more resistance. The gloom could only go on thickening till a 
 
38 
 
 ray of love shot forth to Pompilia ; her unborn child summoned her 
 back to life and love. So when the end came she could bid fare- 
 well to Guido with : 
 
 " His soul has nei-er lain beside my soul; 
 
 But for the unresisting body, — ^thanks ! 
 
 He burned that garment spotted by the flesh. 
 
 Whatever he touched is rightlj' ruined; plague 
 
 It caught, and disinfection it had craved 
 
 Still but for Guido; I am saved through him 
 
 So as by fire; to him — thanks and farewell !" 
 This strong spiritual nature found manifestation also in its 
 reliance upon God. Many of those who suffer inexplainable woes 
 fall .away from their trust in Him. But not so with Pompilia. As 
 her life darkened around her, she held her hand of faith firmly in 
 the hand of God. This element of strength lifts her above weak- 
 ness, and places her as one of God's chosen. So when her dawning 
 consciousness of motherhood bade her save her child, she felt the 
 command came from God. All fear and hesitation, all crouching 
 under Guido's cruelty were goae. 
 
 " My life is charmed, will last till I reach Rome." 
 
 She felt herself of power " to spurn the horsehair springe." She 
 
 dared face this plot of her husband by sending for one who should 
 
 deliver her with her child, even by ways that appeared so doubtful 
 
 in the world's eyes. " And all day," she says, 
 
 " I sent prayer like incense up 
 To God thestrong, God the beneficent, 
 God ever mindful in all strife and strait. 
 Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme, 
 Till at the last He puts forth might and saves." 
 
 Yes, she can believe fully in God, and rest upon Him in faith 
 during all the hard probation she is made to endure. In this she is 
 indeed one of God's saints. 
 
 From this same infinity of spiritual love within her springs 
 her love of Caponsacchi. He, the saint and soldier for God, sent to 
 help her in her distress, arouses her life in this new direction. As 
 his soul had immediately gone out to hers when he saw that sad, 
 strange, beautiful face,_so_she _recogniz ed him. Nor did it trouble 
 her that it was the polished, courtly, young Canon whom God had 
 sent for her help. 'And the love that went out to her helper was 
 ■but a part of her love to God. Browning does not sharply distin- 
 guish the love of the sexes frota that of the all Good, God. Arid as 
 Pompilia's spiritual life was more firmly establishedr she grasped 
 the relationship of their two souls, and was able to tell it more 
 boldly before the world than did Caponsacchi. He, " the lustrotis 
 and pellucid soul," was also the one called of God to save herself 
 
39 
 
 and her babe. So she was not ashamed of this relation. He had 
 
 given to her " all the Spring." He had led her into the new life, 
 
 a\yay from the death in the life of Arez^o, So it was when they 
 
 were endangered at Castelnuovo, she was roused to resistance by 
 
 this new power of love — of the love of God in man : 
 
 " But when at last, all by myself I stood 
 
 Obeying the clear voice which bade me rise, 
 
 Not for my own sake but mj babe unborn, 
 
 And take the angels hand was sent to help — 
 
 And found the adversary athwart the path — 
 
 Not my hand simplj' struck from the angels, but 
 
 The very angel's self made foul i' the face 
 
 By the fiend who struck there, — that I vvould not bear, 
 
 That only I resisted ! So my first 
 
 And last resistance was invincible 
 
 ■ 'Twas truth singed the lies 
 
 And saved me not the vain swofd and weak speech.' 
 
 This love of Caponsacchi, too, is one of the things that makes the 
 
 end seem so happy to her. Without all that past misery, their two' 
 
 selves would never have been brought together: So with frankness 
 
 of joy she faces this great fact of her own and Caponsacchi's mutual 
 
 love. 
 
 " He is still here, not outside with the world, 
 
 Here, here, I have him in the rightful place ! 
 
 'Tis now, when I am most upon the move, 
 
 I feel for what I verily find — again 
 
 The face, again the eyes, again, through all, 
 
 The heart and its immeasurable love 
 
 Of my one friend, my only, all my own. 
 
 Who put his breast between the spears and me. 
 
 Ever with Caponsacchi ! Otherwise 
 
 Here alone would be failure, loss to me — 
 
 How much more loss to him, with life debarred 
 
 From giving life, love locked from love's display. 
 
 The day-star stopped its task that makes night morn." 
 
 Then see how her confidence in this love, in its sacredness, its iden- 
 tity with all that is best in her, is expressed : 
 
 " O lover of my life, O soldier-saint, 
 
 No work begun shall ever pause for death ! 
 
 Love will be helpful to me more and more 
 
 I' the coming course, the new path I must tread — 
 
 My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that ! 
 
 Tell him that if I seem to be without him now. 
 
 That's the world's insight. Oh, he understands ! " 
 And then from these same lips we have that unequalled exposition 
 of love in its highest spiritual form, love when it trembles on the 
 border of religion, a love such as theirs had been ; for theirs was to. 
 be a union of soul to last forever. 
 
 " Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit, 
 
 Mere imitation of the inimitable : 
 
 In heaven we have the real and true and sure. 
 
 'Tis there thev neither marry nor are given 
 
40 
 
 In marriage but are as the angels : right, 
 
 Oh how right that is, how like Jesus Christ 
 
 To say that ! Marriage-making for earth, , 
 
 With "gold so much, — birth, power, repute so much, 
 
 Or beauty, youth so much, in lack of these ! 
 
 Be as the angels rather, whO| apart. 
 
 Know themselves into one, are found at length 
 
 Married, but marry never, no, nor give 
 
 In marriage; they are man and wife at once 
 
 When the true time is : here we have to wait ! 
 
 Could we by a wish 
 
 Have M-hat we will, and get the future now. 
 
 Would we wish ought done undone in the past ? _ 
 
 So, let him wait God's instant men call years; 
 
 Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul, 
 Do out the duty ! 
 
 And then to crown all her monologue, so full of spiritual greatness, 
 
 she tells what he had been to her in religion as in love : 
 
 f^ " Through such. souls alone 
 
 i God stooping shows sufficient of His light 
 J For us i' the dark to rise b_v. And I rise." 
 
 ^ Thus we have this^monologue of Pompilia, so rich in all that 
 
 shows the essential soul. Nrhere is very little care of detail fact in 
 
 her narrative. We get no whisper of Guido's cruelty to her in his 
 
 many specific deeds. Nor is she careful to impute motives to those 
 
 around her. But as she speaks from her own inner life, her words 
 
 become luminous with that life. Of her the good old Pope says : 
 
 " It was not given Pompilia to know much. 
 
 Speak much, to write a book, to move mankind, 
 
 Be memorized by who record my time. 
 
 Yet it in purity and patience, if 
 
 In faith held fast despite the plucking fiend. 
 
 Safe like the signet stone with the new name 
 
 That saints are known by 
 
 Then will this woman-child have proved wh^ knows ? — 
 The one prize vouchsafed unworthy me." 
 
 Pompilia was not indeed given to know much of the knowledge 
 that comes of scholastic training ; her mental world was narrow. 
 But she had something which made her life, and hence the words 
 in which she told of her life, luminous with a truth that could not 
 be hidden from the eyes of those around her. Hence by this life of 
 the spirit Pompilia so spoke that she won each one of the sympa- 
 thetic faces that gathered around her deathbed, and so will she do 
 by this vital power as long as the Ring and the Book finds sympa- 
 thetic readers. 
 
41 
 
 DOMiNUS HYACINTHUS DE ARCHANGELIS. 
 
 After soaring with Pompilia in'her serene heights we are 
 
 brought down very abruptly to the mucky earth. Brought doWn 
 
 to face another qualified speaker, one who had an official relation 
 
 to the matter, who comes forward to give us his contribution toward 
 
 clearing up things. "Then since a Trial ensued," says the author, 
 
 " a touch o' the same 
 To sober u^, flustered with f rothj' talk, 
 And teach our commonsense its helplessness. 
 For why deal simply with divining rod, 
 Scrape where we fancy secret sources flow. 
 And ignore law, the recognized machine, 
 ■ Elaborate display of pipe and wheel 
 Framed to unchoke, pump up and pour apace 
 Truth till a Hoviery foam shall wa«h the world ? 
 The patent truth-extracting process^ — ha ? 
 Let us make that grave mjstery turn one wheel, 
 Give you a single grind of law at least ! " 
 
 Here we get a forecast of what we may expect of this truth-extract- 
 ing process. Shall we depend, ouf author would say, on this for 
 our decision as to what is true? Are we to take law's decision as 
 the stamp of truth on a matter? Even it may fail, he would say; 
 and in fact, between such a brace of barking lawyers, we are almost 
 ready to believe that judgment would be the chance of some fancy 
 fit here, as much as in the common judgment of gossipry. 
 First we have the advocate for Guido, 
 
 " The jolly learned man of middle age, 
 
 Cheek and jowl all in laps with fat and law. 
 
 Mirthful and mighty." 
 After the seriousness of the last three monologues, we are thus 
 utterly released from it. There is no check to his merriment in the 
 fact that three lives have already been lost in this entanglement, 
 and that five others are still in danger. He is much more stirred 
 by the thought that the roast pork, or lamb fries or the porcupine 
 may go wrong under the care of Gigia ; or by paternal pride in 
 the precocious young Archangeli, who shall one day try to follow 
 in papa's footsteps. He has not as much interest in the murder as 
 the jealous husband had, or the worshipping young bachelor who 
 stated his opinion so decidedly in the earlier part of the poem. 
 
 All the interest he had in the case was not an interest of the* 
 heart, but a professional interest. He must make " logic levigate 
 the big crime small." Much more important was it that he should 
 
42 
 
 defeat that Fiscal opponent than that he clear Guido from imputa- 
 tion of guilt. 
 
 " Better we lost the cause than lack the gird 
 
 At the Fisc's Latin, lost the Judges' laugh ! " 
 This crime had come plumb at the right moment of his professional 
 career: he was given the chance of showing his talents before all 
 assembled Rome; it had come as a very crown of success to open 
 out a name and fame for his Cinicello. The heavens he thought, 
 were working to make him height of his profession: there was a 
 blessing on fatherhood. 
 
 " Carnival-time — another providence ! 
 
 The town's a swarm with strangers to amuse, 
 
 To edify, to give one's name and fame 
 
 In charge of." 
 
 Our big red-faced friend calls to mind the turkey-cock who 
 with his inflated self importance, seems to think the whole world is 
 making a careful mark of his display. There is something ludicrous 
 in it which brings in, for a time, an element of farce into the poem. 
 So he has much more feeling to expend to his professional rival 
 than on actors in the tragedy. To discomfort the Fisc would be the 
 best part of his anticipated triumph; and the vivid imagery, by 
 which he places the Fisc in all l^nds of absurd and disagreeable sit- 
 uations, has almost the succulence to his taste of the good things 
 preparing for the birthday feast. 
 
 He cannot but congratulate himself that he is given scope 
 
 "Not for brute force, but ingenuity. 
 Explaining mattery, not denying them!" 
 
 He takes the hard facts of Guido's crime with a display of self 
 assurance, calcuated to strike amazement into his opponents heart at 
 the first onset. The murder is all confessed ; but that gives the 
 opportunity of explaining it all away by his plea of honoris causa. 
 Murder is no more murder when it takes its rise from the insuffer- 
 able wound in the honor. No need of proofs further ; only the 
 need to show how law allowed, according to its endless precedents, 
 of this plea for the murder of a wife. So he dumps upon us prece- 
 dent after precedent, with gathering climax as he rises from the ani- 
 mal kingdom up to the very flower of Christian intelligence of this 
 latter day so well represented by the Court. And having once 
 established the right of murder honoris causa, he goes on heaping 
 upon it the whole aggravation of Guido's case, calmly confident of 
 its all enduring strength. He glories in his mental keenness, as he 
 ferrets out all the aggravating circumstances of the murder ; the 
 worse the case appears for Guido, the more he will have to explain. 
 
43 
 
 And this faculty of explanation seems to givd an artistic quietus to 
 to the matter, as he explains away the confession of the four young 
 accomplices, — that they were about to murder Guido because he 
 had failed to, pay them : This he says is a crowning proof that the 
 four had not the least malice toward those, they killed, but only did 
 their work for money ; and on the other hand that Guido was un- 
 willing to further stain their souls with sin by giving them the 
 money, the wound to his honor once leaving been salved. So with 
 his citations of Latin and the quickness of an oily wit, he has 
 worked up a speech which vyill no doubt set "Rome a crying 
 him the modern Hortensius." 
 
 " Landed and stranded lies my very speech, ^ 
 
 My miracle, ray monster of defence — 
 
 I-eviathan into the nose whereof 
 
 I have put fishhook, pierced his jaw with thorn, 
 
 And give him to my maidens for a play ! " 
 
 But in spite of all his blindtless to the life of things, he 
 catches no inkling of the fact that he fails^o reach the heart of the 
 truth. His proposal to set forth the matter for the understanding 
 of the good old Pope whose faculties are growing obtuse through 
 age, is given in all good faith. For he is 
 
 " The man in public, vigilant for law. 
 
 Zealous for truth, a credit to his kind, ' 
 
 Naj', — since, employing talent so, I j-ield 
 The Lord His own again with usury, — 
 'A satisfaction, j'ea, to God Himself." 
 So intg pigeon hole' goes the speech, with 
 
 " Boitini, burn thy books, thou blazing ass ! 
 Sing Tra-la-la, for, lambkins, we must live ! " 
 
 Thus he departs to the birthday feast arjd his domestic joys with 
 calm unconsciousness of the laugh or anathema arising from his 
 hearers of this distant day; unconscious of how densely ignorant 
 he is oif the heart of the case ; unconscious too of that deep essen- 
 tial falsity of his testimony because of his unregenerated and un- 
 touched moral naturt. 
 
 dOHANNES-BAPTISTA BOTTINIUS. 
 
 Opposed to the fat, law-learned Archangeli, is his lean bach- 
 elor rival, the Fisc. The juicy humanity of the farmer, so well 
 revealed in his double care of Cinicello and of the feast preparing, 
 
44 
 
 found no counterpart here in Bottini, whose ambitions and pleas- 
 ures were entirely self centered. Hence we are more inclined to 
 be incensed at the Fisc, to condemn his bumptiousness. The laugh 
 in the throat that sounds like " fritters deep down frying there " is 
 opposed to the " scrannel pipe that screams in the heights of the 
 head." * 
 
 " In his modest studio, all alone,. 
 
 The tall wight stand a-tiptoe, strives and strains. 
 
 Both eyes shut, like the cockerel that would crow, 
 
 Tries to his own self amorously o'er 
 
 What never will be utfered else than so."' 
 
 Here too the interest in the case is purely a professional one, 
 though this fact is better concealed in the finished speech, than it 
 was "in the first rough draft of Archangeli. The Fisc as an orator 
 was given, by this case, — another chance of showing his oratorical 
 powers. And it is amusing to see how — had he had the power — 
 he would have fixed the court room for the reception of his speech. 
 " An immense hall, — fifity judges in a row — Room for the audience 
 of Rome — a corner for The Pope to listen," and then the introduc- 
 tion of the Fisc with a grand flourish, — all this would have been 
 his ideal. And so at the close of the speech, there is self-congratu- 
 lation again, comparison with the famed panegyric of Isocrates. 
 For, as he states his reason, " It pays." He too is a wrecker, who 
 sits ready to make the misfortunes of others his own advantage. 
 The famous murder case had fallen to h^s hands, and he had seized 
 it with a selfish appropriation. He was * 
 
 " Pompilia's patron by the chance of an hour, 
 
 To-morrow her persecutor, — composite, he. 
 
 As becomes who must meet such various calls. 
 
 A man of ready smile and facile tear. 
 
 Improvised hopes, despairs at nod and beck. 
 
 And language — ah, the gift of eloquence ! 
 
 Language that goes, goes, eas3' as a glove, 
 
 O'er good and evil, smoothens both to one." 
 
 But such zeal always has the reward in vjew. This heartless 
 adaptation of himself to the needs of his practice shuts out the 
 Fisc from all real sympathy with the truth. He smoothens all out 
 for Pompilia now, only to turn in a few days to her defamation 
 when he is engaged professionally to do that work. He had no 
 interest in that white woman's soul apart from the gain it mio-ht 
 bring him. He seems indeed to have believed in the guilt of Pom- 
 pilia, as appears from the character of his asides that make such 
 parade of disbelief in the charges brought against her. He passes 
 over every charge against her character with the specious excuse, so 
 characteristic of the man : 
 
45 
 
 " Yet for the sacredncss of argument, ' • 
 For this once an exemption shall it pleats'. , 
 Anythine.anything, to let the wheels 
 Of argument run glibly' to their goal," 
 
 And again : 
 
 " Not to grasp a truth I can release 
 
 And safely fight without, yet conquer still, — 
 
 Say, she kisSed him, say, he kissed her again I "• 
 
 Thus throughout in his dea,lings with Pompilia he showed himself 
 the harpy, unscrupulous as to whether its foulness defiled the con- 
 secrated or the vile. 
 
 His exordium, really a fine piece,, declares what is to be his 
 plea against Guido. He will not bring out great batteries of law 
 to answer the thunders of Archangeli ; nor are the proofs which 
 have long been known a matter^importance. He will paint Pom- 
 pilia as siie is, and let her portrait speak for her. He himself has 
 ^gested all the facts, the studies here and there, and will now fur- 
 nish the court with the ultimate life of all, in the picture of the 
 one woman's soul. The speaker perhaps told the truth of the 
 methods of creation in art ; he saw truly what was the right pro- 
 cess. He saw that the direct appeal to the emotions thrpugh art 
 was a powerful way of appealing to men : in fact by what Arch- 
 angeli says of him we are led to believe that he commonly used 
 such a process as a strategem in his professional work ; he was per- 
 haps constantly appealing to man's better nature in this way for 
 defense of all sorts of criminals. But with Pompilia where there 
 is not a mere simulated appeal to the moral nature of man, he failed. 
 Where then did he fail ? How did he come short of the painter's 
 success, when he understood the method so thoroughly? The 
 answef rests in the nature of the man himself. The assimilating 
 power of personality is necessary to combine these studies. ^ But 
 this power can only go along with great spiritual insight and 
 strength of soul. His own sordid soul could rise to no such 
 heights. By the mere power of fancy and shrewd intellectual jug- 
 glery, he would' make shift to join the pieces together ; and he 
 would fain make such work pass for the great portrait. But how 
 blind did all his shrewdness really prove. Perhaps he was con- 
 scious that he was not giving any very accurate portrait. Perhaps 
 his hope was, that he could deceive while the lie still lay patent to 
 himself. He may have succeeded with his immediate audience ; 
 ' but time has unmasked him ; he stands before us- in his right colors; 
 and in spite of his intellectual powers, which are superior to those 
 
46 
 
 of Archangeli, he proves himself the ultimate of spiritual dessica- 
 tion. 
 
 ' The most surprising thing to the casual reader is that it 
 should have been considered a defense in any sense of the word. 
 He had avowed his purpose as being to 
 
 ■" Draw the true effigies of a saint. 
 
 Do justice to perfection in the sex, 
 
 A faultless nature in a flawless form." 
 
 Such a plea would indeed have been powerful. But his dastardly 
 
 mouth goes on to dim every beautiful outline in the character of 
 
 Pompilia ; he mingled his own earthiness with the spotless purity 
 
 of her soul. His own conception of purity, truth and love were 
 
 vile, as the whole man was vile ; they could see nothing but this 
 
 same vileness in the purity, truth and love of others. It was as 
 
 much an impossibility with his nature to see the good qualities of 
 
 others, as it was for him to bear true witness to Pompilia ; she 
 
 belonged to another realm that he could not understand. Every 
 
 reckless blotch, falling on the portrait of Pompilia, shows itself as 
 
 a spot from his own impurity. He can dare to cast a shadow over 
 
 Pompilia's whiteness by supposing that she might have been guilty 
 
 of displaying her charms to the general eye, then to the particular 
 
 eye of Caponsacchi, and then that, on and on, she had trodden the 
 
 path of falsehood, up to the very brink of her grave. He avows a 
 
 disbelief in these things, but be lingers over them with a fondness, 
 
 born of affinity to that dirt, until, with Caponsacchi, we think we 
 
 would be doing good service to make him remove his dung-heap 
 
 from such proximity to Madonna. Over against Caponsacchi's 
 
 lofty denial, comes Bottini's justification of kissing on the journey 
 
 to the degree, that, if it had not been, he would say that had been 
 
 the greater wrong. 
 
 " Say, she kissed him, say, he kissed her again I 
 Such osculation was a potent means, 
 A ver3' efficacious help, no doubt ! 
 
 Why should Pompilia 
 
 Pause to employ what, — since it had success. 
 And kept the priest her servant to the end, — 
 We must presume of energy enough. 
 No whit superfluous, so permissable .' " 
 
 When he describes the drawing of the sword at Castelnuovo as 
 being merely wifely obedience, and ends with "Anything to con- 
 tent a wilful spouse," we begin to feel that his horrid mask of 
 insincerity almost challenges our discovery of its own deceit. Of 
 Pompilia's dying confession, so instinct with all that is good, love- 
 ly and true, he can say: 
 
47 
 
 i"'Twas charity, in her so circumstanced, 
 To spend her last breath in one effort more 
 For universal good of friend and foe : 
 And, — by pretending utter innocence, 
 J Nay, freedom from each foible we forgive,^ 
 Reintegrate — not solelj' her own fame, 
 But do the like kind office for the priest 
 Whom telling the crude truth about might vex, 
 Haply expose to peril, abbreviate 
 Indeed the long career of usefulness 
 Presumably before him : while her lord 
 ' Whose fleeting life is forfeit to the law,-^ 
 
 What mercy to the culprit if, by just 
 The gift of such a full certificate 
 Of his immitigable gHiltiness, 
 She stifle in him the absurd conceit 
 Of murder as it were a mere revenge — 
 Stopped confirmation of that jealous3' 
 Which, did she but acknowledge the first flaw, 
 The faintest foible, had emboldened him 
 To battle with the charge, balk penitence. 
 Bar preparation for impending fate ! 
 Whereas, persuade him that he slew a saint 
 Who sinned not even where she may have sinned, 
 You urge him all the brisklier to repent 
 Of most and least and aught and everj'thing ! " 
 
 This certainly fills, up his measure ; let him depart from us with his 
 horrible effigy that would simulate a Rafael. 
 
 The lowest ebb of spiritual life anywhere reached in the 
 whole poem is shown by Bottini. This nadir is touched in the 
 story of Peter, John and Judas. Without the least stirring of sym- 
 pathy or feeling at his own heart by this, portrait which he is draw- 
 ing, he is ready for such a digression, low enough for the lowest 
 groundlings, and an insult to the mental powers of his judges. The 
 story itself is only suited to the enlightenment of street loungers, 
 the vulgar and irreverent being written all through it. But placed 
 as it is, here ip close proximity to a story of the highest things of 
 man's life, it is the earthiest of the earthy. 
 
 THE POPE. 
 
 After the noisy barkings of this leash of lawyers, we are 
 brought once more into calm. It is the end of a cold, gray Febru- 
 ary day, and throughout the hours of that day the Pope had been 
 busied ' ' ' 
 
48 
 
 " Trying one question with true sweat of soul. 
 Shall the said doomed man fitlier live or die ? " 
 
 His own scantily furnished chamber has held him throughout the 
 long day, till those waiting for his decision were growing impa- 
 tient. But for him, there is desire of neither hurry nor delay. 
 There is no longer irresolution. Only the 
 
 " Need to breathe a while, 
 Rest, as the human right allows, review 
 Intent the little seeds of act, m_v tree." 
 
 He would canvas the results of this one days labor, and see how it 
 had fulfilled his "duty as God's vicar here on earth. 
 The author has described him as 
 
 " Grave but not sad, — nay, something like a cheer 
 Leaves the lips free to be benevolent." 
 
 He had come from a grave duty: he had been called to decide the 
 fate of five fellow men ; he had been forced to discern and separate 
 the tangled mesh of truth in this latest outburst of human wicked- 
 ness. And yet with a full realization of this, the grave smile could 
 light his face, as he felt the conscious approval of a duty, done in 
 the fear of no one but his God. He may have mistaken the truth, 
 but he had at least used every power given him for discerning it ; 
 and with consciousness of such rectitude, he would not hesitate to 
 put the unchangeable seal upon his work. He could even stand 
 before his God to offer this condemnation of Guido as his ultimate 
 work, by which he was to be judged. He is grandly self-poised 
 and self-reliant ; he, at the head of the church of Christ, firmly 
 holds his ascendency over the minds of all his admirers by this 
 independency. For his long years of arduous toil for God had 
 left him where he needed no stay to his soul from outside himself. 
 
 The Pope's part in the book is not that of a witness, but 
 rather he has the place of a judge, delivering the last word. He 
 had no new facts to bring to the evidence already adduced. His 
 knowledge of these matters had come by laboriously reading the 
 evidence submitted during trial. But he did bring that which is 
 greater: he brought a knowledge of man's duties in life, and the 
 wisdom that gives insight into the heart of the deed, — the hidden 
 motive that lies concealed. He no more tries to sift the facts when 
 he begins to speak; that is done. He has only to utter what he has 
 discovered of thejinner life of this whole tragedy as it lav clearly 
 before his mental vision. 
 
 His judgment of Guido is piercing and courageous: 
 
49 
 
 " This is why Guido is found reprobate. 
 
 I see him furnished forth for his career, 
 
 On starting for the life chance in our woiMd, 
 
 With nearly all we count sufficient help." ' ' v 
 
 Birth, companionship, his vows to the church should all have gyid; 
 ed him aright ; but all these had been used for his own selfish ends._ 
 His relations to the church had not been to learn her lessons of self- 
 sacrifice and struggle of soul, but to use her shell as a protection to 
 his own vileness. 
 
 " For I find this black mark impinge the man, ' 
 
 That he believes In just the vile of life. f 
 
 Low instinct, base pretensions, are these truth } 
 
 Then, that aforesaid armor, probity. 
 
 He figures in, isfalsehodd scale on scale ; 
 
 Honor and faith, — a lie and a disguise." > 
 
 After that, Guide's life is traced ; the base motive of the marriage 
 is exposed, the cruelty and cunning of the after-plot, the persisten- 
 cy in his craft, greed and violence, the final care to save the money 
 as it dropped from the lifeless hands of his victims. Not one mo- 
 tive that could have proceeded from a good heai^t can the Pope find 
 in all the past life of Guido. That one had lived for just the vile' 
 of life : he had bartered all, and even the lives of others and his 
 • very soul, for gold. Neither reverence nor love nor fear had been 
 able to check his dark, career. Sin was not a matter of diletantti 
 (depreciation to the strong soul of the old Pope. He hated with the 
 righteous hatred toward the Prince of the Powers of Darkness, 
 jlence he could not see in this life of Guido, a merely calculable 
 and reperable injury, an every day loss that must be counted com- 
 mon to our life without further investigation. He saw it rather as 
 a menace to the kingdom of spiritual purity and strength. So 
 when he saw the hand of God, checking Guido's career in crime 
 by the small failure to get the needed passport, with the challenge 
 '' Who is on the Lord's side ? " springing from a heart of conscious 
 loyalty to the good, he did dare to bare his arm and smite with all 
 his power. His only hope |for Guido's wickedness Was in somfe 
 sudden flash of truth God might let down into his soul to purge its 
 .pollution. 
 
 But his judgment does not stop here with the mere challenge 
 law makes of his opinion. He has his grave, forceful word for 
 each of the others connected with the case. He will give the auth- 
 oritative decision on the way each has played the part assigned , 
 him in the world, has attained the praise or blame law cannot 
 bestow with her short arm. It is no pleasant business fpr the sim- 
 ple, mild old ruler to coridemn his children ; yet he pronounces an 
 
5° 
 
 unmistakable word on every sin and \veakness here revealed. 
 
 Even the pecadillos of his gallant soldier-priest are judged. But 
 
 he finally returns with a happy tenderness to contemplate Pom- 
 
 pilia's life and work. She is helpful to him in keeping his spirit 
 
 whole : 
 
 " Stoop thou down, mv child. 
 Give one good moment to the poor old Pope 
 Heartsick at having all his world to blame." 
 
 He cherishes the one blossom of perfect whiteness which his years 
 of rule have brought him ; with as tender hands as the angels he 
 raises what had been crushed under the ruthless rush of wicked- 
 ness. It is a cordial to that strong heart, — an assurance that God 
 still reveals himself to the souls of his creatures here on earth. 
 There is a pathos too deep for human estimation in this part of the 
 Pope's monologue, a pathos that involves man in bis strongest, best 
 and most truthful moments ; it is the incongruit}- of our humanity 
 with the infinitudes of good and love of which God alone can 
 judge. 
 
 It rises from the highest degree of dramatic and artistic 
 skill that our author does not dismiss , the Pope with the 
 judgment of this one difficult problem. In that he had by the 
 strength and clearness of his nature been able to give a truer wit- 
 ness than any of the other speakers. The coping with this finite 
 difficulty, this one snarl in the skein of social relations, had in- 
 deed proved him a strong man ; but he had been placed by his office 
 above his fellows, — he has a greater duty than the mere equalling 
 them in his grip on truth. The effort of the day's judgment had 
 called into action his tingling strength. That whole grand spirit- 
 ual athleticism was aroused. He could no longter challenge the 
 truth of things here and there, but turned to the dark where infin- 
 ity stretched away before him. The questions of sin and destiny 
 and fate were to prove his soul, as he had seen the weaker difficul- 
 ties prove the souls of those below him. " What if thyself adven- 
 ture, now the place is purged so well ? " he asks himself, 
 
 " Shalt thou still gaze on ground, nor lift a lid, — 
 
 Steady in thy superb prerogative. 
 
 Thy inch of inkling, — nor once face the doubt 
 
 I' the sphere above thee, darkness to be felt ? " 
 
 He cannot hope to realize the greatness of the infinite God ; he can 
 only see Him in the " littleness reduced to man's faculty; " but yet 
 with true courage of heart, be will face the overpowering evil of 
 the world. 
 
 The seemingly boundless strength of evil in this world has 
 
51 
 
 been a puzzle to many an one beside the Pope. That evil should 
 
 enjoy an apparent immunity, that it reaches forth its hands over so 
 
 large a portion of man's life, that its victory against the good seems 
 
 all but assured, — these have ever been the sever6 tests to the moral 
 
 faith and courage. So the Pope, after having condemned his world 
 
 so widely for their blindness in seeing the, truth in the tragedy of 
 
 Pompilia, must needs face these questions that vvill likewise test 
 
 him. His answer is Browning's answer, found so often in his 
 
 poems : 
 
 " This life is training and a passage ; pass, — 
 Still we march over some flat obstacle 
 
 We made give way before us ; 
 
 The moral sense grows' but by exercise. 
 'Tis even as man grew probatively 
 Initiated in Godship, set to make 
 A fairer moral world than this he finds. 
 Guess now what shall be known hereafter." 
 
 And as for these injustices of the world, where Pompilia falls by 
 
 the hand of Guido. " Wait till life have passed from out the 
 
 world." This is his own view of the other world, he can trust 
 
 in that fiiture, nor be astonished that, " other men .... reject and 
 
 disbelieve, sin nor fear.'' 
 
 " This I refer still to the foremost fact. 
 
 Life is probation and the earth no goal 
 
 But starting point of man." 
 He Could face without loss of faith this fact, that men should 
 choose darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. He 
 could not help seeing that man's free will might elect evil, arid that 
 this very power of choice was necessary to any capability of 
 growth througETstruggle. 
 
 But what did trouble the Pope was tbat men who professed 
 the highest ideals of life, who followed after the church, who de^ 
 voted their lives to the spiritual good, — that these men should prove 
 as erring as those who made no pretenses of goodness. If spiritual 
 blind-ness were to seize the light of the gospel, and call men to fol- 
 low its leading, he could contemplate nothing but disaster. Here 
 had been one of God's jewels, trodden under foot and cast out, and 
 yet God's representatives on earth had not rescued her, — their ears 
 had been deadened to His Word. 
 
 " Where are the Christians in their panoply ? 
 
 The loins we girt about with truth, the breasts 
 
 Righteousness plated round, the shield of faith, 
 
 The helmet of salvation, and that sword 
 
 O' the Spirit, even the word of God,— where these ? 
 
 Slunk into corners ! " 
 These servants were strenuous in defense of dogma, in advocacy of 
 
52 
 
 their word of address to God, used by Chinese Christian converts ; 
 but they left the whole cities of souls still thirsting for the truth. 
 
 Then as a result of his, thought on these things comes to his 
 mind the query whether this is the success of God's appointed plan 
 of salvation. Can this failure be a failure in the All Power and 
 All Goodness of the Moral Ruler of the world. He can only an- 
 swer, with the assurance of the inner spiritual man, which cannot 
 prove, but is its own truth : 
 
 " How can I speak but as I know ? — mj- speech 
 Must be throughout the darkness, ' It will end • 
 
 The light that did burn, will burn ! ' 
 
 What but the weakness in a faith supplies 
 The incentive to humanity, no strength, 
 Absolute, irresistible, comports ? 
 
 So never 1 miss footing in the maze. 
 
 No, I have light nor fear the dark at all." 
 
 But his fellows had not all of ^hem this bright light of spiritual 
 truth. And then there faced him the men who work righteousness 
 in all nations without the clearness of revelation. Among them. 
 Euripides had clung to the difficult fragment of truth he had laid 
 hold of in the darkness ; he had fought a brave fight with the 
 knowledge given him. He typified to the Pope the yearning, 
 truth-seeking, truth-loving soul in its lonely struggle. This apolo- 
 gy for Euripides is one of the finest things of the book. He had 
 grasped the truth, and been loyal to goodness, when the world was 
 without light. He had opposed sin and born sacrifice, — he had 
 done the will of God more carefully than those with the light of 
 the seventeenth century. He too had been a moral hero, who had 
 counted the world but loss for the excellency of The truth ; and as 
 such, the Pope could only extend to him the warmest sympathetic 
 greeting. 
 
 But it was no longer lack of light that caused men to love 
 evil. It was rather the 
 
 " Ignoble confidence. 
 Cowardly hardihood, that dulls and damps. 
 Makes the old heroism impossible." 
 
 Should he then wish back those days when faith had had a call to 
 heroism and self-sacrifice in it, when the doubtful- gleam of truth 
 had been able to call forth' the martyr and saint to follow in the 
 steps of Christ ? The difficulty in part seemed to lie in the exceed- 
 'ing power of the church, which had now become the path to secur- 
 ing the highest pleasures of earthly life. 
 
53 
 
 " The world smiles ' Right and wise ! 
 
 Faith .points the politic, the thrifty way, 
 
 Will make who plods it in the end returns ' r 
 
 Beyond mere fool's-sport and improvidence.' " 
 
 This the spirit of the world had crept in to make of none effect the 
 
 gospel. The Pope can only look to the futui-e for some change in 
 
 the position of the church to remedy this evil : 
 
 "What if it be the mission of that age. 
 My death will usher into life, to shake 
 This torpor of assurance from our creed. 
 Reintroduce the doubt discarded, bring 
 That formidable danger back, we drove 
 
 Long ago to the distance and the dark ? 
 
 And man stand out again, pale, resolute. 
 Prepared to die, — which means, alive at last." . 
 
 Then out of that commotidn and struggle of spirit will rise new 
 life ; men will have their religion in their hearts ; because it is 
 something more to them than the mere outside pomp of the world. 
 Then will they draw near to the great source of life, and truth in 
 God, and leave their base springs of mere earthly joy. 
 
 Thus the Pope struggles with sinew of soul. He adniits us 
 for the time into the making of such great sou,ls where insight is 
 unquestioned. He puts aside for the time the lesser tests of his 
 strength in the decision of this murder case, and shows how he can 
 win greater triumphs than any of the other actors of this drama 
 dreamed of But his attitude toward this tragedy is that of one, 
 conversant with its inner core through his ,own spiritual vitality. 
 He never loses, his sympathy with the lives here revealed. He has 
 never seen Pompilia or Caponsacchi, yet he is able to perceive 
 what they really are, with a judgment whose truth is not found in 
 any other speaker of the poem.' He has been open to the truth, and 
 that truth has come to abide with him. Not alone does he see what 
 is right in the punishment of the malefaction, but he sees the pro- 
 per spiritual attitude to take to this new revelation of God in his 
 children. Thus his witnessing is true in the highest sense, — that is, 
 it has a sympathetic insight into the facts of this case. He, because 
 of his enlightened spiritual nature, is farthest removed from that 
 falsity of testimony, against which our author would warn us. 
 There is no heat of advocacy nor challenging of opinion in what 
 he says ; for there is no faction in the heart of the one who sees 
 Truth as she is. There is only the confident setting forth of what 
 . has come to him in connection with this tragedy ; the product of 
 his own sanctified intellect as it works on this new revelation to 
 his fellowmen. He has the assurance that 
 
54 
 
 " All I do and am 
 Comes from the truth, or seen or else surmise." 
 
 He ■was aware that it is 
 
 " The seed of act 
 God holds apprising in his hollow palm," 
 
 And he believed that he had been able to see this b^' the clarity of 
 
 his spiritual nature. For these things were ever " authentic to the 
 
 good and faithful servant," even when they seemed most complex 
 
 and perplexing to the wisdom of the world. 
 
 GUIDO. 
 
 "Then must speak Guido vet a second time ; 
 The same man, another voice." 
 
 The artistic justification of this monologue is simple. Guido had 
 already spoken to the reader, but he had not yet revealed his inner 
 self ; he bad constructed a skillful defense to save his neck ; he had 
 not with any conscious loyalty to the truth searched his own heart. 
 We were indeed shown a hint of the man behind the wiles. Hence 
 it is for a real artistic need that Guido is brought before us again. 
 We are given to see the black depths of his soul, to descry the 
 wolf-nature. Our fragmentary hints of the evil-worker of the 
 tragedy are united in fusion by the heat of hell-breath into the 
 seething criminality of one consistent person. 
 
 This narration of the story of his relation to Pompilia is 
 neither a summary of fact, nor even a fine web of motive to excuse 
 his conduct. It gives the real moral attitude of Guido, expressed 
 without an attempt to hide its blackness, toward the general course 
 of things during these four years of his life. His words do their 
 office in confessing the man, in confessing him in a way far more 
 effective than the confession he refused to give to the church's audi- 
 tory. He does not give another false witnessing to the general 
 facts, he rather reveals the utter falsity of his first testimony. But 
 along with this artistic office in the book, the monologue does show 
 Guide's falsity, — a falsity of a more terrible kind, — in his relation 
 to the problems of life in general. His views of the difficult prob- 
 lems of life are set over against those of the Pope ; and his utter 
 blindness of heart is thus made to bear false witness on these things 
 
55 
 
 •which the Pope has treated with a fine and clear spiritual insight. 
 The hope of saving his life, which animated the other mono- 
 logue, is now ^one. It flashes through, this monologue only inter- 
 mittently, like the drowning man's clutch for life. His appeals for 
 the help of the Cardinal and Abate are made with no expectation 
 of success ; they are mixed with revilings and blasphamies in delir- 
 ious confusion. This change of attitude led to the change so well 
 expressed in the figure : 
 
 " The tiger cat screams now, that whined before, 
 That pried and tried and trod so gingerlj-. 
 Till in its silkiness the trap teeth joined ; 
 ,Then j'ou know how the bristling fury foams." 
 
 His former speech had been full of mock humility before the court, 
 full of the whining of flattery, even the assumption of lofty mo- 
 tives in his- work of blood ; " but death rivelled up those lies." 
 The cruel heart, the avaricious thirst, the cuniiing hypocrisy, the 
 hatred of the good, are now vaunted with a terrible frankness. As 
 long as the hope of life remained, it stood as a bar to the free utter- 
 ance of his nature ; but once that hope flown, he unpacks his heart 
 in such a way as to terrify those who occupy the cell with him. 
 The evil ruafies forth because of its own irre^^kible violence in 
 the heart of Guido. A moral insanity lays hol^^t him ; and he is 
 thus compelled to show his true self once before he dies. 
 
 The self-centered man is troublesome, but when the self-cen- 
 tered nature is a wolf at core, it is dangerous and to be put out of 
 ..the way of doing harm. The one center of all his life's conduct 
 was his ow.n pleasure. To that he rhakes all things, give way with 
 a cruelty and persistency that make him seem monstrous. 
 
 " I knew that just raj-self concerned mjself 
 
 Why grant me respite who deserve my doom ? 
 
 Me — who engaged to plaj' a prize, fight you, < 
 
 Knowing your arms, and foil j'ou, trick for trick. 
 
 At rapier-fence, you match and, mayte, more. 
 
 I knew that if I chose sin certain sins, 
 
 Solace my lusts out of the regular way 
 
 Prescribed me, I should find you in the path. 
 
 Have to try skill with a redoubted foe."' ' 
 
 Hi's faith, to sum it up in his own words, was 
 
 " In the present life, made last as long, 
 
 And prove as full of pleasure as may hap. 
 
 Whatever pain it cause the world." 
 This was the "vile of life" in which, as the Pope said, Guido final- 
 ly believed. 
 
 But the debasement of his nature is still more clearly shown 
 
 in his attitude toward religion. He is no longer her humble son. 
 " Christian," he says, " no such stufi" extant " 
 
5<5 
 
 "'Tis dead of age, now, ludicrously dead. .'. . . 
 ' Get pl'fcasure,' scape pain, — give your preference 
 To the immediate good, for time is brief, /' 
 
 And death ends good and ill and ever_vthing ! 
 What's got is gained, and what's gained soon is gained twice, 
 .And inasmuch as faith gains most — feign faith ! " 
 
 His very expectation and desire of a future life is measured in these 
 
 same balances of his own pleasure and pain. 
 
 " Life, without absolute use 
 Of the actual sweet therein, is death, not life. 
 Give me, — pay down, — not promise, vvhich is air, — 
 Something that's out of life and better, still. 
 
 Make sure reward, make certain punishment, , 
 
 Entice me, — I'll forego this life : 
 Otherwise, no ! " 
 
 It is no wonder that to him, the blind, all else in the ecclesiastical 
 
 world seemed so bad, when the brave clear heart of the Po.pe could 
 
 see in it evil almost to disappointment. Hence religion was, in his 
 
 eyes, a sl^illful mummerj', to cheat men into giving one the best 
 
 things of this life. Hence all men seemed to him to be just as 
 
 blind as himself to things other than the gain that could be 
 
 measured. , 
 
 " Whj' should things change because men disbelieve } 
 
 What's incompa"^le, in the whited tomb. 
 
 With bones 3i^<ft-;tipttenness one inch below ? 
 
 What saintly aCt is done in Rome to-day. 
 
 But might be prompted bj' the devil ? 
 
 Why should we do our duty past the need .' " 
 
 It was of such a nature that St. John said : " And thi-s is the con- 
 demnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved dark- 
 ness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every 
 one that doeth evil, hateth the light, neither cometli to the light, 
 lest his deeds should be reproved." Guido had no faith in good- 
 ness, he had no faith in truth, he did not know the power of right- 
 eousness ; he had not the faintest conception of the great spiritual 
 fountainheads that flow for the healing of the nations. His soul 
 was as grovelling as that of the miser in Pilgrim's Progress, who 
 could see nothing but the muck in which he was rakeing. 
 
 As a proof that this base nature of Guido is not in the 
 wrong only in* dealing with the facts of his relation to his wife, We 
 get the story of the poor Felice who had perished by Afannaia, just 
 before Guido made his acquaintance, with the machine by which his 
 own head was soon to fall ; that is the chief thing he grasps from 
 Felice's story. There is not the least sign of pity, or indignation 
 at wrong, as he tells how Felice's boldness in defending his sister's 
 purity is checked by the law. The story is told in a blind and 
 heartless fashion ; for Felice's murder by the law had helped to 
 
57 
 
 defend a noble against a common man, and that was all Guide ask-, 
 
 ed in his own case. For nobility in his estimation was a patent for 
 
 wrong doing, rather tl^an a call to chivalrous and lofty living. And ' 
 
 the change of the times, from when such an immunity would have 
 
 been ready for himself, is all that appeals to the mind of Guido. 
 
 But it is in his account of his relation with Pompilia that 
 
 we best see the nature of the man. His former narrative had 
 
 shown indifferency and selfishness in dealing vvith her; this shows 
 
 fierce greed and hatred, meanness permeating the entire man. The 
 
 effect of the first sight of himself on Pompilia he describes a,s : 
 
 " Struck dumb, for she was white enough before ! 
 
 She eves ma with those frightened balls of black, 
 
 As heifer — the old simile comes pat— ' 
 
 Eyes tremblingly the altar and the priest. ' 
 
 TheJook-amazed all one insuppressive prayer." CWwO-zxiH JL<y-tri 
 
 And this he goes on to say roused, not pity, but resentment in him. 
 
 The neck that " writhes, chords itself against his kiss," the hand he 
 
 wrings, " stark, rigid with despair," rouse hatred and bitterness of' 
 
 soul in him. This attitude toward the dislike of a child indicates 
 
 the total meanness of Guido's nature. Hatred toward a child was a 
 
 suitable passion for such an one. So, says he, 
 
 " She begins with wronging me. 
 Who cannot but begin with hating her." 
 
 Pompilia's very obedience was odious to him : 
 
 " There had been compensation in revolt — 
 
 Revolt's to quell : but martyrdom rehearsed, 
 
 But predetermined saintship for the sake 
 
 O' the mother ? ' Go,' thought I, ' we meet again ! ' 
 
 I'll not believe but instinct wrought in this. 
 
 Set her on to conceive and execute 
 
 The preferable plague." 
 The secret of all this hatred aroused by her quietly bearing his 
 cruelty is explained in Guido's own words : 
 
 " I advise — no one think to bear that look 
 
 Of steady wrong, endured as steadily — 
 
 Through what sustainment of deluding hope ? 
 
 Who is the friend i' the background that notes all ? 
 
 Who may come presently and close accounts ? 
 
 This self-possession to the uttermost, 
 
 How does it differ in aught, save degree. 
 
 From the terrible patience of God .' " 
 Guido sufl^ered the constant rebuke for his wrong doing that is offer- 
 ed by the silent presence of righteousness. He could see in Pom- 
 pilia that better life, which proved his own to be evil, and he hated 
 it because he loved darkness rather than light. Pompilia's purity 
 and moral elevation is given no surer proof in the poem than this 
 unconscious power of her personality to confound Guido. We 
 
58 
 
 have no-mention in this monologue, as in the other of any attempt- 
 ed kindness toward her. In fact it was impossible for Guido to 
 live untroubled in her neighborhood ; and perhaps this aversion 
 was as powerful in giving impetus tO' Guide's schemes as the mere 
 crafty planning to catch the gold. His own ideal of a wife who 
 would have assisted him, is given in the latter part of the mono- 
 logue ; the Biancas or Olimpias bold and brave, who would prove 
 the readiest instruments, through any path of crime, to a fruition in 
 the satiation of his greed for golrt. So he says : 
 
 " M3' wife proved, whether by her fault or mine, — 
 That's immaterial; — a true stumbling block 
 I' the way of me her husband. I but plied 
 Tlie hatchet yourselves use to clear path." 
 
 In his other monologue Guide said, that if Pompilia, instead of the 
 
 hated face of Violante, had appeared at the door to admit him, he 
 
 might have been won to tenderness. Now over against that, we 
 
 have the fearful^ opposite, as he tells how he counted over his 
 
 chances of success before knocking at the villa : 
 
 " If only she is stopped and stamped on, good ! " 
 
 So by the murder, his physical strength exults over her weakness ; 
 
 he would crush down her soul because of its goodness. On her 
 
 very death bed he would have done the same violence, had it been 
 
 possible. 
 
 " She too must shimmer through the gloom o' the grave. 
 
 Come and confront me — not at judgment seat 
 
 Where I could twist her soul, as erst her flesh, 
 
 And turn her truth into a lie, — but there, 
 
 O' the death-bed, with God's hand between us both. 
 
 Striking me dumb, and helping her to speak. 
 
 Tell her own story fjer own way, and turn 
 
 My plausibilitj' to nothingness ! " 
 
 He even follows her with the warning : 
 
 "Beware me in whatever world may be." 
 
 Thus he too, as Pompilia, came to recognize how utterly separate 
 
 their souls were. And as policy no longer called for the relation of 
 
 man and wife, he also was ready that this bond should be broken, 
 
 never to be reiinited. 
 
 His complaints against the Comparini, which took so large a 
 
 part of his other monologue, decrease to their natural size as seen 
 
 by his own heart. They were no longer the chief bitterness to 
 
 him. The domestic bitterness so vividly portrayed before, was part 
 
 of the weh, of lies that had been rivelled up. The old couple have 
 
 now become only tjie miserable insects, that annoy his pleasure, 
 
 and as such he killed them. Their crooked ways had no purity to 
 
 arouse his fears in his own sins. "The pair of old, pretentious fools — " 
 
59 
 
 had meant to fool him, and so he put them out of the way as he 
 would vermin. 
 
 It is also to be remarked that no mention is here ma,de of any, 
 belief on Guido's part that Caponsacchi had performed the part of 
 a lover to his wife. Scarcely is any mention made of the priest at 
 all. That lie had been so utterly useless that it was not worth 
 repeating. Not in the whole course of thi^ confession of his true 
 nature does Guido once assert that he had the least ground for jeal- 
 ousy in regard to his wife. Nor does he have a single jeer for the 
 brave soldier-priest who had cowed him at Castelnuovo. Even his 
 use of Caponsacchi's name at the door of the villa is lost as one of 
 the many tricks that had failed him in the attempt to snare his 
 prey. 
 
 Now again after this, he returns to show his disbelief in the 
 good, and to show his attitude toward spiritual things. " I think 
 I never was ; " says he, " at any time a Christian, as you nickname 
 all the world." He had no faith left for the religion of relics and 
 saints. He had traced all issues,, even the spiritual, to , the love of 
 life, and was suffering for it. And now that the end threatens, he 
 looks forward to a life hereafter, which, if it does not grant him 
 annihilation, he can only hope will be in consonance with his own 
 confessed evil nature : 
 
 " Let me turn wolf, be whole, and sate, for once, — ' 
 
 Wallow in what is now a wolfishness 
 
 Coerced too much bj' the humanity 
 
 That's halt of me as iwell ! Grow out of man, 
 
 Glut the wolf-nature,— what remains but grow 
 
 Into the man again, be fnan indeed, 
 
 And all man ?" 
 This was his only ideal of regenei-ation,— a glutting of the evil 
 until its possibilities were exhausted. He was lost to all thought 
 of an influence to change him such as had changed Caponsacchi to 
 his higher spiritual plane. 
 
 " Is there a new rule in another world ? 
 
 Be sure I shall resign myself : as here 
 
 I recognize no law I could not see. 
 
 There, what I see, I shall acknowledge too ; 
 
 Till when. 
 
 All that was, is ; and must forever be. 
 
 Nor is it in me to unhate my hates." 
 So he recognized and acted up to his wolf-nature in this world ; he 
 hated his hates,, and loved his loves which were like hate ; he had 
 fulfilled his evil career, and so was ready to step from the stage of 
 
 life. , . r ^ 
 
 As his end draws near there are rapid alternations of herce- 
 
6o 
 
 ness and fawning upon his companions ; there is a desperate animal 
 
 effort to save his life. He still clings to the one ray of light he 
 
 sees in their presence, and then as they seem not to respond to his 
 
 earnest wishes he renounces them. Once he promises support to 
 
 the Cardinal in his candidacj' for the Papal chair, an9 again he 
 
 pleads with them by their old friendship, and then he turns fiercely 
 
 upon them to denounce them. He taunts the Cardinal with his 
 
 cruel treatment of his sweetheart, he catches up the hacking cough 
 
 of the Abate. He revels in the thought that they follow him like 
 
 the waves, all to be dashed on the same rocky shore of dissolution. 
 
 But finally when the funeral psalm and the light approach his cell^ 
 
 be shrieks 
 
 " Sirs, my first true word, all truth and no lie. 
 Is — save me notwithstanding ! " 
 
 And as they turn from him he is made in his last words to testify 
 
 his real insight into the hated goodness of Pompilia as he turns to 
 
 b&r for the j>ower of salvation. 
 
 THE BOOK AND THE RrNG. 
 
 The noise and talk about this tragedy came to a sudden 
 period as Guide's head fell under the ax. The elaborate explana- 
 tions were suddenly Crashed out by Mannaia. Guido's history had 
 become an event in the history of the town, and began to decrease 
 in the hearts and speeches of men to its proper significance. But 
 in order to lead our minds down from the sustained elevation of the 
 body of the poem, our author makes us hear a few of the reverber- 
 ations as the noise dies away. Four reports of the execution are 
 given, four brief sketches to indicate how all began to die away to 
 the calm, where the stars could be seen above. They write small 
 the lesson writ so large across the ten monologues ; each exhibits a 
 fleeting glance at a soul by its attitude toward the tnith. 
 
 The first of these reports is a letter from a stranger, man of 
 rank, Venetian visitor at Rome. He jauntily tells th? gossip of the 
 town — pleasant amusement for every visitor at the Imperial City. 
 The chief point at which the execution touched him was in that he 
 had a bet on the matter. So he says : 
 
6i 
 
 " Tell Dandolo I owe him fiCtv drops 
 
 Of heart's blood in the shape of gold zecchines ! 
 
 The Pope has done his worst : I have to pa}' 
 
 For the execution of the Count, by Jove ! " / i 
 
 The assemblage of " quality in conclave " who had come; to see the 
 Count's end, the lively excitement of the mob of common people, 
 the report of this mishap and that miracle, in fact the whQle dis- 
 play of Guido's noisy ending of his career of evil, had furnished a 
 day's diversion for the writer ; and they are written up in much the 
 sensational style that would entitle them to large head-lines in a 
 modern daily ; here in the letter they take place as the most impor- 
 tant pJ€ce of news about town. With the reader, who has been 
 admitted to see the heart of the old Pope, and to conceive his sweat 
 of soul the day before, it calls up an ironical smile, to hear him so 
 facilely disposed of by this man of quality : 
 
 " But yesterday he had to keep indooi-s i 
 
 Because of the outrageous rain that fell. 
 On such days the good, soul has fainting-fits 
 Or lies in stupor, scarcely makes believe 
 Of minding business, fumbles at his beads," 
 
 So the Pope also had to' bear misinterpretation, his good too was 
 turned to bad as it was mouthed about Rome. 
 
 Next comes the last word of our fat sire, so good a judge of 
 cookery and of Latin, Procurator Pauferum and Doctor Legium; 
 a last confirmatory glance at that self-satisfied unctuousness. This 
 letter, written to Cencini, "Socius and brother-in-the-devil " shows 
 its two fold office in one more sly prank of the writer. The abrupt 
 change of tone in the letter shows that there was no self deception 
 in his advocacy of Guido, that he was as ready to twist facts for 
 professional ends as he was to turn to his roast pork. The first half > 
 of the letter is evidently to be read by Cencini to the family of the 
 Francheschini. Its every line tells of sorrow and reverence for the 
 dead Count, "now with God ; " it is a most elaborate off-with-the- 
 hat and bowing low before that noble family. " Then follows place 
 and date. On next leaf, Ilactenus Senioribus," thus far for our 
 betters. Then comes a chatty bit to his friend when the concealing 
 hood is withdrawn. And we have the same pompous attention to 
 his talents and affairs that we found in the monologue. The sen- 
 tence of the court was no longer, according to his former acknowl- 
 edgement, attributable to his 
 
 " Own crass ignorance 
 
 Which failed to set the valid reason forth, 
 
 Find iit excuse ; " 
 But the death of Guido had resulted from a piece of spitework 
 
62 
 
 from the old Pope, a kick to show that he was still alive ; not even 
 
 the learning of such a Doctor as himself could avail against sucb 
 
 prejudice. Yet he can still prophesy the Pope's utterance to him 
 
 when tbey shall next meet as : 
 
 " I must decide as I see proper, Don 
 I'm Pope, I have mj- inward lights for guide. 
 Had learning been a matter in dispute. 
 Could eloquence avail to gainsay jact. 
 Yours were the victory, be comJorted ! " 
 
 The same obstreperous paternity also still manifests itself. He 
 
 must drop in god-papa's ear a word on the precocity of Cinuccio, — 
 
 bow the boy had seen with such interest the execution of the Count, 
 
 and with his shrewd wits had turned things to his father's victory. 
 
 So he would someday, as the happy combination of logic and Latin, 
 
 eclipse even the noonday glory of his famous father. 
 
 Then the Fisc writes his last word for us. Once more he 
 
 shows his disregard for truth and purity. He is ready to change 
 
 sides with the greatest facility. His tongue is 
 
 " A two-edged sword. 
 No ax, sharp one side, blunt the other way." 
 
 He boasts that he will show the adequacy of the machinery of law, 
 will demonstrate that advocacy is not mere froth and impudence ; 
 that it can even change facts to suit its purpose, that it can twist 
 things to its own end. This still is the highest ideal of the Fisc in 
 regard to the power of his profession. There is no thought in his 
 mind that justice and judgment are in any way connected ; the truth 
 is but a lathen dagger before the strong sword of his skillful fence 
 with the untruth. He has now had his success, his opportunity of 
 boasting himself over his opponent, by a mere chance association 
 with the good. But it was not the good in Pompilia's cause that 
 presented itself to him as its winning feature ; for he anathematizes 
 her confession as forestalling his own praises of her purity. But 
 he was soon to find that the truth did have some power. The sen- 
 tence six months after may have given him a gleam of the fact that 
 judgment is no matter of dalliance and convenience, and that such 
 purity as his former client's was stronger than all the logic, law, 
 and eloquence of his profession. He had at least to submit to the 
 irresistible might of God's hand, which He puts forth to save His 
 truth in this world. 
 
 Of the sermon at which the Fisc cast such opprobrium and 
 contempt we must speak a word. It, even more clearly than these 
 letters, gives us to see how the heart it reflects, — this last heart we 
 are shown from all the multitude of Rome, — bore itself in the face 
 
63 
 
 of these facts. We had already begun to love the good, old Augus- 
 
 tinian, who had such tender sympathy for Pompilia on her ,death 
 
 bed ; and so we are glad to get a few authentic words from the 
 
 heart of the man, to show how he could divide the true from the 
 
 false. His live Spiritual nature gives us one last glance at the truth 
 
 of Pompilia's life, one last flash of light from Qod's throne to show 
 
 Pompilia, who was His own. This priest too, just as his Pope, had 
 
 come to see how powerfully evil had asserted itself. He saw that 
 
 " Though this one breast, by miracle, feturn, 
 No wave rolls by, in all the waste, but bears 
 Within it some dead dove-like thing as dear, 
 Beiaiity made blank and harmlessness destroyed ! " 
 
 Here the one martyr shrine had been recognized, but who could 
 
 count the many that still lay under the ban of a pagan mystery. 
 
 Law had proved its inadequacy and ineptitude, soiled the 
 
 white it made boast to defend. So at last Pompilia's rescue had to 
 
 rest in 
 
 " What I call God's hand, — you, perhaps, — mere chance 
 Of the true instinct of an old good man 
 Who happens to hate darkness and love light. 
 In whom too was the eye that saw, not dim, 
 -.The natural force to do the thing he saw 
 No wise abated," 
 
 So the Priest saw how man's judgment had failed where he had tried 
 
 to judge by the outward appearance ; but " God tries the heart." 
 
 Hence he could only assert that " God is true, and every man 
 
 a liar." He too had tried the things of God and the things of life, 
 
 I and he could no more than say 
 
 " As this world seems, I dare not say I know — 
 Apart from Christ's assurance which decides — 
 Whether I have not failed to taste much joy. 
 For man}' a doubt will fain perturb ray choice — 
 Many a dream of life spent otherwise — 
 How human love, in varied shapes, might work 
 As glory, or as rapture, or as grace." 
 
 How different this is from Guide's strong assertion of his 
 
 own selfishness, from the contentedness in their principle of living, 
 
 of those who made self their end in life. 
 
 So the last streaks left by the passage of Star Wormwood 
 
 fade from the sky. The night of entire oblivion succeeds to the 
 
 glaring rush of Guide's crime. The talk, whether true or false, 
 
 gradually became hushed down to silence. But it had gathered its 
 
 accretion in the little vellum covered book, and lay there at rest 
 
 through its century and a half, until it was discovered and Ipreathed 
 
 upon by the immortal fire of the poet's soul. 
 
64 
 
 GENERAL STATEMENT. 
 
 Little in the way of summary is needed. It has been seen 
 that in each monologue the essential character of the speaker has 
 given direction to his attitude toward the case. As they have come 
 to the intricate mazes of this murder, so mixed in its motives, they 
 uttered truth or falsehood according as truth or falsehood were 
 within themselves. Each has given an interpretation to the mo- 
 tives that carried it to its consummation by examining his own 
 heart to see what motives would have moved his ideals of the men 
 in those situations. The first three speakers, chosen from Rome's 
 gossip, who witness from the outside of the tragedy, are persons 
 with little of the infinite in their moral natures. They are ground- 
 lings who have little knowledge of things above them. None of 
 them have the insight to get at the heart of the case so as to give 
 a true witness of it, and yet they are not swayed by conscious evil 
 motives ; their expositions are perhaps faithful accounts so far as 
 their. limited vision carried them. Next we have the testimony of 
 the three direct actors. Guido, however, in his first monologue, is 
 swayed by motives' for concealment, and only at the last do we per- 
 ceive fully the falsity of his witness. His false testimony is of a 
 more terrible kind ; it grows out of an absolute hatred of the light, 
 a clinging to what is mean and low. So he would corrupt what- 
 ever touches his moral makeup. Finally we get the statements of 
 those who have made a careful study of the facts so far as testi- 
 mony will furnish them. The two lawyers are the ultimate of 
 spiritual dessication ; they have become the adepts in jugglerj' with 
 truth for professional ends. Hence they are not only untrue, but 
 their falsehoods are sapless. They do not even, as Guido, talk their 
 judgments from a debased moral nature ; in fact, the moral nature 
 is consciously repressed for professional ends. They arrogate the 
 power of the independent intellect to settle all these things of the 
 soul, and hence their utter failure, hence their absolute falsity of 
 testimony. But the speeches that carry real truth, that throw some 
 light on the mystery of the murder, that show how men's moral 
 natures were affected by the crime, were those of Caponsacchi and 
 
65 
 
 Pompilia from within and the Pope from above it. These speakers 
 were given the insight that is born of a quickened spiritual nature,, 
 that comes of a " sanctified iritellect " working in cooperation with 
 the man's true self. They can speak truth, because the Truth 
 abides in their hearts ; in fact they can speak nothing but the truth 
 to the degree that their spiritual vision approaches perfection. And 
 the old Pope, God's vicar here on earth, seems to have gone as 
 near to such perfection as is possible with men. Thus the various* 
 speakers of the book are made to reflect the life of the tragedy 
 according to their essential selves ; and so the poem is given to 
 show once again the puzzling question as to the truth or falsity of 
 human testimony. In this new art form, men are made to accept 
 the old moral truth, and by the quickening of their moral natures 
 are made to appreciate its' power for good and evil in the lives of 
 mankind. 
 
 PART THREE." 
 
 Browning had already made himself master of the dramatic 
 monologue as an art form when he conceived the idea of making, 
 the Francheschini murtJer trial a subject of his literary art. In 
 this, his masterpiece, he carries his newly perfected art form to its 
 highest possibilities. In fact, some have criticized him on the 
 ground that he has here pushed it beyond its legitimate scope. It 
 is a common criticism that the long speech, put in the mouth of the 
 dying Pompilia, is a physical impossibility because of its length, as 
 well as impossible in its conception for so young and uneducated a 
 mind ; and also that the other monologues are inordinately long. 
 But we may state here that Browning's use of the dramatic mono- 
 logue is not subservient to actualism. He never attempts to use 
 strictly the exact language his speakers would have used in life. 
 He would not be the artist if he did this ; poetry is, something dif- 
 
66 
 
 ferent from conversational prose. But he does observe dramatic 
 fitness in a much higher and more perfect way. He conceives as 
 fully as possible the internal life of the character, its motive; 
 Then with all his own powers as an artist for selection, rejection, 
 and poetic embodiment, he gives an adequate expression to the 
 character, which, except for his artistic power, might remain with- 
 out that expression. He shows what the essential self is, he makes 
 that essential self speak its ovvn cause. So when Pompilia speaks, 
 ■it is not the shattered body, but the eternal soul that tells its story ; 
 not the girl of seventeen, checked by want of education, but the 
 reality of her affections and spiritual perceptions. In this we must 
 always consider the real work of the artist Browning to lie in 
 speaking for any of his characters. 
 
 The dramatic character of the language and versification of 
 the .monologues will be found to have been nicely preserved. Not 
 alone in the thoughts and ideas of the monologues is the truth of 
 the speaker given ; but the plastic power of the artist's personality, 
 as he spoke for the character, has given, throughout these long 
 monologues, a dramatic suitableness of language. He meets with 
 one very serious difficulty in the long cross-quotations, one charac- 
 ter relating the speech of another. To impart the spirit of both 
 speakers is impossible ; and it is sometimes felt, when the quota- 
 tions are protracted, that these interposed bits break the flow of the 
 monologue in which they are placed. We cannot say that Brown- 
 ing has subdued this part of his art to perfect mastership, and we 
 doubt whether it be possible. In the few paragraphs that follow, 
 we shall attempt to briefly outline the general dramatic character- 
 istics of language and versification as shown in the ten monologues. 
 
 The character of the rhetoric and verse of Half Rome's 
 speech is in perfect accord with the character of the speaker. The 
 verse has little melody or beauty of tone, but it has a brisk, abrupt 
 conversational flow. Its movement is rapid. Its consonantal ele- 
 ment is strongly marked, as contrasted with the vowels, which 
 gives acceleration rather than sonorousness, and ruggedness rather 
 than melody. The rhetoric too is marked by clearness and vigor, 
 rather than by beauty or ornamentation. The figures employed are 
 nearly all homely, almost prosaically so, such as that of the " dab 
 
67 
 
 chick " that makes such a poor show at swimming, or the " rags " 
 of Pietro's fortune, or the soap bubble that bursting leaves a bitter 
 taste in the mouth ; yet they all have an incisive clearness. They 
 illustrate very vividly the thought, even though, they give it a 
 mucky flavor. His line "A song a simmer in their noodles " would 
 not have been spoken by any other speaker of the poem, though it 
 gives his thought very clearly. So, throughout, his choice of words 
 is adapted to vividness of imagery — the power to call before the 
 mind sharply outlined pictures — rather than to stir the emotional 
 nature with thoughts of beauty or moral excellence. The sarcastic 
 portraiture of domestic infelicities naturally fitted itself to such a 
 keen, incisive, unsympathetic mind ; he can tell a story without 
 letting drop a particle of its interest, and hence he was admirably ' 
 fitted to the part which the poet has given him in the dramatic . 
 structure of the poem. 
 
 'The Other Half Rome has less of the plebeian in his speech. , 
 His words are m6re polished, and have more apparent learning be- 
 hind them ; he has not gathered his conversation so largely from 
 " the motley merchandizing multitude." But he does lack the vivid- 
 ness arid precision of the first. His narrative contains none of 
 those clear, hurried sketches. The movement is slower and more 
 deliberate. This makes him a more tedious story teller, and in the 
 less interesting parts of the narrative he becomes dull ; his account 
 of the Comparini has none of the fine, gossipy flavor given by Half 
 Rpme. His interest was one of sympathy with Pompilia ; hence 
 his discourse is unsustained : when he speaks of Pompilia, his verses 
 have smoothness and melody ; his own sympathies seem to so 
 quicken the inner man that it, without his being conscious of the 
 fact, moulds his expression organically. We find this characteristic 
 in his opening of the monologue, and again in Pompilia's flight 
 from Arezzo and her trial at Rome. But in the greater part of the 
 monologue there is no marked quality of versification or of rhetoric. 
 Tertium Quid, as befits his rank, and social prominence, 
 
 " Harangues in silvery and selectest phrase." , 
 
 His language is the most elegant and highly polished, the most 
 select in wor;d and phrase, of any of the speakers of the book. His 
 description of the marketing of the Francheschini household is told 
 insurpassably well, and yet there is not a vulgar phrase in the 
 whole picture of noble wretchedness. In those rare turns of ex- 
 pression which hit the idea so exactly, and are sometimes consider- 
 
68 
 
 ed the whole of poetry, he is abundantly rich. He describes Pom- 
 
 pilia as 
 
 " The strange tall pale beautiful creature grown 
 Lily-like out o' the cleft i' the sun-smit rock 
 To bow its white miraculous birth of bods 
 I' the way of wandering Joseph and his spouse." 
 
 Now this sentence is as beautiful as any the whole poem could fur- 
 nish. His figures too are more elaborately and accurately worked 
 out than those of the other speakers. In fact his powers best fitted 
 him to plead either side of the case, had his essential man been con- 
 vinced and drawn toward one of them. The versification partakes 
 of this same elegance. It is very harmonious and has a great deal 
 of flow. The suppression of small words, such as " if" and " the " 
 is also largely used to accelerate the verse. And the underlying 
 tune of the blank verse seems always to be present. However it is 
 to be marked that in t)ie latter part of the monologue, where the 
 charges are so carefully balanced, this elegance and melody is some- 
 what lost in the confusion. Only in the earlier and more undis- 
 turbed parts of the narrative is he at his best. He seems in fact to 
 have had a semi-consciousness of the purity of Pompilia and the 
 wrong done her, and when he does not suppress this for selfish 
 ends, he gives us some very choice poetic treasures. 
 
 The language of Guido'^ first monologue is flexible and has 
 a ready adaptation of itself to his varying moods. He Jells us that 
 we are ■' to expect no quavering tuneful trills," and we do find that 
 his language is little given to ornament or gracefulness. There is, 
 however, a bigger nature, a more apparent depth of the real man 
 in his speech than in those that have gone before ; the same un- 
 bounded reserve force shows itself which we find in every strong 
 nature, whether strong for good or evil. In his second speech his 
 strength is still more emphatically shown ; it grows almost to the 
 sublime. His Titanic malevolence seems at times to transfer its 
 fury to the words themselves, and gives them a part of its own ter- 
 rorizing power. The clearness of each conception and the speed 
 of their succession exhibit the workings of a powerful mind at its 
 white heat of passion. His description of Violante, with " the 
 smile self-satisfied from ear to ear," the account of his lawyers' 
 capabilities, and then his final figure of the waves, following each 
 other to dash in succession on the rock, are good specimens of this 
 power in the man. In fact, his language, because its heat, its law- 
 lessness, its destructiveness, is best figured forth by a lava stream. 
 The verse is up to Browning's best, though a good deal of freedom 
 
69 
 
 is taken in arranging it. There is little adherance to syllable 
 counting, but ^n the movement and general sweep, in adaptedness 
 to its idea, it is certainly of very high excellence. 
 
 None of the monologues so show the plastic power of the 
 artist over his materials as does that of Caponsacchi. Browning 
 says of it that "he speaks rapidly, angrily, sJDeech that smites." 
 But this characterizes only a part of the monologue, only when the 
 sense of being champion for the right against a hideous wrong calls 
 out the moral indignation of the man. In fact nearly every mood 
 of the man has moulded some part of the speech in its own like^ 
 ness. Nothing more terrible and lurid could be found in the book 
 that his judgment pronounced on Guido ; but near it is the immacu- 
 late purity and reverence of his account of his seeing Pompilia ; or 
 the stoi'ms of grief and the gentle pathos as he contemplates Potji- 
 pilia's lot of suffering and martyrdom. There is utter simplicity, 
 almost plainness in the language ; and on this account it more read- 
 ily adapts itself to so wide a range of emotion ; and the way in 
 which Browning artistically preserves the^ sense of the presence of 
 Caponsacchi's interfusing spirit to sustain this emotion, is another 
 evidence of his consummate poetic genius. The verse too seems 
 simpler in its progress. While it has the orchestral movem_ent at, 
 times, yet it more commonly follows the lead of some single pure 
 emotion. It answers sympathetically to the thought it carries, as 
 we see in the delayed movement of some of his lines on his first 
 impressions of Pompilia, as " the same great grave griefFul smile," 
 etc.; or we might draw illustration from the angry, explosive bit to 
 the "low browed verger," or the deeper anger mixed withcontempt 
 of his meeting with Guido at Castelnuovo ; or the strong controlled 
 soul-harmony of that night of "not thought." In fact wherever it 
 is taken, it amply illustrates the power of the soul to plastically 
 naould the body to its own shape, the power of the spiritual ebb 
 and flow to regulate the meter. 
 
 It seems rather remarkable that the author has put less sim- 
 ple language in the mouth of Pompilia than in that of Caponsacchi. 
 There is plainness, lack of ornamentation, sometimes almost prosi- 
 ness in her speech ; yet not the utter simplicity of the Canon's lan- 
 guage. The wide passion range found in the last monologue is 
 likewise replaced by a subdued tone, often mingled with deep, but 
 mild pathos. Yet when the secret springs of her love are touched, 
 her language is sweet and gentle. And there are some passages 
 where the language of passion answers its passion in a strength we 
 
70 
 
 are almost inclined to pronounce beyond Pompilia ; as in the de- 
 scription of her desecrated soul, or the maiden rescued from the 
 Paynims, or of the meeting at Castelnuovo ; then the fervid inten- 
 sity of speech^ amply bespeaks the nature of the woman. So in her 
 account of Don Celestine's psalm, told with such restfulness of 
 spirit, we find the same adaptedness of the language ; it seems to 
 bear the very healing of the dove in its wings. The verse too is 
 less varied in its movement; but the closing paragraph touches one 
 of the peaks of excellence in the versification of the Ring and the 
 Book. 
 
 Browning faced one of his greatest diflScnlties of rhetoric 
 and versification in the first lawyer. The exuberance of Latin 
 mingled with its snatches of translation precluded any melody in 
 these parts. Still he has preserved a sense of meter. The Latin is 
 sometimes treated as counting for just the same metrical length as 
 the same English letters would ; but quite often only the accented 
 syllable is made to conform to the metrical accent, and the unac- 
 cented syllables are huddled together in twos and three in the unac- 
 cented portion of the foot. The broken character of the mono- 
 logue, as it represents the oflSce preparation and not the speech, is 
 also inconsistent with melodious verse. ' So we do feel that there is 
 dramatic propriety in the abrupt and harsh versification. The 
 essential vulgarity of the fat rogue is also well pictured in the lan- 
 guage ; however fine his sense of culinary things, we feel that he is 
 morally obtuse. Hence there is no beauty of language, though 
 there is great volubility and raciness. And his homliness of thought 
 never aspires to the rhetorical flights sometimes made by the Fisc. 
 
 None of the monologues would be as diflicult of execution as 
 that of the Fisc. Its utter foreignness to all that is noble, its de- 
 basement of all that is good and true, its unsanctified bare-facedness 
 and audacity, would all be very difficult for the artist to represent. 
 Yet the author has accomplished his work by putting gjeat learn- 
 ing and elegance in the mouth of the Fisc to do their best to make 
 up for the moral defects of the man. The author speaks of the 
 monologue as 
 
 " The absolute glory in some full grown speech 
 
 On the other side, some finished butterfly, 
 
 Some breathing diamond-flake with leaf gold fans." 
 
 It is interesting to find how carefully this character has been pre- 
 served in the language and versification of the speech. The lan- 
 guage throughout is smooth and polished, weighty in thought of its 
 speaker's kind, and full of all sorts of learned allusions ; it contains 
 
71 
 
 none of the abrupt transition and plebeian plainness of the preceed- 
 ing one. The figures, of which there are a great many, are elabo- 
 rately worked out. We can also note tlie trick of the orator in the 
 flowing period, the frequent use of alliteration, and other sparkles 
 in wording. Even the ver^e moves with an easier and more rapid 
 flow. Everything has been done to justify Bottini in his feeling of 
 triumph in his oratory, — everything but the sight of the fact that 
 there is something hi"gher and better than this technical skill, and 
 that no amount of polish will atone for the utter blindness of ithe 
 heart. i 
 
 The language of the Pope bespeaks his athletic spirit. It is 
 strong with a beneficent strength, not with the hell-flashes of 
 Guido. No other monologue is so difficult to understand from sen- 
 tence to sentence. The thought is difficult in i.tself ; but it also im- 
 parts a sinuosity to the language. Every sentence is freighted deep 
 with thought. There is no flourish nor ornament ; his figures of 
 speech, such as the final one of the view of Naples in the dark 
 night, are simple in their narration, but powerful and full of mean- 
 ing. No more striking metaphor may be found in the whole book 
 than that of Guido as portrayed by the " ambiguous shellfish." The 
 Pope also, in spite of his eighty-six years, has his fund of passion, 
 and it sways his verse with harmonic power at times,; he can speak 
 strongly of guilt, he can speak gently of purity and goodness ; and, 
 in his last great struggle of soul he can speak with perfect control 
 of his moral energies, yet leave apparent their throbbing power. 
 His delibei-ative thought' moves through long periods with a stately 
 march ; but there is never flagging through senile weakness. For 
 sustained verse paragraphs, the monologue approaches more nearly 
 to Milton than any of the others. It sweeps on with stately tread 
 sometimes scarcely pausing for a dozen verses ; and yet it is never 
 hurried or uneven ; it never falls into the organic disorganization so 
 well managed in some of the monologues. And it finally solves 
 the difficulty of combining profound thought with orchestral har- 
 mony of language. 
 
 From this brief exposition may be seen how the essential 
 souls of the various speakers have been made to influence the form 
 as well as the content of their language. It cannot utterly over- 
 come intellectual differences in this particular, yet even here the 
 pure heart and the sanctified mind are seen to exert a goodly influ- 
 ence ; and the poem thus adds this further lesson on the power and 
 beauty of an abiding Truth in the " what is." 
 
" Here were the end, had anything an end." 
 
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