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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Browning’s England, by Helen Archibald Clarke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Browning’s England
+       A Study in English Influences in Browning
+
+Author: Helen Archibald Clarke
+
+Release Date: July 10, 2009 [eBook #29365]
+[Most recently updated: October 24, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Ted Garvin, Linda Cantoni (music), Katherine Ward and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING’S ENGLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+  Browning's England
+
+  A STUDY OF
+  ENGLISH INFLUENCES IN BROWNING
+
+
+  BY
+  HELEN ARCHIBALD CLARKE
+  Author of "_Browning's Italy_"
+
+  NEW YORK
+  THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
+
+  MCMVIII
+
+  _Copyright, 1908, by_
+  The Baker & Taylor Company
+
+  Published, October, 1908
+
+  _The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A._
+
+
+  To
+  MY COLLEAGUE IN PLEASANT LITERARY PATHS
+  AND
+  MANY YEARS FRIEND
+  CHARLOTTE PORTER
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+  CHAPTER I
+                                                          PAGE
+  English Poets, Friends, and Enthusiasms                    1
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  Shakespeare's Portrait                                    42
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  A Crucial Period in English History                       79
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  Social Aspects of English Life                           211
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  Religious Thought in the Nineteenth Century              322
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  Art Criticism Inspired by the English Musician, Avison   420
+
+
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  Browning at 23                                _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                          PAGE
+  Percy Bysshe Shelley                                       4
+  John Keats                                                10
+  William Wordsworth                                        16
+  Rydal Mount, the Home of Wordsworth                       22
+  An English Lane                                           33
+  First Folio Portrait of Shakespeare                       60
+  Charles I in Scene of Impeachment                         80
+  Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford                       88
+  Charles I                                                114
+  Whitehall                                                120
+  Westminster Hall                                         157
+  The Tower, London                                        170
+  The Tower, Traitors' Gate                                183
+  An English Manor House                                   222
+  An English Park                                          240
+  John Bunyan                                              274
+  An English Inn                                           288
+  Cardinal Wiseman                                         336
+  Sacred Heart                                             342
+  The Nativity                                             351
+  The Transfiguration                                      366
+  Handel                                                   426
+  Avison's March                                           446
+
+
+
+
+BROWNING'S ENGLAND
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ENGLISH POETS, FRIENDS AND ENTHUSIASMS
+
+
+To any one casually trying to recall what England has given Robert
+Browning by way of direct poetical inspiration, it is more than likely
+that the little poem about Shelley, "Memorabilia" would at once occur:
+
+    I
+
+    "Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
+      And did he stop and speak to you
+    And did you speak to him again?
+      How strange it seems and new!
+
+    II
+
+    "But you were living before that,
+      And also you are living after;
+    And the memory I started at--
+      My starting moves your laughter!
+
+    III
+
+    "I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
+      And a certain use in the world, no doubt,
+    Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
+      'Mid the blank miles round about:
+
+    IV
+
+    "For there I picked up on the heather
+      And there I put inside my breast
+    A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!
+      Well, I forget the rest."
+
+It puts into a mood and a symbol the almost worshipful admiration felt
+by Browning for the poet in his youth, which he had, many years before
+this little lyric was written, recorded in a finely appreciative passage
+in "Pauline."
+
+    "Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever!
+    Thou are gone from us; years go by and spring
+    Gladdens and the young earth is beautiful,
+    Yet thy songs come not, other bards arise,
+    But none like thee: they stand, thy majesties,
+    Like mighty works which tell some spirit there
+    Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn,
+    Till, its long task completed, it hath risen
+    And left us, never to return, and all
+    Rush in to peer and praise when all in vain.
+    The air seems bright with thy past presence yet,
+    But thou art still for me as thou hast been
+    When I have stood with thee as on a throne
+    With all thy dim creations gathered round
+    Like mountains, and I felt of mould like them,
+    And with them creatures of my own were mixed,
+    Like things, half-lived, catching and giving life.
+    But thou art still for me who have adored
+    Tho' single, panting but to hear thy name
+    Which I believed a spell to me alone,
+    Scarce deeming thou wast as a star to men!
+    As one should worship long a sacred spring
+    Scarce worth a moth's flitting, which long grasses cross,
+    And one small tree embowers droopingly--
+    Joying to see some wandering insect won
+    To live in its few rushes, or some locust
+    To pasture on its boughs, or some wild bird
+    Stoop for its freshness from the trackless air:
+    And then should find it but the fountain-head,
+    Long lost, of some great river washing towns
+    And towers, and seeing old woods which will live
+    But by its banks untrod of human foot,
+    Which, when the great sun sinks, lie quivering
+    In light as some thing lieth half of life
+    Before God's foot, waiting a wondrous change;
+    Then girt with rocks which seek to turn or stay
+    Its course in vain, for it does ever spread
+    Like a sea's arm as it goes rolling on,
+    Being the pulse of some great country--so
+    Wast thou to me, and art thou to the world!
+    And I, perchance, half feel a strange regret
+    That I am not what I have been to thee:
+    Like a girl one has silently loved long
+    In her first loneliness in some retreat,
+    When, late emerged, all gaze and glow to view
+    Her fresh eyes and soft hair and lips which bloom
+    Like a mountain berry: doubtless it is sweet
+    To see her thus adored, but there have been
+    Moments when all the world was in our praise,
+    Sweeter than any pride of after hours.
+    Yet, sun-treader, all hail! From my heart's heart
+    I bid thee hail! E'en in my wildest dreams,
+    I proudly feel I would have thrown to dust
+    The wreaths of fame which seemed o'erhanging me,
+    To see thee for a moment as thou art."
+
+Browning was only fourteen when Shelley first came into his literary
+life. The story has often been told of how the young Robert, passing a
+bookstall one day spied in a box of second-hand volumes, a shabby little
+edition of Shelley advertised "Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poems: very
+scarce." It seems almost incredible to us now that the name was an
+absolutely new one to him, and that only by questioning the bookseller
+did he learn that Shelley had written a number of volumes of poetry and
+that he was now dead. This accident was sufficient to inspire the
+incipient poet's curiosity, and he never rested until he was the owner
+of Shelley's works. They were hard to get hold of in those early days
+but the persistent searching of his mother finally unearthed them at
+Olliers' in Vere Street, London. She brought him also three volumes of
+Keats, who became a treasure second only to Shelley.
+
+[Illustration: Percy Bysshe Shelley
+
+"Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever."]
+
+The question of Shelley's influence on Browning's art has been one often
+discussed. There are many traces of Shelleyan music and idea in his
+early poems "Pauline," "Paracelsus," and "Sordello," but no marked nor
+lasting impression was made upon Browning's development as a poet by
+Shelley. Upon Browning's personal development Shelley exerted a
+short-lived though somewhat intense influence. We see the young
+enthusiast professing the atheism of his idol as the liberal views of
+Shelley were then interpreted, and even becoming a vegetarian. As time
+went on the discipleship vanished, and in its place came the recognition
+on Browning's part of a poetic spirit akin yet different from his own.
+The last trace of the disciple appears in "Sordello" when the poet
+addresses Shelley among the audience of dead great ones he has mustered
+to listen to the story of Sordello:
+
+    --"Stay--thou, spirit, come not near
+    Now--not this time desert thy cloudy place
+    To scare me, thus employed, with that pure face!
+    I need not fear this audience, I make free
+    With them, but then this is no place for thee!
+    The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown
+    Up out of memories of Marathon,
+    Would echo like his own sword's grinding screech
+    Braying a Persian shield,--the silver speech
+    Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin,
+    Turn intense as a trumpet sounding in
+    The Knights to tilt,--wert thou to hear!"
+
+Shelley appears in the work of Browning once more in the prose essay on
+Shelley which was written to a volume of spurious letters of that poet
+published in 1851. In this is summed up in a masterful paragraph
+reflecting Browning's unusual penetration into the secret paths of the
+poetic mind, the characteristics of a poet of Shelley's order. The
+paragraph is as follows:
+
+"We turn with stronger needs to the genius of an opposite tendency--the
+subjective poet of modern classification. He, gifted like the objective
+poet, with the fuller perception of nature and man, is impelled to
+embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to the many
+below as to the One above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends
+all things in their absolute truth,--an ultimate view ever aspired to,
+if but partially attained, by the poet's own soul. Not what man sees,
+but what God sees,--the _Ideas_ of Plato, seeds of creation lying
+burningly on the Divine Hand,--it is toward these that he struggles. Not
+with the combination of humanity in action, but with the primal elements
+of humanity, he has to do; and he digs where he stands,--preferring to
+seek them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of that absolute Mind,
+according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak.
+Such a poet does not deal habitually with the picturesque groupings and
+tempestuous tossings of the forest-trees, but with their roots and
+fibers naked to the chalk and stone. He does not paint pictures and
+hang them on the walls, but rather carries them on the retina of his own
+eyes: we must look deep into his human eyes, to see those pictures on
+them. He is rather a seer, accordingly, than a fashioner, and what he
+produces will be less a work than an effluence. That effluence cannot be
+easily considered in abstraction from his personality,--being indeed the
+very radiance and aroma of his personality, projected from it but not
+separated. Therefore, in our approach to the poetry, we necessarily
+approach the personality of the poet; in apprehending it, we apprehend
+him, and certainly we cannot love it without loving him. Both for love's
+and for understanding's sake we desire to know him, and, as readers of
+his poetry, must be readers of his biography too."
+
+Finally, the little "Memorabilia" lyric gives a mood of cherished memory
+of the Sun-Treader, who beaconed him upon the heights in his youth, and
+has now become a molted eagle-feather held close to his heart.
+
+Keats' lesser but assured place in the poet's affections comes out in
+the pugnacious lyric, "Popularity," one of the old-time bits of
+ammunition shot from the guns of those who found Browning "obscure." The
+poem is an "apology" for any unappreciated poet with the true stuff in
+him, but the allusion to Keats shows him to have been the fuse that
+fired this mild explosion against the dullards who pass by unknowing and
+uncaring of a genius, though he pluck with one hand thoughts from the
+stars, and with the other fight off want.
+
+
+    POPULARITY
+
+    I
+
+    Stand still, true poet that you are!
+      I know you; let me try and draw you.
+    Some night you'll fail us: when afar
+      You rise, remember one man saw you,
+    Knew you, and named a star!
+
+    II
+
+    My star, God's glow-worm! Why extend
+      That loving hand of his which leads you,
+    Yet locks you safe from end to end
+      Of this dark world, unless he needs you,
+    Just saves your light to spend?
+
+    III
+
+    His clenched hand shall unclose at last,
+      I know, and let out all the beauty:
+    My poet holds the future fast,
+      Accepts the coming ages' duty,
+    Their present for this past.
+
+    IV
+
+    That day, the earth's feast-master's brow
+      Shall clear, to God the chalice raising;
+    "Others give best at first, but thou
+      Forever set'st our table praising,
+    Keep'st the good wine till now!"
+
+    V
+
+    Meantime, I'll draw you as you stand,
+      With few or none to watch and wonder:
+    I'll say--a fisher, on the sand
+      By Tyre the old, with ocean-plunder,
+    A netful, brought to land.
+
+    VI
+
+    Who has not heard how Tyrian shells
+      Enclosed the blue, that dye of dyes
+    Whereof one drop worked miracles,
+      And colored like Astarte's eyes
+    Raw silk the merchant sells?
+
+    VII
+
+    And each bystander of them all
+      Could criticise, and quote tradition
+    How depths of blue sublimed some pall
+      --To get which, pricked a king's ambition;
+    Worth sceptre, crown and ball.
+
+    VIII
+
+    Yet there's the dye, in that rough mesh,
+      The sea has only just o'er-whispered!
+    Live whelks, each lip's beard dripping fresh
+      As if they still the water's lisp heard
+    Thro' foam the rock-weeds thresh.
+
+    IX
+
+    Enough to furnish Solomon
+      Such hangings for his cedar-house,
+    That, when gold-robed he took the throne
+      In that abyss of blue, the Spouse
+    Might swear his presence shone
+
+    X
+
+    Most like the centre-spike of gold
+      Which burns deep in the blue-bell's womb,
+    What time, with ardors manifold,
+      The bee goes singing to her groom,
+    Drunken and overbold.
+
+    XI
+
+    Mere conchs! not fit for warp or woof!
+      Till cunning come to pound and squeeze
+    And clarify,--refine to proof
+      The liquor filtered by degrees,
+    While the world stands aloof.
+
+    XII
+
+    And there's the extract, flasked and fine,
+      And priced and salable at last!
+    And Hobbs, Nobbs, Stokes and Nokes combine
+      To paint the future from the past,
+    Put blue into their line.
+
+    XIII
+
+    Hobbs hints blue,--straight he turtle eats:
+      Nobbs prints blue,--claret crowns his cup:
+    Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats,--
+      Both gorge. Who fished the murex up?
+    What porridge had John Keats?
+
+[Illustration: John Keats
+
+    "Who fished the murex up?
+    What porridge had John Keats?"]
+
+Wordsworth, it appears, was, so to speak, the inverse inspiration of the
+stirring lines "The Lost Leader." Browning's strong sympathies with the
+Liberal cause are here portrayed with an ardor which is fairly
+intoxicating poetically, but one feels it is scarcely just to the
+mild-eyed, exemplary Wordsworth, and perhaps exaggeratedly sure of
+Shakespeare's attitude on this point. It is only fair to Browning, to
+point out how he himself felt later that his artistic mood had here run
+away with him, whereupon he made amends honorable in a letter in reply
+to the question whether he had Wordsworth in mind: "I can only answer,
+with something of shame and contrition, that I undoubtedly had
+Wordsworth in my mind--but simply as a model; you know an artist takes
+one or two striking traits in the features of his 'model,' and uses them
+to start his fancy on a flight which may end far enough from the good
+man or woman who happens to be sitting for nose and eye. I thought of
+the great Poet's abandonment of liberalism at an unlucky juncture, and
+no repaying consequence that I could ever see. But, once call my
+fancy-portrait _Wordsworth_--and how much more ought one to say!"
+
+The defection of Wordsworth from liberal sympathies is one of the
+commonplaces of literary history. There was a time when he figured in
+his poetry as a patriotic leader of the people, when in clarion tones he
+exhorted his countrymen to "arm and combine in defense of their common
+birthright." But this was in the enthusiasm of his youth when he and
+Southey and Coleridge were metaphorically waving their red caps for the
+principles of the French Revolution. The unbridled actions of the French
+Revolutionists, quickly cooled off their ardor, and as Taine cleverly
+puts it, "at the end of a few years, the three, brought back into the
+pale of State and Church, were, Coleridge, a Pittite journalist,
+Wordsworth, a distributor of stamps, and Southey, poet-laureate; all
+converted zealots, decided Anglicans, and intolerant conservatives." The
+"handful of silver" for which the patriot in the poem is supposed to
+have left the cause included besides the post of "distributor of
+stamps," given to him by Lord Lonsdale in 1813, a pension of three
+hundred pounds a year in 1842, and the poet-laureateship in 1843.
+
+The first of these offices was received so long after the cooling of
+Wordsworth's "Revolution" ardors which the events of 1793 had brought
+about that it can scarcely be said to have influenced his change of
+mind.
+
+It was during Wordsworth's residence in France, from November 1791 to
+December 1792, that his enthusiasm for the French Revolution reached
+white heat. How the change was wrought in his feelings is shown with
+much penetration and sympathy by Edward Dowden in his "French Revolution
+and English Literature." "When war between France and England was
+declared Wordsworth's nature underwent the most violent strain it had
+ever experienced. He loved his native land yet he could wish for nothing
+but disaster to her arms. As the days passed he found it more and more
+difficult to sustain his faith in the Revolution. First, he abandoned
+belief in the leaders but he still trusted to the people, then the
+people seemed to have grown insane with the intoxication of blood. He
+was driven back from his defense of the Revolution, in its historical
+development, to a bare faith in the abstract idea. He clung to theories,
+the free and joyous movement of his sympathies ceased; opinions stifled
+the spontaneous life of the spirit, these opinions were tested and
+retested by the intellect, till, in the end, exhausted by inward
+debate, he yielded up moral questions in despair ... by process of
+the understanding alone Wordsworth could attain no vital body of
+truth. Rather he felt that things of far more worth than political
+opinions--natural instincts, sympathies, passions, intuitions--were
+being disintegrated or denaturalized. Wordsworth began to suspect the
+analytic intellect as a source of moral wisdom. In place of humanitarian
+dreams came a deep interest in the joys and sorrows of individual men
+and women; through his interest in this he was led back to a study of
+the mind of man and those laws which connect the work of the creative
+imagination with the play of the passions. He had begun again to think
+nobly of the world and human life." He was, in fact, a more thorough
+Democrat socially than any but Burns of the band of poets mentioned in
+Browning's gallant company, not even excepting Browning himself.
+
+
+    THE LOST LEADER
+
+    I
+
+    Just for a handful of silver he left us,
+      Just for a riband to stick in his coat--
+    Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
+      Lost all the others, she lets us devote;
+    They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
+      So much was theirs who so little allowed:
+    How all our copper had gone for his service!
+      Rags--were they purple, his heart had been proud!
+    We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him,
+      Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
+    Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
+      Made him our pattern to live and to die!
+    Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
+      Burns, Shelley, were with us,--they watch from their graves!
+    He alone breaks from the van and the freeman,
+      --He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
+
+    II
+
+    We shall march prospering,--not thro' his presence
+      Songs may inspirit us,--not from his lyre;
+    Deeds will be done,--while he boasts his quiescence,
+      Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:
+    Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
+      One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
+    One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels,
+      One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!
+    Life's night begins: let him never come back to us!
+      There would be doubt, hesitation and pain,
+    Forced praise on our part--the glimmer of twilight,
+      Never glad confident morning again!
+    Best fight on well, for we taught him--strike gallantly,
+      Menace our hearts ere we master his own;
+    Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,
+      Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!
+
+Whether an artist is justified in taking the most doubtful feature of
+his model's physiognomy and building up from it a repellent portrait is
+question for debate, especially when he admits its incompleteness. But
+we may balance against this incompleteness, the fine fire of enthusiasm
+for the "cause" in the poem, and the fact that Wordsworth has not been
+at all harmed by it. The worst that has happened is the raising in our
+minds of a question touching Browning's good taste.
+
+Just here it will be interesting to speak of a bit of purely personal
+expression on the subject of Browning's known liberal standpoint,
+written by him in answer to the question propounded to a number of
+English men of letters and printed together with other replies in a
+volume edited by Andrew Reid in 1885.
+
+
+    "Why I am a Liberal."
+
+    "'Why?' Because all I haply can and do,
+      All that I am now, all I hope to be,--
+      Whence comes it save from fortune setting free
+    Body and soul the purpose to pursue,
+    God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,
+      Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,
+      These shall I bid men--each in his degree
+    Also God-guided--bear, and gayly too?
+
+      "But little do or can the best of us:
+    That little is achieved thro' Liberty.
+      Who then dares hold, emancipated thus,
+    His fellow shall continue bound? Not I,
+      Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss
+    A brother's right to freedom. That is 'Why.'"
+
+[Illustration: William Wordsworth
+
+    "How all our copper had gone for his service.
+    Rags--were they purple, his heart had been proved."]
+
+Enthusiasm for liberal views comes out again and again in the poetry of
+Browning.
+
+His fullest treatment of the cause of political liberty is in
+"Strafford," to be considered in the third chapter, but many are the
+hints strewn about his verse that bring home with no uncertain touch the
+fact that Browning lived man's "lover" and never man's "hater." Take as
+an example "The Englishman in Italy," where the sarcastic turn he gives
+to the last stanza shows clearly where his sympathies lie:
+
+    --"Such trifles!" you say?
+    Fort˘, in my England at home,
+      Men meet gravely to-day
+    And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws
+      Be righteous and wise!
+    --If 't were proper, Scirocco should vanish
+      In black from the skies!
+
+More the ordinary note of patriotism is struck in "Home-thoughts, from
+the Sea," wherein the scenes of England's victories as they come before
+the poet arouse pride in her military achievements.
+
+
+    HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA
+
+    Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away;
+    Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
+    Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
+    In the dimmest North-east distance dawned Gibraltar grand and gray;
+    "Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?"--say,
+    Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,
+    While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.
+
+In two instances Browning celebrates English friends in his poetry. The
+poems are "Waring" and "May and Death."
+
+Waring, who stands for Alfred Domett, is an interesting figure in
+Colonial history as well as a minor light among poets. But it is highly
+probable that he would not have been put into verse by Browning any more
+than many other of the poet's warm friends if it had not been for the
+incident described in the poem which actually took place, and made a
+strong enough impression to inspire a creative if not exactly an exalted
+mood on Browning's part. The incident is recorded in Thomas Powell's
+"Living Authors of England," who writes of Domett, "We have a vivid
+recollection of the last time we saw him. It was at an evening party a
+few days before he sailed from England; his intimate friend, Mr.
+Browning, was also present. It happened that the latter was introduced
+that evening for the first time to a young author who had just then
+appeared in the literary world [Powell, himself]. This, consequently,
+prevented the two friends from conversation, and they parted from each
+other without the slightest idea on Mr. Browning's part that he was
+seeing his old friend Domett for the last time. Some days after when he
+found that Domett had sailed, he expressed in strong terms to the writer
+of this sketch the self-reproach he felt at having preferred the
+conversation of a stranger to that of his old associate."
+
+This happened in 1842, when with no good-bys, Domett sailed for New
+Zealand where he lived for thirty years, and held during that time many
+important official posts. Upon his return to England, Browning and he
+met again, and in his poem "Ranolf and Amohia," published the year
+after, he wrote the often quoted line so aptly appreciative of
+Browning's genius,--"Subtlest assertor of the soul in song."
+
+The poem belongs to the _vers de sociÈtÈ_ order, albeit the lightness is
+of a somewhat ponderous variety. It, however, has much interest as a
+character sketch from the life, and is said by those who had the
+opportunity of knowing to be a capital portrait.
+
+
+    WARING
+
+    I
+
+    I
+
+    What's become of Waring
+    Since he gave us all the slip,
+    Chose land-travel or seafaring,
+    Boots and chest or staff and scrip,
+    Rather than pace up and down
+    Any longer London town?
+
+    II
+
+    Who'd have guessed it from his lip
+    Or his brow's accustomed bearing,
+    On the night he thus took ship
+    Or started landward?--little caring
+    For us, it seems, who supped together
+    (Friends of his too, I remember)
+    And walked home thro' the merry weather,
+    The snowiest in all December.
+    I left his arm that night myself
+    For what's-his-name's, the new prose-poet
+    Who wrote the book there, on the shelf--
+    How, forsooth, was I to know it
+    If Waring meant to glide away
+    Like a ghost at break of day?
+    Never looked he half so gay!
+
+    III
+
+    He was prouder than the devil:
+    How he must have cursed our revel!
+    Ay and many other meetings,
+    Indoor visits, outdoor greetings,
+    As up and down he paced this London,
+    With no work done, but great works undone,
+    Where scarce twenty knew his name.
+    Why not, then, have earlier spoken,
+    Written, bustled? Who's to blame
+    If your silence kept unbroken?
+    "True, but there were sundry jottings,
+    Stray-leaves, fragments, blurs and blottings,
+    Certain first steps were achieved
+    Already which"--(is that your meaning?)
+    "Had well borne out whoe'er believed
+    In more to come!" But who goes gleaning
+    Hedgeside chance-glades, while full-sheaved
+    Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o'erweening
+    Pride alone, puts forth such claims
+    O'er the day's distinguished names.
+
+    IV
+
+    Meantime, how much I loved him,
+    I find out now I've lost him.
+    I who cared not if I moved him,
+    Who could so carelessly accost him,
+    Henceforth never shall get free
+    Of his ghostly company,
+    His eyes that just a little wink
+    As deep I go into the merit
+    Of this and that distinguished spirit--
+    His cheeks' raised color, soon to sink,
+    As long I dwell on some stupendous
+    And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)
+    Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous
+    Demoniaco-seraphic
+    Penman's latest piece of graphic.
+    Nay, my very wrist grows warm
+    With his dragging weight of arm.
+    E'en so, swimmingly appears,
+    Through one's after-supper musings,
+    Some lost lady of old years
+    With her beauteous vain endeavor
+    And goodness unrepaid as ever;
+    The face, accustomed to refusings,
+    We, puppies that we were.... Oh never
+    Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled
+    Being aught like false, forsooth, to?
+    Telling aught but honest truth to?
+    What a sin, had we centupled
+    Its possessor's grace and sweetness!
+    No! she heard in its completeness
+    Truth, for truth's a weighty matter,
+    And truth, at issue, we can't flatter!
+    Well, 'tis done with; she's exempt
+    From damning us thro' such a sally;
+    And so she glides, as down a valley,
+    Taking up with her contempt,
+    Past our reach; and in, the flowers
+    Shut her unregarded hours.
+
+[Illustration: Rydal Mount, the Home of Wordsworth]
+
+    V
+
+    Oh, could I have him back once more,
+    This Waring, but one half-day more!
+    Back, with the quiet face of yore,
+    So hungry for acknowledgment
+    Like mine! I'd fool him to his bent.
+    Feed, should not he, to heart's content?
+    I'd say, "to only have conceived,
+    Planned your great works, apart from progress,
+    Surpasses little works achieved!"
+    I'd lie so, I should be believed.
+    I'd make such havoc of the claims
+    Of the day's distinguished names
+    To feast him with, as feasts an ogress
+    Her feverish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child!
+    Or as one feasts a creature rarely
+    Captured here, unreconciled
+    To capture; and completely gives
+    Its pettish humors license, barely
+    Requiring that it lives.
+
+    VI
+
+    Ichabod, Ichabod,
+    The glory is departed!
+    Travels Waring East away?
+    Who, of knowledge, by hearsay,
+    Reports a man upstarted
+    Somewhere as a god,
+    Hordes grown European-hearted,
+    Millions of the wild made tame
+    On a sudden at his fame?
+    In Vishnu-land what Avatar?
+    Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar,
+    With the demurest of footfalls
+    Over the Kremlin's pavement bright
+    With serpentine and syenite,
+    Steps, with five other Generals
+    That simultaneously take snuff,
+    For each to have pretext enough
+    And kerchiefwise unfold his sash
+    Which, softness' self, is yet the stuff
+    To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,
+    And leave the grand white neck no gash?
+    Waring in Moscow, to those rough
+    Cold northern natures born perhaps,
+    Like the lambwhite maiden dear
+    From the circle of mute kings
+    Unable to repress the tear,
+    Each as his sceptre down he flings,
+    To Dian's fane at Taurica,
+    Where now a captive priestess, she alway
+    Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech
+    With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach
+    As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands
+    Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands
+    Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry
+    Amid their barbarous twitter!
+    In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!
+    Ay, most likely 'tis in Spain
+    That we and Waring meet again
+    Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane
+    Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid
+    All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid
+    Its stiff gold blazing pall
+    From some black coffin-lid.
+    Or, best of all,
+    I love to think
+    The leaving us was just a feint;
+    Back here to London did he slink,
+    And now works on without a wink
+    Of sleep, and we are on the brink
+    Of something great in fresco-paint:
+    Some garret's ceiling, walls and floor,
+    Up and down and o'er and o'er
+    He splashes, as none splashed before
+    Since great Caldara Polidore.
+    Or Music means this land of ours
+    Some favor yet, to pity won
+    By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers,--
+    "Give me my so-long promised son,
+    Let Waring end what I begun!"
+    Then down he creeps and out he steals
+    Only when the night conceals
+    His face; in Kent 'tis cherry-time,
+    Or hops are picking: or at prime
+    Of March he wanders as, too happy,
+    Years ago when he was young,
+    Some mild eve when woods grew sappy
+    And the early moths had sprung
+    To life from many a trembling sheath
+    Woven the warm boughs beneath;
+    While small birds said to themselves
+    What should soon be actual song,
+    And young gnats, by tens and twelves,
+    Made as if they were the throng
+    That crowd around and carry aloft
+    The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure,
+    Out of a myriad noises soft,
+    Into a tone that can endure
+    Amid the noise of a July noon
+    When all God's creatures crave their boon,
+    All at once and all in tune,
+    And get it, happy as Waring then,
+    Having first within his ken
+    What a man might do with men:
+    And far too glad, in the even-glow,
+    To mix with the world he meant to take
+    Into his hand, he told you, so--
+    And out of it his world to make,
+    To contract and to expand
+    As he shut or oped his hand.
+    Oh Waring, what's to really be?
+    A clear stage and a crowd to see!
+    Some Garrick, say, out shall not he
+    The heart of Hamlet's mystery pluck?
+    Or, where most unclean beasts are rife,
+    Some Junius--am I right?--shall tuck
+    His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife!
+    Some Chatterton shall have the luck
+    Of calling Rowley into life!
+    Some one shall somehow run a muck
+    With this old world for want of strife
+    Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive
+    To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive?
+    Our men scarce seem in earnest now.
+    Distinguished names!--but 'tis, somehow,
+    As if they played at being names
+    Still more distinguished, like the games
+    Of children. Turn our sport to earnest
+    With a visage of the sternest!
+    Bring the real times back, confessed
+    Still better than our very best!
+
+
+    II
+
+    I
+
+    "When I last saw Waring...."
+    (How all turned to him who spoke!
+    You saw Waring? Truth or joke?
+    In land-travel or sea-faring?)
+
+    II
+
+    "We were sailing by Triest
+    Where a day or two we harbored:
+    A sunset was in the West,
+    When, looking over the vessel's side,
+    One of our company espied
+    A sudden speck to larboard.
+    And as a sea-duck flies and swims
+    At once, so came the light craft up,
+    With its sole lateen sail that trims
+    And turns (the water round its rims
+    Dancing, as round a sinking cup)
+    And by us like a fish it curled,
+    And drew itself up close beside,
+    Its great sail on the instant furled,
+    And o'er its thwarts a shrill voice cried,
+    (A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's)
+    'Buy wine of us, you English Brig?
+    Or fruit, tobacco and cigars?
+    A pilot for you to Triest?
+    Without one, look you ne'er so big,
+    They'll never let you up the bay!
+    We natives should know best.'
+    I turned, and 'just those fellows' way,'
+    Our captain said, 'The 'long-shore thieves
+    Are laughing at us in their sleeves.'
+
+    III
+
+    "In truth, the boy leaned laughing back;
+    And one, half-hidden by his side
+    Under the furled sail, soon I spied,
+    With great grass hat and kerchief black,
+    Who looked up with his kingly throat,
+    Said somewhat, while the other shook
+    His hair back from his eyes to look
+    Their longest at us; then the boat,
+    I know not how, turned sharply round,
+    Laying her whole side on the sea
+    As a leaping fish does; from the lee
+    Into the weather, cut somehow
+    Her sparkling path beneath our bow,
+    And so went off, as with a bound,
+    Into the rosy and golden half
+    O' the sky, to overtake the sun
+    And reach the shore, like the sea-calf
+    Its singing cave; yet I caught one
+    Glance ere away the boat quite passed,
+    And neither time nor toil could mar
+    Those features: so I saw the last
+    Of Waring!"--You? Oh, never star
+    Was lost here but it rose afar!
+    Look East, where whole new thousands are!
+    In Vishnu-land what Avatar?
+
+"May and Death" is perhaps more interesting for the glimpse it gives of
+Browning's appreciation of English Nature than for its expression of
+grief for the death of a friend.
+
+
+    MAY AND DEATH
+
+    I
+
+    I wish that when you died last May,
+      Charles, there had died along with you
+    Three parts of spring's delightful things;
+      Ay, and, for me, the fourth part too.
+
+    II
+
+    A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps!
+      There must be many a pair of friends
+    Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm
+      Moon-births and the long evening-ends.
+
+    III
+
+    So, for their sake, be May still May!
+      Let their new time, as mine of old,
+    Do all it did for me: I bid
+      Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold.
+
+    IV
+
+    Only, one little sight, one plant,
+      Woods have in May, that starts up green
+    Save a sole streak which, so to speak,
+      Is spring's blood, spilt its leaves between,--
+
+    V
+
+    That, they might spare; a certain wood
+      Might miss the plant; their loss were small:
+    But I,--whene'er the leaf grows there,
+      Its drop comes from my heart, that's all.
+
+The poet's one truly enthusiastic outburst in connection with English
+Nature he sings out in his longing for an English spring in the
+incomparable little lyric "Home-thoughts, from Abroad."
+
+
+    HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD
+
+    I
+
+    Oh, to be in England
+    Now that April's there,
+    And whoever wakes in England
+    Sees, some morning, unaware,
+    That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
+    Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
+    While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
+    In England--now!
+
+    II
+
+    And after April, when May follows,
+    And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
+    Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
+    Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
+    Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge--
+    That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over
+    Lest you should think he never could recapture
+    The first fine careless rapture!
+    And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
+    All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
+    The buttercups, the little children's dower
+    --Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
+
+After this it seems hardly possible that Browning, himself speaks in "De
+Gustibus," yet long and happy living away from England doubtless dimmed
+his sense of the beauty of English landscape. "De Gustibus" was
+published ten years later than "Home-Thoughts from Abroad," when Italy
+and he had indeed become "lovers old." A deeper reason than mere delight
+in its scenery is also reflected in the poem; the sympathy shared with
+Mrs. Browning, for the cause of Italian independence.
+
+
+    "DE GUSTIBUS----"
+
+    I
+
+    Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,
+          (If our loves remain)
+          In an English lane,
+    By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
+    Hark, those two in the hazel coppice--
+    A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,
+          Making love, say,--
+          The happier they!
+    Draw yourself up from the light of the moon,
+    And let them pass, as they will too soon,
+          With the bean-flower's boon,
+          And the blackbird's tune,
+          And May, and June!
+
+    II
+
+    What I love best in all the world
+    Is a castle, precipice-encurled,
+    In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine.
+    Or look for me, old fellow of mine,
+    (If I get my head from out the mouth
+    O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,
+    And come again to the land of lands)--
+    In a sea-side house to the farther South,
+    Where the baked cicala dies of drouth,
+    And one sharp tree--'tis a cypress--stands,
+    By the many hundred years red-rusted,
+    Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted,
+    My sentinel to guard the sands
+    To the water's edge. For, what expands
+    Before the house, but the great opaque
+    Blue breadth of sea without a break?
+    While, in the house, for ever crumbles
+    Some fragment of the frescoed walls,
+    From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.
+    A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles
+    Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons,
+    And says there's news to-day--the king
+    Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing,
+    Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling:
+    --She hopes they have not caught the felons.
+    Italy, my Italy!
+    Queen Mary's saying serves for me--
+          (When fortune's malice
+          Lost her--Calais)--
+    Open my heart and you will see
+    Graved inside of it, "Italy."
+    Such lovers old are I and she:
+    So it always was, so shall ever be!
+
+Two or three English artists called forth appreciation in verse from
+Browning. There is the exquisite bit called "Deaf and Dumb," after a
+group of statuary by Woolner, of Constance and Arthur--the deaf and dumb
+children of Sir Thomas Fairbairn.
+
+
+    DEAF AND DUMB
+
+    A GROUP BY WOOLNER.
+
+    Only the prism's obstruction shows aright
+    The secret of a sunbeam, breaks its light
+    Into the jewelled bow from blankest white;
+      So may a glory from defect arise:
+    Only by Deafness may the vexed Love wreak
+    Its insuppressive sense on brow and cheek,
+    Only by Dumbness adequately speak
+      As favored mouth could never, through the eyes.
+
+[Illustration: An English Lane]
+
+There is also the beautiful description in "Balaustion's Adventure" of
+the Alkestis by Sir Frederick Leighton.
+
+The flagrant anachronism of making a Greek girl at the time of the Fall
+of Athens describe an English picture cannot but be forgiven, since the
+artistic effect gained is so fine. The poet quite convinces the reader
+that Sir Frederick Leighton ought to have been a Kaunian painter, if he
+was not, and that Balaustion or no one was qualified to appreciate his
+picture at its full worth.
+
+    "I know, too, a great Kaunian painter, strong
+    As Herakles, though rosy with a robe
+    Of grace that softens down the sinewy strength:
+    And he has made a picture of it all.
+    There lies Alkestis dead, beneath the sun,
+    She longed to look her last upon, beside
+    The sea, which somehow tempts the life in us
+    To come trip over its white waste of waves,
+    And try escape from earth, and fleet as free.
+    Behind the body, I suppose there bends
+    Old Pheres in his hoary impotence;
+    And women-wailers, in a corner crouch
+    --Four, beautiful as you four--yes, indeed!--
+    Close, each to other, agonizing all,
+    As fastened, in fear's rhythmic sympathy,
+    To two contending opposite. There strains
+    The might o' the hero 'gainst his more than match,
+    --Death, dreadful not in thew and bone, but like
+    The envenomed substance that exudes some dew
+    Whereby the merely honest flesh and blood
+    Will fester up and run to ruin straight,
+    Ere they can close with, clasp and overcome
+    The poisonous impalpability
+    That simulates a form beneath the flow
+    Of those grey garments; I pronounce that piece
+    Worthy to set up in our PoikilÈ!
+
+    "And all came,--glory of the golden verse,
+    And passion of the picture, and that fine
+    Frank outgush of the human gratitude
+    Which saved our ship and me, in Syracuse,--
+    Ay, and the tear or two which slipt perhaps
+    Away from you, friends, while I told my tale,
+    --It all came of this play that gained no prize!
+    Why crown whom Zeus has crowned in soul before?"
+
+Once before had Sir Frederick Leighton inspired the poet in the
+exquisite lines on Eurydice.
+
+
+    EURYDICE TO ORPHEUS
+
+    A PICTURE BY LEIGHTON
+
+    But give them me, the mouth, the eyes, the brow!
+    Let them once more absorb me! One look now
+      Will lap me round for ever, not to pass
+    Out of its light, though darkness lie beyond:
+    Hold me but safe again within the bond
+      Of one immortal look! All woe that was,
+    Forgotten, and all terror that may be,
+    Defied,--no past is mine, no future: look at me!
+
+Beautiful as these lines are, they do not impress me as fully
+interpreting Leighton's picture. The expression of Eurydice is rather
+one of unthinking confiding affection--as if she were really unconscious
+or ignorant of the danger; while that of Orpheus is one of passionate
+agony as he tries to hold her off.
+
+Though English art could not fascinate the poet as Italian art did, for
+the fully sufficient reason that it does not stand for a great epoch of
+intellectual awakening, yet with what fair alchemy he has touched those
+few artists he has chosen to honor. Notwithstanding his avowed devotion
+to Italy, expressed in "De Gustibus," one cannot help feeling that in
+the poems mentioned in this chapter, there is that ecstasy of sympathy
+which goes only to the most potent influences in the formation of
+character. Something of what I mean is expressed in one of his latest
+poems, "Development." In this we certainly get a real peep at young
+Robert Browning, led by his wise father into the delights of Homer, by
+slow degrees, where all is truth at first, to end up with the
+devastating criticism of Wolf. In spite of it all the dream stays and is
+the reality. Nothing can obliterate the magic of a strong early
+enthusiasm, as "fact still held" "Spite of new Knowledge," in his "heart
+of hearts."
+
+
+    DEVELOPMENT
+
+    My Father was a scholar and knew Greek.
+    When I was five years old, I asked him once
+    "What do you read about?"
+                              "The siege of Troy."
+    "What is a siege and what is Troy?"
+                                            Whereat
+    He piled up chairs and tables for a town,
+    Set me a-top for Priam, called our cat
+    --Helen, enticed away from home (he said)
+    By wicked Paris, who couched somewhere close
+    Under the footstool, being cowardly,
+    But whom--since she was worth the pains, poor puss--
+    Towzer and Tray,--our dogs, the Atreidai,--sought
+    By taking Troy to get possession of
+    --Always when great Achilles ceased to sulk,
+    (My pony in the stable)--forth would prance
+    And put to flight Hector--our page-boy's self.
+    This taught me who was who and what was what:
+    So far I rightly understood the case
+    At five years old: a huge delight it proved
+    And still proves--thanks to that instructor sage
+    My Father, who knew better than turn straight
+    Learning's full flare on weak-eyed ignorance,
+    Or, worse yet, leave weak eyes to grow sand-blind,
+    Content with darkness and vacuity.
+
+    It happened, two or three years afterward,
+    That--I and playmates playing at Troy's Siege--
+    My Father came upon our make-believe.
+    "How would you like to read yourself the tale
+    Properly told, of which I gave you first
+    Merely such notion as a boy could bear?
+    Pope, now, would give you the precise account
+    Of what, some day, by dint of scholarship,
+    You'll hear--who knows?--from Homer's very mouth.
+    Learn Greek by all means, read the 'Blind Old Man,
+    Sweetest of Singers'--_tuphlos_ which means 'blind,'
+    _Hedistos_ which means 'sweetest.' Time enough!
+    Try, anyhow, to master him some day;
+    Until when, take what serves for substitute,
+    Read Pope, by all means!"
+                                      So I ran through Pope,
+    Enjoyed the tale--what history so true?
+    Also attacked my Primer, duly drudged,
+    Grew fitter thus for what was promised next--
+    The very thing itself, the actual words,
+    When I could turn--say, Buttmann to account.
+
+    Time passed, I ripened somewhat: one fine day,
+    "Quite ready for the Iliad, nothing less?
+    There's Heine, where the big books block the shelf:
+    Don't skip a word, thumb well the Lexicon!"
+
+    I thumbed well and skipped nowise till I learned
+    Who was who, what was what, from Homer's tongue,
+    And there an end of learning. Had you asked
+    The all-accomplished scholar, twelve years old,
+    "Who was it wrote the Iliad?"--what a laugh!
+    "Why, Homer, all the world knows: of his life
+    Doubtless some facts exist: it's everywhere:
+    We have not settled, though, his place of birth:
+    He begged, for certain, and was blind beside:
+    Seven cites claimed him--Scio, with best right,
+    Thinks Byron. What he wrote? Those Hymns we have.
+    Then there's the 'Battle of the Frogs and Mice,'
+    That's all--unless they dig 'Margites' up
+    (I'd like that) nothing more remains to know."
+
+    Thus did youth spend a comfortable time;
+    Until--"What's this the Germans say is fact
+    That Wolf found out first? It's unpleasant work
+    Their chop and change, unsettling one's belief:
+    All the same, while we live, we learn, that's sure."
+    So, I bent brow o'er _Prolegomena_.
+    And, after Wolf, a dozen of his like
+    Proved there was never any Troy at all,
+    Neither Besiegers nor Besieged,--nay, worse,--
+    No actual Homer, no authentic text,
+    No warrant for the fiction I, as fact,
+    Had treasured in my heart and soul so long--
+    Ay, mark you! and as fact held still, still hold,
+    Spite of new knowledge, in my heart of hearts
+    And soul of souls, fact's essence freed and fixed
+    From accidental fancy's guardian sheath.
+    Assuredly thenceforward--thank my stars!--
+    However it got there, deprive who could--
+    Wring from the shrine my precious tenantry,
+    Helen, Ulysses, Hector and his Spouse,
+    Achilles and his Friend?--though Wolf--ah, Wolf!
+    Why must he needs come doubting, spoil a dream?
+
+    But then "No dream's worth waking"--Browning says:
+    And here's the reason why I tell thus much
+    I, now mature man, you anticipate,
+    May blame my Father justifiably
+    For letting me dream out my nonage thus,
+    And only by such slow and sure degrees
+    Permitting me to sift the grain from chaff,
+    Get truth and falsehood known and named as such.
+    Why did he ever let me dream at all,
+    Not bid me taste the story in its strength?
+    Suppose my childhood was scarce qualified
+    To rightly understand mythology,
+    Silence at least was in his power to keep:
+    I might have--somehow--correspondingly--
+    Well, who knows by what method, gained my gains,
+    Been taught, by forthrights not meanderings,
+    My aim should be to loathe, like Peleus's son,
+    A lie as Hell's Gate, love my wedded wife,
+    Like Hector, and so on with all the rest.
+    Could not I have excogitated this
+    Without believing such men really were?
+    That is--he might have put into my hand
+    The "Ethics"? In translation, if you please,
+    Exact, no pretty lying that improves,
+    To suit the modern taste: no more, no less--
+    The "Ethics": 'tis a treatise I find hard
+    To read aright now that my hair is grey,
+    And I can manage the original.
+    At five years old--how ill had fared its leaves!
+    Now, growing double o'er the Stagirite,
+    At least I soil no page with bread and milk,
+    Nor crumple, dogsear and deface--boys' way.
+
+This chapter would not be complete without Browning's tribute to dog
+Tray, whose traits may not be peculiar to English dogs but whose name
+is proverbially English. Besides it touches a subject upon which the
+poet had strong feelings. Vivisection he abhorred, and in the
+controversies which were tearing the scientific and philanthropic world
+asunder in the last years of his life, no one was a more determined
+opponent of vivisection than he.
+
+
+    TRAY
+
+    Sing me a hero! Quench my thirst
+    Of soul, ye bards!
+                       Quoth Bard the first:
+    "Sir Olaf, the good knight, did don
+    His helm and eke his habergeon...."
+    Sir Olaf and his bard----!
+
+    "That sin-scathed brow" (quoth Bard the second),
+    "That eye wide ope as though Fate beckoned
+    My hero to some steep, beneath
+    Which precipice smiled tempting death...."
+    You too without your host have reckoned!
+
+    "A beggar-child" (let's hear this third!)
+    "Sat on a quay's edge: like a bird
+    Sang to herself at careless play,
+    'And fell into the stream. Dismay!
+    Help, you the standers-by!' None stirred.
+
+    "Bystanders reason, think of wives
+    And children ere they risk their lives.
+    Over the balustrade has bounced
+    A mere instinctive dog, and pounced
+    Plumb on the prize. 'How well he dives!
+
+    "'Up he comes with the child, see, tight
+    In mouth, alive too, clutched from quite
+    A depth of ten feet--twelve, I bet!
+    Good dog! What, off again? There's yet
+    Another child to save? All right!
+
+    "'How strange we saw no other fall!
+    It's instinct in the animal.
+    Good dog! But he's a long while under:
+    If he got drowned I should not wonder--
+    Strong current, that against the wall!
+
+    "'Here he comes, holds in mouth this time
+    --What may the thing be? Well, that's prime!
+    Now, did you ever? Reason reigns
+    In man alone, since all Tray's pains
+    Have fished--the child's doll from the slime!'
+
+    "And so, amid the laughter gay,
+    Trotted my hero off,--old Tray,--
+    Till somebody, prerogatived
+    With reason, reasoned: 'Why he dived,
+    His brain would show us, I should say.
+
+    "'John, go and catch--or, if needs be,
+    Purchase--that animal for me!
+    By vivisection, at expense
+    Of half-an-hour and eighteenpence,
+    How brain secretes dog's soul, we'll see!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SHAKESPEARE'S PORTRAIT
+
+
+Once and once only did Browning depart from his custom of choosing
+people of minor note to figure in his dramatic monologues. In "At the
+'Mermaid'" he ventures upon the consecrated ground of a heart-to-heart
+talk between Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and the wits who gathered at the
+classic "Mermaid" Tavern in Cheapside, following this up with further
+glimpses into the inner recesses of Shakespeare's mind in the monologues
+"House" and "Shop." It is a particularly daring feat in the case of
+Shakespeare, for as all the world knows any attempt at getting in touch
+with the real man, Shakespeare, must, per force, be woven out of such
+"stuff as dreams are made on."
+
+In interpreting this portraiture of one great poet by another it will be
+of interest to glance at the actual facts as far as they are known in
+regard to the relations which existed between Shakespeare and Jonson.
+Praise and blame both are recorded on Jonson's part when writing of
+Shakespeare, yet the praise shows such undisguised admiration that the
+blame sinks into insignificance. Jonson's "learned socks" to which
+Milton refers probably tripped the critic up occasionally by reason of
+their weight.
+
+There is a charming story told of the friendship between the two men
+recorded by Sir Nicholas L'Estrange, within a very few years of
+Shakespeare's death, who attributed it to Dr. Donne. The story goes that
+"Shakespeare was godfather to one of Ben Jonson's children, and after
+the christening, being in a deep study, Jonson came to cheer him up and
+asked him why he was so melancholy. 'No, faith, Ben,' says he, 'not I,
+but I have been considering a great while what should be the fittest
+gift for me to bestow upon my godchild, and I have resolved at last.' 'I
+prythee what?' says he. 'I'faith, Ben, I'll e'en give him a dozen good
+Lattin spoons, and thou shalt translate them.'" If this must be taken
+with a grain of salt, there is another even more to the honor of
+Shakespeare reported by Rowe and considered credible by such
+Shakespearian scholars as Halliwell Phillipps and Sidney Lee. "His
+acquaintance with Ben Jonson" writes Rowe, "began with a remarkable
+piece of humanity and good nature; Mr. Jonson, who was at that time
+altogether unknown to the world, had offered one of his plays to the
+players in order to have it acted, and the persons into whose hands it
+was put, after having turned it carelessly and superciliously over, were
+just upon returning it to him with an ill-natured answer that it would
+be of no service to their company, when Shakespeare luckily cast his eye
+upon it, and found something so well in it as to engage him first to
+read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings
+to the public." The play in question was the famous comedy of "Every Man
+in His Humour," which was brought out in September, 1598, by the Lord
+Chamberlain's company, Shakespeare himself being one of the leading
+actors upon the occasion.
+
+Authentic history records a theater war in which Jonson and Shakespeare
+figured, on opposite sides, but if allusions in Jonson's play the
+"Poetaster" have been properly interpreted, their friendly relations
+were not deeply disturbed. The trouble began in the first place by the
+London of 1600 suddenly rushing into a fad for the company of boy
+players, recruited chiefly from the choristers of the Chapel Royal, and
+known as the "Children of the Chapel." They had been acting at the new
+theater in Blackfriars since 1597, and their vogue became so great as
+actually to threaten Shakespeare's company and other companies of adult
+actors. Just at this time Ben Jonson was having a personal quarrel with
+his fellow dramatists, Marston and Dekker, and as he received little
+sympathy from the actors, he took his revenge by joining his forces with
+those of the Children of the Chapel. They brought out for him in 1600
+his satire of "Cynthia's Revels," in which he held up to ridicule
+Marston, Dekker and their friends the actors. Marston and Dekker, with
+the actors of Shakespeare's company, prepared to retaliate, but Jonson
+hearing of it forestalled them with his play the "Poetaster" in which he
+spared neither dramatists nor actors. Shakespeare's company continued
+the fray by bringing out at the Globe Theatre, in the following year,
+Dekker and Marston's "Satiro-Mastix, or The Untrussing of the Humorous
+Poet," and as Ward remarks, "the quarrel had now become too hot to
+last." The excitement, however, continued for sometime, theater-goers
+took sides and watched with interest "the actors and dramatists'
+boisterous war of personalities," to quote Mr. Lee, who goes on to
+point out that on May 10, 1601, the Privy Council called the attention
+of the Middlesex magistrates to the abuse covertly leveled by the actors
+of the "Curtain" at gentlemen "of good desert and quality," and directed
+the magistrates to examine all plays before they were produced.
+
+Jonson, himself, finally made apologies in verses appended to printed
+copies of the "Poetaster."
+
+    "Now for the players 'tis true I tax'd them
+    And yet but some, and those so sparingly
+    As all the rest might have sat still unquestioned,
+    Had they but had the wit or conscience
+    To think well of themselves. But impotent they
+    Thought each man's vice belonged to their whole tribe;
+    And much good do it them. What they have done against me
+    I am not moved with, if it gave them meat
+    Or got them clothes, 'tis well: that was their end,
+    Only amongst them I was sorry for
+    Some better natures by the rest so drawn
+    To run in that vile line."
+
+Sidney Lee cleverly deduces Shakespeare's attitude in the quarrel in
+allusions to it in "Hamlet," wherein he "protested against the abusive
+comments on the men-actors of 'the common' stages or public theaters
+which were put into the children's mouths. Rosencrantz declared that the
+children 'so berattle [_i.e._ assail] the common stages--so they call
+them--that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and dare
+scarce come thither [_i.e._ to the public theaters].' Hamlet in pursuit
+of the theme pointed out that the writers who encouraged the vogue of
+the 'child actors' did them a poor service, because when the boys should
+reach men's estate they would run the risk, if they continued on the
+stage, of the same insults and neglect which now threatened their
+seniors.
+
+"'_Hamlet._ What are they children? Who maintains 'em? How are they
+escorted [_i.e._ paid]? Will they pursue the quality [_i.e._ the actor's
+profession] no longer than they can sing? Will they not say afterwards,
+if they should grow themselves to common players--as it is most like, if
+their means are no better--their writers do them wrong to make them
+exclaim against their own succession?
+
+"'_Rosencrantz._ Faith, there has been much to do on both sides, and the
+nation holds it no sin to tarre [_i.e._ incite] them to controversy;
+there was for a while no money bid for argument, unless the poet and the
+player went to cuffs in the question.'"
+
+This certainly does not reflect a very belligerent attitude since it
+merely puts in a word for the grown-up actors rather than casting any
+slurs upon the children. Further indications of Shakespeare's mildness
+in regard to the whole matter are given in the Prologue to "Troylus and
+Cressida," where, as Mr. Lee says, he made specific reference to the
+strife between Ben Jonson and the players in the lines
+
+          "And hither am I come
+    A Prologue arm'd, but not in confidence,
+    Of Authors' pen, or Actors' voyce."
+
+The most interesting bit of evidence to show that Shakespeare and Jonson
+remained friends, even in the heat of the conflict, may be gained from
+the "Poetaster" itself if we admit that the Virgil of the play, who is
+chosen peacemaker stands for Shakespeare; and who so fit to be
+peacemaker as Shakespeare for his amiable qualities seem to have
+impressed themselves upon all who knew him.
+
+Following Mr. Lee's lead, "Jonson figures personally in the 'Poetaster'
+under the name of Horace. Episodically Horace and his friends, Tibullus
+and Gallus, eulogize the work and genius of another character, Virgil,
+in terms so closely resembling those which Jonson is known to have
+applied to Shakespeare that they may be regarded as intended to apply to
+him (Act V, Scene I). Jonson points out that Virgil, by his penetrating
+intuition, achieved the great effects which others laboriously sought to
+reach through rules of art.
+
+    'His learning labors not the school-like gloss
+    That most consists of echoing words and terms ...
+    Nor any long or far-fetched circumstance--
+    Wrapt in the curious generalities of arts--
+    But a direct and analytic sum
+    Of all the worth and first effects of art.
+    And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life
+    That it shall gather strength of life with being,
+    And live hereafter, more admired than now.'
+
+Tibullus gives Virgil equal credit for having in his writings touched
+with telling truth upon every vicissitude of human existence:
+
+    'That which he hath writ
+    Is with such judgment labored and distilled
+    Through all the needful uses of our lives
+    That, could a man remember but his lines,
+    He should not touch at any serious point
+    But he might breathe his spirit out of him.'
+
+"Finally, Virgil in the play is nominated by CÊsar to act as judge
+between Horace and his libellers, and he advises the administration of
+purging pills to the offenders."
+
+This neat little chain of evidence would have no weak link, if it were
+not for a passage in the play, "The Return from Parnassus," acted by
+the students in St. John's College the same year, 1601. In this there is
+a dialogue between Shakespeare's fellow-actors, Burbage and Kempe.
+Speaking of the University dramatists, Kempe says:
+
+"Why here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down; aye, and Ben
+Jonson, too. O! that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow. He brought up
+Horace, giving the poets a pill; but our fellow Shakespeare hath given
+him a purge that made him bewray his credit." Burbage continues, "He is
+a shrewd fellow indeed." This has, of course, been taken to mean that
+Shakespeare was actively against Jonson in the Dramatists' and Actors'
+war. But as everything else points, as we have seen, to the contrary,
+one accepts gladly the loophole of escape offered by Mr. Lee. "The words
+quoted from 'The Return from Parnassus' hardly admit of a literal
+interpretation. Probably the 'purge' that Shakespeare was alleged by the
+author of 'The Return from Parnassus' to have given Jonson meant no more
+than that Shakespeare had signally outstripped Jonson in popular
+esteem." That this was an actual fact is proved by the lines of Leonard
+Digges, an admiring contemporary of Shakespeare's, printed in the 1640
+edition of Shakespeare's poems, comparing "Julius CÊsar" and Jonson's
+play "Cataline:"
+
+    "So have I seen when CÊsar would appear,
+    And on the stage at half-sword parley were
+    Brutus and Cassius--oh, how the audience
+    Were ravish'd, with what wonder they went thence;
+    When some new day they would not brook a line
+    Of tedious, though well-labored, Cataline."
+
+This reminds one of the famous witticism attributed to Eudymion Porter
+that "Shakespeare was sent from Heaven and Ben from College."
+
+If Jonson's criticisms of Shakespeare's work were sometime not wholly
+appreciative, the fact may be set down to the distinction between the
+two here so humorously indicated. "A Winter's Tale" and the "Tempest"
+both called forth some sarcasms from Jonson, the first for its error
+about the Coast of Bohemia which Shakespeare borrowed from Greene.
+Jonson wrote in the Induction to "Bartholemew Fair;" "If there be never
+a servant-monster in the Fair, who can help it he says? Nor a nest of
+Antics. He is loth to make nature afraid in his plays like those that
+beget Tales, Tempests, and such like Drolleries." The allusions here
+are very evidently to Caliban and the satyrs who figure in the
+sheep-shearing feast in "A Winter's Tale." The worst blast of all,
+however, occurs in Jonson's "Timber," but the blows are evidently given
+with a loving hand. He writes "I remember, the players have often
+mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare that, in his writing, whatsoever
+he penn'd, hee never blotted out line. My answer hath beene, would he
+had blotted a thousand;--which they thought a malevolent speech. I had
+not told posterity this, but for their ignorance who choose that
+circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to
+justifie mine owne candor,--for I lov'd the man, and doe honor his
+memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. Hee was, indeed, honest,
+and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasie; brave
+notions and gentle expressions; wherein hee flow'd with that facility
+that sometime it was necessary he should be stop'd;--_sufflaminandus
+erat_, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his owne
+power;--would the rule of it had beene so too! Many times he fell into
+those things, could not escape laughter; as when he said in the person
+of CÊsar, one speaking to him,--CÊsar thou dost me wrong; hee
+replyed,--CÊsar did never wrong but with just cause; and such like;
+which were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices with his virtues.
+There was ever more in him to be praysed then to be pardoned."
+
+And even this criticism is altogether controverted by the wholly
+eulogistic lines Jonson wrote for the First Folio edition of Shakespeare
+printed in 1623, "To the memory of my beloved, The Author Mr. William
+Shakespeare and what he hath left us."[1]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] See the Tempest volume in First Folio Shakespeare. (Crowell & Co.)
+
+For the same edition he also wrote the following lines for the portrait
+reproduced in this volume, which it is safe to regard as the Shakespeare
+Ben Jonson remembered:
+
+
+    "TO THE READER
+
+    This Figure, that thou here seest put,
+      It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
+    Wherein the Graver had a strife
+      With Nature, to out-doo the life:
+    O, could he but have drawne his wit
+      As well in brasse, as he hath hit
+    His face; the Print would then surpasse
+      All, that was ever writ in brasse.
+    But, since he cannot, Reader, looke
+      Not on his Picture, but his Booke.
+
+    B. J."
+
+Shakespeare's talk in "At the 'Mermaid'" grows out of the supposition,
+not touched upon until the very last line that Ben Jonson had been
+calling him "Next Poet," a supposition quite justifiable in the light of
+Ben's praises of him. The poem also reflects the love and admiration in
+which Shakespeare the man was held by all who have left any record of
+their impressions of him. As for the portraiture of the poet's attitude
+of mind, it is deduced indirectly from his work. That he did not desire
+to become "Next Poet" may be argued from the fact that after his first
+outburst of poem and sonnet writing in the manner of the poets of the
+age, he gave up the career of gentleman-poet to devote himself wholly to
+the more independent if not so socially distinguished one of
+actor-playwright. "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece" were the only poems
+of his published under his supervision and the only works with the
+dedication to a patron such as it was customary to write at that time.
+
+I have before me as I write the recent Clarendon Press fac-similes of
+"Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece," published respectively in 1593 and
+1594,--beautiful little quartos with exquisitely artistic designs in the
+title-pages, headpieces and initials; altogether worthy of a poet who
+might have designs upon Fame. The dedication to the first reads:--
+
+  "TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE
+  Henry Wriothesley, Earle of Southampton
+  and Baron of Litchfield
+
+    _Right Honourable, I know not how I shall offend in dedicating
+    my unpolisht lines to your Lordship, nor how the worlde will
+    censure mee for choosing so strong a proppe to support so weake
+    a burthen, onelye if your Honour seeme but pleased, I account my
+    selfe highly praised, and vowe to take advantage of all idle
+    houres, till I have honoured you with some great labour. But if
+    the first heire of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorie
+    it had so noble a god-father: and never after eare so barren a
+    land, for feare it yield me still so bad a harvest, I leave it
+    to your Honourable Survey, and your Honor to your hearts
+    content, which I wish may alwaies answere your owne wish, and
+    the worlds hopeful expectation._
+
+  Your Honors in all dutie
+    WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE."
+
+The second reads:--
+
+  "TO THE RIGHT
+  HONORABLE, HENRY
+  Wriothesley, Earle of Southampton
+  and Baron of Litchfield
+
+    The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end: wherof this
+    Pamphlet without beginning is a superfluous Moiety. The warrant
+    I have of your Honourable disposition, nor the worth of my
+    untutored Lines makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done
+    is yours, what I have to doe is yours, being part in all I have,
+    devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duety would shew
+    greater, meane time, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship; To
+    whom I wish long life still lengthened with all happinesse.
+
+  Your Lordships in all duety.
+    WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE."
+
+No more after this does Shakespeare appear in the light of a poet with a
+patron. Even the sonnets, some of which evidently celebrate Southampton,
+were issued by a piratical publisher without Shakespeare's consent,
+while his plays found their way into print at the hands of other pirates
+who cribbed them from stage copies.
+
+Such hints as these have been worked up by Browning into a consistent
+characterization of a man who regards himself as having foregone his
+chances of laureateship or "Next Poet" by devoting himself to a form of
+literary art which would not appeal to the powers that be as fitting him
+for any such position. Such honors he claims do not go to the dramatic
+poet, who has never allowed the world to slip inside his breast, but has
+simply portrayed the joy and the sorrow of life as he saw it around him,
+and with an art which turns even sorrow into beauty.--"Do I stoop? I
+pluck a posy, do I stand and stare? all's blue;"--but to the subjective,
+introspective poet, out of tune with himself and with the universe. The
+allusions Shakespeare makes to the last "King" are not very definite,
+but, on the whole, they fit Edmund Spenser, whose poems from first to
+last are dedicated to people of distinction in court circles. His work,
+moreover, is full of wailing and woe in various keys, and also full of
+self-revelation. He allowed the world to slip inside his breast upon
+almost every occasion, and perhaps he may be said to have bought "his
+laurel," for it was no doubt extremely gratifying to Queen Elizabeth to
+see herself in the guise of the Faerie Queene, and even his dedication
+of the "Faerie Queene" to her, used as she was to flattery, must have
+been as music in her ears. "To the most high, mightie, and magnificent
+Empresse, renouned for piety, vertue, and all gratious government,
+Elizabeth, by the Grace of God, Queene of England, Frahnce, and Ireland
+and of Virginia. Defender of the Faith, &c. Her most humble servant
+Edmund Spenser doth in all humilitie, Dedicate, present, and consecrate
+These his labours, To live with the eternity of her Fame." The next year
+Spenser received a pension from the crown of fifty pounds per annum.
+
+It is a careful touch on Browning's part to use the phrase "Next Poet,"
+for the "laureateship" at that time was not a recognized official
+position. The term, "laureate," seems to have been used to designate
+poets who had attained fame and Royal favor, since Nash speaks of
+Spenser in his "Supplication of Piers Pennilesse" the same year the
+"Faerie Queene" was published as next laureate.
+
+The first really officially appointed Poet Laureate was Ben Jonson,
+himself, who in either 1616 or 1619 received the post from James I.,
+later ratified by Charles I., who increased the annuity to one hundred
+pounds a year and a butt of wine from the King's cellars.
+
+Probably the allusion "Your Pilgrim" in the twelfth stanza of "At the
+Mermaid" is to "The Return from Parnassus" in which the pilgrims to
+Parnassus who figure in an earlier play "The Pilgrimage to Parnassus"
+discover the world to be about as dismal a place as it is described in
+this stanza.
+
+At first sight it might seem that the position taken by Shakespeare in
+the poem is almost too modest, yet upon second thoughts it will be
+remembered that though Shakespeare had a tremendous following among the
+people, attested by the frequency with which his plays were acted; that
+though there are instances of his being highly appreciated by
+contemporaries of importance; that though his plays were given before
+the Queen, he did not have the universal acceptance among learned and
+court circles which was accorded to Spenser.
+
+It is quite fitting that the scene should be set in the "Mermaid." No
+record exists to show that Shakespeare was ever there, it is true, but
+the "Mermaid" was a favorite haunt of Ben Jonson and his circle of wits,
+whose meetings there were immortalized by Beaumont in his poetical
+letter to Jonson:--
+
+              "What things have we seen
+    Done at the Mermaid? heard words that have been
+    So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
+    As if that every one from whence they came
+    Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
+    And had resolved to live a fool the rest
+    Of his dull life."
+
+Add to this what Fuller wrote in his "Worthies," 1662, "Many were the
+wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a
+Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war; Master Jonson (like the
+former) was built far higher in learning, solid but slow in his
+performances. Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk,
+but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take
+advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention," and
+there is sufficient poetic warrant for the "Mermaid" setting.
+
+[Illustration: First Folio Portrait of Shakespeare
+
+    "Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.
+    Do I stand and stare? All's blue."]
+
+The final touch is given in the hint that all the time Shakespeare is
+aware of his own greatness, perhaps to be recognized by a future age.
+
+Let Browning, himself, now show what he has done with the material.
+
+
+    AT THE "MERMAID"
+
+        The figure that thou here seest.... Tut!
+        Was it for gentle Shakespeare put?
+
+    B. JONSON. (_Adapted._)
+
+    I
+
+    I--"Next Poet?" No, my hearties,
+      I nor am nor fain would be!
+    Choose your chiefs and pick your parties,
+      Not one soul revolt to me!
+    I, forsooth, sow song-sedition?
+      I, a schism in verse provoke?
+    I, blown up by bard's ambition,
+      Burst--your bubble-king? You joke.
+
+    II
+
+    Come, be grave! The sherris mantling
+      Still about each mouth, mayhap,
+    Breeds you insight--just a scantling--
+      Brings me truth out--just a scrap.
+    Look and tell me! Written, spoken,
+      Here's my life-long work: and where
+    --Where's your warrant or my token
+      I'm the dead king's son and heir?
+
+    III
+
+    Here's my work: does work discover--
+      What was rest from work--my life?
+    Did I live man's hater, lover?
+      Leave the world at peace, at strife?
+    Call earth ugliness or beauty?
+      See things there in large or small?
+    Use to pay its Lord my duty?
+      Use to own a lord at all?
+
+    IV
+
+    Blank of such a record, truly
+      Here's the work I hand, this scroll,
+    Yours to take or leave; as duly,
+      Mine remains the unproffered soul.
+    So much, no whit more, my debtors--
+      How should one like me lay claim
+    To that largess elders, betters
+      Sell you cheap their souls for--fame?
+
+    V
+
+    Which of you did I enable
+      Once to slip inside my breast,
+    There to catalogue and label
+      What I like least, what love best,
+    Hope and fear, believe and doubt of,
+      Seek and shun, respect--deride?
+    Who has right to make a rout of
+      Rarities he found inside?
+
+    VI
+
+    Rarities or, as he'd rather,
+      Rubbish such as stocks his own:
+    Need and greed (O strange) the Father
+      Fashioned not for him alone!
+    Whence--the comfort set a-strutting,
+      Whence--the outcry "Haste, behold!
+    Bard's breast open wide, past shutting,
+      Shows what brass we took for gold!"
+
+    VII
+
+    Friends, I doubt not he'd display you
+      Brass--myself call orichalc,--
+    Furnish much amusement; pray you
+      Therefore, be content I balk
+    Him and you, and bar my portal!
+      Here's my work outside: opine
+    What's inside me mean and mortal!
+      Take your pleasure, leave me mine!
+
+    VIII
+
+    Which is--not to buy your laurel
+      As last king did, nothing loth.
+    Tale adorned and pointed moral
+      Gained him praise and pity both.
+    Out rushed sighs and groans by dozens,
+      Forth by scores oaths, curses flew:
+    Proving you were cater-cousins,
+      Kith and kindred, king and you!
+
+    IX
+
+    Whereas do I ne'er so little
+      (Thanks to sherris) leave ajar
+    Bosom's gate--no jot nor tittle
+      Grow we nearer than we are.
+    Sinning, sorrowing, despairing,
+      Body-ruined, spirit-wrecked,--
+    Should I give my woes an airing,--
+      Where's one plague that claims respect?
+
+    X
+
+    Have you found your life distasteful?
+      My life did, and does, smack sweet.
+    Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
+      Mine I saved and hold complete.
+    Do your joys with age diminish?
+      When mine fail me, I'll complain.
+    Must in death your daylight finish?
+      My sun sets to rise again.
+
+    XI
+
+    What, like you, he proved--your Pilgrim--
+      This our world a wilderness,
+    Earth still grey and heaven still grim,
+      Not a hand there his might press,
+    Not a heart his own might throb to,
+      Men all rogues and women--say,
+    Dolls which boys' heads duck and bob to,
+      Grown folk drop or throw away?
+
+    XII
+
+    My experience being other,
+      How should I contribute verse
+    Worthy of your king and brother?
+      Balaam-like I bless, not curse.
+    I find earth not grey but rosy,
+      Heaven not grim but fair of hue.
+    Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.
+      Do I stand and stare? All's blue.
+
+    XIII
+
+    Doubtless I am pushed and shoved by
+      Rogues and fools enough: the more
+    Good luck mine, I love, am loved by
+      Some few honest to the core.
+    Scan the near high, scout the far low!
+      "But the low come close:" what then?
+    Simpletons? My match is Marlowe;
+      Sciolists? My mate is Ben.
+
+    XIV
+
+    Womankind--"the cat-like nature,
+      False and fickle, vain and weak"--
+    What of this sad nomenclature
+      Suits my tongue, if I must speak?
+    Does the sex invite, repulse so,
+      Tempt, betray, by fits and starts?
+    So becalm but to convulse so,
+      Decking heads and breaking hearts?
+
+    XV
+
+    Well may you blaspheme at fortune!
+      I "threw Venus" (Ben, expound!)
+    Never did I need importune
+      Her, of all the Olympian round.
+    Blessings on my benefactress!
+      Cursings suit--for aught I know--
+    Those who twitched her by the back tress,
+      Tugged and thought to turn her--so!
+
+    XVI
+
+    Therefore, since no leg to stand on
+      Thus I'm left with,--joy or grief
+    Be the issue,--I abandon
+      Hope or care you name me Chief!
+    Chief and king and Lord's anointed,
+      I?--who never once have wished
+    Death before the day appointed:
+      Lived and liked, not poohed and pished!
+
+    XVII
+
+    "Ah, but so I shall not enter,
+      Scroll in hand, the common heart--
+    Stopped at surface: since at centre
+      Song should reach _Welt-schmerz_, world-smart!"
+    "Enter in the heart?" Its shelly
+      Cuirass guard mine, fore and aft!
+    Such song "enters in the belly
+      And is cast out in the draught."
+
+    XVIII
+
+    Back then to our sherris-brewage!
+      "Kingship" quotha? I shall wait--
+    Waive the present time: some new age ...
+      But let fools anticipate!
+    Meanwhile greet me--"friend, good fellow,
+      Gentle Will," my merry men!
+    As for making Envy yellow
+      With "Next Poet"--(Manners, Ben!)
+
+The first stanza of "House"--
+
+    "Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself?
+      Do I live in a house you would like to see?
+    Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf?
+      'Unlock my heart with a sonnet-key?'"--
+
+brings one face to face with the interminable controversies upon the
+autobiographical significance of Shakespeare's Sonnets. As volumes upon
+the subject have been written, it is not possible even adequately to
+review the various theories here. The controversialists may be broadly
+divided into those who read complicated autobiographical details into
+the sonnets, those who scout the idea of their being autobiographical at
+all, and those who take a middle ground. Of the first there are two
+factions: one of these believes that the opening sonnets were addressed
+to Lord William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and the other that they were
+addressed to Shakespeare's patron, the Earl of Southampton. The first
+theory dates back as far as 1832 when it was started by James Boaden, a
+journalist and the biographer of Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. This theory
+has had many supporters and is associated to-day with the name of Thomas
+Tyler, who, in his edition of the Sonnets published in 1890, claimed to
+have identified the dark lady of the Sonnets with a lady of the Court,
+Mary Fitton and the mistress of the Earl of Pembroke. The theory, like
+most things of the sort, has its fascinations, and few people can read
+the Sonnets without being more or less impressed by it. It is based,
+however, upon a supposition so unlikely that it may be said to be proved
+incorrect, namely, that the dedication of the Sonnets to their "Onlie
+Begettor, Mr. W. H." is intended for "Mr. William Herbert." There was a
+Mr. William Hall, later a master printer, and the friend of Thomas
+Thorpe, the publisher of the Sonnets, who is much more likely to be the
+person meant. Lord Herbert was far too important a person to be
+addressed as Mr. W. H. As Mr. Lee points out, when Thorpe did dedicate
+books to Herbert he was careful to give full prominence to the titles
+and distinction of his patron. The Sonnets as we have already seen were
+not published with Shakespeare's sanction. In those days the author had
+no protection, and if a manuscript fell into the hands of a printer he
+could print it if he felt so disposed. Mr. William Hall was in the
+habit of looking out for manuscripts and before he became a printer, in
+1606, had one published by Southwell of which he himself wrote the
+dedication, to the "Vertuous Gentleman, Mathew Saunders, Esquire W. H.
+wisheth, with long life, a prosperous achievement of his good desires."
+"There is little doubt," writes Mr. Lee, "that the W. H. of the
+Southwell volume was Mr. William Hall, who, when he procured that
+manuscript for publication, was an humble auxiliary in the publishing
+army." To sum up in Mr. Lee's words his interesting and convincing
+chapter on "Thomas Thorpe and Mr. 'W. H.'" "'Mr. W. H.,' whom Thorpe
+described as the 'only begetter of these ensuing sonnets,' was in all
+probability the acquirer or procurer of the manuscript, who,
+figuratively speaking, brought the book into being either by first
+placing the manuscript in Thorpe's hands or by pointing out the means by
+which a copy might be acquired. To assign such significance to the word
+'begetter' was entirely in Thorpe's vein. Thorpe described his rÙle in
+the piratical enterprise of the 'Sonnets' as that of 'the well-wishing
+adventurer in setting forth,' _i.e._, the hopeful speculator in the
+scheme. 'Mr. W. H.' doubtless played the almost equally important
+part--one as well known then as now in commercial operations--of the
+'vender' of the property to be exploited."
+
+The Southampton theory is reared into a fine air-castle by Gerald Massey
+in his lengthy book on the Sonnets--truly entertaining reading but too
+ingenious to be convincing.
+
+Finally Mr. Lee in his book looks at the subject in an unbiased and
+perfectly sane way. He thinks the opening Sonnets are to the Earl of
+Southampton, known to be Shakespeare's patron, but he warns us that
+exaggerated devotion was the hall-mark of the Sonnets of the age, and
+therefore what Shakespeare says of his young patron in these Sonnets
+need not be taken too literally as expressing the poet's sentiments,
+though he admits there may be a note of genuine feeling in them. Also he
+thinks that some of the sonnets reflecting moods of melancholy or a
+sense of sin may reveal the writer's inner consciousness. Possibly, too,
+the story of the "dark lady" may have some basis in fact, though he
+insists, "There is no clue to the lady's identity, and speculation on
+the topic is useless." Furthermore, he thinks it doubtful whether all
+the words in these Sonnets are to be taken with the seriousness implied,
+the affair probably belonging only to the annals of gallantry.
+
+It will be seen from the poem that Browning took the uncompromisingly
+non-autobiographical view of the Sonnets. In this stand present
+authoritative opinion would not justify him, but it speaks well for his
+insight and sympathy that he was not fascinated by the William Herbert
+theory which, at the time he wrote the poem, was very much in the air.
+
+In "Shop" is given, in a way, the obverse side of the idea. If it is
+proved that the dramatic poet does not allow himself to appear in his
+work, the step toward regarding him as having no individuality aside
+from his work is an easy one. The allusions in the poem to the
+mercenariness of the "Shop-Keeper" seem to hit at the criticisms of
+Shakespeare's thrift, which enabled him to buy a home in his native
+place and retire there to live some years before the end of his life. In
+some quarters it has been customary to regard Shakespeare as devoting
+himself to dramatic literature in order to make money, as if this were a
+terrible slur on his character. The superiority of such an independent
+spirit over that of those who constantly sought patrons was quite
+manifest to Browning's mind or he would not have written this sarcastic
+bit of symbolism, between the lines of which can be read that Browning
+was on Shakespeare's side.
+
+
+    HOUSE
+
+    I
+
+    Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself?
+      Do I live in a house you would like to see?
+    Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf?
+      "Unlock my heart with a sonnet key?"
+
+    II
+
+    Invite the world, as my betters have done?
+      "Take notice: this building remains on view,
+    Its suites of reception every one,
+      Its private apartment and bedroom too;
+
+    III
+
+    "For a ticket, apply to the Publisher."
+      No: thanking the public, I must decline.
+    A peep through my window, if folk prefer;
+      But, please you, no foot over threshold of mine!
+
+    IV
+
+    I have mixed with a crowd and heard free talk
+      In a foreign land where an earthquake chanced:
+    And a house stood gaping, nought to balk
+      Man's eye wherever he gazed or glanced.
+
+    V
+
+    The whole of the frontage shaven sheer,
+      The inside gaped: exposed to day,
+    Right and wrong and common and queer,
+      Bare, as the palm of your hand, it lay.
+
+    VI
+
+    The owner? Oh, he had been crushed, no doubt!
+      "Odd tables and chairs for a man of wealth!
+    What a parcel of musty old books about!
+      He smoked,--no wonder he lost his health!
+
+    VII
+
+    "I doubt if he bathed before he dressed.
+      A brasier?--the pagan, he burned perfumes!
+    You see it is proved, what the neighbors guessed:
+      His wife and himself had separate rooms."
+
+    VIII
+
+    Friends, the goodman of the house at least
+      Kept house to himself till an earthquake came:
+    'Tis the fall of its frontage permits you feast
+      On the inside arrangement you praise or blame.
+
+    IX
+
+    Outside should suffice for evidence:
+      And whoso desires to penetrate
+    Deeper, must dive by the spirit-sense--
+      No optics like yours, at any rate!
+
+    X
+
+    "Hoity toity! A street to explore,
+      Your house the exception! '_With this same key
+    Shakespeare unlocked his heart_,' once more!"
+      Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!
+
+
+    SHOP
+
+    I
+
+    So, friend, your shop was all your house!
+      Its front, astonishing the street,
+    Invited view from man and mouse
+      To what diversity of treat
+      Behind its glass--the single sheet!
+
+    II
+
+    What gimcracks, genuine Japanese:
+      Gape-jaw and goggle-eye, the frog;
+    Dragons, owls, monkeys, beetles, geese;
+      Some crush-nosed, human-hearted dog:
+      Queer names, too, such a catalogue!
+
+    III
+
+    I thought "And he who owns the wealth
+      Which blocks the window's vastitude,
+    --Ah, could I peep at him by stealth
+      Behind his ware, pass shop, intrude
+      On house itself, what scenes were viewed!
+
+    IV
+
+    "If wide and showy thus the shop,
+      What must the habitation prove?
+    The true house with no name a-top--
+      The mansion, distant one remove,
+      Once get him off his traffic-groove!
+
+    V
+
+    "Pictures he likes, or books perhaps;
+      And as for buying most and best,
+    Commend me to these City chaps!
+      Or else he's social, takes his rest
+      On Sundays, with a Lord for guest.
+
+    VI
+
+    "Some suburb-palace, parked about
+      And gated grandly, built last year:
+    The four-mile walk to keep off gout;
+      Or big seat sold by bankrupt peer:
+      But then he takes the rail, that's clear.
+
+    VII
+
+    "Or, stop! I wager, taste selects
+      Some out o' the way, some all-unknown
+    Retreat: the neighborhood suspects
+      Little that he who rambles lone
+      Makes Rothschild tremble on his throne!"
+
+    VIII
+
+    Nowise! Nor Mayfair residence
+      Fit to receive and entertain,--
+    Nor Hampstead villa's kind defence
+      From noise and crowd, from dust and drain,--
+      Nor country-box was soul's domain!
+
+    IX
+
+    Nowise! At back of all that spread
+      Of merchandize, woe's me, I find
+    A hole i' the wall where, heels by head,
+      The owner couched, his ware behind,
+      --In cupboard suited to his mind.
+
+    X
+
+    For why? He saw no use of life
+      But, while he drove a roaring trade,
+    To chuckle "Customers are rife!"
+      To chafe "So much hard cash outlaid
+      Yet zero in my profits made!
+
+    XI
+
+    "This novelty costs pains, but--takes?
+      Cumbers my counter! Stock no more!
+    This article, no such great shakes,
+      Fizzes like wildfire? Underscore
+      The cheap thing--thousands to the fore!"
+
+    XII
+
+    'Twas lodging best to live most nigh
+      (Cramp, coffinlike as crib might be)
+    Receipt of Custom; ear and eye
+      Wanted no outworld: "Hear and see
+      The bustle in the shop!" quoth he.
+
+    XIII
+
+    My fancy of a merchant-prince
+      Was different. Through his wares we groped
+    Our darkling way to--not to mince
+      The matter--no black den where moped
+      The master if we interloped!
+
+    XIV
+
+    Shop was shop only: household-stuff?
+      What did he want with comforts there?
+    "Walls, ceiling, floor, stay blank and rough,
+      So goods on sale show rich and rare!
+      '_Sell and scud home_' be shop's affair!"
+
+    XV
+
+    What might he deal in? Gems, suppose!
+      Since somehow business must be done
+    At cost of trouble,--see, he throws
+      You choice of jewels, everyone,
+      Good, better, best, star, moon and sun!
+
+    XVI
+
+    Which lies within your power of purse?
+      This ruby that would tip aright
+    Solomon's sceptre? Oh, your nurse
+      Wants simply coral, the delight
+      Of teething baby,--stuff to bite!
+
+    XVII
+
+    Howe'er your choice fell, straight you took
+      Your purchase, prompt your money rang
+    On counter,--scarce the man forsook
+      His study of the "Times," just swang
+      Till-ward his hand that stopped the clang,--
+
+    XVIII
+
+    Then off made buyer with a prize,
+      Then seller to his "Times" returned;
+    And so did day wear, wear, till eyes
+      Brightened apace, for rest was earned:
+      He locked door long ere candle burned.
+
+    XIX
+
+    And whither went he? Ask himself,
+      Not me! To change of scene, I think.
+    Once sold the ware and pursed the pelf,
+      Chaffer was scarce his meat and drink,
+      Nor all his music--money-chink.
+
+    XX
+
+    Because a man has shop to mind
+      In time and place, since flesh must live,
+    Needs spirit lack all life behind,
+      All stray thoughts, fancies fugitive,
+      All loves except what trade can give?
+
+    XXI
+
+    I want to know a butcher paints,
+      A baker rhymes for his pursuit,
+    Candlestick-maker much acquaints
+      His soul with song, or, haply mute,
+      Blows out his brains upon the flute!
+
+    XXII
+
+    But--shop each day and all day long!
+      Friend, your good angel slept, your star
+    Suffered eclipse, fate did you wrong!
+      From where these sorts of treasures are,
+      There should our hearts be--Christ, how far!
+
+These poems are valuable not only for furnishing an interesting
+interpretation of Shakespeare's character as a man and artist, but for
+the glimpses they give into Browning's stand toward his own art. He
+wished to be regarded primarily as a dramatic artist, presenting and
+interpreting the souls of his characters, and he must have felt keenly
+the stupid attitude which insisted always in reading "Browning's
+Philosophy" into all his poems. The fact that his objective material was
+of the soul rather than of the external actions of life has no doubt
+lent force to the supposition that Browning himself can be seen in
+everything he writes. It is true, nevertheless, that while much of his
+work is Shakespearian in its dramatic intensity, he had too forceful a
+philosophy of life to keep it from sometimes coming to the front.
+Besides he has written many things avowedly personal as this chapter
+amply illustrates.
+
+To what intensity of feeling Browning could rise when contemplating the
+genius of Shakespeare is revealed in his direct and outspoken tribute.
+Here there breathes an almost reverential attitude toward the one
+supremely great man he has ventured to portray.
+
+
+    THE NAMES
+
+    Shakespeare!--to such name's sounding, what succeeds
+      Fitly as silence? Falter forth the spell,--
+      Act follows word, the speaker knows full well;
+    Nor tampers with its magic more than needs.
+    Two names there are: That which the Hebrew reads
+      With his soul only: if from lips it fell,
+      Echo, back thundered by earth, heaven and hell,
+    Would own, "Thou didst create us!" Naught impedes
+    We voice the other name, man's most of might,
+      Awesomely, lovingly: let awe and love
+    Mutely await their working, leave to sight
+      All of the issue as--below--above--
+      Shakespeare's creation rises: one remove,
+    Though dread--this finite from that infinite.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A CRUCIAL PERIOD IN ENGLISH HISTORY
+
+
+"Whom the gods destroy they first make mad." Of no one in English
+history is this truer than of King Charles I. Just at a time when the
+nation was feeling the strength of its wings both in Church and State,
+when individuals were claiming the right to freedom of conscience in
+their form of worship and the people were growing more insistent for the
+recognition of their ancient rights and liberties, secured to them, in
+the first place, by the Magna Charta,--just at this time looms up the
+obstruction of a King so imbued with the defunct ideal of the divine
+right of Kings that he is blind to the tendencies of the age. What
+wonder, then, if the swirling waters of discontent should rise higher
+and higher until he became engulfed in their fury.
+
+The history of the reign of Charles I. is one full of involved details,
+yet the broader aspects of it, the great events which chiseled into
+shape the future of England stand out in bold relief in front of a
+background of interminable bickerings. There was constant quarreling
+between the factions within the English church, and between the
+Protestants and the Catholics, complicated by the discontent of the
+people and at times the nobles because of the autocratic, vacillating
+policy of the King.
+
+Among these epoch-bringing events were the emergence of the Puritans
+from the chaos of internecine church squabbles, the determined raising
+of the voice of the people in the Long Parliament, where King and people
+finally came to an open clash in the impeachment of the King's most
+devoted minister, Wentworth, Earl Strafford, by Pym, the great leader in
+the House of Commons, ending in Strafford's execution; the Grand
+Remonstrance, which sounded in no uncertain tones the tocsin of the
+coming revolution; and finally the King's impeachment of Pym, Hampden,
+Holles, Hazelrigg and Strode, one of the many ill-advised moves of this
+Monarch which at once precipitated the Revolution.
+
+These cataclysms at home were further intensified by the Scottish
+Invasion and the Irish Rebellion.
+
+[Illustration: Charles I in Scene of Impeachment]
+
+It is not surprising that Browning should have been attracted to this
+period of English history, when he contemplated the writing of a play on
+an English subject. His liberty-loving mind would naturally find
+congenial occupation in depicting this great English struggle for
+liberty. Yet the hero of the play is not Pym, the leader of the people,
+but Strafford, the supporter of the King. The dramatic reasons are
+sufficient to account for this. Strafford's career was picturesque and
+tragic and his personality so striking that more than one interpretation
+of his remarkable life is possible.
+
+The interpretation will differ according to whether one is partisan in
+hatred or admiration of his character and policy, or possesses the
+larger quality of sympathetic appreciation of the man and the problems
+with which he had to deal. Any one coming to judge him in this latter
+spirit would undoubtedly perceive all the fine points in Strafford's
+nature and would balance these against his theories of government to the
+better understanding of this extraordinary man.
+
+It is almost needless to say that Browning's perception of Strafford's
+character was penetrating and sympathetic. Strafford's devotion to his
+King had in it not only the element of loyalty to the liege, but an
+element of personal love which would make an especial appeal to
+Browning. He, in consequence, seizes upon this trait as the key-note of
+his portrayal of Strafford.
+
+The play is, on the whole, accurate in its historical details, though
+the poet's imagination has added many a flying buttress to the
+structure.
+
+Forster's lives of the English Statesmen in Lardner's CyclopÊdia
+furnished plenty of material, and he was besides familiar with some if
+not all of Forster's materials for the lives. One of the interesting
+surprises in connection with Browning's literary career was the fact
+divulged some years ago that he had actually helped Forster in the
+preparation of the Life of Strafford. Indeed it is thought that he wrote
+it almost entirely from the notes of Forster. Dr. Furnivall first called
+attention to this, and later the life of Strafford was reprinted as
+"Robert Browning's Prose Life of Strafford."[2] In his Forewords to this
+volume, Dr. Furnivall, who, among many other claims to distinction, was
+the president of the "London Browning Society," writes, "Three times
+during his life did Browning speak to me about his prose 'Life of
+Strafford.' The first time he said only--in the course of chat--that
+very few people had any idea of how much he had helped John Forster in
+it. The second time he told me at length that one day he went to see
+Forster and found him very ill, and anxious about the 'Life of
+Strafford,' which he had promised to write at once, to complete a volume
+of 'Lives of Eminent British Statesmen' for Lardner's 'Cabinet
+CyclopÊdia.' Forster had finished the 'Life of Eliot'--the first in the
+volume--and had just begun that of Strafford, for which he had made full
+collections and extracts; but illness had come on, he couldn't work, the
+book ought to be completed forthwith, as it was due in the serial issue
+of volumes; what _was_ he to do? 'Oh,' said Browning, 'don't trouble
+about it. I'll take your papers and do it for you.' Forster thanked his
+young friend heartily, Browning put the Strafford papers under his arm,
+walked off, worked hard, finished the Life, and it came out to time in
+1836, to Forster's great relief, and passed under his name." Professor
+Gardiner, the historian, was of the opinion from internal evidence that
+the Life was more Browning's than Forster's. He said to Furnivall, "It
+is not a historian's conception of the character but a poet's. I am
+certain that it's not Forster's. Yes, it makes mistakes in facts and
+dates, but, it has got the man--in the main." In this opinion Furnivall
+concurs. Of the last paragraph in the history he exclaims, "I could
+swear it was Browning's":--The paragraph in question sums up the
+character of Strafford and is interesting in this connection, as giving
+hints, though not the complete picture of the Strafford of the Drama.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] Estes and Lauriat, Boston, Mass.
+
+"A great lesson is written in the life of this truly extraordinary
+person. In the career of Strafford is to be sought the justification of
+the world's 'appeal from tyranny to God.' In him Despotism had at length
+obtained an instrument with mind to comprehend, and resolution to act
+upon, her principles in their length and breadth,--and enough of her
+purposes were effected by him, to enable mankind to 'see as from a tower
+the end of all.' I cannot discern one false step in Strafford's public
+conduct, one glimpse of a recognition of an alien principle, one
+instance of a dereliction of the law of his being, which can come in to
+dispute the decisive result of the experiment, or explain away its
+failure. The least vivid fancy will have no difficulty in taking up the
+interrupted design, and by wholly enfeebling, or materially emboldening,
+the insignificant nature of Charles; and by according some half-dozen
+years of immunity to the 'fretted tenement' of Strafford's 'fiery
+soul',--contemplate then, for itself, the perfect realization of the
+scheme of 'making the prince the most absolute lord in Christendom.'
+That done,--let it pursue the same course with respect to Eliot's noble
+imaginings, or to young Vane's dreamy aspirings, and apply in like
+manner a fit machinery to the working out the projects which made the
+dungeon of the one a holy place, and sustained the other in his
+self-imposed exile.--The result is great and decisive! It establishes,
+in renewed force, those principles of political conduct which have
+endured, and must continue to endure, 'like truth from age to age.'" The
+history, on the whole, lacks the grasp in the portrayal of Wentworth to
+be found in the drama. C. H. Firth, commenting upon this says truly,
+"One might almost say that in the first, Strafford was represented as he
+appeared to his opponents, and in the second as he appeared to himself;
+or that, having painted Strafford as he was, Browning painted him again
+as he wished to be. In the biography Strafford is exhibited as a man of
+rare gifts and noble qualities; yet in his political capacity, merely
+the conscious, the devoted tool of a tyrant. In the tragedy, on the
+other hand, Strafford is the champion of the King's will against the
+people's, but yet looks forward to the ultimate reconciliation of
+Charles and his subjects, and strives for it after his own fashion. He
+loves the master he serves, and dies for him, but when the end comes he
+can proudly answer his accusers, 'I have loved England too.'"
+
+The play opens at the important moment of Wentworth's return to London
+from Ireland, where for some time he had been governor. The occasion of
+his return, according to Gardiner, was a personal quarrel with the
+Chancellor Loftus, of Ireland. Both men were allowed to come to England
+to plead their cause, which resulted in the victory of Wentworth. In the
+play Pym says, "Ay, the Court gives out His own concerns have brought
+him back: I know 'tis the King calls him." The authority for this remark
+is found in the Forster-Browning Life. "In the danger threatened by the
+Scots' Covenant, Wentworth was Charles's only hope; the King sent for
+him, saying he desired his personal counsel and attendance. He wrote:
+'The Scots' Covenant begins to spread too far, yet, for all this, I will
+not have you take notice that I have sent for you, but pretend some
+other occasion of business.'" Certain it is that from this time
+Wentworth became the most trusted counsellor of Charles, that is, as
+far as Charles was capable of trusting any one. The condition of affairs
+to which Wentworth returned is brought out in the play in a thoroughly
+alive and human manner. We are introduced to the principal actors in the
+struggle for their rights and privileges against the government of
+Charles meeting in a house near Whitehall. Among the "great-hearted" men
+are Hampden, Hollis, the younger Vane, Rudyard, Fiennes--all leaders in
+the "Faction,"--Presbyterians, Loudon and other members of the Scots'
+commissioners. A bit of history has been drawn upon for this opening
+scene, for according to the Forster-Browning Life, "There is no doubt
+that a close correspondence with the Scotch commissioners, headed by
+Lords Loudon and Dumferling, was entered into under the management of
+Pym and Hampden. Whenever necessity obliged the meetings to be held in
+London, they took place at Pym's house in Gray's Inn Lane." In the talk
+between these men the political situation in England at the time from
+the point of view of the liberal party is brought vividly before the
+reader.
+
+There has been no Parliament in England for ten years, hence the people
+have had no say in the direction of the government. The growing
+dissatisfaction of the people at being thus deprived of their rights
+focussed itself upon the question of "ship-money." The taxes levied by
+the King for the maintainance of a fleet were loudly objected to upon
+all sides. That a fleet was a necessary means of protection in those
+threatening times is not to be doubted, but the objections of the people
+were grounded upon the fact that the King levied these taxes upon his
+own authority. "Ship-money, it was loudly declared," says Gardiner, "was
+undeniably a tax, and the ancient customs of the realm, recently
+embodied in the Petition of Right, had announced with no doubtful voice
+that no tax could be levied without consent of Parliament. Even this
+objection was not the full measure of the evil. If Charles could take
+this money without the consent of Parliament, he need not, unless some
+unforeseen emergency arose, ever summon a Parliament again. The true
+question at issue was whether Parliament formed an integral part of the
+Constitution or not." Other taxes were objected to on the same grounds,
+and the more determined the King was not to summon a Parliament, the
+greater became the political ferment.
+
+[Illustration: Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford]
+
+At the same time the religious ferment was centering itself upon
+hatred of Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury. His policy was to silence
+opposition to the methods of worship then followed by the Church of
+England, by the terrors of the Star Chamber. The Puritans were smarting
+under the sentence which had been passed upon the three pamphleteers,
+William Prynne, Henry Burton, and John Bastwick, who had expressed their
+opinions of the practises of the church with great outspokenness. Prynne
+called upon pious King Charles "to do justice on the whole Episcopal
+order by which he had been robbed of the love of God and of his people,
+and which aimed at plucking the crown from his head, that they might set
+it on their own ambitious pates." Burton hinted that "the sooner the
+office of the Bishops was abolished the better it would be for the
+nation." Bastwick, who had been brought up in the straitest principles
+of Puritanism, had ended his pamphlet "_Flagellum Pontificis_," with
+this outburst, "Take notice, so far am I from flying or fearing, as I
+resolve to make war against the Beast, and every hint of Antichrist, all
+the days of my life. If I die in that battle, so much the sooner I shall
+be sent in a chariot of triumph to heaven; and when I come there, I
+will, with those that are under the altar cry, 'How long, Lord, holy
+and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood upon them that dwell
+upon the earth?'"
+
+These men were called before the Star Chamber upon a charge of libel.
+The sentence was a foregone conclusion, and was so outrageous that its
+result could only be the strengthening of opposition. The "muckworm"
+Cottington, as Browning calls him, suggested the sentence which was
+carried out. The men were condemned to lose their ears, to pay a fine of
+£5000 each, and to be imprisoned for the remainder of their lives in the
+castles of Carnarvon, Launceston, and Lancaster. Finch, not satisfied
+with this, added the savage wish that Prynne should be branded on the
+cheek with the letters S. L., to stand for "seditious libeller," and
+this was also done.
+
+The account of the execution of this sentence is almost too horrible to
+read. Some one who recorded the scene wrote, "The humours of the people
+were various; some wept, some laughed, and some were very reserved."
+Prynne, whose sufferings had been greatest for he had been burned as
+well as having his ears taken off, was yet able to indulge in a grim
+piece of humor touching the letters S. L. branded on his cheeks. He
+called them "Stigmata Laudis," the "Scars of Laud," on his way back to
+prison. Popular demonstrations in favor of the prisoners were made all
+along the road when they were taken to their respective prisons, where
+they were allowed neither pen, ink nor books. Fearful lest they might
+somehow still disseminate their heretical doctrines to the outer world,
+the council removed them to still more distant prisons, in the Scilly
+Isles, in Guernsey and in Jersey. Retaliation against this treatment
+found open expression. "A copy of the Star Chamber decree was nailed to
+a board. Its corners were cut off as the ears of Laud's victims had been
+cut off at Westminster. A broad ink mark was drawn round Laud's name. An
+inscription declared that 'The man that puts the saints of God into a
+pillory of wood stands here in a pillory of ink!'"
+
+Things were brought to a crisis in Scotland also, through hatred of Laud
+and the new prayer-book. The King, upon his visit to Scotland, had been
+shocked at the slovenly appearance and the slovenly ritual of
+the Scottish Church, which reflected strongly survivals of the
+Presbyterianism of an earlier time. The King wrote to the Scottish
+Bishops soon after his return to England: "We, tendering the good and
+peace of that Church by having good and decent order and discipline
+observed therein, whereby religion and God's worship may increase, and
+considering that there is nothing more defective in that Church than the
+want of a Book of Common Prayer and uniform service to be kept in all
+the churches thereof, and the want of canons for the uniformity of the
+same, we are hereby pleased to authorise you as the representative body
+of that Church, and do herewith will and require you to condescend upon
+a form of Church service to be used therein, and to set down the canons
+for the uniformity of the discipline thereof." Laud, who as Archbishop
+of Canterbury had no jurisdiction over Scottish Bishops, put his finger
+into the pie as secretary of the King. As Gardiner says, "He conveyed
+instructions to the Bishops, remonstrated with proceedings which shocked
+his sense of order, and held out prospects of advancement to the
+zealous. Scotchmen naturally took offense. They did not trouble
+themselves to distinguish between the secretary and the archbishop. They
+simply said that the Pope of Canterbury was as bad as the Pope of Rome."
+
+The upshot of it all was that in May, 1637, the "new Prayer-book" was
+sent to Scotland, and every minister was ordered to buy two copies on
+pain of outlawry. Riots followed. It was finally decided that it must be
+settled once for all whether a King had any right to change the forms of
+worship without the sanction of a legislative assembly. Then came the
+Scottish Covenant which declared the intention of the signers to uphold
+religious liberty. The account of the signing of this covenant is one of
+the most impressive episodes in all history. The Covenant was carried on
+the 28th of February, 1638, to the Grey Friars' Church to which all the
+gentlemen present in Edinburgh had been summoned. The scene has been
+most sympathetically described by Gardiner.
+
+"At four o'clock in the grey winter evening, the noblemen, the Earl of
+Sutherland leading the way began to sign. Then came the gentlemen, one
+after the other until nearly eight. The next day the ministers were
+called on to testify their approval, and nearly three hundred signatures
+were obtained before night. The Commissioners of the boroughs signed at
+the same time.
+
+"On the third day the people of Edinburgh were called on to attest their
+devotion to the cause which was represented by the Covenant. Tradition
+long loved to tell how the honored parchment, carried back to the Grey
+Friars, was laid out on a tombstone in the churchyard, whilst weeping
+multitudes pressed round in numbers too great to be contained in any
+building. There are moments when the stern Scottish nature breaks out
+into an enthusiasm less passionate, but more enduring, than the frenzy
+of a Southern race. As each man and woman stepped forward in turn, with
+the right hand raised to heaven before the pen was grasped, every one
+there present knew that there would be no flinching amongst that band of
+brothers till their religion was safe from intrusive violence.
+
+"Modern narrators may well turn their attention to the picturesqueness
+of the scene, to the dark rocks of the Castle crag over against the
+churchyard, and to the earnest faces around. The men of the seventeenth
+century had no thought to spare for the earth beneath or for the sky
+above. What they saw was their country's faith trodden under foot, what
+they felt was the joy of those who had been long led astray, and had now
+returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls."
+
+Such were the conditions that brought on the Scotch war, neither Charles
+nor Wentworth being wise enough to make concessions to the Covenanters.
+
+The grievances against the King's Minister Wentworth are in this opening
+scene shown as being aggravated by the fact that the men of the
+"Faction" regard him as a deserter from their cause, Pym, himself being
+one of the number who is loth to think Wentworth stands for the King's
+policy.
+
+The historical ground for the assumption lies in the fact that Wentworth
+was one of the leaders of the opposition in the Parliament of 1628.
+
+The reason for this was largely personal, because of Buckingham's
+treatment of him. Wentworth had refused to take part in the collection
+of the forced loan of 1626, and was dismissed from his official posts in
+consequence. When he further refused to subscribe to that loan himself
+he was imprisoned in the Marshalsea and at Depford. Regarding himself as
+personally attacked by Buckingham, he joined the opposition. Yet, as
+Firth points out, "fiercely as he attacked the King's ministers, he was
+careful to exonerate the King." He concludes his list of grievances by
+saying, "This hath not been done by the King, but by projectors." Again,
+"Whether we shall look upon the King or his people, it did never more
+behove this great physician the parliament, to effect a true consent
+amongst the parties than now. Both are injured, both to be cured. By one
+and the same thing hath the King and people been hurt. I speak truly
+both for the interest of the King and the people."
+
+His intention was to find some means of cooperation which would leave
+the people their liberty and yet give the crown its prerogative, "Let us
+make what laws we can, there must--nay, there will be a trust left in
+the crown."
+
+It will be seen by any unbiased critic that Wentworth was only half for
+the people even at this time. On the other hand, it is not astonishing
+that men, heart and soul for the people, should consider Wentworth's
+subsequent complete devotion to the cause of the King sufficient to
+brand him as an apostate. The fact that he received so many official
+dignities from the King also leant color to the supposition that
+personal ambition was a leading motive with him. With true dramatic
+instinct Browning has centered this feeling and made the most of it in
+the attitude of Pym's party, while he offsets it later in the play by
+showing us the reality of the man Strafford.
+
+There is no very authentic source for the idea also brought out in this
+first scene that Strafford and Pym had been warm personal friends. The
+story is told by Dr. James Welwood, one of the physicians of William
+III., who, in the year 1700, published a volume entitled "Memoirs, of
+the most material transactions in England for the last hundred years
+preceding the Revolution of 1688." Without mentioning any source he
+tells the following story; "There had been a long and intimate
+friendship between Mr. Pym and him [Wentworth], and they had gone hand
+in hand in everything in the House of Commons. But when Sir Thomas
+Wentworth was upon making his peace with the Court, he sent to Pym to
+meet him alone at Greenwich; where he began in a set speech to sound Mr.
+Pym about the dangers they were like to run by the courses they were in;
+and what advantages they might have if they would but listen to some
+offers which would probably be made them from the Court. Pym
+understanding his speech stopped him short with this expression: 'You
+need not use all this art to tell me you have a mind to leave us; but
+remember what I tell you, you are going to be undone. But remember, that
+though you leave us now I will never leave you while your head is upon
+your shoulders.'"
+
+Though only a tradition this was entirely too useful a suggestion not to
+be used. The intensity of the situation between the leaders on opposite
+sides is enhanced tenfold by bringing into the field a personal
+sentiment.
+
+The attitude of Pym's followers is reflected again in their opinion of
+Wentworth's Irish rule. Although Wentworth's policy seemed to be
+successful in Ireland, the very fact of its success would condemn it in
+the eyes of the popular party; besides later developments revealed its
+weaknesses. How it appeared to the eyes of a non-fanatical observer at
+this time may be gathered from the following letter of Sir Thomas Roe to
+the Queen of Bohemia, written in 1634.
+
+"The Lord Deputy of Ireland doth great wonders, and governs like a King,
+and hath taught that Kingdom to show us an example of envy, by having
+parliaments, and knowing wisely how to use them; for they have given the
+King six subsidies, which will arise to £240,000, and they are like to
+have the liberty we contended for, and grace from his Majesty worth
+their gift double; and which is worth much more, the honor of good
+intelligence and love between the King and people, which I would to God
+our great wits had had eyes to see. This is a great service, and to
+give your Majesty a character of the man,--he is severe abroad and in
+business, and sweet in private conversation; retired in his friendships,
+but very firm; a terrible judge and a strong enemy; a servant violently
+zealous in his Master's ends, and not negligent of his own; one that
+will have what he will, and though of great reason, he can make his will
+greater when it may serve him; affecting glory by a seeming contempt;
+one that cannot stay long in the middle region of fortune, being
+entreprenant; but will either be the greatest man in England, or much
+less than he is; lastly, one that may (and his nature lies fit for it,
+for he is ambitious to do what others will not), do your Majesty very
+great service, if you can make him."
+
+In order to be in sympathy with the play throughout and especially with
+the first scene all this historical background must be kept in mind, for
+the talk gives no direct information, it merely in an absolutely
+dramatic fashion reveals the feelings and opinions of the men upon the
+situation, just as friends at a dinner party might discuss one of our
+own less strenuous political situations--all present being perfectly
+familiar with the issues at stake.
+
+
+STRAFFORD
+
+ACT I
+
+SCENE I.--_A House near Whitehall._
+
+_HAMPDEN, HOLLIS, the +younger+ VANE, RUDYARD, FIENNES and many of the
+Presbyterian Party: LOUDON and other Scots' Commissioners._
+
+  _Vane._ I say, if he be here--
+
+  _Rudyard._                     (And he is here!)--
+
+  _Hollis._ For England's sake let every man be still
+  Nor speak of him, so much as say his name,
+  Till Pym rejoin us! Rudyard! Henry Vane!
+  One rash conclusion may decide our course
+  And with it England's fate--think--England's fate!
+  Hampden, for England's sake they should be still!
+
+  _Vane._ You say so, Hollis? Well, I must be still.
+  It is indeed too bitter that one man,
+  Any one man's mere presence, should suspend
+  England's combined endeavor: little need
+  To name him!
+
+  _Rudyard._ For you are his brother, Hollis!
+
+  _Hampden._ Shame on you, Rudyard! time to tell him that,
+  When he forgets the Mother of us all.
+
+  _Rudyard._ Do I forget her?
+
+  _Hampden._                  You talk idle hate
+  Against her foe: is that so strange a thing?
+  Is hating Wentworth all the help she needs?
+
+  _A Puritan._ The Philistine strode, cursing as he went:
+  But David--five smooth pebbles from the brook
+  Within his scrip....
+
+  _Rudyard._           Be you as still as David!
+
+  _Fiennes._ Here's Rudyard not ashamed to wag a tongue
+  Stiff with ten years' disuse of Parliaments;
+  Why, when the last sat, Wentworth sat with us!
+
+  _Rudyard._ Let's hope for news of them now he returns--
+  He that was safe in Ireland, as we thought!
+  --But I'll abide Pym's coming.
+
+  _Vane._                        Now, by Heaven,
+  They may be cool who can, silent who will--
+  Some have a gift that way! Wentworth is here,
+  Here, and the King's safe closeted with him
+  Ere this. And when I think on all that's past
+  Since that man left us, how his single arm
+  Rolled the advancing good of England back
+  And set the woeful past up in its place,
+  Exalting Dagon where the Ark should be,--
+  How that man has made firm the fickle King
+  (Hampden, I will speak out!)--in aught he feared
+  To venture on before; taught tyranny
+  Her dismal trade, the use of all her tools,
+  To ply the scourge yet screw the gag so close
+  That strangled agony bleeds mute to death;
+  How he turns Ireland to a private stage
+  For training infant villanies, new ways
+  Of wringing treasure out of tears and blood,
+  Unheard oppressions nourished in the dark
+  To try how much man's nature can endure
+  --If he dies under it, what harm? if not,
+  Why, one more trick is added to the rest
+  Worth a king's knowing, and what Ireland bears
+  England may learn to bear:--how all this while
+  That man has set himself to one dear task,
+  The bringing Charles to relish more and more
+  Power, power without law, power and blood too
+  --Can I be still?
+
+  _Hampden._       For that you should be still.
+
+  _Vane._ Oh Hampden, then and now! The year he left us,
+  The People in full Parliament could wrest
+  The Bill of Rights from the reluctant King;
+  And now, he'll find in an obscure small room
+  A stealthy gathering of great-hearted men
+  That take up England's cause: England is here!
+
+  _Hampden._ And who despairs of England?
+
+  _Rudyard._                              That do I,
+  If Wentworth comes to rule her. I am sick
+  To think her wretched masters, Hamilton,
+  The muckworm Cottington, the maniac Laud,
+  May yet be longed-for back again. I say,
+  I do despair.
+
+  _Vane._       And, Rudyard, I'll say this--
+  Which all true men say after me, not loud
+  But solemnly and as you'd say a prayer!
+  This King, who treads our England underfoot,
+  Has just so much ... it may be fear or craft,
+  As bids him pause at each fresh outrage; friends,
+  He needs some sterner hand to grasp his own,
+  Some voice to ask, "Why shrink? Am I not by?"
+  Now, one whom England loved for serving her,
+  Found in his heart to say, "I know where best
+  The iron heel shall bruise her, for she leans
+  Upon me when you trample." Witness, you!
+  So Wentworth heartened Charles, so England fell.
+  But inasmuch as life is hard to take
+  From England....
+
+  _Many Voices._  Go on, Vane! 'Tis well said, Vane!
+
+  _Vane._ --Who has not so forgotten Runnymead!--
+
+  _Voices._ 'Tis well and bravely spoken, Vane! Go on!
+
+  _Vane._ --There are some little signs of late she knows
+  The ground no place for her. She glances round,
+  Wentworth has dropped the hand, is gone his way
+  On other service: what if she arise?
+  No! the King beckons, and beside him stands
+  The same bad man once more, with the same smile
+  And the same gesture. Now shall England crouch,
+  Or catch at us and rise?
+
+  _Voices._                The Renegade!
+  Haman! Ahithophel!
+
+  _Hampden._         Gentlemen of the North,
+  It was not thus the night your claims were urged,
+  And we pronounced the League and Covenant,
+  The cause of Scotland, England's cause as well:
+  Vane there, sat motionless the whole night through.
+
+  _Vane._ Hampden!
+
+  _Fiennes._       Stay, Vane!
+
+  _Loudon._                    Be just and patient, Vane!
+
+  _Vane._ Mind how you counsel patience, Loudon! you
+  Have still a Parliament, and this your League
+  To back it; you are free in Scotland still:
+  While we are brothers, hope's for England yet.
+  But know you wherefore Wentworth comes? to quench
+  This last of hopes? that he brings war with him?
+  Know you the man's self? what he dares?
+
+  _Loudon._                               We know,
+  All know--'tis nothing new.
+
+  _Vane._                     And what's new, then,
+  In calling for his life? Why, Pym himself--
+  You must have heard--ere Wentworth dropped our cause
+  He would see Pym first; there were many more
+  Strong on the people's side and friends of his,
+  Eliot that's dead, Rudyard and Hampden here,
+  But for these Wentworth cared not; only, Pym
+  He would see--Pym and he were sworn, 'tis said,
+  To live and die together; so, they met
+  At Greenwich. Wentworth, you are sure, was long,
+  Specious enough, the devil's argument
+  Lost nothing on his lips; he'd have Pym own
+  A patriot could not play a purer part
+  Than follow in his track; they two combined
+  Might put down England. Well, Pym heard him out;
+  One glance--you know Pym's eye--one word was all:
+  "You leave us, Wentworth! while your head is on,
+  I'll not leave you."
+
+  _Hampden._           Has he left Wentworth, then?
+  Has England lost him? Will you let him speak,
+  Or put your crude surmises in his mouth?
+  Away with this! Will you have Pym or Vane?
+
+  _Voices._ Wait Pym's arrival! Pym shall speak.
+
+  _Hampden._                                     Meanwhile
+  Let Loudon read the Parliament's report
+  From Edinburgh: our last hope, as Vane says,
+  Is in the stand it makes. Loudon!
+
+  _Vane._                           No, no!
+  Silent I can be: not indifferent!
+
+  _Hampden._ Then each keep silence, praying God to spare
+  His anger, cast not England quite away
+  In this her visitation!
+
+  _A Puritan._            Seven years long
+  The Midianite drove Israel into dens
+  And caves. Till God sent forth a mighty man,
+
+_PYM enters_
+
+  Even Gideon!
+
+  _Pym._       Wentworth's come: nor sickness, care,
+  The ravaged body nor the ruined soul,
+  More than the winds and waves that beat his ship,
+  Could keep him from the King. He has not reached
+  Whitehall: they've hurried up a Council there
+  To lose no time and find him work enough.
+  Where's Loudon? your Scots' Parliament....
+
+  _Loudon._                                  Holds firm:
+  We were about to read reports.
+
+  _Pym._                         The King
+  Has just dissolved your Parliament.
+
+  _Loudon and other Scots._           Great God!
+  An oath-breaker! Stand by us, England, then!
+
+  _Pym._ The King's too sanguine; doubtless Wentworth's here;
+  But still some little form might be kept up.
+
+  _Hampden._ Now speak, Vane! Rudyard, you had much to say!
+
+  _Hollis._ The rumor's false, then....
+
+  _Pym._                                Ay, the Court gives out
+  His own concerns have brought him back: I know
+  'Tis the King calls him. Wentworth supersedes
+  The tribe of Cottingtons and Hamiltons
+  Whose part is played; there's talk enough, by this,--
+  Merciful talk, the King thinks: time is now
+  To turn the record's last and bloody leaf
+  Which, chronicling a nation's great despair,
+  Tells they were long rebellious, and their lord
+  Indulgent, till, all kind expedients tried,
+  He drew the sword on them and reigned in peace.
+  Laud's laying his religion on the Scots
+  Was the last gentle entry: the new page
+  Shall run, the King thinks, "Wentworth thrust it down
+  At the sword's point."
+
+  _A Puritan._           I'll do your bidding, Pym,
+  England's and God's--one blow!
+
+  _Pym._                         A goodly thing--
+  We all say, friends, it is a goodly thing
+  To right that England. Heaven grows dark above:
+  Let's snatch one moment ere the thunder fall,
+  To say how well the English spirit comes out
+  Beneath it! All have done their best, indeed,
+  From lion Eliot, that grand Englishman,
+  To the least here: and who, the least one here,
+  When she is saved (for her redemption dawns
+  Dimly, most dimly, but it dawns--it dawns)
+  Who'd give at any price his hope away
+  Of being named along with the Great Men?
+  We would not--no, we would not give that up!
+
+  _Hampden._ And one name shall be dearer than all names.
+  When children, yet unborn, are taught that name
+  After their fathers',--taught what matchless man....
+
+  _Pym._ ... Saved England? What if Wentworth's should be still
+  That name?
+
+  _Rudyard and others._ We have just said it, Pym! His death
+  Saves her! We said it--there's no way beside!
+  I'll do God's bidding, Pym! They struck down Joab
+  And purged the land.
+
+  _Vane._             No villanous striking-down!
+
+  _Rudyard._ No, a calm vengeance: let the whole land rise
+  And shout for it. No Feltons!
+
+  _Pym._                        Rudyard, no!
+  England rejects all Feltons; most of all
+  Since Wentworth ... Hampden, say the trust again
+  Of England in her servants--but I'll think
+  You know me, all of you. Then, I believe,
+  Spite of the past, Wentworth rejoins you, friends!
+
+  _Vane and others._ Wentworth? Apostate! Judas! Double-dyed
+  A traitor! Is it Pym, indeed....
+
+  _Pym._                           ... Who says
+  Vane never knew that Wentworth, loved that man,
+  Was used to stroll with him, arm locked in arm,
+  Along the streets to see the people pass,
+  And read in every island-countenance
+  Fresh argument for God against the King,--
+  Never sat down, say, in the very house
+  Where Eliot's brow grew broad with noble thoughts,
+  (You've joined us, Hampden--Hollis, you as well,)
+  And then left talking over Gracchus' death....
+
+  _Vane._ To frame, we know it well, the choicest clause
+  In the Petition of Right: he framed such clause
+  One month before he took at the King's hand
+  His Northern Presidency, which that Bill
+  Denounced.
+
+  _Pym._     Too true! Never more, never more
+  Walked we together! Most alone I went.
+  I have had friends--all here are fast my friends--
+  But I shall never quite forget that friend.
+  And yet it could not but be real in him!
+  You, Vane,--you, Rudyard, have no right to trust
+  To Wentworth: but can no one hope with me?
+  Hampden, will Wentworth dare shed English blood
+  Like water?
+
+  _Hampden._ Ireland is Aceldama.
+
+  _Pym._ Will he turn Scotland to a hunting-ground
+  To please the King, now that he knows the King?
+  The People or the King? and that King, Charles!
+
+  _Hampden._ Pym, all here know you: you'll not set your heart
+  On any baseless dream. But say one deed
+  Of Wentworth's since he left us....
+
+[_Shouting without._
+
+  _Vane._                             There! he comes,
+  And they shout for him! Wentworth's at Whitehall,
+  The King embracing him, now, as we speak,
+  And he, to be his match in courtesies,
+  Taking the whole war's risk upon himself,
+  Now, while you tell us here how changed he is!
+  Hear you?
+
+  _Pym._    And yet if 'tis a dream, no more,
+  That Wentworth chose their side, and brought the King
+  To love it as though Laud had loved it first,
+  And the Queen after;--that he led their cause
+  Calm to success, and kept it spotless through,
+  So that our very eyes could look upon
+  The travail of our souls, and close content
+  That violence, which something mars even right
+  Which sanctions it, had taken off no grace
+  From its serene regard. Only a dream!
+
+  _Hampden._ We meet here to accomplish certain good
+  By obvious means, and keep tradition up
+  Of free assemblages, else obsolete,
+  In this poor chamber: nor without effect
+  Has friend met friend to counsel and confirm,
+  As, listening to the beats of England's heart,
+  We spoke its wants to Scotland's prompt reply
+  By these her delegates. Remains alone
+  That word grow deed, as with God's help it shall--
+  But with the devil's hindrance, who doubts too?
+  Looked we or no that tyranny should turn
+  Her engines of oppression to their use?
+  Whereof, suppose the worst be Wentworth here--
+  Shall we break off the tactics which succeed
+  In drawing out our formidablest foe,
+  Let bickering and disunion take their place?
+  Or count his presence as our conquest's proof,
+  And keep the old arms at their steady play?
+  Proceed to England's work! Fiennes, read the list!
+
+  _Fiennes._ Ship-money is refused or fiercely paid
+  In every county, save the northern parts
+  Where Wentworth's influence....
+
+[_Shouting._
+
+  _Vane._                         I, in England's name,
+  Declare her work, this way, at end! Till now,
+  Up to this moment, peaceful strife was best.
+  We English had free leave to think; till now,
+  We had a shadow of a Parliament
+  In Scotland. But all's changed: they change the first,
+  They try brute-force for law, they, first of all....
+
+  _Voices._ Good! Talk enough! The old true hearts with Vane!
+
+  _Vane._ Till we crush Wentworth for her, there's no act
+  Serves England!
+
+  _Voices._       Vane for England!
+
+  _Pym._                            Pym should be
+  Something to England. I seek Wentworth, friends.
+
+In the second scene of the first act, the man upon whom the popular
+party has been heaping opprobrium appears to speak for himself. Again
+the historical background must be known in order that the whole drift of
+the scene may be understood. Wentworth is talking with Lady Carlisle, a
+woman celebrated for her beauty and her wit, and fond of having
+friendships with great men. Various opinions of this beautiful woman
+have been expressed by those who knew her. "Her beauty," writes one,
+"brought her adorers of all ranks, courtiers, and poets, and statesmen;
+but she remained untouched by their worship." Sir Toby Mathews who
+prefixed to a collection of letters published in 1660 "A character of
+the most excellent Lady, Lucy, Countess of Carlisle," writes that she
+will "freely discourse of love, and hear both the fancies and powers of
+it; but if you will needs bring it within knowledge, and boldly direct
+it to herself, she is likely to divert the discourse, or, at least, seem
+not to understand it. By which you may know her humour, and her justice;
+for since she cannot love in earnest she would have nothing from love."
+According to him she filled her mind "with gallant fancies, and high and
+elevated thoughts," and "her wit being most eminent among the rest of
+her great abilities," even the conversation of those most famed for it
+was affected. Quite another view of her is given in a letter of
+Voiture's written to Mr. Gordon on leaving England in 1623.
+
+"In one human being you let me see more treasures than there are there
+[the Tower], and even more lions and leopards. It will not be difficult
+for you to guess after this that I speak of the Countess of Carlisle.
+For there is nobody else of whom all this good and evil can be said. No
+matter how dangerous it is to let the memory dwell upon her, I have not,
+so far, been able to keep mine from it, and, quite honestly, I would not
+give the picture of her that lingers in my mind, for all the loveliest
+things I have seen in my life. I must confess that she is an enchanting
+personality, and there would not be a woman under heaven so worthy of
+affection, if she only knew what it was, and if she had as sensitive a
+nature as she has a reasonable mind. But with the temperament we know
+she possesses, there is nothing to be said except that she is the most
+lovable of all things not good, and the most delightful poison that
+nature ever concocted." Browning himself says he first sketched her
+character from Mathews, but finding that rather artificial, he used
+Voiture and Waller, who referred to her as the "bright Carlisle of the
+Court of Heaven." It should be remembered that she had become a widow
+and was considerably older at the time of her friendship with Wentworth
+than when Voiture wrote of her, and was probably better balanced, and
+truly worthy of Wentworth's own appreciation of her when he wrote, "A
+nobler nor a more intelligent friendship did I never meet with in my
+life." A passage in a letter to Laud indicates that Wentworth was well
+aware of the practical advantage in having such a friend as Lady
+Carlisle at Court. "I judge her ladyship very considerable. She is often
+in place, and extremely well skilled how to speak with advantage and
+spirit for those friends she professeth unto, which will not be many.
+There is this further in her disposition, she will not seem to be the
+person she is not, an ingenuity I have always observed and honoured her
+for."
+
+It is something of a shock to learn that even before the Wentworth
+episode was well over, she became a friend of his bitterest foe, Pym.
+Gardiner sums up her character in as fair a way as any one,--and not at
+all inconsistent with Browning's portrayal of her.
+
+"Lady Carlisle had now been for many years a widow. She had long been
+the reigning beauty at Court, and she loved to mingle political intrigue
+with social intercourse. For politics as a serious occupation she had no
+aptitude; but, in middle age, she felt a woman's pride in attaching to
+herself the strong heads by which the world was ruled, as she had
+attached to herself in youth, the witty courtier or the agile dancer. It
+was worth a statesman's while to cultivate her acquaintance. She could
+make him a power in society as well as in Council, could worm out a
+secret which it behoved him to know, and could convey to others his
+suggestions with assured fidelity. The calumny which treated Strafford,
+as it afterwards treated Pym, as her accepted lover, may be safely
+disregarded. But there can be no doubt that purely personal motives
+attached her both to Strafford and Pym. For Strafford's theory of
+Monarchical government she cared as little as she cared for Pym's theory
+of Parliamentary government. It may be, too, that some mingled feeling
+may have arisen in Strafford's breast. It was something to have an ally
+at Court ready at all times to plead his cause with gay enthusiasm, to
+warn him of hidden dangers, and to offer him the thread of that
+labyrinth which, under the name of 'the Queen's side,' was such a
+mystery to him. It was something, too, no doubt, that this advocate was
+not a grey haired statesman, but a woman, in spite of growing years, of
+winning grace and sparkling vivacity of eye and tongue."
+
+[Illustration: Charles I]
+
+Strafford, himself, Browning brings before us, ill, and worn out with
+responsibility as he was upon his return to England at this time.
+Carlisle tactfully lets him know how he will have to face criticisms
+from other councillors about the King, and how even the confidence of
+the fickle King cannot be relied upon. In his conference with the King
+in this scene, Strafford, at last, wins the confidence of the King as
+history relates. Wentworth, horrified at the way in which a war with
+Scotland has been precipitated, carries his point, that Parliaments
+should be called in Ireland and England. This will give time for
+preparation, and at the same time an opportunity of convincing the
+people that the war is justified by Scotland's treason, so causing them
+willingly to grant subsidies for the expense of the war. To turn from
+the play to history, Commissioners from the Scottish Parliament, the
+Earls of Loudon and Dumferling had arrived in London to ask that the
+acts of the Scottish Parliament might receive confirmation from the
+King. This question was referred to a committee of eight Privy
+Councillors. Propositions were made to put the Scotch Commissioners in
+prison; however, the King finally decided to dismiss them without
+treating with them. Scottish indignation of course ran high at this
+proceeding, and here Wentworth stepped in and won the King to his policy
+of ruling Scotland directly from England. "He insisted," writes
+Gardiner, "that a Parliament, and a Parliament alone, was the remedy
+fitted for the occasion. Laud and Hamilton gave him their support. He
+carried his point with the Committee. What was of more importance he
+carried it with the King." And as one writer expressed it the Lords were
+of the opinion that "his Majesty should make trial of that once more,
+that so he might leave his people without excuse, and have where withal
+to justify himself to God and the world that in his own inclination he
+desired the old way; but that if his people should not cheerfully,
+according to their duties, meet him in that, especially in this exigent
+when his kingdom and person are in apparent danger, the world might see
+he is forced, contrary to his own inclination, to use extraordinary
+means rather than, by the peevishness of some few factious spirits, to
+suffer his state and government to be lost."
+
+In the play as in history, Charles now confers upon Wentworth an
+Earldom. Shortly after this the King "was prepared," says Gardiner, "to
+confer upon his faithful Minister that token of his confidence which he
+had twice refused before. On January 12, Wentworth received the Earldom
+of Strafford, and a week later he exchanged the title of Lord-Deputy of
+Ireland for the higher dignity of Lord-Lieutenant."
+
+In his conference with Pym, Strafford who, in talking to Carlisle, had
+shown a slight wavering toward the popular party, because of finding
+himself so surrounded by difficulties, stands firm; this episode is a
+striking working up of the tradition of the friendship between these
+two men.
+
+The influence of the Queen upon Charles is the last strand in this
+tangled skein of human destiny brought out by Browning in the scene. The
+Parliament that Wentworth wants she is afraid of lest it should ask for
+a renewal of the persecution of the Catholics. The vacillating Charles,
+in an instant, is ready to repudiate his interview with Wentworth, and
+act only to please the Queen.
+
+
+SCENE II.--_Whitehall._
+
+_+Lady+ CARLISLE and WENTWORTH_
+
+  _Wentworth._ And the King?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._          Wentworth, lean on me! Sit then!
+  I'll tell you all; this horrible fatigue
+  Will kill you.
+
+  _Wentworth._   No;--or, Lucy, just your arm;
+  I'll not sit till I've cleared this up with him:
+  After that, rest. The King?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._            Confides in you.
+
+  _Wentworth._ Why? or, why now?--They have kind throats, the knaves!
+  Shout for me--they!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._    You come so strangely soon:
+  Yet we took measures to keep off the crowd--
+  Did they shout for you?
+
+  _Wentworth._            Wherefore should they not?
+  Does the King take such measures for himself?
+  Besides, there's such a dearth of malcontents,
+  You say!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ I said but few dared carp at you.
+
+  _Wentworth._ At me? at us, I hope! The King and I!
+  He's surely not disposed to let me bear
+  The fame away from him of these late deeds
+  In Ireland? I am yet his instrument
+  Be it for well or ill? He trusts me too!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ The King, dear Wentworth, purposes, I said,
+  To grant you, in the face of all the Court....
+
+  _Wentworth._ All the Court! Evermore the Court about us!
+  Savile and Holland, Hamilton and Vane
+  About us,--then the King will grant me--what?
+  That he for once put these aside and say--
+  "Tell me your whole mind, Wentworth!"
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                      You professed
+  You would be calm.
+
+  _Wentworth._       Lucy, and I am calm!
+  How else shall I do all I come to do,
+  Broken, as you may see, body and mind,
+  How shall I serve the King? Time wastes meanwhile,
+  You have not told me half. His footstep! No.
+  Quick, then, before I meet him,--I am calm--
+  Why does the King distrust me?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._               He does not
+  Distrust you.
+
+  _Wentworth._ Lucy, you can help me; you
+  Have even seemed to care for me: one word!
+  Is it the Queen?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ No, not the Queen: the party
+  That poisons the Queen's ear, Savile and Holland.
+
+  _Wentworth._ I know, I know: old Vane, too, he's one too?
+  Go on--and he's made Secretary. Well?
+  Or leave them out and go straight to the charge--
+  The charge!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Oh, there's no charge, no precise charge;
+  Only they sneer, make light of--one may say,
+  Nibble at what you do.
+
+  _Wentworth._           I know! but, Lucy,
+  I reckoned on you from the first!--Go on!
+  --Was sure could I once see this gentle friend
+  When I arrived, she'd throw an hour away
+  To help her ... what am I?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._           You thought of me,
+  Dear Wentworth?
+
+  _Wentworth._    But go on! The party here!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ They do not think your Irish government
+  Of that surpassing value....
+
+  _Wentworth._                 The one thing
+  Of value! The one service that the crown
+  May count on! All that keeps these very Vanes
+  In power, to vex me--not that they do vex,
+  Only it might vex some to hear that service
+  Decried, the sole support that's left the King!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ So the Archbishop says.
+
+  _Wentworth._                             Ah? well, perhaps
+  The only hand held up in my defence
+  May be old Laud's! These Hollands then, these Saviles
+  Nibble? They nibble?--that's the very word!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Your profit in the Customs, Bristol says,
+  Exceeds the due proportion: while the tax....
+
+  _Wentworth._ Enough! 'tis too unworthy,--I am not
+  So patient as I thought. What's Pym about?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Pym?
+
+  _Wentworth._          Pym and the People.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                          O, the Faction!
+  Extinct--of no account: there'll never be
+  Another Parliament.
+
+  _Wentworth._        Tell Savile that!
+  You may know--(ay, you do--the creatures here
+  Never forget!) that in my earliest life
+  I was not ... much that I am now! The King
+  May take my word on points concerning Pym
+  Before Lord Savile's, Lucy, or if not,
+  I bid them ruin their wise selves, not me,
+  These Vanes and Hollands! I'll not be their tool
+  Who might be Pym's friend yet.
+                                   But there's the King!
+  Where is he?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Just apprised that you arrive.
+
+  _Wentworth._ And why not here to meet me? I was told
+  He sent for me, nay, longed for me.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                    Because,--
+  He is now ... I think a Council's sitting now
+  About this Scots affair.
+
+  _Wentworth._            A Council sits?
+  They have not taken a decided course
+  Without me in the matter?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._          I should say....
+
+  _Wentworth._ The war? They cannot have agreed to that?
+  Not the Scots' war?--without consulting me--
+  Me, that am here to show how rash it is,
+  How easy to dispense with?--Ah, you too
+  Against me! well,--the King may take his time.
+  --Forget it, Lucy! Cares make peevish: mine
+  Weigh me (but 'tis a secret) to my grave.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ For life or death I am your own, dear friend!
+
+[_Goes out._
+
+  _Wentworth._ Heartless! but all are heartless here. Go now,
+  Forsake the People!
+                      I did not forsake
+  The People: they shall know it, when the King
+  Will trust me!--who trusts all beside at once,
+  While I have not spoke Vane and Savile fair,
+  And am not trusted: have but saved the throne:
+  Have not picked up the Queen's glove prettily,
+  And am not trusted. But he'll see me now.
+  Weston is dead: the Queen's half English now--
+  More English: one decisive word will brush
+  These insects from ... the step I know so well!
+  The King! But now, to tell him ... no--to ask
+  What's in me he distrusts:--or, best begin
+  By proving that this frightful Scots affair
+  Is just what I foretold. So much to say,
+  And the flesh fails, now, and the time is come,
+  And one false step no way to be repaired.
+  You were avenged, Pym, could you look on me.
+
+_PYM enters._
+
+  _Wentworth._ I little thought of you just then.
+
+  _Pym._                                          No? I
+  Think always of you, Wentworth.
+
+  _Wentworth._                    The old voice!
+  I wait the King, sir.
+
+  _Pym._                True--you look so pale!
+  A Council sits within; when that breaks up
+  He'll see you.
+
+  _Wentworth._   Sir, I thank you.
+
+  _Pym._                           Oh, thank Laud!
+  You know when Laud once gets on Church affairs
+  The case is desperate: he'll not be long
+  To-day: he only means to prove, to-day,
+  We English all are mad to have a hand
+  In butchering the Scots for serving God
+  After their fathers' fashion: only that!
+
+[Illustration: Whitehall]
+
+  _Wentworth._ Sir, keep your jests for those who relish them!
+  (Does he enjoy their confidence?) 'Tis kind
+  To tell me what the Council does.
+
+  _Pym._                            You grudge
+  That I should know it had resolved on war
+  Before you came? no need: you shall have all
+  The credit, trust me!
+
+  _Wentworth._          Have the Council dared--
+  They have not dared ... that is--I know you not.
+  Farewell, sir: times are changed.
+
+  _Pym._                            --Since we two met
+  At Greenwich? Yes: poor patriots though we be,
+  You cut a figure, makes some slight return
+  For your exploits in Ireland! Changed indeed,
+  Could our friend Eliot look from out his grave!
+  Ah, Wentworth, one thing for acquaintance' sake,
+  Just to decide a question; have you, now,
+  Felt your old self since you forsook us?
+
+  _Wentworth._                             Sir!
+
+  _Pym._ Spare me the gesture! you misapprehend.
+  Think not I mean the advantage is with me.
+  I was about to say that, for my part,
+  I never quite held up my head since then--
+  Was quite myself since then: for first, you see,
+  I lost all credit after that event
+  With those who recollect how sure I was
+  Wentworth would outdo Eliot on our side.
+  Forgive me: Savile, old Vane, Holland here,
+  Eschew plain-speaking: 'tis a trick I keep.
+
+  _Wentworth._ How, when, where, Savile, Vane, and Holland speak,
+  Plainly or otherwise, would have my scorn,
+  All of my scorn, sir....
+
+  _Pym._                   ... Did not my poor thoughts
+  Claim somewhat?
+
+  _Wentworth._    Keep your thoughts! believe the King
+  Mistrusts me for their prattle, all these Vanes
+  And Saviles! make your mind up, o' God's love,
+  That I am discontented with the King!
+
+  _Pym._ Why, you may be: I should be, that I know,
+  Were I like you.
+
+  _Wentworth._     Like me?
+
+  _Pym._                    I care not much
+  For titles: our friend Eliot died no lord,
+  Hampden's no lord, and Savile is a lord;
+  But you care, since you sold your soul for one.
+  I can't think, therefore, your soul's purchaser
+  Did well to laugh you to such utter scorn
+  When you twice prayed so humbly for its price,
+  The thirty silver pieces ... I should say,
+  The Earldom you expected, still expect,
+  And may. Your letters were the movingest!
+  Console yourself: I've borne him prayers just now
+  From Scotland not to be oppressed by Laud,
+  Words moving in their way: he'll pay, be sure,
+  As much attention as to those you sent.
+
+  _Wentworth._ False, sir! Who showed them you? Suppose it so,
+  The King did very well ... nay, I was glad
+  When it was shown me: I refused, the first!
+  John Pym, you were my friend--forbear me once!
+
+  _Pym._ Oh, Wentworth, ancient brother of my soul,
+  That all should come to this!
+
+  _Wentworth._                  Leave me!
+
+  _Pym._                                  My friend,
+  Why should I leave you?
+
+  _Wentworth._            To tell Rudyard this,
+  And Hampden this!
+
+  _Pym._            Whose faces once were bright
+  At my approach, now sad with doubt and fear,
+  Because I hope in you--yes, Wentworth, you
+  Who never mean to ruin England--you
+  Who shake off, with God's help, an obscene dream
+  In this Ezekiel chamber, where it crept
+  Upon you first, and wake, yourself, your true
+  And proper self, our Leader, England's Chief,
+  And Hampden's friend!
+                        This is the proudest day!
+  Come, Wentworth! Do not even see the King!
+  The rough old room will seem itself again!
+  We'll both go in together: you've not seen
+  Hampden so long: come: and there's Fiennes: you'll have
+  To know young Vane. This is the proudest day!
+
+[_The KING enters. WENTWORTH lets fall PYM'S hand._
+
+  _Charles._ Arrived, my lord?--This gentleman, we know
+  Was your old friend.
+                       The Scots shall be informed
+  What we determine for their happiness.
+
+[_PYM goes out._
+
+  You have made haste, my lord.
+
+  _Wentworth._                  Sir, I am come....
+
+  _Charles._ To see an old familiar--nay, 'tis well;
+  Aid us with his experience: this Scots' League
+  And Covenant spreads too far, and we have proofs
+  That they intrigue with France: the Faction too,
+  Whereof your friend there is the head and front,
+  Abets them,--as he boasted, very like.
+
+  _Wentworth._ Sir, trust me! but for this once, trust me, sir!
+
+  _Charles._ What can you mean?
+
+  _Wentworth._ That you should trust me, sir!
+  Oh--not for my sake! but 'tis sad, so sad
+  That for distrusting me, you suffer--you
+  Whom I would die to serve: sir, do you think
+  That I would die to serve you?
+
+  _Charles._                     But rise, Wentworth!
+
+  _Wentworth._ What shall convince you? What does Savile do
+  To prove him.... Ah, one can't tear out one's heart
+  And show it, how sincere a thing it is!
+
+  _Charles._ Have I not trusted you?
+
+  _Wentworth._                       Say aught but that!
+  There is my comfort, mark you: all will be
+  So different when you trust me--as you shall!
+  It has not been your fault,--I was away,
+  Mistook, maligned, how was the King to know?
+  I am here, now--he means to trust me, now--
+  All will go on so well!
+
+  _Charles._              Be sure I do--
+  I've heard that I should trust you: as you came,
+  Your friend, the Countess, told me....
+
+  _Wentworth._                           No,--hear nothing--
+  Be told nothing about me!--you're not told
+  Your right-hand serves you, or your children love you!
+
+  _Charles._ You love me, Wentworth: rise!
+
+  _Wentworth._                             I can speak now.
+  I have no right to hide the truth. 'Tis I
+  Can save you: only I. Sir, what must be?
+
+  _Charles._ Since Laud's assured (the minutes are within)
+  --Loath as I am to spill my subjects' blood....
+
+  _Wentworth._ That is, he'll have a war: what's done is done!
+
+  _Charles._ They have intrigued with France; that's clear to Laud.
+
+  _Wentworth._ Has Laud suggested any way to meet
+  The war's expense?
+
+  _Charles._         He'd not decide so far
+  Until you joined us.
+
+  _Wentworth._         Most considerate!
+  He's certain they intrigue with France, these Scots?
+  The People would be with us.
+
+  _Charles._                   Pym should know.
+
+  _Wentworth._ The People for us--were the People for us!
+  Sir, a great thought comes to reward your trust:
+  Summon a Parliament! in Ireland first,
+  Then, here.
+
+  _Charles._ In truth?
+
+  _Wentworth._          That saves us! that puts off
+  The war, gives time to right their grievances--
+  To talk with Pym. I know the Faction,--Laud
+  So styles it,--tutors Scotland: all their plans
+  Suppose no Parliament: in calling one
+  You take them by surprise. Produce the proofs
+  Of Scotland's treason; then bid England help:
+  Even Pym will not refuse.
+
+  _Charles._                You would begin
+  With Ireland?
+
+  _Wentworth._ Take no care for that: that's sure
+  To prosper.
+
+  _Charles._ You shall rule me. You were best
+  Return at once: but take this ere you go!
+  Now, do I trust you? You're an Earl: my Friend
+  Of Friends: yes, while.... You hear me not!
+
+  _Wentworth._ Say it all o'er again--but once again:
+  The first was for the music: once again!
+
+  _Charles._ Strafford, my friend, there may have been reports,
+  Vain rumors. Henceforth touching Strafford is
+  To touch the apple of my sight: why gaze
+  So earnestly?
+
+  _Wentworth._ I am grown young again,
+  And foolish. What was it we spoke of?
+
+  _Charles._                            Ireland,
+  The Parliament,--
+
+  _Wentworth._      I may go when I will?
+  --Now?
+
+  _Charles._ Are you tired so soon of us?
+
+  _Wentworth._                            My King!
+  But you will not so utterly abhor
+  A Parliament? I'd serve you any way.
+
+  _Charles._ You said just now this was the only way.
+
+  _Wentworth._ Sir, I will serve you.
+
+  _Charles._                          Strafford, spare yourself:
+  You are so sick, they tell me.
+
+  _Wentworth._                   'Tis my soul
+  That's well and prospers now.
+                                This Parliament--
+  We'll summon it, the English one--I'll care
+  For everything. You shall not need them much.
+
+  _Charles._ If they prove restive....
+
+  _Wentworth._                         I shall be with you.
+
+  _Charles._ Ere they assemble?
+
+  _Wentworth._                  I will come, or else
+  Deposit this infirm humanity
+  I' the dust. My whole heart stays with you, my King!
+
+[_As WENTWORTH goes out, the QUEEN enters._
+
+  _Charles._ That man must love me.
+
+  _Queen._                          Is it over then?
+  Why, he looks yellower than ever! Well,
+  At least we shall not hear eternally
+  Of service--services: he's paid at least.
+
+  _Charles._ Not done with: he engages to surpass
+  All yet performed in Ireland.
+
+  _Queen._                      I had thought
+  Nothing beyond was ever to be done.
+  The war, Charles--will he raise supplies enough?
+
+  _Charles._ We've hit on an expedient; he ... that is,
+  I have advised ... we have decided on
+  The calling--in Ireland--of a Parliament.
+
+  _Queen._ O truly! You agree to that? Is that
+  The first fruit of his counsel? But I guessed
+  As much.
+
+  _Charles._   This is too idle, Henriette!
+  I should know best. He will strain every nerve,
+  And once a precedent established....
+
+  _Queen._                              Notice
+  How sure he is of a long term of favor!
+  He'll see the next, and the next after that;
+  No end to Parliaments!
+
+  _Charles._             Well, it is done.
+  He talks it smoothly, doubtless. If, indeed,
+  The Commons here....
+
+  _Queen._             Here! you will summon them
+  Here? Would I were in France again to see
+  A King!
+
+  _Charles._ But, Henriette....
+
+  _Queen._                      Oh, the Scots see clear!
+  Why should they bear your rule?
+
+  _Charles._                      But listen, sweet!
+
+  _Queen._ Let Wentworth listen--you confide in him!
+
+  _Charles._ I do not, love,--I do not so confide!
+  The Parliament shall never trouble us
+  ... Nay, hear me! I have schemes, such schemes: we'll buy
+  The leaders off: without that, Wentworth's counsel
+  Had ne'er prevailed on me. Perhaps I call it
+  To have excuse for breaking it for ever,
+  And whose will then the blame be? See you not?
+  Come, dearest!--look, the little fairy, now,
+  That cannot reach my shoulder! Dearest, come!
+
+In the second act, the historical episode, which pervades the act is the
+assembling and the dissolution of the Short Parliament. Only the salient
+points of the political situation have been seized upon by Browning. As
+in the first act, the popular party in private conclave is introduced.
+From the talk it is gathered that feeling runs high against Strafford,
+by whose advice the Parliament had been called, because of the
+exorbitant demands made upon it for money to support an army, this army
+to crush Scotland whose cause was so nearly like its own. The popular
+party or the Faction had supposed the Parliament would be a means for
+the redressing of its long list of grievances which had been
+accumulating during the years since the last Parliament had been held.
+Instead of that the Commons was deliberately informed by Charles that
+there would be no discussions of its demands until it had granted the
+subsidies for which it had been asked. The play gives one a much more
+lively sense of the indignant feelings of the duped men than can
+possibly be gained by reading many more pages of history with its
+endless minor details. Upon this gathering, Pym suddenly enters again,
+and to the reproaches of him for his belief in Strafford, makes the
+reply that the Parliament has been dissolved, the King has cast
+Strafford off forever, and henceforth Strafford will be on their
+side,--a conclusion not warranted by history, and, of course, found out
+to be erroneous by Pym and his followers in the next scene. Again there
+is the dramatic need to emphasize the human side of life even in an
+essentially political play, by showing that Pym's friendship and loyalty
+to Wentworth were no uncertain elements in his character. The moment it
+could be proved beyond a doubt that Wentworth was in the eyes of Pym,
+England's enemy, that moment Pym knew it would become his painful duty
+to crush Wentworth utterly, therefore Pym had for his own conscience'
+sake to make the uttermost trial of his faith.
+
+The second scene, as in the first act, brings out the other side. It is
+in the main true to history though much condensed. History relates that
+after the Short Parliament was dissolved, "voices were raised at
+Whitehall in condemnation of Strafford." His policy of raising subsidies
+from the Parliament having failed, criticisms would, of course, be made
+upon his having pushed ahead a war without the proper means of
+sustaining it. Charles himself was also frightened by the manifestations
+of popular discontent and failed to uphold Wentworth in his policy.
+
+Northumberland had been appointed commander-in-chief of the army, but
+besides having little heart for an enterprise so badly prepared for, he
+was ill in bed and could not take command of the army, so the King
+appointed Strafford in his place. A hint of Strafford as he appears in
+this scene may be taken from Clarendon who writes "The earl of Strafford
+was scarce recovered from a great sickness, yet was willing to undertake
+the charge out of pure indignation to see how few men were forward to
+serve the King with that vigor of mind they ought to do; but knowing
+well the malicious designs which were contrived against himself,
+he would rather serve as lieutenant-general under the earl of
+Northumberland, than that he should resign his commission: and so, with
+and under that qualification, he made all possible haste towards the
+north before he had strength enough for the journey." Browning makes the
+King tell Strafford in this interview that he has dissolved the
+Parliament. He represents Strafford as horrified by the news and driven
+in this extremity to suggest the desperate measure of debasing the
+coinage as a means of obtaining funds. Strafford actually counseled
+this, when all else failed, namely, the proposed loan from the city, and
+one from the Spanish government, but, according to history, he himself
+voted for the dissolution of Parliament, though the play is accurate in
+laying the necessity of the dissolution at the door of old Vane. It was
+truly his ill-judged vehemence, for, not able to brook the arguments of
+the Commons, "He rose," says Gardiner, "to state that the King would
+accept nothing less than the twelve subsidies which he had demanded in
+his message. Upon this the Committee broke up without coming to a
+resolution, postponing further consideration of the matter to the
+following day." The next morning the King who had called his councillors
+together early "announced his intention of proceeding to a dissolution.
+Strafford, who arrived late, begged that the question might first be
+seriously discussed, and that the opinions of the Councillors, who were
+also members of the Lower House, might first be heard. Vane declared
+that there was no hope that the Commons 'would give one penny.' On this
+the votes were taken. Northumberland and Holland were alone in wishing
+to avert a dissolution. Supported by the rest of the Council the King
+hurried to the House of Lords and dissolved Parliament."
+
+Wholly imaginary is the episode in this scene where Pym and his
+followers break in upon the interview of Wentworth and the King. Just
+at the climax of Wentworth's sorrowful rage at the King's treatment of
+him, they come to claim Wentworth for their side.
+
+  That you would say I did advise the war;
+  And if, through your own weakness, or what's worse,
+  These Scots, with God to help them, drive me back,
+  You will not step between the raging People
+  And me, to say....
+                     I knew it! from the first
+  I knew it! Never was so cold a heart!
+  Remember that I said it--that I never
+  Believed you for a moment!
+                             --And, you loved me?
+  You thought your perfidy profoundly hid
+  Because I could not share the whisperings
+  With Vane, with Savile? What, the face was masked?
+  I had the heart to see, sir! Face of flesh,
+  But heart of stone--of smooth cold frightful stone!
+  Ay, call them! Shall I call for you? The Scots
+  Goaded to madness? Or the English--Pym--
+  Shall I call Pym, your subject? Oh, you think
+  I'll leave them in the dark about it all?
+  They shall not know you? Hampden, Pym shall not?
+
+_PYM, HAMPDEN, VANE, etc., enter._
+
+  [_Dropping on his knee._] Thus favored with your gracious countenance
+  What shall a rebel League avail against
+  Your servant, utterly and ever yours?
+  So, gentlemen, the King's not even left
+  The privilege of bidding me farewell
+  Who haste to save the People--that you style
+  Your People--from the mercies of the Scots
+  And France their friend?
+  [_To CHARLES._] Pym's grave grey eyes are fixed
+  Upon you, sir!
+                 Your pleasure, gentlemen?
+
+  _Hampden._ The King dissolved us--'tis the King we seek
+  And not Lord Strafford.
+
+  _Strafford._            --Strafford, guilty too
+  Of counselling the measure. [_To CHARLES._] (Hush ... you know--
+  You have forgotten--sir, I counselled it)
+  A heinous matter, truly! But the King
+  Will yet see cause to thank me for a course
+  Which now, perchance ... (Sir, tell them so!)--he blames.
+  Well, choose some fitter time to make your charge:
+  I shall be with the Scots, you understand?
+  Then yelp at me!
+                   Meanwhile, your Majesty
+  Binds me, by this fresh token of your trust....
+
+[_Under the pretence of an earnest farewell, STRAFFORD conducts CHARLES
+to the door, in such a manner as to hide his agitation from the rest: as
+the King disappears, they turn as by one impulse to PYM, who has not
+changed his original posture of surprise._
+
+  _Hampden._ Leave we this arrogant strong wicked man!
+
+  _Vane and others._ Hence, Pym! Come out of this unworthy place
+  To our old room again! He's gone.
+
+[_STRAFFORD, just about to follow the KING, looks back._
+
+  _Pym._                            Not gone!
+  [_To STRAFFORD._] Keep tryst! the old appointment's made anew:
+  Forget not we shall meet again!
+
+  _Strafford._                    So be it!
+  And if an army follows me?
+
+  _Vane._                    His friends
+  Will entertain your army!
+
+  _Pym._                    I'll not say
+  You have misreckoned, Strafford: time shows.
+                                               Perish
+  Body and spirit! Fool to feign a doubt,
+  Pretend the scrupulous and nice reserve
+  Of one whose prowess shall achieve the feat!
+  What share have I in it? Do I affect
+  To see no dismal sign above your head
+  When God suspends his ruinous thunder there?
+  Strafford is doomed. Touch him no one of you!
+
+[_PYM, HAMPDEN, etc., go out._
+
+  _Strafford._ Pym, we shall meet again!
+
+In the final talk of this scene with Carlisle, the pathos of Strafford's
+position is wonderfully brought out--the man who loves his King so
+overmuch that no perfidy on the King's part can make his resolution to
+serve him waver for an instant.
+
+_+Lady+ CARLISLE enters._
+
+                                You here, child?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                              Hush--
+  I know it all: hush, Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                    Ah? you know?
+  Well. I shall make a sorry soldier, Lucy!
+  All knights begin their enterprise, we read,
+  Under the best of auspices; 'tis morn,
+  The Lady girds his sword upon the Youth
+  (He's always very young)--the trumpets sound,
+  Cups pledge him, and, why, the King blesses him--
+  You need not turn a page of the romance
+  To learn the Dreadful Giant's fate. Indeed,
+  We've the fair Lady here; but she apart,--
+  A poor man, rarely having handled lance,
+  And rather old, weary, and far from sure
+  His Squires are not the Giant's friends. All's one:
+  Let us go forth!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Go forth?
+
+  _Strafford._               What matters it?
+  We shall die gloriously--as the book says.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ To Scotland? Not to Scotland?
+
+  _Strafford._                                   Am I sick
+  Like your good brother, brave Northumberland?
+  Beside, these walls seem falling on me.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                        Strafford,
+  The wind that saps these walls can undermine
+  Your camp in Scotland, too. Whence creeps the wind?
+  Have you no eyes except for Pym? Look here!
+  A breed of silken creatures lurk and thrive
+  In your contempt. You'll vanquish Pym? Old Vane
+  Can vanquish you. And Vane you think to fly?
+  Rush on the Scots! Do nobly! Vane's slight sneer
+  Shall test success, adjust the praise, suggest
+  The faint result: Vane's sneer shall reach you there.
+  --You do not listen!
+
+  _Strafford._         Oh,--I give that up!
+  There's fate in it: I give all here quite up.
+  Care not what old Vane does or Holland does
+  Against me! 'Tis so idle to withstand!
+  In no case tell me what they do!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                But, Strafford....
+
+  _Strafford._ I want a little strife, beside; real strife;
+  This petty palace-warfare does me harm:
+  I shall feel better, fairly out of it.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                        Why do you smile?
+
+  _Strafford._ I got to fear them, child!
+  I could have torn his throat at first, old Vane's,
+  As he leered at me on his stealthy way
+  To the Queen's closet. Lord, one loses heart!
+  I often found it on my lips to say
+  "Do not traduce me to her!"
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._            But the King....
+
+  _Strafford._ The King stood there, 'tis not so long ago,
+  --There; and the whisper, Lucy, "Be my friend
+  Of friends!"--My King! I would have....
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                        ... Died for him?
+
+  _Strafford._ Sworn him true, Lucy: I can die for him.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ But go not, Strafford! But you must renounce
+  This project on the Scots! Die, wherefore die?
+  Charles never loved you.
+
+  _Strafford._             And he never will.
+  He's not of those who care the more for men
+  That they're unfortunate.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._          Then wherefore die
+  For such a master?
+
+  _Strafford._       You that told me first
+  How good he was--when I must leave true friends
+  To find a truer friend!--that drew me here
+  From Ireland,--"I had but to show myself
+  And Charles would spurn Vane, Savile, and the rest"--
+  You, child, to ask me this?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._            (If he have set
+  His heart abidingly on Charles!)
+                                   Then, friend,
+  I shall not see you any more.
+
+  _Strafford._                  Yes, Lucy.
+  There's one man here I have to meet.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                     (The King!
+  What way to save him from the King?
+                                      My soul--
+  That lent from its own store the charmed disguise
+  Which clothes the King--he shall behold my soul!)
+  Strafford,--I shall speak best if you'll not gaze
+  Upon me: I had never thought, indeed,
+  To speak, but you would perish too, so sure!
+  Could you but know what 'tis to bear, my friend,
+  One image stamped within you, turning blank
+  The else imperial brilliance of your mind,--
+  A weakness, but most precious,--like a flaw
+  I' the diamond, which should shape forth some sweet face
+  Yet to create, and meanwhile treasured there
+  Lest nature lose her gracious thought for ever!
+
+  _Strafford._ When could it be? no! Yet ... was it the day
+  We waited in the anteroom, till Holland
+  Should leave the presence-chamber?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                   What?
+
+  _Strafford._                            --That I
+  Described to you my love for Charles?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                    (Ah, no--
+  One must not lure him from a love like that!
+  Oh, let him love the King and die! 'Tis past.
+  I shall not serve him worse for that one brief
+  And passionate hope, silent for ever now!)
+  And you are really bound for Scotland then?
+  I wish you well: you must be very sure
+  Of the King's faith, for Pym and all his crew
+  Will not be idle--setting Vane aside!
+
+  _Strafford._ If Pym is busy,--you may write of Pym.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ What need, since there's your King to take your part?
+  He may endure Vane's counsel; but for Pym--
+  Think you he'll suffer Pym to....
+
+  _Strafford._                      Child, your hair
+  Is glossier than the Queen's!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._              Is that to ask
+  A curl of me?
+
+  _Strafford._ Scotland----the weary way!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Stay, let me fasten it.
+                                          --A rival's, Strafford?
+
+  _Strafford_ [_showing the George_]. He hung it there: twine yours
+          around it, child!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ No--no--another time--I trifle so!
+  And there's a masque on foot. Farewell. The Court
+  Is dull; do something to enliven us
+  In Scotland: we expect it at your hands.
+
+  _Strafford._ I shall not fail in Scotland.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                           Prosper--if
+  You'll think of me sometimes!
+
+  _Strafford._                  How think of him
+  And not of you? of you, the lingering streak
+  (A golden one) in my good fortune's eve.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Strafford.... Well, when the eve has its last streak
+  The night has its first star.
+
+[_She goes out._
+
+  _Strafford._                  That voice of hers--
+  You'd think she had a heart sometimes! His voice
+  Is soft too.
+               Only God can save him now.
+  Be Thou about his bed, about his path!
+  His path! Where's England's path? Diverging wide,
+  And not to join again the track my foot
+  Must follow--whither? All that forlorn way
+  Among the tombs! Far--far--till.... What, they do
+  Then join again, these paths? For, huge in the dusk,
+  There's--Pym to face!
+                        Why then, I have a foe
+  To close with, and a fight to fight at last
+  Worthy my soul! What, do they beard the King,
+  And shall the King want Strafford at his need?
+  Am I not here?
+                 Not in the market-place,
+  Pressed on by the rough artisans, so proud
+  To catch a glance from Wentworth! They lie down
+  Hungry yet smile "Why, it must end some day:
+  Is he not watching for our sake?" Not there!
+  But in Whitehall, the whited sepulchre,
+  The....
+          Curse nothing to-night! Only one name
+  They'll curse in all those streets to-night. Whose fault?
+  Did I make kings? set up, the first, a man
+  To represent the multitude, receive
+  All love in right of them--supplant them so,
+  Until you love the man and not the king----
+  The man with the mild voice and mournful eyes
+  Which send me forth.
+                       --To breast the bloody sea
+  That sweeps before me: with one star for guide.
+  Night has its first, supreme, forsaken star.
+
+During the third act, the long Parliament is in session, and Pym is
+making his great speech impeaching Wentworth.
+
+The conditions of affairs at the time of this Parliament were well-nigh
+desperate for Charles and Wentworth. Things had not gone well with the
+Scottish war and Wentworth was falling more and more into disfavor.
+England was now threatened with a Scottish invasion. Still, even with
+this danger to face it was impossible to raise money to support the
+army. The English had a suspicion that the Scotch cause was their own.
+The universal demand for a Parliament could no longer be ignored; the
+King, therefore, summoned it to meet on the third of November. As Firth
+observes, "To Strafford this meant ruin, but he hardly realized the
+greatness of the danger in which he stood. On October 8, the Scotch
+Commissioners in a public paper denounced him as an incendiary, and
+declared that they meant to insist on his punishment.
+
+"As soon as the Parliament opened Charles discovered that it was
+necessary for his service to have Strafford again by his side, and
+summoned him to London. There is evidence that his friends urged him to
+pass over to Ireland where the army rested at his devotion, or to
+transport himself to foreign Kingdoms till fairer weather here should
+invite him home. The Marquis of Hamilton advised him to fly, but as
+Hamilton told the King, the Earl was too great-hearted to fear. Though
+conscious of the peril of obedience, he set out to London to stand by
+his Master."
+
+The enmity of the Court party to Strafford is touched upon in the first
+scene, and in the second, Strafford's return, unsuspecting of the great
+blow that awaits him. He had indeed meditated a blow on his own part.
+According to Firth, he felt that "One desperate resource remained. The
+intrigues of the parliamentary leaders with the Scots had come to
+Strafford's knowledge, and he had determined to impeach them of high
+treason. He could prove that Pym and his friends had secretly
+communicated with the rebels, and invited them to bring a Scottish army
+into England. Strafford arrived in London on Monday, November 9, 1640,
+and spent Tuesday in resting after his journey. On the morning of
+Wednesday the 11th, he took his seat in the House of Lords, but did not
+strike the blow." Upon that day he was impeached of high treason by Pym.
+Gardiner's account here has much the same dramatic force as the play.
+
+"Followed by a crowd of approving members, Pym carried up the message.
+Whilst the Lords were still debating on this unusual request for
+imprisonment before the charge had been set forth, the news of the
+impeachment was carried to Strafford. 'I will go,' he proudly said 'and
+look my accusers in the face.' With haughty mien and scowling brow he
+strode up the floor of the House to his place of honor. There were those
+amongst the Peers who had no wish to allow him to speak, lest he should
+accuse them of complicity with the Scots. The Lords, as a body, felt
+even more personally aggrieved by his method of government than the
+Commons. Shouts of 'Withdraw! withdraw!' rose from every side. As soon
+as he was gone an order was passed sequestering the Lord-Lieutenant from
+his place in the House and committing him to the custody of the
+Gentleman Usher. He was then called in and bidden to kneel whilst the
+order was read. He asked permission to speak, but his request was
+sternly refused. Maxwell, the Usher of the Black Rod, took from him his
+sword, and conducted him out of the House. The crowd outside gazed
+pitilessly on the fallen minister, 'No man capping to him, before whom
+that morning the greatest in England would have stood dis-covered.'
+'What is the matter?' they asked. 'A small matter, I warrant you,'
+replied Strafford with forced levity. 'Yes, indeed,' answered a
+bystander, 'high treason is a small matter.'"
+
+This passage brings up the scene in a manner so similar to that of the
+play, it is safe to say that Gardiner was here influenced by Browning,
+the history having been written many years after the play.
+
+
+SCENE II.--_Whitehall._
+
+_The QUEEN and +Lady+ CARLISLE._
+
+  _Queen._ It cannot be.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._       It is so.
+
+  _Queen._                         Why, the House
+  Have hardly met.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ They met for that.
+
+  _Queen._                            No, no!
+  Meet to impeach Lord Strafford? 'Tis a jest.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ A bitter one.
+
+  _Queen._                       Consider! 'Tis the House
+  We summoned so reluctantly, which nothing
+  But the disastrous issue of the war
+  Persuaded us to summon. They'll wreak all
+  Their spite on us, no doubt; but the old way
+  Is to begin by talk of grievances:
+  They have their grievances to busy them.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Pym has begun his speech.
+
+  _Queen._                                   Where's Vane?--That is,
+  Pym will impeach Lord Strafford if he leaves
+  His Presidency; he's at York, we know,
+  Since the Scots beat him: why should he leave York?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Because the King sent for him.
+
+  _Queen._                                        Ah--but if
+  The King did send for him, he let him know
+  We had been forced to call a Parliament--
+  A step which Strafford, now I come to think,
+  Was vehement against.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._      The policy
+  Escaped him, of first striking Parliaments
+  To earth, then setting them upon their feet
+  And giving them a sword: but this is idle.
+  Did the King send for Strafford? He will come.
+
+  _Queen._ And what am I to do?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ What do? Fail, madam!
+  Be ruined for his sake! what matters how,
+  So it but stand on record that you made
+  An effort, only one?
+
+  _Queen._             The King away
+  At Theobald's!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Send for him at once: he must
+  Dissolve the House.
+
+  _Queen._            Wait till Vane finds the truth
+  Of the report: then....
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._        --It will matter little
+  What the King does. Strafford that lends his arm
+  And breaks his heart for you!
+
+_+Sir+ H. VANE enters._
+
+  _Vane._                       The Commons, madam,
+  Are sitting with closed doors. A huge debate,
+  No lack of noise; but nothing, I should guess,
+  Concerning Strafford: Pym has certainly
+  Not spoken yet.
+
+  _Queen_ [_to +Lady+ CARLISLE_]. You hear?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                           I do not hear
+  That the King's sent for!
+
+  _Vane._                   Savile will be able
+  To tell you more.
+
+_HOLLAND enters._
+
+  _Queen._          The last news, Holland?
+
+  _Holland._                                Pym
+  Is raging like a fire. The whole House means
+  To follow him together to Whitehall
+  And force the King to give up Strafford.
+
+  _Queen._                                 Strafford?
+
+  _Holland._ If they content themselves with Strafford! Laud
+  Is talked of, Cottington and Windebank too.
+  Pym has not left out one of them--I would
+  You heard Pym raging!
+
+  _Queen._              Vane, go find the King!
+  Tell the King, Vane, the People follow Pym
+  To brave us at Whitehall!
+
+_SAVILE enters._
+
+  _Savile._                 Not to Whitehall--
+  'Tis to the Lords they go: they seek redress
+  On Strafford from his peers--the legal way,
+  They call it.
+
+  _Queen._      (Wait, Vane!)
+
+  _Savile._                   But the adage gives
+  Long life to threatened men. Strafford can save
+  Himself so readily: at York, remember,
+  In his own country: what has he to fear?
+  The Commons only mean to frighten him
+  From leaving York. Surely, he will not come.
+
+  _Queen._ Lucy, he will not come!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                 Once more, the King
+  Has sent for Strafford. He will come.
+
+  _Vane._                               Oh doubtless!
+  And bring destruction with him: that's his way.
+  What but his coming spoilt all Conway's plan?
+  The King must take his counsel, choose his friends,
+  Be wholly ruled by him! What's the result?
+  The North that was to rise, Ireland to help,--
+  What came of it? In my poor mind, a fright
+  Is no prodigious punishment.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._             A fright?
+  Pym will fail worse than Strafford if he thinks
+  To frighten him. [_To the QUEEN._] You will not save him then?
+
+  _Savile._ When something like a charge is made, the King
+  Will best know how to save him: and t'is clear,
+  While Strafford suffers nothing by the matter,
+  The King may reap advantage: this in question,
+  No dinning you with ship-money complaints!
+
+  _Queen_ [_to +Lady+ CARLISLE_]. If we dissolve them, who will pay
+          the army?
+  Protect us from the insolent Scots?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                    In truth,
+  I know not, madam. Strafford's fate concerns
+  Me little: you desired to learn what course
+  Would save him: I obey you.
+
+  _Vane._                     Notice, too,
+  There can't be fairer ground for taking full
+  Revenge--(Strafford's revengeful)--than he'll have
+  Against his old friend Pym.
+
+  _Queen._                    Why, he shall claim
+  Vengeance on Pym!
+
+  _Vane._           And Strafford, who is he
+  To 'scape unscathed amid the accidents
+  That harass all beside? I, for my part,
+  Should look for something of discomfiture
+  Had the King trusted me so thoroughly
+  And been so paid for it.
+
+  _Holland._               He'll keep at York:
+  All will blow over: he'll return no worse,
+  Humbled a little, thankful for a place
+  Under as good a man. Oh, we'll dispense
+  With seeing Strafford for a month or two!
+
+_STRAFFORD enters._
+
+  _Queen._ You here!
+
+  _Strafford._      The King sends for me, madam.
+
+  _Queen._                                        Sir,
+  The King....
+
+  _Strafford._ An urgent matter that imports the King!
+  [_To +Lady+ CARLISLE._] Why, Lucy, what's in agitation now,
+  That all this muttering and shrugging, see,
+  Begins at me? They do not speak!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                 'Tis welcome!
+  For we are proud of you--happy and proud
+  To have you with us, Strafford! You were staunch
+  At Durham: you did well there! Had you not
+  Been stayed, you might have ... we said, even now,
+  Our hope's in you!
+
+  _Vane_ [_to +Lady+ CARLISLE_]. The Queen would speak with you.
+
+  _Strafford._ Will one of you, his servants here, vouchsafe
+  To signify my presence to the King?
+
+  _Savile._                           An urgent matter?
+
+  _Strafford._ None that touches you,
+  Lord Savile! Say, it were some treacherous
+  Sly pitiful intriguing with the Scots--
+  You would go free, at least! (They half divine
+  My purpose!) Madam, shall I see the King?
+  The service I would render, much concerns
+  His welfare.
+
+  _Queen._     But his Majesty, my lord,
+  May not be here, may....
+
+  _Strafford._             Its importance, then,
+  Must plead excuse for this withdrawal, madam,
+  And for the grief it gives Lord Savile here.
+
+  _Queen_ [_who has been conversing with VANE and HOLLAND_].
+  The King will see you, sir!
+  [_To +Lady+ CARLISLE._]    Mark me: Pym's worst
+  Is done by now: he has impeached the Earl,
+  Or found the Earl too strong for him, by now.
+  Let us not seem instructed! We should work
+  No good to Strafford, but deform ourselves
+  With shame in the world's eye. [_To STRAFFORD._] His Majesty
+  Has much to say with you.
+
+  _Strafford._              Time fleeting, too!
+  [_To +Lady+ CARLISLE._] No means of getting them away? And She--
+  What does she whisper? Does she know my purpose?
+  What does she think of it? Get them away!
+
+  _Queen_ [_to +Lady+ CARLISLE_]. He comes to baffle Pym--he thinks
+          the danger
+  Far off: tell him no word of it! a time
+  For help will come; we'll not be wanting then.
+  Keep him in play, Lucy--you, self-possessed
+  And calm! [_To STRAFFORD._] To spare your lordship some delay
+  I will myself acquaint the King. [_To +Lady+ CARLISLE._] Beware!
+
+[_The QUEEN, VANE, HOLLAND, and SAVILE go out._
+
+  _Strafford._ She knows it?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._           Tell me, Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                                   Afterward!
+  This moment's the great moment of all time.
+  She knows my purpose?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._      Thoroughly: just now
+  She bade me hide it from you.
+
+  _Strafford._                  Quick, dear child,
+  The whole o' the scheme?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._         (Ah, he would learn if they
+  Connive at Pym's procedure! Could they but
+  Have once apprised the King! But there's no time
+  For falsehood, now.) Strafford, the whole is known.
+
+  _Strafford._ Known and approved?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                Hardly discountenanced.
+
+  _Strafford._ And the King--say, the King consents as well?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ The King's not yet informed, but will not dare
+  To interpose.
+
+  _Strafford._ What need to wait him, then?
+  He'll sanction it! I stayed, child, tell him, long!
+  It vexed me to the soul--this waiting here.
+  You know him, there's no counting on the King.
+  Tell him I waited long!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._        (What can he mean?
+  Rejoice at the King's hollowness?)
+
+  _Strafford._                       I knew
+  They would be glad of it,--all over once,
+  I knew they would be glad: but he'd contrive,
+  The Queen and he, to mar, by helping it,
+  An angel's making.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._   (Is he mad?) Dear Strafford,
+  You were not wont to look so happy.
+
+  _Strafford._                        Sweet,
+  I tried obedience thoroughly. I took
+  The King's wild plan: of course, ere I could reach
+  My army, Conway ruined it. I drew
+  The wrecks together, raised all heaven and earth,
+  And would have fought the Scots: the King at once
+  Made truce with them. Then, Lucy, then, dear child,
+  God put it in my mind to love, serve, die
+  For Charles, but never to obey him more!
+  While he endured their insolence at Ripon
+  I fell on them at Durham. But you'll tell
+  The King I waited? All the anteroom
+  Is filled with my adherents.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Strafford--Strafford,
+  What daring act is this you hint?
+
+  _Strafford._                      No, no!
+  'Tis here, not daring if you knew? all here!
+
+[_Drawing papers from his breast._
+
+  Full proof, see, ample proof--does the Queen know
+  I have such damning proof? Bedford and Essex,
+  Brooke, Warwick, Savile (did you notice Savile?
+  The simper that I spoilt?), Saye, Mandeville--
+  Sold to the Scots, body and soul, by Pym!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                          Great heaven!
+
+  _Strafford._ From Savile and his lords, to Pym
+  And his losels, crushed!--Pym shall not ward the blow
+  Nor Savile creep aside from it! The Crew
+  And the Cabal--I crush them!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._             And you go--
+  Strafford,--and now you go?--
+
+  _Strafford._                  --About no work
+  In the background, I promise you! I go
+  Straight to the House of Lords to claim these knaves.
+  Mainwaring!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Stay--stay, Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                            She'll return,
+  The Queen--some little project of her own!
+  No time to lose: the King takes fright perhaps.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Pym's strong, remember!
+
+  _Strafford._                             Very strong, as fits
+  The Faction's head--with no offence to Hampden,
+  Vane, Rudyard and my loving Hollis: one
+  And all they lodge within the Tower to-night
+  In just equality. Bryan! Mainwaring!
+
+[_Many of his +Adherents+ enter._
+
+  The Peers debate just now (a lucky chance)
+  On the Scots' war; my visit's opportune.
+  When all is over, Bryan, you proceed
+  To Ireland: these dispatches, mark me, Bryan,
+  Are for the Deputy, and these for Ormond:
+  We want the army here--my army, raised
+  At such a cost, that should have done such good,
+  And was inactive all the time! no matter,
+  We'll find a use for it. Willis ... or, no--you!
+  You, friend, make haste to York: bear this, at once ...
+  Or,--better stay for form's sake, see yourself
+  The news you carry. You remain with me
+  To execute the Parliament's command,
+  Mainwaring! Help to seize these lesser knaves,
+  Take care there's no escaping at backdoors:
+  I'll not have one escape, mind me--not one!
+  I seem revengeful, Lucy? Did you know
+  What these men dare!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._     It is so much they dare!
+
+  _Strafford._ I proved that long ago; my turn is now.
+  Keep sharp watch, Goring, on the citizens!
+  Observe who harbors any of the brood
+  That scramble off: be sure they smart for it!
+  Our coffers are but lean.
+                            And you, child, too,
+  Shall have your task; deliver this to Laud.
+  Laud will not be the slowest in thy praise:
+  "Thorough" he'll cry!--Foolish, to be so glad!
+  This life is gay and glowing, after all:
+  'Tis worth while, Lucy, having foes like mine
+  Just for the bliss of crushing them. To-day
+  Is worth the living for.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._         That reddening brow!
+  You seem....
+
+  _Strafford._ Well--do I not? I would be well--
+  I could not but be well on such a day!
+  And, this day ended, 'tis of slight import
+  How long the ravaged frame subjects the soul
+  In Strafford.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Noble Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                      No farewell!
+  I'll see you anon, to-morrow--the first thing.
+  --If She should come to stay me!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                 Go--'tis nothing--
+  Only my heart that swells: it has been thus
+  Ere now: go, Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._            To-night, then, let it be.
+  I must see Him: you, the next after Him.
+  I'll tell how Pym looked. Follow me, friends!
+  You, gentlemen, shall see a sight this hour
+  To talk of all your lives. Close after me!
+  "My friend of friends!"
+
+[_STRAFFORD and the rest go out._
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._        The King--ever the King!
+  No thought of one beside, whose little word
+  Unveils the King to him--one word from me,
+  Which yet I do not breathe!
+                              Ah, have I spared
+  Strafford a pang, and shall I seek reward
+  Beyond that memory? Surely too, some way
+  He is the better for my love. No, no--
+  He would not look so joyous--I'll believe
+  His very eye would never sparkle thus,
+  Had I not prayed for him this long, long while.
+
+
+SCENE III.--_The Antechamber of the House of Lords._
+
+_Many of the Presbyterian Party. The +Adherents+ of STRAFFORD, etc._
+
+  _A Group of Presbyterians._ --1. I tell you he struck Maxwell:
+          Maxwell sought
+  To stay the Earl: he struck him and passed on.
+  2. Fear as you may, keep a good countenance
+  Before these rufflers.
+  3.                     Strafford here the first,
+  With the great army at his back!
+  4.                               No doubt.
+  I would Pym had made haste: that's Bryan, hush--
+  The gallant pointing.
+
+  _Strafford's Followers._ --1. Mark these worthies, now!
+  2. A goodly gathering! "Where the carcass is
+  There shall the eagles"--what's the rest?
+  3.                                        For eagles
+  Say crows.
+
+  _A Presbyterian._ Stand back, sirs!
+
+  _One of Strafford's Followers._     Are we in Geneva?
+
+  _A Presbyterian._ No, nor in Ireland; we have leave to breathe.
+
+  _One of Strafford's Followers._ Truly? Behold how privileged we be
+  That serve "King Pym"! There's Some-one at Whitehall
+  Who skulks obscure; but Pym struts....
+
+  _The Presbyterian._                    Nearer.
+
+  _A Follower of Strafford._                     Higher,
+  We look to see him. [_To his +Companions+._] I'm to have St. John
+  In charge; was he among the knaves just now
+  That followed Pym within there?
+
+  _Another._                      The gaunt man
+  Talking with Rudyard. Did the Earl expect
+  Pym at his heels so fast? I like it not.
+
+_MAXWELL enters._
+
+  _Another._ Why, man, they rush into the net! Here's Maxwell--
+  Ha, Maxwell? How the brethren flock around
+  The fellow! Do you feel the Earl's hand yet
+  Upon your shoulder, Maxwell?
+
+  _Maxwell._                   Gentlemen,
+  Stand back! a great thing passes here.
+
+  _A Follower of Strafford_ [_To another_]. The Earl
+  Is at his work! [_To +M.+_] Say, Maxwell, what great thing!
+  Speak out! [_To a +Presbyterian+._] Friend, I've a kindness for you!
+          Friend,
+  I've seen you with St. John: O stockishness!
+  Wear such a ruff, and never call to mind
+  St. John's head in a charger? How, the plague,
+  Not laugh?
+
+  _Another._ Say, Maxwell, what great thing!
+
+  _Another._                                 Nay, wait:
+  The jest will be to wait.
+
+  _First._                  And who's to bear
+  These demure hypocrites? You'd swear they came ...
+  Came ... just as we come!
+
+[_A +Puritan+ enters hastily and without observing STRAFFORD'S
++Followers+._
+
+  _The Puritan._            How goes on the work?
+  Has Pym....
+
+  _A Follower of Strafford._ The secret's out at last. Aha,
+  The carrion's scented! Welcome, crow the first!
+  Gorge merrily, you with the blinking eye!
+  "King Pym has fallen!"
+
+  _The Puritan._         Pym?
+
+  _A Strafford._              Pym!
+
+  _A Presbyterian._                Only Pym?
+
+  _Many of Strafford's Followers._ No, brother, not Pym only;
+          Vane as well,
+  Rudyard as well, Hampden, St. John as well!
+
+  _A Presbyterian._ My mind misgives: can it be true?
+
+  _Another._                                          Lost! Lost!
+
+  _A Strafford._ Say we true, Maxwell?
+
+  _The Puritan._                       Pride before destruction,
+  A haughty spirit goeth before a fall.
+
+  _Many of Strafford's Followers._      Ah now! The very thing!
+          A word in season!
+  A golden apple in a silver picture,
+  To greet Pym as he passes!
+
+[_The doors at the back begin to open, noise and light issuing._
+
+  _Maxwell._                 Stand back, all!
+
+  _Many of the Presbyterians._ I hold with Pym! And I!
+
+  _Strafford's Followers._ Now for the text!
+  He comes! Quick!
+
+  _The Puritan._   How hath the oppressor ceased!
+  The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked!
+  The sceptre of the rulers, he who smote
+  The people in wrath with a continual stroke,
+  That ruled the nations in his anger--he
+  Is persecuted and none hindreth!
+
+[_The doors open, and STRAFFORD issues in the greatest disorder, and
+amid cries from within of "+Void the House+!"_
+
+  _Strafford._ Impeach me! Pym! I never struck, I think,
+  The felon on that calm insulting mouth
+  When it proclaimed--Pym's mouth proclaimed me ... God!
+  Was it a word, only a word that held
+  The outrageous blood back on my heart--which beats!
+  Which beats! Some one word--"Traitor," did he say,
+  Bending that eye, brimful of bitter fire,
+  Upon me?
+
+  _Maxwell._ In the Commons' name, their servant
+  Demands Lord Strafford's sword.
+
+  _Strafford._                    What did you say?
+
+  _Maxwell._ The Commons bid me ask your lordship's sword.
+
+  _Strafford._ Let us go forth: follow me, gentlemen!
+  Draw your swords too: cut any down that bar us.
+  On the King's service! Maxwell, clear the way!
+
+[_The +Presbyterians+ prepare to dispute his passage._
+
+  _Strafford._ I stay: the King himself shall see me here.
+  Your tablets, fellow!
+  [_To MAINWARING._] Give that to the King!
+  Yes, Maxwell, for the next half-hour, let be!
+  Nay, you shall take my sword!
+
+[_MAXWELL advances to take it._
+
+                                Or, no--not that!
+  Their blood, perhaps, may wipe out all thus far,
+  All up to that--not that! Why, friend, you see
+  When the King lays your head beneath my foot
+  It will not pay for that. Go, all of you!
+
+  _Maxwell._ I dare, my lord, to disobey: none stir!
+
+  _Strafford._ This gentle Maxwell!--Do not touch him, Bryan!
+  [_To the +Presbyterians+._] Whichever cur of you will carry this
+  Escapes his fellow's fate. None saves his life?
+  None?
+
+[_Cries from within of "STRAFFORD!"_
+
+        Slingsby, I've loved you at least: make haste!
+  Stab me! I have not time to tell you why.
+  You then, my Bryan! Mainwaring, you then!
+  Is it because I spoke so hastily
+  At Allerton? The King had vexed me.
+  [_To the +Presbyterians+._]           You!
+  --Not even you? If I live over this,
+  The King is sure to have your heads, you know!
+  But what if I can't live this minute through?
+  Pym, who is there with his pursuing smile!
+
+[_Louder cries of "STRAFFORD!"_
+
+  The King! I troubled him, stood in the way
+  Of his negotiations, was the one
+  Great obstacle to peace, the Enemy
+  Of Scotland: and he sent for me, from York,
+  My safety guaranteed--having prepared
+  A Parliament--I see! And at Whitehall
+  The Queen was whispering with Vane--I see
+  The trap!
+
+[_Tearing off the George._
+
+            I tread a gewgaw underfoot,
+  And cast a memory from me. One stroke, now!
+
+[_His own +Adherents+ disarm him. Renewed cries of "STRAFFORD!"_
+
+  England! I see thy arm in this and yield.
+  Pray you now--Pym awaits me--pray you now!
+
+[_STRAFFORD reaches the doors: they open wide. HAMPDEN and a crowd
+discovered, and, at the bar, PYM standing apart. As STRAFFORD kneels,
+the scene shuts._
+
+[Illustration: Westminster Hall]
+
+The history of the fourth act deals with further episodes of Strafford's
+trial, especially with the change in the procedure from Impeachment to a
+Bill of Attainder against Strafford. The details of this great trial are
+complicated and cannot be followed in all their ramifications here.
+There was danger that the Impeachment would not go through. Strafford,
+himself, felt confident that in law his actions could not be found
+treasonable.
+
+After Strafford's brilliant defense of himself, it was decided to bring
+in a Bill of Attainder. New evidence against Strafford contained in
+some notes which the younger Vane had found among his father's papers
+were used to strengthen the charge of treason. In these notes Strafford
+had advised the King to act "loose and absolved from all rules of
+government," and had reminded him that there was an army in Ireland,
+ready to reduce the Kingdom. These notes were found by the merest
+accident. The younger Vane who had just been knighted and was about to
+be married, borrowed his father's keys in order to look up some law
+papers. In his search he fell upon these notes taken at a committee that
+met immediately after the dissolution of the short Parliament. He made a
+copy and carried it to Pym who also made a copy.
+
+According to Baillie, the "secret" of the change from the Impeachment to
+the Bill was "to prevent the hearing of the Earl's lawyers, who give out
+that there is no law yet in force whereby he can be condemned to die for
+aught yet objected against him, and therefore their intent by this Bill
+to supply the defect of the laws therein." To this may be added the
+opinion of a member of the Commons. "If the House of Commons proceeds to
+demand judgment of the Lords, without doubt they will acquit him, there
+being no law extant whereby to condemn him of treason. Wherefore the
+Commons are determined to desert the Lord's judicature, and to proceed
+against him by Bill of Attainder, whereby he shall be adjudged to death
+upon a treason now to be declared."
+
+One of the chief results in this change of procedure, emphasized by
+Browning in an intense scene between Pym and Charles was that it altered
+entirely the King's attitude towards Strafford's trial. As Baillie
+expresses it, "Had the Commons gone on in the former way of pursuit, the
+King might have been a patient, and only beheld the striking off of
+Strafford's head; but now they have put them on a Bill which will force
+the King either to be our agent and formal voicer to his death, or else
+do the world knows not what."
+
+For the sake of a gain in dramatic power, Browning has once more
+departed from history by making Pym the moving power in the Bill of
+Attainder, and Hampden in favor of it; while in reality they were
+opposed to the change in procedure, and believed that the Impeachment
+could have been carried through.
+
+The relentless, scourging force of Pym in the play, pursuing the
+arch-foe of England as he regarded Wentworth to the death, once he is
+convinced that England's welfare demands it, would have been weakened
+had he been represented in favor of the policy which was abandoned,
+instead of with the policy that succeeded. But Pym is made to intimate
+that he will abandon the Bill unless the King gives his word that he
+will ratify it, and further, Pym declares, should he not ratify the Bill
+his next step will be against the King himself.
+
+  _Enter HAMPDEN and VANE._
+
+  _Vane._ O Hampden, save the great misguided man!
+  Plead Strafford's cause with Pym! I have remarked
+  He moved no muscle when we all declaimed
+  Against him: you had but to breathe--he turned
+  Those kind calm eyes upon you.
+
+[_Enter PYM, the +Solicitor-General+ ST. JOHN, the +Managers+ of the
+Trial, FIENNES, RUDYARD, etc._
+
+  _Rudyard._                    Horrible!
+  Till now all hearts were with you: I withdraw
+  For one. Too horrible! But we mistake
+  Your purpose, Pym: you cannot snatch away
+  The last spar from the drowning man.
+
+  _Fiennes._                           He talks
+  With St. John of it--see, how quietly!
+  [_To other +Presbyterians+._] You'll join us? Strafford may deserve
+          the worst:
+  But this new course is monstrous. Vane, take heart!
+  This Bill of his Attainder shall not have
+  One true man's hand to it.
+
+  _Vane._                    Consider, Pym!
+  Confront your Bill, your own Bill: what is it?
+  You cannot catch the Earl on any charge,--
+  No man will say the law has hold of him
+  On any charge; and therefore you resolve
+  To take the general sense on his desert,
+  As though no law existed, and we met
+  To found one. You refer to Parliament
+  To speak its thought upon the abortive mass
+  Of half-borne-out assertions, dubious hints
+  Hereafter to be cleared, distortions--ay,
+  And wild inventions. Every man is saved
+  The task of fixing any single charge
+  On Strafford: he has but to see in him
+  The enemy of England.
+
+  _Pym._                A right scruple!
+  I have heard some called England's enemy
+  With less consideration.
+
+  _Vane._                  Pity me!
+  Indeed you made me think I was your friend!
+  I who have murdered Strafford, how remove
+  That memory from me?
+
+  _Pym._               I absolve you, Vane.
+  Take you no care for aught that you have done!
+
+  _Vane._ John Hampden, not this Bill! Reject this Bill!
+  He staggers through the ordeal: let him go,
+  Strew no fresh fire before him! Plead for us!
+  When Strafford spoke, your eyes were thick with tears!
+
+  _Hampden._ England speaks louder: who are we, to play
+  The generous pardoner at her expense,
+  Magnanimously waive advantages,
+  And, if he conquer us, applaud his skill?
+
+  _Vane._ He was your friend.
+
+  _Pym._                      I have heard that before.
+
+  _Fiennes._ And England trusts you.
+
+  _Hampden._                         Shame be his, who turns
+  The opportunity of serving her
+  She trusts him with, to his own mean account--
+  Who would look nobly frank at her expense!
+
+  _Fiennes._ I never thought it could have come to this.
+
+  _Pym._ But I have made myself familiar, Fiennes,
+  With this one thought--have walked, and sat, and slept,
+  This thought before me. I have done such things,
+  Being the chosen man that should destroy
+  The traitor. You have taken up this thought
+  To play with, for a gentle stimulant,
+  To give a dignity to idler life
+  By the dim prospect of emprise to come,
+  But ever with the softening, sure belief,
+  That all would end some strange way right at last.
+
+  _Fiennes._ Had we made out some weightier charge!
+
+  _Pym._                                            You say
+  That these are petty charges: can we come
+  To the real charge at all? There he is safe
+  In tyranny's stronghold. Apostasy
+  Is not a crime, treachery not a crime:
+  The cheek burns, the blood tingles, when you speak
+  The words, but where's the power to take revenge
+  Upon them? We must make occasion serve,--
+  The oversight shall pay for the main sin
+  That mocks us.
+
+  _Rudyard._     But his unexampled course,
+  This Bill!
+
+  _Pym._     By this, we roll the clouds away
+  Of precedent and custom, and at once
+  Bid the great beacon-light God sets in all,
+  The conscience of each bosom, shine upon
+  The guilt of Strafford: each man lay his hand
+  Upon his breast, and judge!
+
+  _Vane._                     I only see
+  Strafford, nor pass his corpse for all beyond!
+
+  _Rudyard and others._ Forgive him! He would join us, now he finds
+  What the King counts reward! The pardon, too,
+  Should be your own. Yourself should bear to Strafford
+  The pardon of the Commons.
+
+  _Pym._                     Meet him? Strafford?
+  Have we to meet once more, then? Be it so!
+  And yet--the prophecy seemed half fulfilled
+  When, at the Trial, as he gazed, my youth,
+  Our friendship, divers thoughts came back at once
+  And left me, for a time.... 'Tis very sad!
+  To-morrow we discuss the points of law
+  With Lane--to-morrow?
+
+  _Vane._               Not before to-morrow--
+  So, time enough! I knew you would relent!
+
+  _Pym._ The next day, Haselrig, you introduce
+  The Bill of his Attainder. Pray for me!
+
+
+SCENE III.--_Whitehall._
+
+_The KING._
+
+  _Charles._ My loyal servant! To defend himself
+  Thus irresistibly,--withholding aught
+  That seemed to implicate us!
+                               We have done
+  Less gallantly by Strafford. Well, the future
+  Must recompense the past.
+                            She tarries long.
+  I understand you, Strafford, now!
+                                    The scheme--
+  Carlisle's mad scheme--he'll sanction it, I fear,
+  For love of me. 'Twas too precipitate:
+  Before the army's fairly on its march,
+  He'll be at large: no matter.
+                                Well, Carlisle?
+
+_Enter PYM._
+
+  _Pym._ Fear me not, sir:--my mission is to save,
+  This time.
+
+  _Charles._ To break thus on me! Unannounced!
+
+  _Pym._ It is of Strafford I would speak.
+
+  _Charles._                               No more
+  Of Strafford! I have heard too much from you.
+
+  _Pym._ I spoke, sir, for the People; will you hear
+  A word upon my own account?
+
+  _Charles._                  Of Strafford?
+  (So turns the tide already? Have we tamed
+  The insolent brawler?--Strafford's eloquence
+  Is swift in its effect.) Lord Strafford, sir,
+  Has spoken for himself.
+
+  _Pym._                  Sufficiently.
+  I would apprise you of the novel course
+  The People take: the Trial fails.
+
+  _Charles._                        Yes, yes:
+  We are aware, sir: for your part in it
+  Means shall be found to thank you.
+
+  _Pym._                             Pray you, read
+  This schedule! I would learn from your own mouth
+  --(It is a matter much concerning me)--
+  Whether, if two Estates of us concede
+  The death of Strafford, on the grounds set forth
+  Within that parchment, you, sir, can resolve
+  To grant your own consent to it. This Bill
+  Is framed by me. If you determine, sir,
+  That England's manifested will should guide
+  Your judgment, ere another week such will
+  Shall manifest itself. If not,--I cast
+  Aside the measure.
+
+  _Charles._         You can hinder, then,
+  The introduction of this Bill?
+
+  _Pym._                          I can.
+
+  _Charles._ He is my friend, sir: I have wronged him: mark you,
+  Had I not wronged him, this might be. You think
+  Because you hate the Earl ... (turn not away,
+  We know you hate him)--no one else could love
+  Strafford: but he has saved me, some affirm.
+  Think of his pride! And do you know one strange,
+  One frightful thing? We all have used the man
+  As though a drudge of ours, with not a source
+  Of happy thoughts except in us; and yet
+  Strafford has wife and children, household cares,
+  Just as if we had never been. Ah sir,
+  You are moved, even you, a solitary man
+  Wed to your cause--to England if you will!
+
+  _Pym._ Yes--think, my soul--to England! Draw not back!
+
+  _Charles._ Prevent that Bill, sir! All your course seems fair
+  Till now. Why, in the end, 'tis I should sign
+  The warrant for his death! You have said much
+  I ponder on; I never meant, indeed,
+  Strafford should serve me any more. I take
+  The Commons' counsel; but this Bill is yours--
+  Nor worthy of its leader: care not, sir,
+  For that, however! I will quite forget
+  You named it to me. You are satisfied?
+
+  _Pym._ Listen to me, sir! Eliot laid his hand,
+  Wasted and white, upon my forehead once;
+  Wentworth--he's gone now!--has talked on, whole nights,
+  And I beside him; Hampden loves me: sir,
+  How can I breathe and not wish England well,
+  And her King well?
+
+  _Charles._          I thank you, sir, who leave
+  That King his servant. Thanks, sir!
+
+  _Pym._                              Let me speak!
+  --Who may not speak again; whose spirit yearns
+  For a cool night after this weary day:
+  --Who would not have my soul turn sicker yet
+  In a new task, more fatal, more august,
+  More full of England's utter weal or woe.
+  I thought, sir, could I find myself with you,
+  After this trial, alone, as man to man--
+  I might say something, warn you, pray you, save--
+  Mark me, King Charles, save----you!
+  But God must do it. Yet I warn you, sir--
+  (With Strafford's faded eyes yet full on me)
+  As you would have no deeper question moved
+  --"How long the Many must endure the One,"
+  Assure me, sir, if England give assent
+  To Strafford's death, you will not interfere!
+  Or----
+
+  _Charles._ God forsakes me. I am in a net
+  And cannot move. Let all be as you say!
+
+_Enter +Lady+ CARLISLE._
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ He loves you--looking beautiful with joy
+  Because you sent me! he would spare you all
+  The pain! he never dreamed you would forsake
+  Your servant in the evil day--nay, see
+  Your scheme returned! That generous heart of his!
+  He needs it not--or, needing it, disdains
+  A course that might endanger you--you, sir,
+  Whom Strafford from his inmost soul....
+  [_Seeing PYM._]                        Well met!
+  No fear for Strafford! All that's true and brave
+  On your own side shall help us: we are now
+  Stronger than ever.
+                      Ha--what, sir, is this?
+  All is not well! What parchment have you there?
+
+  _Pym._ Sir, much is saved us both.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                   This Bill! Your lip
+  Whitens--you could not read one line to me
+  Your voice would falter so!
+
+  _Pym._                      No recreant yet!
+  The great word went from England to my soul,
+  And I arose. The end is very near.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ I am to save him! All have shrunk beside;
+  'Tis only I am left. Heaven will make strong
+  The hand now as the heart. Then let both die!
+
+In the last act Browning has drawn upon his imagination more than in any
+other part of the play. Strafford in prison in the Tower is the center
+around which all the other elements of the drama are made to revolve. A
+glimpse, the first, of the man in a purely human capacity is given in
+the second scene with Strafford and his children. From all accounts
+little Anne was a precocious child and Browning has sketched her
+accordingly. The scene is like a gleam of sunshine in the gathering
+gloom.
+
+The genuine grief felt by the historical Charles over the part he played
+in the ruin of Strafford is brought out in an interview between
+Strafford and Charles, who is represented as coming disguised to the
+prison. Strafford who has been hoping for pardon from the King learns
+from Hollis, in the King's presence, that the King has signed his death
+warrant. He receives this shock with the remark which history attributes
+to him.
+
+                        "Put not your trust
+    In princes, neither in the sons of men,
+    In whom is no salvation!"
+
+History tells us of two efforts to rescue Strafford. One of these was an
+attempt to bribe Balfour to allow him to escape from the tower. This
+hint the Poet has worked up into the episode of Charles, calling Balfour
+and begging him to go at once to Parliament, to say he will grant all
+demands, and that he chooses to pardon Strafford. History, however, does
+not say that Lady Carlisle was implicated in any plan for the rescue of
+Strafford, of which Browning makes so much. According to Gardiner, she
+was by this time bestowing her favors upon Pym. Devotion to the truth
+here on Browning's part would have completely ruined the inner unity of
+the play. Carlisle, the woman ready to devote herself to Strafford's
+utmost need, while Strafford is more or less indifferent to her is the
+artistic compliment of Strafford the man devoted to the unresponsive
+King. The failure of the escape through Pym's intervention is a final
+dramatic climax bringing face to face not so much the two individual men
+as the two principles of government for which England was warring, the
+Monarchical and the Parliamentary. To the last, Strafford is loyal to
+the King and the Kingly idea, while Pym crushing his human feelings
+under foot, calmly contemplates the sacrifice not only of Strafford, but
+even of the King, if England's need demand it.
+
+In this supreme moment of agony when Strafford and Pym meet face to face
+both men are made to realize an abiding love for each other beneath all
+their earthly differences. "A great poet of our own day," writes
+Gardiner, "clothing the reconciling spirit of the nineteenth century in
+words which never could have been spoken in the seventeenth, has
+breathed a high wish. On his page an imaginary Pym, recalling an
+imaginary friendship, looks forward hopefully to a reunion in a better
+and brighter world."
+
+
+SCENE II.--_The Tower._
+
+_STRAFFORD sitting with his +Children+. They sing._
+
+      _O bell 'andare
+      Per barca in mare,
+      Verso la sera
+      Di Primavera!_
+
+  _William._ The boat's in the broad moonlight all this while--
+
+      _Verso la sera
+      Di Primavera!_
+
+  And the boat shoots from underneath the moon
+  Into the shadowy distance; only still
+  You hear the dipping oar--
+
+      _Verso la sera_,
+
+  And faint, and fainter, and then all's quite gone,
+  Music and light and all, like a lost star.
+
+  _Anne._ But you should sleep, father; you were to sleep.
+
+  _Strafford._ I do sleep, Anne; or if not--you must know
+  There's such a thing as....
+
+  _William._                  You're too tired to sleep?
+
+  _Strafford._ It will come by-and-by and all day long,
+  In that old quiet house I told you of:
+  We sleep safe there.
+
+  _Anne._              Why not in Ireland?
+
+  _Strafford._                             No!
+  Too many dreams!--That song's for Venice, William:
+  You know how Venice looks upon the map--
+  Isles that the mainland hardly can let go?
+
+  _William._ You've been to Venice, father?
+
+  _Strafford._                              I was young, then.
+
+  _William._ A city with no King; that's why I like
+  Even a song that comes from Venice.
+
+  _Strafford._                        William!
+
+  _William._ Oh, I know why! Anne, do you love the King?
+  But I'll see Venice for myself one day.
+
+  _Strafford._ See many lands, boy--England last of all,--
+  That way you'll love her best.
+
+[Illustration: The Tower, London]
+
+  _William._                     Why do men say
+  You sought to ruin her then?
+
+  _Strafford._                 Ah,--they say that.
+
+  _William._ Why?
+
+  _Strafford._    I suppose they must have words to say,
+  As you to sing.
+
+  _Anne._         But they make songs beside:
+  Last night I heard one, in the street beneath,
+  That called you.... Oh, the names!
+
+  _William._                         Don't mind her, father!
+  They soon left off when I cried out to them.
+
+  _Strafford._ We shall so soon be out of it, my boy!
+  'Tis not worth while: who heeds a foolish song?
+
+  _William._ Why, not the King.
+
+  _Strafford._                  Well: it has been the fate
+  Of better; and yet,--wherefore not feel sure
+  That Time, who in the twilight comes to mend
+  All the fantastic day's caprice, consign
+  To the low ground once more the ignoble Term,
+  And raise the Genius on his orb again,--
+  That Time will do me right?
+
+  _Anne._                     (Shall we sing, William?
+  He does not look thus when we sing.)
+
+  _Strafford._                         For Ireland,
+  Something is done: too little, but enough
+  To show what might have been.
+
+  _William._                    (I have no heart
+  To sing now! Anne, how very sad he looks!
+  Oh, I so hate the King for all he says!)
+
+  _Strafford._ Forsook them! What, the common songs will run
+  That I forsook the People? Nothing more?
+  Ay, Fame, the busy scribe, will pause, no doubt,
+  Turning a deaf ear to her thousand slaves
+  Noisy to be enrolled,--will register
+  The curious glosses, subtle notices,
+  Ingenious clearings-up one fain would see
+  Beside that plain inscription of The Name--
+  The Patriot Pym, or the Apostate Strafford!
+
+[_The +Children+ resume their song timidly, but break off._
+
+_Enter HOLLIS and an +Attendant+._
+
+  _Strafford._ No,--Hollis? in good time!--Who is he?
+
+  _Hollis._                                           One
+  That must be present.
+
+  _Strafford._          Ah--I understand.
+  They will not let me see poor Laud alone.
+  How politic! They'd use me by degrees
+  To solitude: and, just as you came in,
+  I was solicitous what life to lead
+  When Strafford's "not so much as Constable
+  In the King's service." Is there any means
+  To keep oneself awake? What would you do
+  After this bustle, Hollis, in my place?
+
+  _Hollis._ Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._         Observe, not but that Pym and you
+  Will find me news enough--news I shall hear
+  Under a quince-tree by a fish-pond side
+  At Wentworth. Garrard must be re-engaged
+  My newsman. Or, a better project now--
+  What if when all's consummated, and the Saints
+  Reign, and the Senate's work goes swimmingly,--
+  What if I venture up, some day, unseen,
+  To saunter through the Town, notice how Pym,
+  Your Tribune, likes Whitehall, drop quietly
+  Into a tavern, hear a point discussed,
+  As, whether Strafford's name were John or James--
+  And be myself appealed to--I, who shall
+  Myself have near forgotten!
+
+  _Hollis._                   I would speak....
+
+  _Strafford._ Then you shall speak,--not now. I want just now,
+  To hear the sound of my own tongue. This place
+  Is full of ghosts.
+
+  _Hollis._          Nay, you must hear me, Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._ Oh, readily! Only, one rare thing more,--
+  The minister! Who will advise the King,
+  Turn his Sejanus, Richelieu and what not,
+  And yet have health--children, for aught I know--
+  My patient pair of traitors! Ah,--but, William--
+  Does not his cheek grow thin?
+
+  _William._                    'Tis you look thin, Father!
+
+  _Strafford._ A scamper o'er the breezy wolds
+  Sets all to-rights.
+
+  _Hollis._           You cannot sure forget
+  A prison-roof is o'er you, Strafford?
+
+  _Strafford._                          No,
+  Why, no. I would not touch on that, the first.
+  I left you that. Well, Hollis? Say at once,
+  The King can find no time to set me free!
+  A mask at Theobald's?
+
+  _Hollis._             Hold: no such affair
+  Detains him.
+
+  _Strafford._ True: what needs so great a matter?
+  The Queen's lip may be sore. Well: when he pleases,--
+  Only, I want the air: it vexes flesh
+  To be pent up so long.
+
+  _Hollis._              The King--I bear
+  His message, Strafford: pray you, let me speak!
+
+  _Strafford._ Go, William! Anne, try o'er your song again!
+
+[_The +Children+ retire._
+
+  They shall be loyal, friend, at all events.
+  I know your message: you have nothing new
+  To tell me: from the first I guessed as much.
+  I know, instead of coming here himself,
+  Leading me forth in public by the hand,
+  The King prefers to leave the door ajar
+  As though I were escaping--bids me trudge
+  While the mob gapes upon some show prepared
+  On the other side of the river! Give at once
+  His order of release! I've heard, as well
+  Of certain poor manoeuvres to avoid
+  The granting pardon at his proper risk;
+  First, he must prattle somewhat to the Lords,
+  Must talk a trifle with the Commons first,
+  Be grieved I should abuse his confidence,
+  And far from blaming them, and.... Where's the order?
+
+  _Hollis._ Spare me!
+
+  _Strafford._        Why, he'd not have me steal away?
+  With an old doublet and a steeple hat
+  Like Prynne's? Be smuggled into France, perhaps?
+  Hollis, 'tis for my children! 'Twas for them
+  I first consented to stand day by day
+  And give your Puritans the best of words,
+  Be patient, speak when called upon, observe
+  Their rules, and not return them prompt their lie!
+  What's in that boy of mine that he should prove
+  Son to a prison-breaker? I shall stay
+  And he'll stay with me. Charles should know as much,
+  He too has children!
+  [_Turning to HOLLIS'S +Companion+._] Sir, you feel for me!
+  No need to hide that face! Though it have looked
+  Upon me from the judgment-seat ... I know
+  Strangely, that somewhere it has looked on me, ...
+  Your coming has my pardon, nay, my thanks:
+  For there is one who comes not.
+
+  _Hollis._                       Whom forgive,
+  As one to die!
+
+  _Strafford._   True, all die, and all need
+  Forgiveness: I forgive him from my soul.
+
+  _Hollis._ 'Tis a world's wonder: Strafford, you must die!
+
+  _Strafford._ Sir, if your errand is to set me free
+  This heartless jest mars much. Ha! Tears in truth?
+  We'll end this! See this paper, warm--feel--warm
+  With lying next my heart! Whose hand is there?
+  Whose promise? Read, and loud for God to hear!
+  "Strafford shall take no hurt"--read it, I say!
+  "In person, honor, nor estate"--
+
+  _Hollis._                        The King....
+
+  _Strafford._ I could unking him by a breath! You sit
+  Where Loudon sat, who came to prophesy
+  The certain end, and offer me Pym's grace
+  If I'd renounce the King: and I stood firm
+  On the King's faith. The King who lives....
+
+  _Hollis._                                   To sign
+  The warrant for your death.
+
+  _Strafford._                "Put not your trust
+  In princes, neither in the sons of men,
+  In whom is no salvation!"
+
+  _Hollis._                 Trust in God!
+  The scaffold is prepared: they wait for you:
+  He has consented. Cast the earth behind!
+
+  _Charles._ You would not see me, Strafford, at your foot!
+  It was wrung from me! Only, curse me not!
+
+  _Hollis_ [_to STRAFFORD_]. As you hope grace and pardon in your need,
+  Be merciful to this most wretched man.
+
+[_Voices from within._
+
+      _Verso la sera
+      Di Primavera_
+
+  _Strafford._ You'll be good to those children, sir? I know
+  You'll not believe her, even should the Queen
+  Think they take after one they rarely saw.
+  I had intended that my son should live
+  A stranger to these matters: but you are
+  So utterly deprived of friends! He too
+  Must serve you--will you not be good to him?
+  Or, stay, sir, do not promise--do not swear!
+  You, Hollis--do the best you can for me!
+  I've not a soul to trust to: Wandesford's dead,
+  And you've got Radcliffe safe, Laud's turn comes next:
+  I've found small time of late for my affairs,
+  But I trust any of you, Pym himself--
+  No one could hurt them: there's an infant, too.
+  These tedious cares! Your Majesty could spare them.
+  Nay--pardon me, my King! I had forgotten
+  Your education, trials, much temptation,
+  Some weakness: there escaped a peevish word--
+  'Tis gone: I bless you at the last. You know
+  All's between you and me: what has the world
+  To do with it? Farewell!
+
+  _Charles_ [_at the door_]. Balfour! Balfour!
+
+_Enter BALFOUR._
+
+  The Parliament!--go to them: I grant all
+  Demands. Their sittings shall be permanent:
+  Tell them to keep their money if they will:
+  I'll come to them for every coat I wear
+  And every crust I eat: only I choose
+  To pardon Strafford. As the Queen shall choose!
+  --You never heard the People howl for blood,
+  Beside!
+
+  _Balfour._ Your Majesty may hear them now:
+  The walls can hardly keep their murmurs out:
+  Please you retire!
+
+  _Charles._         Take all the troops, Balfour!
+
+  _Balfour._ There are some hundred thousand of the crowd.
+
+  _Charles._ Come with me, Strafford! You'll not fear, at least!
+
+  _Strafford._ Balfour, say nothing to the world of this!
+  I charge you, as a dying man, forget
+  You gazed upon this agony of one ...
+  Of one ... or if ... why you may say, Balfour,
+  The King was sorry: 'tis no shame in him:
+  Yes, you may say he even wept, Balfour,
+  And that I walked the lighter to the block
+  Because of it. I shall walk lightly, sir!
+  Earth fades, heaven breaks on me: I shall stand next
+  Before God's throne: the moment's close at hand
+  When man the first, last time, has leave to lay
+  His whole heart bare before its Maker, leave
+  To clear up the long error of a life
+  And choose one happiness for evermore.
+  With all mortality about me, Charles,
+  The sudden wreck, the dregs of violent death--
+  What if, despite the opening angel-song,
+  There penetrate one prayer for you? Be saved
+  Through me! Bear witness, no one could prevent
+  My death! Lead on! ere he awake--best, now!
+  All must be ready: did you say, Balfour,
+  The crowd began to murmur? They'll be kept
+  Too late for sermon at St. Antholin's!
+  Now! But tread softly--children are at play
+  In the next room. Precede! I follow--
+
+_Enter +Lady+ CARLISLE with many +Attendants+._
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                      Me!
+  Follow me, Strafford, and be saved! The King?
+  [_To the KING._] Well--as you ordered, they are ranged without,
+  The convoy.... [_seeing the KING'S state._]
+  [_To STRAFFORD._] You know all, then! Why I thought
+  It looked best that the King should save you,--Charles
+  Alone; 'tis a shame that you should owe me aught.
+  Or no, not shame! Strafford, you'll not feel shame
+  At being saved by me?
+
+  _Hollis._             All true! Oh Strafford,
+  She saves you! all her deed! this lady's deed!
+  And is the boat in readiness? You, friend,
+  Are Billingsley, no doubt. Speak to her, Strafford!
+  See how she trembles, waiting for your voice!
+  The world's to learn its bravest story yet.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Talk afterward! Long nights in France enough,
+  To sit beneath the vines and talk of home.
+
+  _Strafford._ You love me, child? Ah, Strafford can be loved
+  As well as Vane! I could escape, then?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                       Haste!
+  Advance the torches, Bryan!
+
+  _Strafford._                I will die.
+  They call me proud: but England had no right,
+  When she encountered me--her strength to mine--
+  To find the chosen foe a craven. Girl,
+  I fought her to the utterance, I fell,
+  I am hers now, and I will die. Beside,
+  The lookers-on! Eliot is all about
+  This place, with his most uncomplaining brow.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                I think if you could know how much
+  I love you, you would be repaid, my friend!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Then, for my sake!
+
+  _Strafford._                        Even for your sweet sake,
+  I stay.
+
+  _Hollis._ For _their_ sake!
+
+  _Strafford._                To bequeath a stain?
+  Leave me! Girl, humor me and let me die!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Bid him escape--wake, King! Bid him escape!
+
+  _Strafford._ True, I will go! Die, and forsake the King?
+  I'll not draw back from the last service.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                And, after all, what is disgrace to me?
+  Let us come, child! That it should end this way!
+  Lead them! but I feel strangely: it was not
+  To end this way.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Lean--lean on me!
+
+  _Strafford._                       My King!
+  Oh, had he trusted me--his friend of friends!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ I can support him, Hollis!
+
+  _Strafford._                                Not this way!
+  This gate--I dreamed of it, this very gate.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ It opens on the river: our good boat
+  Is moored below, our friends are there.
+
+  _Strafford._                            The same:
+  Only with something ominous and dark,
+  Fatal, inevitable.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._   Strafford! Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._ Not by this gate! I feel what will be there!
+  I dreamed of it, I tell you: touch it not!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ To save the King,--Strafford, to save the King!
+
+[_As STRAFFORD opens the door, PYM is discovered with HAMPDEN, VANE,
+etc. STRAFFORD falls back; PYM follows slowly and confronts him._
+
+  _Pym._ Have I done well? Speak, England! Whose sole sake
+  I still have labored for, with disregard
+  To my own heart,--for whom my youth was made
+  Barren, my manhood waste, to offer up
+  Her sacrifice--this friend, this Wentworth here--
+  Who walked in youth with me, loved me, it may be,
+  And whom, for his forsaking England's cause,
+  I hunted by all means (trusting that she
+  Would sanctify all means) even to the block
+  Which waits for him. And saying this, I feel
+  No bitterer pang than first I felt, the hour
+  I swore that Wentworth might leave us, but I
+  Would never leave him: I do leave him now.
+  I render up my charge (be witness, God!)
+  To England who imposed it. I have done
+  Her bidding--poorly, wrongly,--it may be,
+  With ill effects--for I am weak, a man:
+  Still, I have done my best, my human best,
+  Not faltering for a moment. It is done.
+  And this said, if I say ... yes, I will say
+  I never loved but one man--David not
+  More Jonathan! Even thus, I love him now:
+  And look for my chief portion in that world
+  Where great hearts led astray are turned again,
+  (Soon it may be, and, certes, will be soon:
+  My mission over, I shall not live long,)--
+  Ay, here I know I talk--I dare and must,
+  Of England, and her great reward, as all
+  I look for there; but in my inmost heart,
+  Believe, I think of stealing quite away
+  To walk once more with Wentworth--my youth's friend
+  Purged from all error, gloriously renewed,
+  And Eliot shall not blame us. Then indeed....
+  This is no meeting, Wentworth! Tears increase
+  Too hot. A thin mist--is it blood?--enwraps
+  The face I loved once. Then, the meeting be!
+
+  _Strafford._ I have loved England too; we'll meet then, Pym.
+  As well die now! Youth is the only time
+  To think and to decide on a great course:
+  Manhood with action follows; but 'tis dreary,
+  To have to alter our whole life in age--
+  The time past, the strength gone! As well die now.
+  When we meet, Pym, I'd be set right--not now!
+  Best die. Then if there's any fault, fault too
+  Dies, smothered up. Poor grey old little Laud
+  May dream his dream out, of a perfect Church,
+  In some blind corner. And there's no one left.
+  I trust the King now wholly to you, Pym!
+  And yet, I know not: I shall not be there:
+  Friends fail--if he have any. And he's weak,
+  And loves the Queen, and.... Oh, my fate is nothing--
+  Nothing! But not that awful head--not that!
+
+  _Pym._ If England shall declare such will to me....
+
+  _Strafford._ Pym, you help England! I, that am to die,
+  What I must see! 'tis here--all here! My God,
+  Let me but gasp out, in one word of fire,
+  How thou wilt plague him, satiating hell!
+  What? England that you help, become through you
+  A green and putrefying charnel, left
+  Our children ... some of us have children, Pym--
+  Some who, without that, still must ever wear
+  A darkened brow, an over-serious look,
+  And never properly be young! No word?
+  What if I curse you? Send a strong curse forth
+  Clothed from my heart, lapped round with horror till
+  She's fit with her white face to walk the world
+  Scaring kind natures from your cause and you--
+  Then to sit down with you at the board-head,
+  The gathering for prayer.... O speak, but speak!
+  ... Creep up, and quietly follow each one home,
+  You, you, you, be a nestling care for each
+  To sleep with,--hardly moaning in his dreams.
+  She gnaws so quietly,--till, lo he starts,
+  Gets off with half a heart eaten away!
+  Oh, shall you 'scape with less if she's my child?
+  You will not say a word--to me--to Him?
+
+  _Pym._ If England shall declare such will to me....
+
+  _Strafford._ No, not for England now, not for Heaven now,--
+  See, Pym, for my sake, mine who kneel to you!
+  There, I will thank you for the death, my friend!
+  This is the meeting: let me love you well!
+
+  _Pym._ England,--I am thine own! Dost thou exact
+  That service? I obey thee to the end.
+
+  _Strafford._ O God, I shall die first--I shall die first!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A lively picture of Cavalier sentiment is given in the "Cavalier
+Tunes"--which ought to furnish conclusive proof that Browning does not
+always put himself into his work. They may be compared with the words
+set to Avison's march given in the last chapter which presents just as
+sympathetically "Roundhead" sentiment.
+
+
+    I. MARCHING ALONG
+
+    I
+
+    Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
+    Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing:
+    And, pressing a troop unable to stoop
+    And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,
+    Marched them along, fifty-score strong,
+    Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.
+
+[Illustration: The Tower: Traitors' Gate]
+
+    II
+
+    God for King Charles! Pym and such carles
+    To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous parles!
+    Cavaliers, up! Lips from the cup,
+    Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup
+    Till you're--
+
+      CHORUS.--_Marching along, fifty-score strong,
+                Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song._
+
+    III
+
+    Hampden to hell, and his obsequies' knell
+    Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well!
+    England, good cheer! Rupert is near!
+    Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here
+
+      CHORUS.--_Marching along, fifty-score strong,
+                Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song?_
+
+    IV
+
+    Then, God for King Charles! Pym and his snarls
+    To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles!
+    Hold by the right, you double your might;
+    So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight,
+
+      CHORUS.--_March we along, fifty-score strong,
+                Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!_
+
+
+    II. GIVE A ROUSE
+
+    I
+
+    King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
+    King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
+    Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
+    King Charles!
+
+    II
+
+    Who gave me the goods that went since?
+    Who raised me the house that sank once?
+    Who helped me to gold I spent since?
+    Who found me in wine you drank once?
+
+      CHORUS.--_King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
+                King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
+                Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
+                King Charles!_
+
+    III
+
+    To whom used my boy George quaff else,
+    By the old fool's side that begot him?
+    For whom did he cheer and laugh else,
+    While Noll's damned troopers shot him?
+
+      CHORUS.--_King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
+                King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
+                Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
+                King Charles!_
+
+
+    III. BOOT AND SADDLE
+
+    I
+
+    Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!
+    Rescue my castle before the hot day
+    Brightens to blue from its silvery grey,
+
+      CHORUS.--"_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_"
+
+    II
+
+    Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say;
+    Many's the friend there, will listen and pray
+    "God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay--"
+
+      CHORUS.--"_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_"
+
+    III
+
+    Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay,
+    Flouts Castle Brancepeth the Roundheads' array:
+    Who laughs, "Good fellows ere this, by my fay,"
+
+      CHORUS.--"_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_"
+
+    IV
+
+    Who? My wife Gertrude; that, honest and gay,
+    Laughs when you talk of surrendering, "Nay!
+    I've better counsellors; what counsel they?"
+
+      CHORUS.--"_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_"
+
+Though not illustrative of the subject in hand, "Martin Relph" is
+included here on account of the glimpse it gives of an episode,
+interesting in English History, though devoid of serious consequences,
+since it marked the final abortive struggle of a dying cause.
+
+An imaginary incident of the rebellion in the time of George II., forms
+the background of "Martin Relph," the point of the story being the
+life-long agony of reproach suffered by Martin who let his envy and
+jealousy conquer him at a crucial moment. The history of the attempt of
+Charles Edward to get back the crown of England, supported by a few
+thousand Highlanders, of his final defeat at the Battle of Culloden, and
+of the decay henceforth of Jacobitism, needs no telling. The treatment
+of spies as herein shown is a common-place of war-times, but that a
+reprieve exonerating the accused should be prevented from reaching its
+destination in time through the jealousy of the only person who saw it
+coming gives the episode a tragic touch lifting it into an atmosphere of
+peculiar individual pathos.
+
+
+    MARTIN RELPH
+
+    _My grandfather says he remembers he saw, when a youngster long ago,
+    On a bright May day, a strange old man, with a beard as white as snow,
+    Stand on the hill outside our town like a monument of woe,
+    And, striking his bare bald head the while, sob out the reason--so!_
+
+    If I last as long at Methuselah I shall never forgive myself:
+    But--God forgive me, that I pray, unhappy Martin Relph,
+    As coward, coward I call him--him, yes, him! Away from me!
+    Get you behind the man I am now, you man that I used to be!
+
+    What can have sewed my mouth up, set me a-stare, all eyes, no tongue?
+    People have urged "You visit a scare too hard on a lad so young!
+    You were taken aback, poor boy," they urge, "no time to regain
+          your wits:
+    Besides it had maybe cost you life." Ay, there is the cap which fits!
+
+    So, cap me, the coward,--thus! No fear! A cuff on the brow does good:
+    The feel of it hinders a worm inside which bores at the brain
+          for food.
+    See now, there certainly seems excuse: for a moment, I trust, dear
+          friends,
+    The fault was but folly, no fault of mine, or if mine, I have made
+          amends!
+
+    For, every day that is first of May, on the hill-top, here stand I,
+    Martin Relph, and I strike my brow, and publish the reason why,
+    When there gathers a crowd to mock the fool. No fool, friends,
+          since the bite
+    Of a worm inside is worse to bear: pray God I have balked him quite!
+
+    I'll tell you. Certainly much excuse! It came of the way they cooped
+    Us peasantry up in a ring just here, close huddling because
+          tight-hooped
+    By the red-coats round us villagers all: they meant we should see
+          the sight
+    And take the example,--see, not speak, for speech was the Captain's
+          right.
+
+    "You clowns on the slope, beware!" cried he: "This woman about to die
+    Gives by her fate fair warning to such acquaintance as play the spy.
+    Henceforth who meddle with matters of state above them perhaps will
+          learn
+    That peasants should stick to their plough-tail, leave to the King
+          the King's concern.
+
+    "Here's a quarrel that sets the land on fire, between King George
+          and his foes:
+    What call has a man of your kind--much less, a woman--to interpose?
+    Yet you needs must be meddling, folk like you, not foes--so much
+          the worse!
+    The many and loyal should keep themselves unmixed with the few
+          perverse.
+
+    "Is the counsel hard to follow? I gave it you plainly a month ago,
+    And where was the good? The rebels have learned just all that they
+          need to know.
+    Not a month since in we quietly marched: a week, and they had the
+          news,
+    From a list complete of our rank and file to a note of our caps and
+          shoes.
+
+    "All about all we did and all we were doing and like to do!
+    Only, I catch a letter by luck, and capture who wrote it, too.
+    Some of you men look black enough, but the milk-white face demure
+    Betokens the finger foul with ink: 'tis a woman who writes, be sure!
+
+    "Is it 'Dearie, how much I miss your mouth!'--good natural stuff,
+          she pens?
+    Some sprinkle of that, for a blind, of course: with talk about
+          cocks and hens,
+    How 'robin has built on the apple-tree, and our creeper which came
+          to grief
+    Through the frost, we feared, is twining afresh round casement in
+          famous leaf.'
+
+    "But all for a blind! She soon glides frank into 'Horrid the place
+          is grown
+    With Officers here and Privates there, no nook we may call our own:
+    And Farmer Giles has a tribe to house, and lodging will be to seek
+    For the second Company sure to come ('tis whispered) on Monday week.'
+
+    "And so to the end of the chapter! There! The murder you see, was out:
+    Easy to guess how the change of mind in the rebels was brought about!
+    Safe in the trap would they now lie snug, had treachery made no sign:
+    But treachery meets a just reward, no matter if fools malign!
+
+    "That traitors had played us false, was proved--sent news which fell
+          so pat:
+    And the murder was out--this letter of love, the sender of this sent
+          that!
+    'Tis an ugly job, though, all the same--a hateful, to have to deal
+    With a case of the kind, when a woman's in fault: we soldiers need
+          nerves of steel!
+
+    "So, I gave her a chance, despatched post-haste a message to
+          Vincent Parkes
+    Whom she wrote to; easy to find he was, since one of the King's
+          own clerks,
+    Ay, kept by the King's own gold in the town close by where the
+          rebels camp:
+    A sort of a lawyer, just the man to betray our sort--the scamp!
+
+    "'If her writing is simple and honest and only the lover-like stuff
+          it looks,
+    And if you yourself are a loyalist, nor down in the rebels' books,
+    Come quick,' said I, 'and in person prove you are each of you clear
+          of crime,
+    Or martial law must take its course: this day next week's the time!'
+
+    "Next week is now: does he come? Not he! Clean gone, our clerk, in
+          a trice!
+    He has left his sweetheart here in the lurch: no need of a warning
+          twice!
+    His own neck free, but his partner's fast in the noose still, here
+          she stands
+    To pay for her fault. 'Tis an ugly job: but soldiers obey commands.
+
+    "And hearken wherefore I make a speech! Should any acquaintance share
+    The folly that led to the fault that is now to be punished, let fools
+          beware!
+    Look black, if you please, but keep hands white: and, above all else,
+          keep wives--
+    Or sweethearts or what they may be--from ink! Not a word now, on your
+          lives!"
+
+    Black? but the Pit's own pitch was white to the Captain's face--the
+          brute
+    With the bloated cheeks and the bulgy nose and the bloodshot eyes
+          to suit!
+    He was muddled with wine, they say: more like, he was out of his
+          wits with fear;
+    He had but a handful of men, that's true,--a riot might cost him
+          dear.
+
+    And all that time stood Rosamund Page, with pinioned arms and face
+    Bandaged about, on the turf marked out for the party's firing-place.
+    I hope she was wholly with God: I hope 'twas His angel stretched
+          a hand
+    To steady her so, like the shape of stone you see in our
+          church-aisle stand.
+
+    I hope there was no vain fancy pierced the bandage to vex her eyes,
+    No face within which she missed without, no questions and no replies--
+    "Why did you leave me to die?"--"Because...." Oh, fiends, too soon
+          you grin
+    At merely a moment of hell, like that--such heaven as hell ended in!
+
+    Let mine end too! He gave the word, up went the guns in a line.
+    Those heaped on the hill were blind as dumb,--for, of all eyes,
+          only mine
+    Looked over the heads of the foremost rank. Some fell on their knees
+          in prayer,
+    Some sank to the earth, but all shut eyes, with a sole exception
+          there.
+
+    That was myself, who had stolen up last, had sidled behind the group:
+    I am highest of all on the hill-top, there stand fixed while the
+          others stoop!
+    From head to foot in a serpent's twine am I tightened: _I_ touch
+          ground?
+    No more than a gibbet's rigid corpse which the fetters rust around!
+
+    Can I speak, can I breathe, can I burst--aught else but see, see,
+          only see?
+    And see I do--for there comes in sight--a man, it sure must be!--
+    Who staggeringly, stumblingly rises, falls, rises, at random flings
+          his weight
+    On and on, anyhow onward--a man that's mad he arrives too late!
+
+    Else why does he wave a something white high-flourished above his
+          head?
+    Why does not he call, cry,--curse the fool!--why throw up his arms
+          instead?
+    O take his fist in your own face, fool! Why does not yourself shout
+          "Stay!
+    Here's a man comes rushing, might and main, with something he's mad
+          to say?"
+
+    And a minute, only a moment, to have hell-fire boil up in your brain,
+    And ere you can judge things right, choose heaven,--time's over,
+          repentance vain!
+    They level: a volley, a smoke and the clearing of smoke: I see no more
+    Of the man smoke hid, nor his frantic arms, nor the something white
+          he bore.
+
+    But stretched on the field, some half-mile off, is an object. Surely
+          dumb,
+    Deaf, blind were we struck, that nobody heard, not one of us saw him
+          come!
+    Has he fainted through fright? One may well believe! What is it he
+          holds so fast?
+    Turn him over, examine the face! Heyday! What, Vincent Parkes at last?
+
+    Dead! dead as she, by the self-same shot: one bullet has ended both,
+    Her in the body and him in the soul. They laugh at our plighted troth.
+    "Till death us do part?" Till death us do join past parting--that
+          sounds like
+    Betrothal indeed! O Vincent Parkes, what need has my fist to strike?
+
+    I helped you: thus were you dead and wed: one bound, and your soul
+          reached hers!
+    There is clenched in your hand the thing, signed, sealed, the paper
+          which plain avers
+    She is innocent, innocent, plain as print, with the King's Arms
+          broad engraved:
+    No one can hear, but if any one high on the hill can see, she's saved!
+
+    And torn his garb and bloody his lips with heart-break--plain it grew
+    How the week's delay had been brought about: each guess at the end
+          proved true.
+    It was hard to get at the folk in power: such waste of time! and
+          then
+    Such pleading and praying, with, all the while, his lamb in the
+          lion's den!
+
+    And at length when he wrung their pardon out, no end to the stupid
+          forms--
+    The license and leave: I make no doubt--what wonder if passion warms
+    The pulse in a man if you play with his heart?--he was something
+          hasty in speech;
+    Anyhow, none would quicken the work: he had to beseech, beseech!
+
+    And the thing once signed, sealed, safe in his grasp,--what followed
+          but fresh delays?
+    For the floods were out, he was forced to take such a roundabout of
+          ways!
+    And 'twas "Halt there!" at every turn of the road, since he had to
+          cross the thick
+    Of the red-coats: what did they care for him and his "Quick, for
+          God's sake, quick!"
+
+    Horse? but he had one: had it how long? till the first knave smirked
+          "You brag
+    Yourself a friend of the King's? then lend to a King's friend here
+          your nag!"
+    Money to buy another? Why, piece by piece they plundered him still,
+    With their "Wait you must;--no help: if aught can help you, a guinea
+          will!"
+
+    And a borough there was--I forget the name--whose Mayor must have
+          the bench
+    Of Justices ranged to clear a doubt: for "Vincent," thinks he,
+          sounds French!
+    It well may have driven him daft, God knows! all man can certainly
+          know
+    Is--rushing and falling and rising, at last he arrived in a
+          horror--so!
+
+    When a word, cry, gasp, would have rescued both! Ay bite me! The
+          worm begins
+    At his work once more. Had cowardice proved--that only--my sin of
+          sins!
+    Friends, look you here! Suppose ... suppose.... But mad I am, needs
+          must be!
+    Judas the Damned would never have dared such a sin as I dream! For,
+          see!
+
+    Suppose I had sneakingly loved her myself, my wretched self, and
+          dreamed
+    In the heart of me "She were better dead than happy and his!"--while
+          gleamed
+    A light from hell as I spied the pair in a perfectest embrace,
+    He the savior and she the saved,--bliss born of the very murder-place!
+
+    No! Say I was scared, friends! Call me fool and coward, but nothing
+          worse!
+    Jeer at the fool and gibe at the coward! 'Twas ever the coward's
+          curse
+    That fear breeds fancies in such: such take their shadow for
+          substance still,
+    --A fiend at their back. I liked poor Parkes,--loved Vincent, if
+          you will!
+
+    And her--why, I said "Good morrow" to her, "Good even," and nothing
+          more:
+    The neighborly way! She was just to me as fifty had been before.
+    So, coward it is and coward shall be! There's a friend, now!
+          Thanks! A drink
+    Of water I wanted: and now I can walk, get home by myself, I think.
+
+This poem, on an incident in Clive's life, is also included on account
+of its English historical setting.
+
+The remarkable career of Robert Clive cannot be gone into here. Suffice
+it to refresh one's memory with a few principal events of his life. He
+was born in Shopshire in 1725. He entered the service of the East India
+Company at eighteen and was sent to Madras. Here, on account of his
+falling into debt, and being in danger of losing his situation, he twice
+tried to shoot himself. The pistol failed to go off, however, and he
+became impressed with the idea that some great destiny was awaiting him.
+His feeling was fully realized as his subsequent career in India shows.
+At twenty-seven, when he returned to England he had made the English the
+first military power in India. On his return to India (1755-59) he took
+a further step and secured for the English a political supremacy.
+Finally, on his last visit, he crowned his earlier exploits by putting
+the English dominance on a sounder basis of integrity than it had before
+been.
+
+The incident related in the poem by the old man, Browning heard from
+Mrs. Jameson, who had shortly before heard it from Macaulay at Lansdowne
+House. Macaulay mentions it in his essay: "Of his personal courage he
+had, while still a writer [clerk] given signal proof by a desperate duel
+with a military bully who was the terror of Fort St. David."
+
+The old gentleman in the poem evidently mixed up his dates slightly, for
+he says this incident occurred when Clive was twenty-one, and he
+represents him as committing suicide twenty-five years afterwards. Clive
+was actually forty-nine when he took his own life.
+
+
+    CLIVE
+
+    I and Clive were friends--and why not? Friends! I think you laugh,
+          my lad.
+    Clive it was gave England India, while your father gives--egad,
+    England nothing but the graceless boy who lures him on to speak--
+    "Well, Sir, you and Clive were comrades--" with a tongue thrust in
+          your cheek!
+    Very true: in my eyes, your eyes, all the world's eyes, Clive was man,
+    I was, am and ever shall be--mouse, nay, mouse of all its clan
+    Sorriest sample, if you take the kitchen's estimate for fame;
+    While the man Clive--he fought Plassy, spoiled the clever foreign
+          game,
+    Conquered and annexed and Englished!
+                              Never mind! As o'er my punch
+    (You away) I sit of evenings,--silence, save for biscuit-crunch,
+    Black, unbroken,--thought grows busy, thrids each pathway of old
+          years,
+    Notes this forthright, that meander, till the long-past life appears
+    Like an outspread map of country plodded through, each mile and rood,
+    Once, and well remembered still: I'm startled in my solitude
+    Ever and anon by--what's the sudden mocking light that breaks
+    On me as I slap the table till no rummer-glass but shakes
+    While I ask--aloud, I do believe, God help me!--"Was it thus?
+    Can it be that so I faltered, stopped when just one step for us--"
+    (Us,--you were not born, I grant, but surely some day born would be)
+    "--One bold step had gained a province" (figurative talk, you see)
+    "Got no end of wealth and honor,--yet I stood stock still no less?"
+    --"For I was not Clive," you comment: but it needs no Clive to guess
+    Wealth were handy, honor ticklish, did no writing on the wall
+    Warn me "Trespasser, 'ware man-traps!" Him who braves that
+          notice--call
+    Hero! none of such heroics suit myself who read plain words,
+    Doff my hat, and leap no barrier. Scripture says the land's the
+          Lord's:
+    Louts them--what avail the thousand, noisy in a smock-frocked ring,
+    All-agog to have me trespass, clear the fence, be Clive their king?
+    Higher warrant must you show me ere I set one foot before
+    T'other in that dark direction, though I stand for evermore
+    Poor as Job and meek as Moses. Evermore? No! By-and-by
+    Job grows rich and Moses valiant, Clive turns out less wise than I.
+    Don't object "Why call him friend, then?" Power is power, my boy,
+          and still
+    Marks a man,--God's gift magnific, exercised for good or ill.
+    You've your boot now on my hearth-rug, tread what was a tiger's skin:
+    Rarely such a royal monster as I lodged the bullet in!
+    True, he murdered half a village, so his own death came to pass;
+    Still, for size and beauty, cunning, courage--ah, the brute he was!
+    Why, that Clive,--that youth, that greenhorn, that quill-driving
+          clerk, in fine,--
+    He sustained a siege in Arcot.... But the world knows! Pass the wine.
+
+    Where did I break off at? How bring Clive in? Oh, you mentioned
+          "fear"!
+    Just so: and, said I, that minds me of a story you shall hear.
+
+    We were friends then, Clive and I: so, when the clouds, about the orb
+    Late supreme, encroaching slowly, surely, threatened to absorb
+    Ray by ray its noontide brilliance,--friendship might, with
+          steadier eye
+    Drawing near, bear what had burned else, now no blaze--all majesty.
+    Too much bee's-wing floats my figure? Well, suppose a castle's new:
+    None presume to climb its ramparts, none find foothold sure for shoe
+    'Twixt those squares and squares of granite plating the impervious
+          pile
+    As his scale-mail's warty iron cuirasses a crocodile.
+    Reels that castle thunder-smitten, storm-dismantled? From without
+    Scrambling up by crack and crevice, every cockney prates about
+    Towers--the heap he kicks now! turrets--just the measure of his cane!
+    Will that do? Observe moreover--(same similitude again)--
+    Such a castle seldom crumbles by sheer stress of cannonade:
+    'Tis when foes are foiled and fighting's finished that vile rains
+          invade,
+    Grass o'ergrows, o'ergrows till night-birds congregating find no holes
+    Fit to build in like the topmost sockets made for banner-poles.
+    So Clive crumbled slow in London--crashed at last.
+
+                                                      A week before,
+    Dining with him,--after trying churchyard-chat of days of yore,--
+    Both of us stopped, tired as tombstones, head-piece, foot-piece,
+          when they lean
+    Each to other, drowsed in fog-smoke, o'er a coffined Past between.
+    As I saw his head sink heavy, guessed the soul's extinguishment
+    By the glazing eyeball, noticed how the furtive fingers went
+    Where a drug-box skulked behind the honest liquor,--"One more throw
+    Try for Clive!" thought I: "Let's venture some good rattling
+          question!" So--
+    "Come, Clive, tell us"--out I blurted--"what to tell in turn,
+          years hence,
+    When my boy--suppose I have one--asks me on what evidence
+    I maintain my friend of Plassy proved a warrior every whit
+    Worth your Alexanders, CÊsars, Marlboroughs and--what said Pitt?--
+    Frederick the Fierce himself! Clive told me once"--I want to say--
+    "Which feat out of all those famous doings bore the bell away
+    --In his own calm estimation, mark you, not the mob's rough guess--
+    Which stood foremost as evincing what Clive called courageousness!
+    Come! what moment of the minute, what speck-center in the wide
+    Circle of the action saw your mortal fairly deified?
+    (Let alone that filthy sleep-stuff, swallow bold this wholesome Port!)
+    If a friend has leave to question,--when were you most brave, in
+          short?"
+
+    Up he arched his brows o' the instant--formidably Clive again.
+    "When was I most brave? I'd answer, were the instance half as plain
+    As another instance that's a brain-lodged crystal--curse it!--here
+    Freezing when my memory touches--ugh!--the time I felt most fear.
+    Ugh! I cannot say for certain if I showed fear--anyhow,
+    Fear I felt, and, very likely, shuddered, since I shiver now."
+
+    "Fear!" smiled I. "Well, that's the rarer: that's a specimen to seek,
+    Ticket up in one's museum, _Mind-Freaks_, _Lord Clive's Fear_,
+          _Unique_!"
+
+    Down his brows dropped. On the table painfully he pored as though
+    Tracing, in the stains and streaks there, thoughts encrusted long ago.
+    When he spoke 'twas like a lawyer reading word by word some will,
+    Some blind jungle of a statement,--beating on and on until
+    Out there leaps fierce life to fight with.
+
+                                        "This fell in my factor-days.
+    Desk-drudge, slaving at St. David's, one must game, or drink, or
+          craze.
+    I chose gaming: and,--because your high-flown gamesters hardly take
+    Umbrage at a factor's elbow if the factor pays his stake,--
+    I was winked at in a circle where the company was choice,
+    Captain This and Major That, men high of color, loud of voice,
+    Yet indulgent, condescending to the modest juvenile
+    Who not merely risked but lost his hard-earned guineas with a smile.
+
+    "Down I sat to cards, one evening,--had for my antagonist
+    Somebody whose name's a secret--you'll know why--so, if you list,
+    Call him Cock o' the Walk, my scarlet son of Mars from head to heel!
+    Play commenced: and, whether Cocky fancied that a clerk must feel
+    Quite sufficient honor came of bending over one green baize,
+    I the scribe with him the warrior,--guessed no penman dared to raise
+    Shadow of objection should the honor stay but playing end
+    More or less abruptly,--whether disinclined he grew to spend
+    Practice strictly scientific on a booby born to stare
+    At--not ask of--lace-and-ruffles if the hand they hide plays fair,--
+    Anyhow, I marked a movement when he bade me 'Cut!'
+
+                                                      "I rose.
+    'Such the new manoeuvre, Captain? I'm a novice: knowledge grows.
+    What, you force a card, you cheat, Sir?'
+
+                                            "Never did a thunder-clap
+    Cause emotion, startle Thyrsis locked with Chloe in his lap,
+    As my word and gesture (down I flung my cards to join the pack)
+    Fired the man of arms, whose visage, simply red before, turned black.
+
+    "When he found his voice, he stammered 'That expression once again!'
+
+    "'Well, you forced a card and cheated!'
+
+                                            "'Possibly a factor's brain,
+    Busied with his all-important balance of accounts, may deem
+    Weighing words superfluous trouble: _cheat_ to clerkly ears may seem
+    Just the joke for friends to venture: but we are not friends, you see!
+    When a gentleman is joked with,--if he's good at repartee,
+    He rejoins, as do I--Sirrah, on your knees, withdraw in full!
+    Beg my pardon, or be sure a kindly bullet through your skull
+    Lets in light and teaches manners to what brain it finds! Choose
+          quick--
+    Have your life snuffed out or, kneeling, pray me trim yon
+          candle-wick!'
+
+    "'Well, you cheated!'
+
+                          "Then outbroke a howl from all the friends
+          around.
+    To his feet sprang each in fury, fists were clenched and teeth were
+          ground.
+    'End it! no time like the present! Captain, yours were our disgrace!
+    No delay, begin and finish! Stand back, leave the pair a space!
+    Let civilians be instructed: henceforth simply ply the pen,
+    Fly the sword! This clerk's no swordsman? Suit him with a pistol,
+          then!
+    Even odds! A dozen paces 'twixt the most and least expert
+    Make a dwarf a giant's equal: nay, the dwarf, if he's alert,
+    Likelier hits the broader target!'
+
+                                        "Up we stood accordingly.
+    As they handed me the weapon, such was my soul's thirst to try
+    Then and there conclusions with this bully, tread on and stamp out
+    Every spark of his existence, that,--crept close to, curled about
+    By that toying tempting teasing fool-fore-finger's middle joint,--
+    Don't you guess?--the trigger yielded. Gone my chance! and at the
+          point
+    Of such prime success moreover: scarce an inch above his head
+    Went my ball to hit the wainscot. He was living, I was dead.
+
+    "Up he marched in flaming triumph--'twas his right, mind!--up, within
+    Just an arm's length. 'Now, my clerkling,' chuckled Cocky with a grin
+    As the levelled piece quite touched me, 'Now, Sir Counting-House,
+          repeat
+    That expression which I told you proved bad manners! Did I cheat?'
+
+    "'Cheat you did, you knew you cheated, and, this moment, know as well.
+    As for me, my homely breeding bids you--fire and go to Hell!'
+
+    "Twice the muzzle touched my forehead. Heavy barrel, flurried wrist,
+    Either spoils a steady lifting. Thrice: then, 'Laugh at Hell who list,
+    I can't! God's no fable either. Did this boy's eye wink once? No!
+    There's no standing him and Hell and God all three against me,--so,
+    I did cheat!'
+
+                  "And down he threw the pistol, out rushed--by the door
+    Possibly, but, as for knowledge if by chimney, roof or floor,
+    He effected disappearance--I'll engage no glance was sent
+    That way by a single starer, such a blank astonishment
+    Swallowed up their senses: as for speaking--mute they stood as mice.
+
+    "Mute not long, though! Such reaction, such a hubbub in a trice!
+    'Rogue and rascal! Who'd have thought it? What's to be expected next,
+    When His Majesty's Commission serves a sharper as pretext
+    For.... But where's the need of wasting time now? Nought requires
+          delay:
+    Punishment the Service cries for: let disgrace be wiped away
+    Publicly, in good broad daylight! Resignation? No, indeed
+    Drum and fife must play the Rogue's March, rank and file be free to
+          speed
+    Tardy marching on the rogue's part by appliance in the rear
+    --Kicks administered shall right this wronged civilian,--never fear,
+    Mister Clive, for--though a clerk--you bore yourself--suppose we say--
+    Just as would beseem a soldier!'
+
+                                      "'Gentlemen, attention--pray!
+    First, one word!'
+
+                      "I passed each speaker severally in review.
+    When I had precise their number, names and styles, and fully knew
+    Over whom my supervision thenceforth must extend,--why, then----
+
+    "'Some five minutes since, my life lay--as you all saw, gentlemen--
+    At the mercy of your friend there. Not a single voice was raised
+    In arrest of judgment, not one tongue--before my powder blazed--
+    Ventured "Can it be the youngster blundered, really seemed to mark
+    Some irregular proceeding? We conjecture in the dark,
+    Guess at random,--still, for sake of fair play--what if for a freak,
+    In a fit of absence,--such things have been!--if our friend proved
+          weak
+    --What's the phrase?--corrected fortune! Look into the case, at
+          least!"
+    Who dared interpose between the altar's victim and the priest?
+    Yet he spared me! You eleven! Whosoever, all or each,
+    To the disadvantage of the man who spared me, utters speech
+    --To his face, behind his back,--that speaker has to do with me:
+    Me who promise, if positions change and mine the chance should be,
+    Not to imitate your friend and waive advantage!'
+
+                                                    "Twenty-five
+    Years ago this matter happened: and 'tis certain," added Clive,
+    "Never, to my knowledge, did Sir Cocky have a single breath
+    Breathed against him: lips were closed throughout his life, or
+          since his death,
+    For if he be dead or living I can tell no more than you.
+    All I know is--Cocky had one chance more; how he used it,--grew
+    Out of such unlucky habits, or relapsed, and back again
+    Brought the late-ejected devil with a score more in his train,--
+    That's for you to judge. Reprieval I procured, at any rate.
+    Ugh--the memory of that minute's fear makes gooseflesh rise! Why prate
+    Longer? You've my story, there's your instance: fear I did, you see!"
+
+    "Well"--I hardly kept from laughing--"if I see it, thanks must be
+    Wholly to your Lordship's candor. Not that--in a common case--
+    When a bully caught at cheating thrusts a pistol in one's face,
+    I should underrate, believe me, such a trial to the nerve!
+    'Tis no joke, at one-and-twenty, for a youth to stand nor swerve.
+    Fear I naturally look for--unless, of all men alive,
+    I am forced to make exception when I come to Robert Clive.
+    Since at Arcot, Plassy, elsewhere, he and death--the whole world
+          knows--
+    Came to somewhat closer quarters."
+                                      Quarters? Had we come to blows,
+    Clive and I, you had not wondered--up he sprang so, out he rapped
+    Such a round of oaths--no matter! I'll endeavor to adapt
+    To our modern usage words he--well, 'twas friendly license--flung
+    At me like so many fire-balls, fast as he could wag his tongue.
+
+    "You--a soldier? You--at Plassy? Yours the faculty to nick
+    Instantaneously occasion when your foe, if lightning-quick,
+    --At his mercy, at his malice,--has you, through some stupid inch
+    Undefended in your bulwark? Thus laid open,--not to flinch
+    --That needs courage, you'll concede me. Then, look here! Suppose
+          the man,
+    Checking his advance, his weapon still extended, not a span
+    Distant from my temple,--curse him!--quietly had bade me 'There!
+    Keep your life, calumniator!--worthless life I freely spare:
+    Mine you freely would have taken--murdered me and my good fame
+    Both at once--and all the better! Go, and thank your own bad aim
+    Which permits me to forgive you!' What if, with such words as these,
+    He had cast away his weapon? How should I have borne me, please?
+    Nay, I'll spare you pains and tell you. This, and only this,
+          remained--
+    Pick his weapon up and use it on myself. I so had gained
+    Sleep the earlier, leaving England probably to pay on still
+    Rent and taxes for half India, tenant at the Frenchman's will."
+
+    "Such the turn," said I, "the matter takes with you? Then I abate
+    --No, by not one jot nor tittle,--of your act my estimate.
+    Fear--I wish I could detect there: courage fronts me, plain enough--
+    Call it desperation, madness--never mind! for here's in rough
+    Why, had mine been such a trial, fear had overcome disgrace.
+    True, disgrace were hard to bear: but such a rush against God's face
+    --None of that for me, Lord Plassy, since I go to church at times,
+    Say the creed my mother taught me! Many years in foreign climes
+    Rub some marks away--not all, though! We poor sinners reach life's
+          brink,
+    Overlook what rolls beneath it, recklessly enough, but think
+    There's advantage in what's left us--ground to stand on, time to call
+    'Lord, have mercy!' ere we topple over--do not leap, that's all!"
+
+    Oh, he made no answer,--re-absorbed into his cloud. I caught
+    Something like "Yes--courage: only fools will call it fear."
+                                                                If aught
+    Comfort you, my great unhappy hero Clive, in that I heard,
+    Next week, how your own hand dealt you doom, and uttered just the word
+    "Fearfully courageous!"--this, be sure, and nothing else I groaned.
+    I'm no Clive, nor parson either: Clive's worst deed--we'll hope
+          condoned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+SOCIAL ASPECTS OF ENGLISH LIFE
+
+
+Browning's poetry presents no such complete panorama of phases of social
+life in England as it does of those in Italy, perhaps, because there is
+a poise and solidity about the English character which does not lend
+itself to so great a variety of mood as one may find in the peculiarly
+artistic temperament of the Italians, especially those of the
+Renaissance period. Even such irregular proceedings as murders have
+their philosophical after-claps which show their usefulness in the
+divine scheme of things, while unfortunate love affairs work such
+beneficent results in character that they are shorn of much of their
+tragedy of sorrow. There is quite a group of love-lyrics with no
+definite setting that might be put down as English in temper. It does
+not require much imagination to think of the lover who sings so lofty a
+strain in "One Way of Love" as English:--
+
+    I
+
+    All June I bound the rose in sheaves.
+    Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves
+    And strew them where Pauline may pass.
+    She will not turn aside? Alas!
+    Let them lie. Suppose they die?
+    The chance was they might take her eye.
+
+    II
+
+    How many a month I strove to suit
+    These stubborn fingers to the lute!
+    To-day I venture all I know.
+    She will not hear my music? So!
+    Break the string; fold music's wing:
+    Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!
+
+    III
+
+    My whole life long I learned to love.
+    This hour my utmost art I prove
+    And speak my passion--heaven or hell?
+    She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!
+    Lose who may--I still can say,
+    Those who win heaven, blest are they!
+
+And is not this treatment of a "pretty woman" more English than not?
+
+
+    A PRETTY WOMAN
+
+    I
+
+    That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers,
+        And the blue eye
+        Dear and dewy,
+    And that infantine fresh air of hers!
+
+    II
+
+    To think men cannot take you, Sweet,
+        And enfold you,
+        Ay, and hold you,
+    And so keep you what they make you, Sweet!
+
+    III
+
+    You like us for a glance, you know--
+        For a word's sake
+        Or a sword's sake,
+    All's the same, whate'er the chance, you know.
+
+    IV
+
+    And in turn we make you ours, we say--
+        You and youth too,
+        Eyes and mouth too,
+    All the face composed of flowers, we say.
+
+    V
+
+    All's our own, to make the most of, Sweet--
+        Sing and say for,
+        Watch and pray for,
+    Keep a secret or go boast of, Sweet!
+
+    VI
+
+    But for loving, why, you would not, Sweet,
+        Though we prayed you,
+        Paid you, brayed you
+    In a mortar--for you could not, Sweet!
+
+    VII
+
+    So, we leave the sweet face fondly there:
+        Be its beauty
+        Its sole duty!
+    Let all hope of grace beyond, lie there!
+
+    VIII
+
+    And while the face lies quiet there,
+        Who shall wonder
+        That I ponder
+    A conclusion? I will try it there.
+
+    IX
+
+    As,--why must one, for the love foregone,
+        Scout mere liking?
+        Thunder-striking
+    Earth,--the heaven, we looked above for, gone!
+
+    X
+
+    Why, with beauty, needs there money be,
+        Love with liking?
+        Crush the fly-king
+    In his gauze, because no honey-bee?
+
+    XI
+
+    May not liking be so simple-sweet,
+        If love grew there
+        'Twould undo there
+    All that breaks the cheek to dimples sweet?
+
+    XII
+
+    Is the creature too imperfect, say?
+        Would you mend it
+        And so end it?
+    Since not all addition perfects aye!
+
+    XIII
+
+    Or is it of its kind, perhaps,
+        Just perfection--
+        Whence, rejection
+    Of a grace not to its mind, perhaps?
+
+    XIV
+
+    Shall we burn up, tread that face at once
+        Into tinder,
+        And so hinder
+    Sparks from kindling all the place at once?
+
+    XV
+
+    Or else kiss away one's soul on her?
+        Your love-fancies!
+        --A sick man sees
+    Truer, when his hot eyes roll on her!
+
+    XVI
+
+    Thus the craftsman thinks to grace the rose,--
+        Plucks a mould-flower
+        For his gold flower,
+    Uses fine things that efface the rose:
+
+    XVII
+
+    Rosy rubies make its cup more rose,
+        Precious metals
+        Ape the petals,--
+    Last, some old king locks it up, morose!
+
+    XVIII
+
+    Then how grace a rose? I know a way!
+        Leave it, rather.
+        Must you gather?
+    Smell, kiss, wear it--at last, throw away!
+
+"The Last Ride Together" may be cited as another example of the
+philosophy which an Englishman, or at any rate a Browning, can evolve
+from a more or less painful episode.
+
+
+    THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER
+
+    I
+
+    I said--Then, dearest, since 'tis so,
+    Since now at length my fate I know,
+    Since nothing all my love avails,
+    Since all my life seemed meant for, fails,
+      Since this was written and needs must be--
+    My whole heart rises up to bless
+    Your name in pride and thankfulness!
+    Take back the hope you gave,--I claim
+    Only a memory of the same,
+    --And this beside, if you will not blame,
+      Your leave for one more last ride with me.
+
+    II
+
+    My mistress bent that brow of hers;
+    Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs
+    When pity would be softening through,
+    Fixed me a breathing-while or two
+      With life or death in the balance: right!
+    The blood replenished me again;
+    My last thought was at least not vain:
+    I and my mistress, side by side
+    Shall be together, breathe and ride,
+    So, one day more am I deified.
+      Who knows but the world may end to-night?
+
+    III
+
+    Hush! if you saw some western cloud
+    All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed
+    By many benedictions--sun's--
+    And moon's and evening-star's at once--
+      And so, you, looking and loving best,
+    Conscious grew, your passion drew
+    Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too,
+    Down on you, near and yet more near,
+    Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!--
+    Thus leant she and lingered--joy and fear!
+      Thus lay she a moment on my breast.
+
+    IV
+
+    Then we began to ride. My soul
+    Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll
+    Freshening and fluttering in the wind.
+    Past hopes already lay behind.
+      What need to strive with a life awry?
+    Had I said that, had I done this,
+    So might I gain, so might I miss.
+    Might she have loved me? just as well
+    She might have hated, who can tell!
+    Where had I been now if the worst befell?
+      And here we are riding, she and I.
+
+    V
+
+    Fail I alone, in words and deeds?
+    Why, all men strive and who succeeds?
+    We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,
+    Saw other regions, cities new,
+      As the world rushed by on either side.
+    I thought,--All labor, yet no less
+    Bear up beneath their unsuccess.
+    Look at the end of work, contrast
+    The petty done, the undone vast,
+    This present of theirs with the hopeful past!
+      I hoped she would love me; here we ride.
+
+    VI
+
+    What hand and brain went ever paired?
+    What heart alike conceived and dared?
+    What act proved all its thought had been?
+    What will but felt the fleshly screen?
+      We ride and I see her bosom heave.
+    There's many a crown for who can reach.
+    Ten lines, a stateman's life in each!
+    The flag stuck on a heap of bones,
+    A soldier's doing! what atones?
+    They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones.
+      My riding is better, by their leave.
+
+    VII
+
+    What does it all mean, poet? Well,
+    Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell
+    What we felt only; you expressed
+    You hold things beautiful the best,
+      And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.
+    'Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then,
+    Have you yourself what's best for men?
+    Are you--poor, sick, old ere your time--
+    Nearer one whit your own sublime
+    Than we who never have turned a rhyme?
+      Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride.
+
+    VIII
+
+    And you, great sculptor--so, you gave
+    A score of years to Art, her slave,
+    And that's your Venus, whence we turn
+    To yonder girl that fords the burn!
+      You acquiesce, and shall I repine?
+    What, man of music, you grown grey
+    With notes and nothing else to say,
+    Is this your sole praise from a friend,
+    "Greatly his opera's strains intend,
+    But in music we know how fashions end!"
+      I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.
+
+    IX
+
+    Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate
+    Proposed bliss here should sublimate
+    My being--had I signed the bond--
+    Still one must lead some life beyond,
+      Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.
+    This foot once planted on the goal,
+    This glory-garland round my soul,
+    Could I descry such? Try and test!
+    I sink back shuddering from the quest.
+    Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?
+      Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride.
+
+    X
+
+    And yet--she has not spoke so long!
+    What if heaven be that, fair and strong
+    At life's best, with our eyes upturned
+    Whither life's flower is first discerned,
+      We, fixed so, ever should so abide?
+    What if we still ride on, we two
+    With life for ever old yet new,
+    Changed not in kind but in degree,
+    The instant made eternity,--
+    And heaven just prove that I and she
+      Ride, ride together, for ever ride?
+
+"James Lee's Wife" is also English in temper as the English name
+indicates sufficiently, though the scene is laid out of England. This
+wife has her agony over the faithless husband, but she plans vengeance
+against neither him nor the other women who attract him. She realizes
+that his nature is not a deep and serious one like her own, and in her
+highest reach she sees that her own nature has been lifted up by means
+of her true and loyal feeling, that this gain to herself is her reward,
+or will be in some future state. The stanzas giving this thought are
+among the most beautiful in the poem.
+
+
+    AMONG THE ROCKS
+
+    I
+
+    Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth,
+    This autumn morning! How he sets his bones
+    To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet
+    For the ripple to run over in its mirth;
+      Listening the while, where on the heap of stones
+    The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.
+
+    II
+
+    That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true;
+      Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows.
+    If you loved only what were worth your love,
+    Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you:
+      Make the low nature better by your throes!
+    Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!
+
+Two of the longer poems have distinctly English settings: "A Blot in the
+Scutcheon" and "The Inn Album;" while, of the shorter ones, "Ned Bratts"
+has an English theme, and "Halbert and Hob" though not founded upon an
+English story has been given an English _mis en scËne_ by Browning.
+
+In the "Blot," we get a glimpse of Eighteenth Century aristocratic
+England. The estate over which Lord Tresham presided was one of those
+typical country kingdoms, which have for centuries been so conspicuous a
+feature of English life, and which through the assemblies of the great,
+often gathered within their walls, wielded potent influences upon
+political life. The play opens with the talk of a group of retainers,
+such as formed the household of these lordly establishments. It was not
+a rare thing for the servants of the great to be admitted into intimacy
+with the family, as was the case with Gerard. They were often people of
+a superior grade, hardly to be classed with servants in the sense
+unfortunately given to that word to-day.
+
+Besides the house and the park which figure in the play, such an estate
+had many acres of land devoted to agriculture--some of it, called the
+demesne, which was cultivated for the benefit of the owner, and some
+land held in villeinage which the unfree tenants, called villeins, were
+allowed to till for themselves. All this land might be in one large
+tract, or the demesne might be separate from the other. Mertoun speaks
+of their demesnes touching each other. Over the villeins presided the
+Bailiff, who kept strict watch to see that they performed their work
+punctually. His duties were numerous, for he directed the ploughing,
+sowing and reaping, gave out the seed, watched the harvest, gathered and
+looked after the stock and horses. A church, a mill and an inn were
+often included in such an estate.
+
+[Illustration: An English Manor House]
+
+Pride in their ancient lineage was, of course, common to noble families,
+though probably few of them could boast as Tresham did that there was no
+blot in their escutcheon. Some writers have even declared that most of
+the nobles are descended from tradesmen. According to one of these "The
+great bulk of our peerage is comparatively modern, so far as the titles
+go; but it is not the less noble that it has been recruited to so large
+an extent from the ranks of honorable industry. In olden times, the
+wealth and commerce of London, conducted as it was by energetic and
+enterprising men was a prolific source of peerages. Thus, the earldom
+of Cornwallis was founded by Thomas Cornwallis, the Cheapside merchant;
+that of Essex by William Capel, the draper; and that of Craven by
+William Craven, the merchant tailor. The modern Earl of Warwick is not
+descended from 'the King-maker,' but from William Greville, the
+woolstapler; whilst the modern Dukes of Northumberland find their head,
+not in the Percies, but in Hugh Smithson, a respectable London
+apothecary. The founders of the families of Dartmouth, Radnor, Ducie,
+and Pomfret were respectively a skinner, a silk manufacturer, a merchant
+tailor, and a Calais merchant; whilst the founders of the peerages of
+Tankerville, Dormer, and Coventry were mercers. The ancestors of Earl
+Romney, and Lord Dudley and Ward, were goldsmiths and jewelers; and Lord
+Dacres was a banker in the reign of Charles I., as Lord Overstone is in
+that of Queen Victoria. Edward Osborne, the founder of the dukedom of
+Leeds, was apprentice to William Hewet, a rich cloth worker on London
+Bridge, whose only daughter he courageously rescued from drowning, by
+leaping into the Thames after her, and eventually married. Among other
+peerages founded by trade are those of Fitzwilliam, Leigh, Petre,
+Cowper, Darnley, Hill, and Carrington."
+
+Perhaps the imaginary house of Tresham may be said to find its closest
+counterpart in the Sidney family, for many generations owners of
+Penshurst, and with a traditional character according to which the men
+were all brave and the women were all pure. Sir Philip Sidney was
+himself the type of all the virtues of the family, while his father's
+care for his proper bringing up was not unlike Tresham's for Mildred. In
+the words of a recent writer: "The most famous scion of this Kentish
+house was above all things, the moral and intellectual product of
+Penshurst Place. In the park may still be seen an avenue of trees, under
+which the father, in his afternoon walks with the boy, tested his
+recollection of the morning's lessons conned with the tutor. There, too,
+it was that he impressed on the lad those maxims for the conduct of
+life, afterwards emphasized in the correspondence still extant among the
+Penshurst archives.
+
+"Philip was to begin every day with lifting up his mind to the Almighty
+in hearty prayer, as well as feelingly digesting all he prayed for. He
+was also, early or late, to be obedient to others, so that in due time
+others might obey him. The secret of all success lay in a moderate diet
+with rare use of wine. A gloomy brow was, however, to be avoided.
+Rather should the youth give himself to be merry, so as not to
+degenerate from his father. Above all things should he keep his wit from
+biting words, or indeed from too much talk of any kind. Had not nature
+ramparted up the tongue with teeth and the lips with hair as reins and
+bridles against the tongue's loose use. Heeding this, he must be sure to
+tell no untruth even in trifles; for that was a naughty custom, nor
+could there be a greater reproach to a gentleman than to be accounted a
+liar. _Noblesse oblige_ formed the keynote of the oral and written
+precepts with which the future Sir Philip Sidney was paternally
+supplied. By his mother, too, Lady Mary Dudley, the boy must remember
+himself to be of noble blood. Let him beware, therefore, through sloth
+and vice, of being accounted a blemish on his race."
+
+Furthermore, the brotherly and sisterly relations of Tresham and Mildred
+are not unlike those of Sir Philip Sidney and his sister Mary. They
+studied and worked together in great sympathy, broken into only by the
+tragic fate of Sir Philip. Although the education of women in those days
+was chiefly domestic, with a smattering of accomplishments, yet there
+were exceptional girls who aspired to learning and who became brilliant
+women. Mildred under her brother's tutelage bid fare to be one of this
+sort.
+
+The ideals of the Sidneys, it is true, were sixteenth-century ideals.
+Eighteenth-century ideals were proverbially low. England, then, had not
+recovered from the frivolities inaugurated after the Restoration. The
+slackness and unbelief among the clergy, and the looseness of morals in
+society were notorious, but this degeneration could not have been
+universal. There are always a few Noahs and their families left to
+repeople the world with righteousness after a deluge of degeneracy, and
+Browning is quite right in his portrayal of an eighteenth-century knight
+_sans peur et sans reproche_ who defends the honor of his house with his
+sword, because of his high moral ideals. Besides, the Methodist revival
+led by the Wesleys gained constantly in power. It affected not only the
+people of the middle and lower classes, rescuing them from brutality of
+mind and manners, but it affected the established church for the better,
+and made its mark upon the upper classes. "Religion, long despised and
+contemned by the titled and the great" writes Withrow, "began to receive
+recognition and support by men high in the councils of the nation. Many
+ladies of high rank became devout Christians. A new element of
+restraint, compelling at least some outward respect for the decencies of
+life and observances of religion, was felt at court, where too long
+corruption and back-stair influence had sway."
+
+Like all of his kind, no matter what the century, Tresham is more than
+delighted at the thought of an alliance between his house and the noble
+house to which Mertoun belonged. The youth of Mildred was no obstacle,
+for marriages were frequently contracted in those days between young
+boys and girls. The writer's English grand-father and mother were married
+at the respective ages of sixteen and fifteen within the boundaries of
+the nineteenth century.
+
+The first two scenes of the play present episodes thoroughly
+illustrative of the life lived by the "quality."
+
+
+ACT I
+
+SCENE I.--_The interior of a lodge in LORD TRESHAM'S park. Many
+Retainers crowded at the window, supposed to command a view of the
+entrance to his mansion._
+
+_GERARD, the warrener, his back to a table on which are flagons, etc._
+
+  _1st Retainer._ Ye, do! push, friends, and then you'll push down me!
+  --What for? Does any hear a runner's foot
+  Or a steed's trample or a coach-wheel's cry?
+  Is the Earl come or his least poursuivant?
+  But there's no breeding in a man of you
+  Save Gerard yonder: here's a half-place yet,
+  Old Gerard!
+
+  _Gerard._ Save your courtesies, my friend.
+  Here is my place.
+
+  _2nd Retainer._ Now, Gerard, out with it!
+  What makes you sullen, this of all the days
+  I' the year? To-day that young rich bountiful
+  Handsome Earl Mertoun, whom alone they match
+  With our Lord Tresham through the country side,
+  Is coming here in utmost bravery
+  To ask our master's sister's hand?
+
+  _Gerard._                           What then?
+
+  _2nd Retainer._ What then? Why, you, she speaks to if she meets
+  Your worship, smiles on as you hold apart
+  The boughs to let her through her forest walks
+  You, always favorite for your no deserts
+  You've heard, these three days, how Earl Mertoun sues
+  To lay his heart and house and broad lands too
+  At Lady Mildred's feet: and while we squeeze
+  Ourselves into a mousehole lest we miss
+  One congee of the least page in his train,
+  You sit o' one side--"there's the Earl," say I--
+  "What then," say you!
+
+  _3rd Retainer._          I'll wager he has let
+  Both swans be tamed for Lady Mildred swim
+  Over the falls and gain the river!
+
+  _Gerard._                           Ralph!
+  Is not to-morrow my inspecting day
+  For you and for your hawks?
+
+  _4th Retainer._             Let Gerard be!
+  He's coarse-grained, like his carved black cross-bow stock.
+  Ha, look now, while we squabble with him, look!
+  Well done, now--is not this beginning, now,
+  To purpose?
+
+  _1st Retainer._ Our retainers look as fine--
+  That's comfort. Lord, how Richard holds himself
+  With his white staff! Will not a knave behind
+  Prick him upright?
+
+  _4th Retainer._ He's only bowing, fool!
+  The Earl's man bent us lower by this much.
+
+  _1st Retainer._ That's comfort. Here's a very cavalcade!
+
+  _3rd Retainer._ I don't see wherefore Richard, and his troop
+  Of silk and silver varlets there, should find
+  Their perfumed selves so indispensable
+  On high days, holidays! Would it so disgrace
+  Our family, if I, for instance, stood--
+  In my right hand a cast of Swedish hawks,
+  A leash of greyhounds in my left?--
+
+  _Gerard._                             --With Hugh
+  The logman for supporter, in his right
+  The bill-hook, in his left the brushwood-shears!
+
+  _3rd Retainer._ Out on you, crab! What next, what next?
+  The Earl!
+
+  _1st Retainer._ Oh Walter, groom, our horses, do they match
+  The Earl's? Alas, that first pair of the six--
+  They paw the ground--Ah Walter! and that brute
+  Just on his haunches by the wheel!
+
+  _6th Retainer._                     Ay--ay!
+  You, Philip, are a special hand, I hear,
+  At soups and sauces: what's a horse to you?
+  D'ye mark that beast they've slid into the midst
+  So cunningly?--then, Philip, mark this further;
+  No leg has he to stand on!
+
+  _1st Retainer._             No? That's comfort.
+
+  _2nd Retainer._ Peace, Cook! The Earl descends. Well, Gerard, see
+  The Earl at least! Come, there's a proper man,
+  I hope! Why, Ralph, no falcon, Pole or Swede,
+  Has got a starrier eye.
+
+  _3rd Retainer._         His eyes are blue:
+  But leave my hawks alone!
+
+  _4th Retainer._           So young, and yet
+  So tall and shapely!
+
+  _5th Retainer._     Here's Lord Tresham's self!
+  There now--there's what a nobleman should be!
+  He's older, graver, loftier, he's more like
+  A House's head.
+
+  _2nd Retainer._ But you'd not have a boy
+  --And what's the Earl beside?--possess too soon
+  That stateliness?
+
+  _1st Retainer._  Our master takes his hand--
+  Richard and his white staff are on the move--
+  Back fall our people--(tsh!--there's Timothy
+  Sure to get tangled in his ribbon-ties,
+  And Peter's cursed rosette's a-coming off!)
+  --At last I see our lord's back and his friend's;
+  And the whole beautiful bright company
+  Close round them--in they go!
+
+[_Jumping down from the window-bench, and making for the table and its
+jugs._]
+
+                               Good health, long life
+  Great joy to our Lord Tresham and his House!
+
+  _6th Retainer._ My father drove his father first to court,
+  After his marriage-day--ay, did he!
+
+  _2nd Retainer._                     God bless
+  Lord Tresham, Lady Mildred, and the Earl!
+  Here, Gerard, reach your beaker!
+
+  _Gerard._                         Drink, my boys!
+  Don't mind me--all's not right about me--drink!
+
+  _2nd Retainer_ [_aside_]. He's vexed, now, that he let the show escape!
+  [_To GERARD._] Remember that the Earl returns this way.
+
+  _Gerard._ That way?
+
+  _2nd Retainer._     Just so.
+
+  _Gerard._                    Then my way's here.
+
+[_Goes._
+
+  _2nd Retainer._                                  Old Gerard
+  Will die soon--mind, I said it! He was used
+  To care about the pitifullest thing
+  That touched the House's honor, not an eye
+  But his could see wherein: and on a cause
+  Of scarce a quarter this importance, Gerard
+  Fairly had fretted flesh and bone away
+  In cares that this was right, nor that was wrong,
+  Such point decorous, and such square by rule--
+  He knew such niceties, no herald more:
+  And now--you see his humor: die he will!
+
+  _2nd Retainer._ God help him! Who's for the great servant's hall
+  To hear what's going on inside? They'd follow
+  Lord Tresham into the saloon.
+
+  _3rd Retainer._                 I!--
+
+  _4th Retainer._                       I!--
+  Leave Frank alone for catching, at the door,
+  Some hint of how the parley goes inside!
+  Prosperity to the great House once more!
+  Here's the last drop!
+
+  _1st Retainer._       Have at you! Boys, hurrah!
+
+
+SCENE II.--_A Saloon in the Mansion._
+
+_Enter LORD THESHAM, LORD MERTOUN, AUSTIN, and GUENDOLEN._
+
+  _Tresham._ I welcome you, Lord Mertoun, yet once more,
+  To this ancestral roof of mine. Your name
+  --Noble among the noblest in itself,
+  Yet taking in your person, fame avers,
+  New price and lustre,--(as that gem you wear,
+  Transmitted from a hundred knightly breasts,
+  Fresh chased and set and fixed by its last lord,
+  Seems to re-kindle at the core)--your name
+  Would win you welcome!--
+
+  _Mertoun._                Thanks!
+
+  _Tresham._                        --But add to that,
+  The worthiness and grace and dignity
+  Of your proposal for uniting both
+  Our Houses even closer than respect
+  Unites them now--add these, and you must grant
+  One favor more, nor that the least,--to think
+  The welcome I should give;--'tis given! My lord,
+  My only brother, Austin: he's the king's.
+  Our cousin, Lady Guendolen--betrothed
+  To Austin: all are yours.
+
+  _Mertoun._ I thank you--less
+  For the expressed commendings which your seal,
+  And only that, authenticates--forbids
+  My putting from me ... to my heart I take
+  Your praise ... but praise less claims my gratitude,
+  Than the indulgent insight it implies
+  Of what must needs be uppermost with one
+  Who comes, like me, with the bare leave to ask,
+  In weighed and measured unimpassioned words,
+  A gift, which, if as calmly 'tis denied,
+  He must withdraw, content upon his cheek,
+  Despair within his soul. That I dare ask
+  Firmly, near boldly, near with confidence
+  That gift, I have to thank you. Yes, Lord Tresham,
+  I love your sister--as you'd have one love
+  That lady ... oh more, more I love her! Wealth,
+  Rank, all the world thinks me, they're yours, you know,
+  To hold or part with, at your choice--but grant
+  My true self, me without a rood of land,
+  A piece of gold, a name of yesterday,
+  Grant me that lady, and you ... Death or life?
+
+  _Guendolen_ [_apart to AUSTIN_]. Why, this is loving, Austin!
+
+  _Austin._                       He's so young!
+
+  _Guendolen._ Young? Old enough, I think, to half surmise
+  He never had obtained an entrance here,
+  Were all this fear and trembling needed.
+
+  _Austin._                                Hush!
+  He reddens.
+
+  _Guendolen._ Mark him, Austin; that's true love!
+  Ours must begin again.
+
+  _Tresham._              We'll sit, my lord.
+  Ever with best desert goes diffidence.
+  I may speak plainly nor be misconceived.
+  That I am wholly satisfied with you
+  On this occasion, when a falcon's eye
+  Were dull compared with mine to search out faults,
+  Is somewhat. Mildred's hand is hers to give
+  Or to refuse.
+
+  _Mertoun._    But you, you grant my suit?
+  I have your word if hers?
+
+  _Tresham._                My best of words
+  If hers encourage you. I trust it will.
+  Have you seen Lady Mildred, by the way?
+
+  _Mertoun._ I ... I ... our two demesnes, remember, touch;
+  I have been used to wander carelessly
+  After my stricken game: the heron roused
+  Deep in my woods, has trailed its broken wing
+  Thro' thicks and glades a mile in yours,--or else
+  Some eyass ill-reclaimed has taken flight
+  And lured me after her from tree to tree,
+  I marked not whither. I have come upon
+  The lady's wondrous beauty unaware,
+  And--and then ... I have seen her.
+
+  _Guendolen_ [_aside to AUSTIN_]. Note that mode
+  Of faltering out that, when a lady passed,
+  He, having eyes, did see her! You had said--
+  "On such a day I scanned her, head to foot;
+  Observed a red, where red should not have been,
+  Outside her elbow; but was pleased enough
+  Upon the whole." Let such irreverent talk
+  Be lessoned for the future!
+
+  _Tresham._                  What's to say
+  May be said briefly. She has never known
+  A mother's care; I stand for father too.
+  Her beauty is not strange to you, it seems--
+  You cannot know the good and tender heart,
+  Its girl's trust and its woman's constancy,
+  How pure yet passionate, how calm yet kind,
+  How grave yet joyous, how reserved yet free
+  As light where friends are--how imbued with lore
+  The world most prizes, yet the simplest, yet
+  The ... one might know I talked of Mildred--thus
+  We brothers talk!
+
+  _Mertoun._        I thank you.
+
+  _Tresham._                      In a word,
+  Control's not for this lady; but her wish
+  To please me outstrips in its subtlety
+  My power of being pleased: herself creates
+  The want she means to satisfy. My heart
+  Prefers your suit to her as 'twere its own.
+  Can I say more?
+
+  _Mertoun._      No more--thanks, thanks--no more!
+
+  _Tresham._ This matter then discussed....
+
+  _Mertoun._                          --We'll waste no breath
+  On aught less precious. I'm beneath the roof
+  Which holds her: while I thought of that, my speech
+  To you would wander--as it must not do,
+  Since as you favor me I stand or fall.
+  I pray you suffer that I take my leave!
+
+  _Tresham._ With less regret 't is suffered, that again
+  We meet, I hope, so shortly.
+
+  _Mertoun._                    We? again?--
+  Ah yes, forgive me--when shall ... you will crown
+  Your goodness by forthwith apprising me
+  When ... if ... the lady will appoint a day
+  For me to wait on you--and her.
+
+  _Tresham._                      So soon
+  As I am made acquainted with her thoughts
+  On your proposal--howsoe'er they lean--
+  A messenger shall bring you the result.
+
+  _Mertoun._ You cannot bind me more to you, my lord.
+  Farewell till we renew ... I trust, renew
+  A converse ne'er to disunite again.
+
+  _Tresham._ So may it prove!
+
+  _Mertoun._                  You, lady, you, sir, take
+  My humble salutation!
+
+  _Guendolen and Austin._ Thanks!
+
+  _Tresham._                      Within there!
+
+[_+Servants+ enter. TRESHAM conducts MERTOUN to the door. Meantime
+AUSTIN remarks_,
+
+  Here I have an advantage of the Earl,
+  Confess now! I'd not think that all was safe
+  Because my lady's brother stood my friend!
+  Why, he makes sure of her--"do you say, yes"--
+  "She'll not say, no,"--what comes it to beside?
+  I should have prayed the brother, "speak this speech,
+  For Heaven's sake urge this on her--put in this--
+  Forget not, as you'd save me, t'other thing,--
+  Then set down what she says, and how she looks,
+  And if she smiles, and" (in an under breath)
+  "Only let her accept me, and do you
+  And all the world refuse me, if you dare!"
+
+  _Guendolen._ That way you'd take, friend Austin? What a shame
+  I was your cousin, tamely from the first
+  Your bride, and all this fervor's run to waste!
+  Do you know you speak sensibly to-day?
+  The Earl's a fool.
+
+  _Austin._           Here's Thorold. Tell him so!
+
+  _Tresham_ [_returning_]. Now, voices, voices! 'St! the lady's first!
+  How seems he?--seems he not ... come, faith give fraud
+  The mercy-stroke whenever they engage!
+  Down with fraud, up with faith! How seems the Earl?
+  A name! a blazon! if you knew their worth,
+  As you will never! come--the Earl?
+
+  _Guendolen._                        He's young.
+
+  _Tresham._ What's she? an infant save in heart and brain.
+  Young! Mildred is fourteen, remark! And you ...
+  Austin, how old is she?
+
+  _Guendolen._            There's tact for you!
+  I meant that being young was good excuse
+  If one should tax him....
+
+  _Tresham._                Well?
+
+  _Guendolen._                    --With lacking wit.
+
+  _Tresham._ He lacked wit? Where might he lack wit, so please you?
+
+  _Guendolen._ In standing straighter than the steward's rod
+  And making you the tiresomest harangue,
+  Instead of slipping over to my side
+  And softly whispering in my ear, "Sweet lady,
+  Your cousin there will do me detriment
+  He little dreams of: he's absorbed, I see,
+  In my old name and fame--be sure he'll leave
+  My Mildred, when his best account of me
+  Is ended, in full confidence I wear
+  My grandsire's periwig down either cheek.
+  I'm lost unless your gentleness vouchsafes"....
+
+  _Tresham._ ... "To give a best of best accounts, yourself,
+  Of me and my demerits." You are right!
+  He should have said what now I say for him.
+  Yon golden creature, will you help us all?
+  Here's Austin means to vouch for much, but you
+  --You are ... what Austin only knows! Come up,
+  All three of us: she's in the library
+  No doubt, for the day's wearing fast. Precede!
+
+  _Guendolen._ Austin, how we must--!
+
+  _Tresham._                          Must what? Must speak truth,
+  Malignant tongue! Detect one fault in him!
+  I challenge you!
+
+  _Guendolen._   Witchcraft's a fault in him,
+  For you're bewitched.
+
+  _Tresham._              What's urgent we obtain
+  Is, that she soon receive him--say, to-morrow--
+  Next day at furthest.
+
+  _Guendolen._            Ne'er instruct me!
+
+  _Tresham._                                 Come!
+  --He's out of your good graces, since forsooth,
+  He stood not as he'd carry us by storm
+  With his perfections! You're for the composed
+  Manly assured becoming confidence!
+  --Get her to say, "to-morrow," and I'll give you ...
+  I'll give you black Urganda, to be spoiled
+  With petting and snail-paces. Will you? Come!
+
+The story of the love of Mildred and Mertoun is the universally human
+one, and belongs to no one country or no one period of civilization more
+than another, but the attitude of all the actors in the tragedy belongs
+distinctively to the phase of moral culture which we saw illustrated in
+the youth of Sir Philip Sidney, and is characteristic of English ways of
+thinking whenever their moral force comes uppermost, as for example in
+the Puritan thought of the Cromwellian era.
+
+The play is in a sense a problem play, though to most modern readers the
+tragedy of its ending is all too horrible a consequence of the sin.
+Dramatically and psychically, however, the tragedy is much more
+inevitable than that of Romeo and Juliet, whose love one naturally
+thinks of in the same connection. The catastrophe in the Shakespeare
+play is almost mechanically pushed to its conclusion through mere
+external blundering, easily to have been prevented. Juliet saw clearly
+where Mildred does not, that loyalty to a deep and true love should
+triumph over all minor considerations, so that in her case the tragedy
+is, in no sense, due to her blindness of vision. In the "Blot," lack of
+perception of the true values in life makes it impossible for Mildred or
+Tresham to act otherwise than they did. But having worked out their
+problem according to their lights, a new light of a more glorious day
+dawns upon them.
+
+The ideal by which Tresham lives and moves and has his being is that of
+pride of birth, with honor and chastity as its watchwords. At the same
+time the idol of his life is his sister Mildred, over whom he has
+watched with a father's and mother's care. When the blow to his ideal
+comes at the hands of this much cherished sister, it is not to be
+wondered at that his reason almost deserts him. The greatest agony
+possible to the human soul is to have its ideals, the very food which
+has been the sustenance of its being, utterly ruined. The ideal may be a
+wrong one, or an impartial one, and through the wrack and ruin may dawn
+larger vision, but, unless the nature be a marvelously developed one the
+storm that breaks when an ideal is shattered is overwhelming.
+
+It would be equally true of Mildred that, nurtured as she had been and
+as young English girls usually are, in great purity, even ignorance of
+all things pertaining to life, the sense of her sin would be so
+overwhelming as to blind her to any possible means of expiation except
+the most extreme. And indeed may it not be said that only those who can
+see as Mertoun and Guendolen did that genuine and loyal love is no less
+love because, in a conventional sense, it has sinned,--only those would
+acknowledge, as Tresham, indeed, does after he has murdered Mertoun, how
+perfect the love of Mildred and Mertoun was. Sin flourishes only when
+insincerity tricks itself out in the garb of love, and on the whole it
+is well that human beings should have an abiding sense of their own and
+others insincerity, and test themselves by their willingness to
+acknowledge their love before God and man. There are many Mildreds but
+few Mertouns. It is little wonder that Dickens wrote with such
+enthusiasm of this play that he knew no love like that of Mildred and
+Mertoun, no passion like it.
+
+[Illustration: An English Park]
+
+One does not need to discuss whether murders were possible in English
+social life. They are possible in all life at all times as long as men
+and women allow their passions to overthrow their reason. The last act,
+however, illustrates the English poise already referred to; Tresham
+regains his equilibrium with enlarged vision, his salvation is
+accomplished, his soul awakened.
+
+
+ACT III
+
+SCENE I.--_The end of the Yew-tree Avenue under MILDRED'S window. A
+light seen through a central red pane._
+
+_Enter TRESHAM through the trees._
+
+  Again here! But I cannot lose myself.
+  The heath--the orchard--I have traversed glades
+  And dells and bosky paths which used to lead
+  Into green wild-wood depths, bewildering
+  My boy's adventurous step. And now they tend
+  Hither or soon or late; the blackest shade
+  Breaks up, the thronged trunks of the trees ope wide,
+  And the dim turret I have fled from, fronts
+  Again my step: the very river put
+  Its arm about me and conducted me
+  To this detested spot. Why then, I'll shun
+  Their will no longer: do your will with me!
+  Oh, bitter! To have reared a towering scheme
+  Of happiness, and to behold it razed,
+  Were nothing: all men hope, and see their hopes
+  Frustrate, and grieve awhile, and hope anew.
+  But I ... to hope that from a line like ours
+  No horrid prodigy like this would spring,
+  Were just as though I hoped that from these old
+  Confederates against the sovereign day,
+  Children of older and yet older sires,
+  Whose living coral berries dropped, as now
+  On me, on many a baron's surcoat once,
+  On many a beauty's wimple--would proceed
+  No poison-tree, to thrust, from hell its root,
+  Hither and thither its strange snaky arms.
+  Why came I here? What must I do? [_A bell strikes._] A bell?
+  Midnight! and 'tis at midnight.... Ah, I catch
+  --Woods, river, plains, I catch your meaning now,
+  And I obey you! Hist! This tree will serve.
+
+[_He retires behind one of the trees. After a pause, enter MERTOUN
+cloaked as before._
+
+  _Mertoun._ Not time! Beat out thy last voluptuous beat
+  Of hope and fear, my heart! I thought the clock
+  I' the chapel struck as I was pushing through
+  The ferns. And so I shall no more see rise
+  My love-star! Oh, no matter for the past!
+  So much the more delicious task to watch
+  Mildred revive: to pluck out, thorn by thorn,
+  All traces of the rough forbidden path
+  My rash love lured her to! Each day must see
+  Some fear of hers effaced, some hope renewed:
+  Then there will be surprises, unforeseen
+  Delights in store. I'll not regret the past.
+
+[_The light is placed above in the purple pane._
+
+  And see, my signal rises, Mildred's star!
+  I never saw it lovelier than now
+  It rises for the last time. If it sets,
+  'Tis that the re-assuring sun may dawn.
+
+[_As he prepares to ascend the last tree of the avenue, TRESHAM arrests
+his arm._
+
+  Unhand me--peasant, by your grasp! Here's gold.
+  'Twas a mad freak of mine. I said I'd pluck
+  A branch from the white-blossomed shrub beneath
+  The casement there. Take this, and hold your peace.
+
+  _Tresham._ Into the moonlight yonder, come with me!
+  Out of the shadow!
+
+  _Mertoun._         I am armed, fool!
+
+  _Tresham._                           Yes,
+  Or no? You'll come into the light, or no?
+  My hand is on your throat--refuse!--
+
+  _Mertoun._                           That voice!
+  Where have I heard ... no--that was mild and slow.
+  I'll come with you.
+
+[_They advance._
+
+  _Tresham._          You're armed: that's well. Declare
+  Your name: who are you?
+
+  _Mertoun._              (Tresham!--she is lost!)
+
+  _Tresham._ Oh, silent? Do you know, you bear yourself
+  Exactly as, in curious dreams I've had
+  How felons, this wild earth is full of, look
+  When they're detected, still your kind has looked!
+  The bravo holds an assured countenance,
+  The thief is voluble and plausible,
+  But silently the slave of lust has crouched
+  When I have fancied it before a man.
+  Your name!
+
+  _Mertoun._ I do conjure Lord Tresham--ay,
+  Kissing his foot, if so I might prevail--
+  That he for his own sake forbear to ask
+  My name! As heaven's above, his future weal
+  Or woe depends upon my silence! Vain!
+  I read your white inexorable face.
+  Know me, Lord Tresham!
+
+[_He throws off his disguises._
+
+  _Tresham._             Mertoun!
+           [_After a pause._] Draw now!
+
+  _Mertoun._                            Hear me
+  But speak first!
+
+  _Tresham._       Not one least word on your life!
+  Be sure that I will strangle in your throat
+  The least word that informs me how you live
+  And yet seem what you seem! No doubt 'twas you
+  Taught Mildred still to keep that face and sin.
+  We should join hands in frantic sympathy
+  If you once taught me the unteachable,
+  Explained how you can live so, and so lie.
+  With God's help I retain, despite my sense,
+  The old belief--a life like yours is still
+  Impossible. Now draw!
+
+  _Mertoun._            Not for my sake,
+  Do I entreat a hearing--for your sake,
+  And most, for her sake!
+
+  _Tresham._              Ha ha, what should I
+  Know of your ways? A miscreant like yourself,
+  How must one rouse his ire? A blow?--that's pride
+  No doubt, to him! One spurns him, does one not?
+  Or sets the foot upon his mouth, or spits
+  Into his face! Come! Which, or all of these?
+
+  _Mertoun._ 'Twixt him and me and Mildred, Heaven be judge!
+  Can I avoid this? Have your will, my lord!
+
+[_He draws and, after a few passes, falls._
+
+  _Tresham._ You are not hurt?
+
+  _Mertoun._                   You'll hear me now!
+
+  _Tresham._                                       But rise!
+
+  _Mertoun._ Ah, Tresham, say I not "you'll hear me now!"
+  And what procures a man the right to speak
+  In his defense before his fellow man,
+  But--I suppose--the thought that presently
+  He may have leave to speak before his God
+  His whole defense?
+
+  _Tresham._         Not hurt? It cannot be!
+  You made no effort to resist me. Where
+  Did my sword reach you? Why not have returned
+  My thrusts? Hurt where?
+
+  _Mertoun._              My lord--
+
+  _Tresham._                        How young he is!
+
+  _Mertoun._ Lord Tresham, I am very young, and yet
+  I have entangled other lives with mine.
+  Do let me speak, and do believe my speech!
+  That when I die before you presently,--
+
+  _Tresham._ Can you stay here till I return with help?
+
+  _Mertoun._ Oh, stay by me! When I was less than boy
+  I did you grievous wrong and knew it not--
+  Upon my honor, knew it not! Once known,
+  I could not find what seemed a better way
+  To right you than I took: my life--you feel
+  How less than nothing were the giving you
+  The life you've taken! But I thought my way
+  The better--only for your sake and hers:
+  And as you have decided otherwise,
+  Would I had an infinity of lives
+  To offer you! Now say--instruct me--think!
+  Can you, from the brief minutes I have left,
+  Eke out my reparation? Oh think--think!
+  For I must wring a partial--dare I say,
+  Forgiveness from you, ere I die?
+
+  _Tresham._                       I do
+  Forgive you.
+
+  _Mertoun._   Wait and ponder that great word!
+  Because, if you forgive me, I shall hope
+  To speak to you of--Mildred!
+
+  _Tresham._                   Mertoun, haste
+  And anger have undone us. 'Tis not you
+  Should tell me for a novelty you're young,
+  Thoughtless, unable to recall the past.
+  Be but your pardon ample as my own!
+
+  _Mertoun._ Ah, Tresham, that a sword-stroke and a drop
+  Of blood or two, should bring all this about!
+  Why, 'twas my very fear of you, my love
+  Of you--(what passion like a boy's for one
+  Like you?)--that ruined me! I dreamed of you--
+  You, all accomplished, courted everywhere,
+  The scholar and the gentleman. I burned
+  To knit myself to you: but I was young,
+  And your surpassing reputation kept me
+  So far aloof! Oh, wherefore all that love?
+  With less of love, my glorious yesterday
+  Of praise and gentlest words and kindest looks,
+  Had taken place perchance six months ago.
+  Even now, how happy we had been! And yet
+  I know the thought of this escaped you, Tresham!
+  Let me look up into your face; I feel
+  'Tis changed above me: yet my eyes are glazed.
+  Where? where?
+
+[_As he endeavors to raise himself, his eye catches the lamp._
+
+                Ah, Mildred! What will Mildred do?
+  Tresham, her life is bound up in the life
+  That's bleeding fast away! I'll live--must live,
+  There, if you'll only turn me I shall live
+  And save her! Tresham--oh, had you but heard!
+  Had you but heard! What right was yours to set
+  The thoughtless foot upon her life and mine,
+  And then say, as we perish, "Had I thought,
+  All had gone otherwise?" We've sinned and die:
+  Never you sin, Lord Tresham! for you'll die,
+  And God will judge you.
+
+  _Tresham._              Yes, be satisfied!
+  That process is begun.
+
+  _Mertoun._             And she sits there
+  Waiting for me! Now, say you this to her--
+  You, not another--say, I saw him die
+  As he breathed this, "I love her"--you don't know
+  What those three small words mean! Say, loving her
+  Lowers me down the bloody slope to death
+  With memories ... I speak to her, not you,
+  Who had no pity, will have no remorse,
+  Perchance intend her.... Die along with me,
+  Dear Mildred! 'tis so easy, and you'll 'scape
+  So much unkindness! Can I lie at rest,
+  With rude speech spoken to you, ruder deeds
+  Done to you?--heartless men shall have my heart,
+  And I tied down with grave-clothes and the worm,
+  Aware, perhaps, of every blow--oh God!--
+  Upon those lips--yet of no power to tear
+  The felon stripe by stripe! Die, Mildred! Leave
+  Their honorable world to them! For God
+  We're good enough, though the world casts us out.
+
+[_A whistle is heard._
+
+  _Tresham._ Ho, Gerard!
+
+_Enter GERARD, AUSTIN and GUENDOLEN, with lights._
+
+                        No one speak! You see what's done.
+  I cannot bear another voice.
+
+  _Mertoun._                   There's light--
+  Light all about me, and I move to it.
+  Tresham, did I not tell you--did you not
+  Just promise to deliver words of mine
+  To Mildred?
+
+  _Tresham._ I will bear these words to her.
+
+  _Mertoun._ Now?
+
+  _Tresham._      Now. Lift you the body, and leave me
+  The head.
+
+[_As they half raise MERTOUN, he turns suddenly._
+
+  _Mertoun._ I knew they turned me: turn me not from her!
+  There! stay you! there!
+
+[_Dies._
+
+  _Guendolen_ [_after a pause_]. Austin, remain you here
+  With Thorold until Gerard comes with help:
+  Then lead him to his chamber. I must go
+  To Mildred.
+
+  _Tresham._ Guendolen, I hear each word
+  You utter. Did you hear him bid me give
+  His message? Did you hear my promise? I,
+  And only I, see Mildred.
+
+  _Guendolen._             She will die.
+
+  _Tresham._ Oh no, she will not die! I dare not hope
+  She'll die. What ground have you to think she'll die?
+  Why, Austin's with you!
+
+  _Austin._               Had we but arrived
+  Before you fought!
+
+  _Tresham._         There was no fight at all.
+  He let me slaughter him--the boy! I'll trust
+  The body there to you and Gerard--thus!
+  Now bear him on before me.
+
+  _Austin._                  Whither bear him?
+
+  _Tresham._ Oh, to my chamber! When we meet there next,
+  We shall be friends.
+
+[_They bear out the body of MERTOUN._
+
+                       Will she die, Guendolen?
+
+  _Guendolen._ Where are you taking me?
+
+  _Tresham._                            He fell just here.
+  Now answer me. Shall you in your whole life
+  --You who have nought to do with Mertoun's fate,
+  Now you have seen his breast upon the turf,
+  Shall you e'er walk this way if you can help?
+  When you and Austin wander arm-in-arm
+  Through our ancestral grounds, will not a shade
+  Be ever on the meadow and the waste--
+  Another kind of shade than when the night
+  Shuts the woodside with all its whispers up?
+  But will you ever so forget his breast
+  As carelessly to cross this bloody turf
+  Under the black yew avenue? That's well!
+  You turn your head: and I then?--
+
+  _Guendolen._                      What is done
+  Is done. My care is for the living. Thorold,
+  Bear up against this burden: more remains
+  To set the neck to!
+
+  _Tresham._          Dear and ancient trees
+  My fathers planted, and I loved so well!
+  What have I done that, like some fabled crime
+  Of yore, lets loose a Fury leading thus
+  Her miserable dance amidst you all?
+  Oh, never more for me shall winds intone
+  With all your tops a vast antiphony,
+  Demanding and responding in God's praise!
+  Hers ye are now, not mine! Farewell--farewell!
+
+
+SCENE II.--_MILDRED'S chamber._
+
+_MILDRED alone._
+
+  He comes not! I have heard of those who seemed
+  Resourceless in prosperity,--you thought
+  Sorrow might slay them when she listed; yet
+  Did they so gather up their diffused strength
+  At her first menace, that they bade her strike,
+  And stood and laughed her subtlest skill to scorn.
+  Oh, 'tis not so with me! The first woe fell,
+  And the rest fall upon it, not on me:
+  Else should I bear that Henry comes not?--fails
+  Just this first night out of so many nights?
+  Loving is done with. Were he sitting now,
+  As so few hours since, on that seat, we'd love
+  No more--contrive no thousand happy ways
+  To hide love from the loveless, any more.
+  I think I might have urged some little point
+  In my defense, to Thorold; he was breathless
+  For the least hint of a defense: but no,
+  The first shame over, all that would might fall.
+  No Henry! Yet I merely sit and think
+  The morn's deed o'er and o'er. I must have crept
+  Out of myself. A Mildred that has lost
+  Her lover--oh, I dare not look upon
+  Such woe! I crouch away from it! 'Tis she,
+  Mildred, will break her heart, not I! The world
+  Forsakes me: only Henry's left me--left?
+  When I have lost him, for he does not come,
+  And I sit stupidly.... Oh Heaven, break up
+  This worse than anguish, this mad apathy,
+  By any means or any messenger!
+
+  _Tresham_ [_without_]. Mildred!
+
+  _Mildred._                      Come in! Heaven hears me!
+  [_Enter TRESHAM._] You? alone?
+  Oh, no more cursing!
+
+  _Tresham._           Mildred, I must sit.
+  There--you sit!
+
+  _Mildred._      Say it, Thorold--do not look
+  The curse! deliver all you come to say!
+  What must become of me? Oh, speak that thought
+  Which makes your brow and cheeks so pale!
+
+  _Tresham._                                My thought?
+
+  _Mildred._ All of it!
+
+  _Tresham._            How we waded--years ago--
+  After those water-lilies, till the plash,
+  I know not how, surprised us; and you dared
+  Neither advance nor turn back: so, we stood
+  Laughing and crying until Gerard came--
+  Once safe upon the turf, the loudest too,
+  For once more reaching the relinquished prize!
+  How idle thoughts are, some men's, dying men's!
+  Mildred,--
+
+  _Mildred._ You call me kindlier by my name
+  Than even yesterday: what is in that?
+
+  _Tresham._ It weighs so much upon my mind that I
+  This morning took an office not my own!
+  I might ... of course, I must be glad or grieved,
+  Content or not, at every little thing
+  That touches you. I may with a wrung heart
+  Even reprove you, Mildred; I did more:
+  Will you forgive me?
+
+  _Mildred._           Thorold? do you mock?
+  Or no ... and yet you bid me ... say that word!
+
+  _Tresham._ Forgive me, Mildred!--are you silent, Sweet?
+
+  _Mildred_ [_starting up_]. Why does not Henry Mertoun come to-night?
+  Are you, too, silent?
+
+[_Dashing his mantle aside, and pointing to his scabbard, which is
+empty._
+
+                         Ah, this speaks for you!
+  You've murdered Henry Mertoun! Now proceed!
+  What is it I must pardon? This and all?
+  Well, I do pardon you--I think I do.
+  Thorold, how very wretched you must be!
+
+  _Tresham._ He bade me tell you....
+
+  _Mildred._                         What I do forbid
+  Your utterance of! So much that you may tell
+  And will not--how you murdered him ... but, no!
+  You'll tell me that he loved me, never more
+  Than bleeding out his life there: must I say
+  "Indeed," to that? Enough! I pardon you.
+
+  _Tresham._ You cannot, Mildred! for the harsh words, yes:
+  Of this last deed Another's judge: whose doom
+  I wait in doubt, despondency and fear.
+
+  _Mildred._ Oh, true! There's nought for me to pardon! True!
+  You loose my soul of all its cares at once.
+  Death makes me sure of him for ever! You
+  Tell me his last words? He shall tell me them,
+  And take my answer--not in words, but reading
+  Himself the heart I had to read him late,
+  Which death....
+
+  _Tresham._      Death? You are dying too? Well said
+  Of Guendolen! I dared not hope you'd die:
+  But she was sure of it.
+
+  _Mildred._              Tell Guendolen
+  I loved her, and tell Austin....
+
+  _Tresham._                        Him you loved:
+  And me?
+
+  _Mildred._ Ah, Thorold! Was't not rashly done
+  To quench that blood, on fire with youth and hope
+  And love of me--whom you loved too, and yet
+  Suffered to sit here waiting his approach
+  While you were slaying him? Oh, doubtlessly
+  You let him speak his poor boy's speech
+  --Do his poor utmost to disarm your wrath
+  And respite me!--you let him try to give
+  The story of our love and ignorance,
+  And the brief madness and the long despair--
+  You let him plead all this, because your code
+  Of honor bids you hear before you strike:
+  But at the end, as he looked up for life
+  Into your eyes--you struck him down!
+
+  _Tresham._                          No! No!
+  Had I but heard him--had I let him speak
+  Half the truth--less--had I looked long on him
+  I had desisted! Why, as he lay there,
+  The moon on his flushed cheek, I gathered all
+  The story ere he told it: I saw through
+  The troubled surface of his crime and yours
+  A depth of purity immovable,
+  Had I but glanced, where all seemed turbidest
+  Had gleamed some inlet to the calm beneath;
+  I would not glance: my punishment's at hand.
+  There, Mildred, is the truth! and you--say on--
+  You curse me?
+
+  _Mildred._    As I dare approach that Heaven
+  Which has not bade a living thing despair,
+  Which needs no code to keep its grace from stain,
+  But bids the vilest worm that turns on it
+  Desist and be forgiven,--I--forgive not,
+  But bless you, Thorold, from my soul of souls!
+
+[_Falls on his neck._
+
+  There! Do not think too much upon the past!
+  The cloud that's broke was all the same a cloud
+  While it stood up between my friend and you;
+  You hurt him 'neath its shadow: but is that
+  So past retrieve? I have his heart, you know;
+  I may dispose of it: I give it you!
+  It loves you as mine loves! Confirm me, Henry!
+
+[_Dies._
+
+  _Tresham._ I wish thee joy, Beloved! I am glad
+  In thy full gladness!
+
+  _Guendolen_ [_without_]. Mildred! Tresham!
+          [_Entering with AUSTIN._] Thorold,
+  I could desist no longer. Ah, she swoons!
+  That's well.
+
+  _Tresham._ Oh, better far than that!
+
+  _Guendolen._                          She's dead!
+  Let me unlock her arms!
+
+  _Tresham._              She threw them thus
+  About my neck, and blessed me, and then died:
+  You'll let them stay now, Guendolen!
+
+  _Austin._                            Leave her
+  And look to him! What ails you, Thorold?
+
+  _Guendolen._                             White
+  As she, and whiter! Austin! quick--this side!
+
+  _Austin._ A froth is oozing through his clenched teeth;
+  Both lips, where they're not bitten through, are black:
+  Speak, dearest Thorold!
+
+  _Tresham._              Something does weigh down
+  My neck beside her weight: thanks: I should fall
+  But for you, Austin, I believe!--there, there,
+  'Twill pass away soon!--ah,--I had forgotten:
+  I am dying.
+
+  _Guendolen._ Thorold--Thorold--why was this?
+
+  _Tresham._ I said, just as I drank the poison off,
+  The earth would be no longer earth to me,
+  The life out of all life was gone from me.
+  There are blind ways provided, the foredone
+  Heart-weary player in this pageant-world
+  Drops out by, letting the main masque defile
+  By the conspicuous portal: I am through--
+  Just through!
+
+  _Guendolen._ Don't leave him, Austin! Death is close.
+
+  _Tresham._ Already Mildred's face is peacefuller.
+  I see you, Austin--feel you: here's my hand,
+  Put yours in it--you, Guendolen, yours too!
+  You're lord and lady now--you're Treshams; name
+  And fame are yours: you hold our 'scutcheon up.
+  Austin, no blot on it! You see how blood
+  Must wash one blot away: the first blot came
+  And the first blood came. To the vain world's eye
+  All's gules again: no care to the vain world,
+  From whence the red was drawn!
+
+  _Austin._                     No blot shall come!
+
+  _Tresham._ I said that: yet it did come. Should it come,
+  Vengeance is God's, not man's. Remember me!
+
+[_Dies._
+
+  _Guendolen_ [_letting fall the pulseless arm_].
+          Ah, Thorold, we can but--remember you!
+
+In "Ned Bratts," Browning has given a striking picture of the influence
+exerted by Bunyan upon some of his wicked contemporaries. The poet took
+his hints for the story from Bunyan himself, who tells it as follows in
+the "Life and Death of Mr. Badman."
+
+"At a summer assizes holden at Hertford, while the judge was sitting
+upon the bench, comes this old Tod into the Court, clothed in a green
+suit, with his leathern girdle in his hand, his bosom open, and all on a
+dung sweat, as if he had run for his life; and being come in, he spake
+aloud, as follows: 'My lord,' said he, 'here is the veriest rogue that
+breathes upon the face of the earth. I have been a thief from a child:
+when I was but a little one, I gave myself to rob orchards and to do
+other such like wicked things, and I have continued a thief ever since.
+My lord, there has not been a robbery committed these many years, within
+so many miles of this place, but I have either been at it, or privy to
+it.' The judge thought the fellow was mad, but after some conference
+with some of the justices, they agreed to indict him; and so they did of
+several felonious actions; to all of which he heartily confessed guilty,
+and so was hanged, with his wife at the same time."
+
+Browning had the happy thought of placing this episode in Bedford amid
+the scenes of Bunyan's labors and imprisonment. Bunyan, himself, was
+tried at the Bedford Assizes upon the charge of preaching things he
+should not, or according to some accounts for preaching without having
+been ordained, and was sentenced to twelve years' imprisonment in the
+Bedford Jail. At one time it was thought that he wrote "Pilgrim's
+Progress" during this imprisonment, but Dr. Brown, in his biography of
+Bunyan conjectured that this book was not begun until a later and
+shorter imprisonment of 1675-76, in the town prison and toll-house on
+Bedford Bridge. Dr. Brown supposes that the portion of the book written
+in prison closes where Christian and Hopeful part from the shepherds on
+the Delectable Mountains. "At that point a break in the narrative is
+indicated--'So I awoke from my dream;' it is resumed with the
+words--'And I slept and dreamed again, and saw the same two pilgrims
+going down the mountains along the highway towards the city.' Already
+from the top of an high hill called 'Clear,' the Celestial City was in
+view; dangers there were still to be encountered; but to have reached
+that high hill and to have seen something like a gate, and some of the
+glory of the place, was an attainment and an incentive." There Bunyan
+could pause. Several years later the pilgrimage of Christiana was
+written.
+
+Browning, however, adopts the tradition that the book was written during
+the twelve years' imprisonment, and makes use of the story of Bunyan's
+having supported himself during this time by making tagged shoe-laces.
+He brings in, also, the little blind daughter to whom Bunyan was said to
+be devoted. The Poet was evidently under the impression also that the
+assizes were held in a courthouse, but there is good authority for
+thinking that at that time they were held in the chapel of Herne.
+Nothing remains of this building now, but it was situated at the
+southwest corner of the churchyard of St. Paul, and was spoken of
+sometimes as the School-house chapel.
+
+Ned Bratts and his wife did not know, of course, that they actually
+lived in the land of the "Pilgrim's Progress." This has been pointed out
+only recently in a fascinating little book by A. J. Foster of Wootton
+Vicarage, Bedfordshire. He has been a pilgrim from Elstow, the village
+where Bunyan was born near Bedford, through all the surrounding country,
+and has fixed upon many spots beautiful and otherwise which he believes
+were transmuted in Bunyan's imagination into the House Beautiful, The
+Delectable Mountains, Vanity Fair and so on through nearly all the
+scenes of Christian's journey.
+
+The House Beautiful he identifies with Houghton House in the manor of
+Dame Ellen's Bury. This is one of the most interesting of the country
+houses of England, because of its connection with Sir Philip Sidney's
+sister, Mary Sidney. After the death of her husband, Lord Pembroke,
+James I. presented her with the royal manor of Dame Ellen's Bury, and
+under the guidance of Inigo Jones, it is generally supposed, Houghton
+House was built. It is in ruins now and covered with ivy. Trees have
+grown within the ruins themselves. Still it is one of the most beautiful
+spots in Bedfordshire. "In Bunyan's time," Mr. Foster writes, "we may
+suppose the northern slope of Houghton Park was a series of terraces
+rising one above another, and laid out in the stiff garden fashion of
+the time. A flight of steps, or maybe a steep path, would lead from one
+terrace to the next, and gradually the view over the plain of Bedford
+would reveal itself to the traveler as he mounted higher and higher."
+
+From Houghton House there is a view of the Chiltern Hills. Mr. Foster is
+of the opinion that Bunyan had this view in mind when he described
+Christian as looking from the roof of the House Beautiful southwards
+towards the Delectable Mountains. He writes, "One of the main roads to
+London from Bedford, and the one, moreover, which passes through Elstow,
+crosses the hills only a little more than a mile east of Houghton House,
+and Bunyan, in his frequent journeys to London, no doubt often passed
+along this road. All in this direction was, therefore, to him familiar
+ground. Many a pleasant walk or ride came back to him through memory, as
+he took pen in hand to describe Hill Difficulty with its steep path and
+its arbor, and the House Beautiful with its guest-chamber, its large
+upper room looking eastward, its study and its armory.
+
+"Many a time did Bunyan, as he journeyed, look southwards to the blue
+Chilterns, and when the time came he placed together all that he had
+seen, as the frame in which he should set his way-faring pilgrim."
+
+Pleasant as it would be to follow with Mr. Foster his journey through
+the real scenes of the "Pilgrim's Progress," our main interest at
+present is to observe how Browning's facile imagination has presented
+the conversion, through the impression made upon them by Bunyan's book,
+of Ned and his wife.
+
+
+    NED BRATTS
+
+    'T was Bedford Special Assize, one daft Midsummer's Day:
+    A broiling blasting June,--was never its like, men say.
+    Corn stood sheaf-ripe already, and trees looked yellow as that;
+    Ponds drained dust-dry, the cattle lay foaming around each flat.
+    Inside town, dogs went mad, and folk kept bibbing beer
+    While the parsons prayed for rain. 'T was horrible, yes--but queer:
+    Queer--for the sun laughed gay, yet nobody moved a hand
+    To work one stroke at his trade: as given to understand
+    That all was come to a stop, work and such worldly ways,
+    And the world's old self about to end in a merry blaze.
+    Midsummer's Day moreover was the first of Bedford Fair,
+    With Bedford Town's tag-rag and bobtail a-bowsing there.
+
+    But the Court House, Quality crammed: through doors ope, windows wide,
+    High on the Bench you saw sit Lordships side by side.
+    There frowned Chief Justice Jukes, fumed learned Brother Small,
+    And fretted their fellow Judge: like threshers, one and all,
+    Of a reek with laying down the law in a furnace. Why?
+    Because their lungs breathed flame--the regular crowd forbye--
+    From gentry pouring in--quite a nosegay, to be sure!
+    How else could they pass the time, six mortal hours endure
+    Till night should extinguish day, when matters might haply mend?
+    Meanwhile no bad resource was--watching begin and end
+    Some trial for life and death, in a brisk five minutes' space,
+    And betting which knave would 'scape, which hang, from his sort
+          of face.
+
+    So, their Lordships toiled and moiled, and a deal of work was done
+    (I warrant) to justify the mirth of the crazy sun
+    As this and t'other lout, struck dumb at the sudden show
+    Of red robes and white wigs, boggled nor answered "Boh!"
+    When asked why he, Tom Styles, should not--because Jack Nokes
+    Had stolen the horse--be hanged: for Judges must have their jokes,
+    And louts must make allowance--let's say, for some blue fly
+    Which punctured a dewy scalp where the frizzles stuck awry--
+    Else Tom had fleered scot-free, so nearly over and done
+    Was the main of the job. Full-measure, the gentles enjoyed their fun,
+    As a twenty-five were tried, rank puritans caught at prayer
+    In a cow-house and laid by the heels,--have at 'em, devil may care!--
+    And ten were prescribed the whip, and ten a brand on the cheek,
+    And five a slit of the nose--just leaving enough to tweak.
+
+    Well, things at jolly high-tide, amusement steeped in fire,
+    While noon smote fierce the roof's red tiles to heart's desire,
+    The Court a-simmer with smoke, one ferment of oozy flesh,
+    One spirituous humming musk mount-mounting until its mesh
+    Entoiled all heads in a fluster, and Serjeant Postlethwayte
+    --Dashing the wig oblique as he mopped his oily pate--
+    Cried "Silence, or I grow grease! No loophole lets in air?
+    Jurymen,--Guilty, Death! Gainsay me if you dare!"
+    --Things at this pitch, I say,--what hubbub without the doors?
+    What laughs, shrieks, hoots and yells, what rudest of uproars?
+
+    Bounce through the barrier throng a bulk comes rolling vast!
+    Thumps, kicks,--no manner of use!--spite of them rolls at last
+    Into the midst a ball which, bursting, brings to view
+    Publican Black Ned Bratts and Tabby his big wife too:
+    Both in a muck-sweat, both ... were never such eyes uplift
+    At the sight of yawning hell, such nostrils--snouts that sniffed
+    Sulphur, such mouths a-gape ready to swallow flame!
+    Horrified, hideous, frank fiend-faces! yet, all the same,
+    Mixed with a certain ... eh? how shall I dare style--mirth
+    The desperate grin of the guest that, could they break from earth,
+    Heaven was above, and hell might rage in impotence
+    Below the saved, the saved!
+
+                              "Confound you! (no offence!)
+    Out of our way,--push, wife! Yonder their Worships be!"
+    Ned Bratts has reached the bar, and "Hey, my Lords," roars he,
+    "A Jury of life and death, Judges the prime of the land,
+    Constables, javelineers,--all met, if I understand,
+    To decide so knotty a point as whether 't was Jack or Joan
+    Robbed the henroost, pinched the pig, hit the King's Arms with
+          a stone,
+    Dropped the baby down the well, left the tithesman in the lurch,
+    Or, three whole Sundays running, not once attended church!
+    What a pother--do these deserve the parish-stocks or whip,
+    More or less brow to brand, much or little nose to snip,--
+    When, in our Public, plain stand we--that's we stand here,
+    I and my Tab, brass-bold, brick-built of beef and beer,
+    --Do not we, slut? Step forth and show your beauty, jade!
+    Wife of my bosom--that's the word now! What a trade
+    We drove! None said us nay: nobody loved his life
+    So little as wag a tongue against us,--did they, wife?
+    Yet they knew us all the while, in their hearts, for what we are
+    --Worst couple, rogue and quean, unhanged--search near and far!
+    Eh, Tab? The pedler, now--o'er his noggin--who warned a mate
+    To cut and run, nor risk his pack where its loss of weight
+    Was the least to dread,--aha, how we two laughed a-good
+    As, stealing round the midden, he came on where I stood
+    With billet poised and raised,--you, ready with the rope,--
+    Ah, but that's past, that's sin repented of, we hope!
+    Men knew us for that same, yet safe and sound stood we!
+    The lily-livered knaves knew too (I've balked a d----)
+    Our keeping the 'Pied Bull' was just a mere pretence:
+    Too slow the pounds make food, drink, lodging, from out the pence!
+    There's not a stoppage to travel has chanced, this ten long year,
+    No break into hall or grange, no lifting of nag or steer,
+    Not a single roguery, from the clipping of a purse
+    To the cutting of a throat, but paid us toll. Od's curse!
+    When Gipsy Smouch made bold to cheat us of our due,
+    --Eh, Tab? the Squire's strong-box we helped the rascal to--
+    I think he pulled a face, next Sessions' swinging-time!
+    He danced the jig that needs no floor,--and, here's the prime,
+    'T was Scroggs that houghed the mare! Ay, those were busy days!
+
+    "Well, there we flourished brave, like scripture-trees called bays,
+    Faring high, drinking hard, in money up to head
+    --Not to say, boots and shoes, when ... Zounds, I nearly said--
+    Lord, to unlearn one's language! How shall we labor, wife?
+    Have you, fast hold, the Book? Grasp, grip it, for your life!
+    See, sirs, here's life, salvation! Here's--hold but out my breath--
+    When did I speak so long without once swearing? 'Sdeath,
+    No, nor unhelped by ale since man and boy! And yet
+    All yesterday I had to keep my whistle wet
+    While reading Tab this Book: book? don't say 'book'--they're plays,
+    Songs, ballads and the like: here's no such strawy blaze,
+    But sky wide ope, sun, moon, and seven stars out full-flare!
+    Tab, help and tell! I'm hoarse. A mug! or--no, a prayer!
+    Dip for one out of the Book! Who wrote it in the Jail
+    --He plied his pen unhelped by beer, sirs, I'll be bail!
+
+    "I've got my second wind. In trundles she--that's Tab.
+    'Why, Gammer, what's come now, that--bobbing like a crab
+    On Yule-tide bowl--your head's a-work and both your eyes
+    Break loose? Afeard, you fool? As if the dead can rise!
+    Say--Bagman Dick was found last May with fuddling-cap
+    Stuffed in his mouth: to choke's a natural mishap!'
+    'Gaffer, be--blessed,' cries she, 'and Bagman Dick as well!
+    I, you, and he are damned: this Public is our hell:
+    We live in fire: live coals don't feel!--once quenched, they learn--
+    Cinders do, to what dust they moulder while they burn!'
+
+    "'If you don't speak straight out,' says I--belike I swore--
+    'A knobstick, well you know the taste of, shall, once more,
+    Teach you to talk, my maid!' She ups with such a face,
+    Heart sunk inside me. 'Well, pad on, my prate-apace!'
+
+    "'I've been about those laces we need for ... never mind!
+    If henceforth they tie hands, 't is mine they'll have to bind.
+    You know who makes them best--the Tinker in our cage,
+    Pulled-up for gospelling, twelve years ago: no age
+    To try another trade,--yet, so he scorned to take
+    Money he did not earn, he taught himself the make
+    Of laces, tagged and tough--Dick Bagman found them so!
+    Good customers were we! Well, last week, you must know
+    His girl,--the blind young chit, who hawks about his wares,--
+    She takes it in her head to come no more--such airs
+    These hussies have! Yet, since we need a stoutish lace,--
+    "I'll to the jail-bird father, abuse her to his face!"
+    So, first I filled a jug to give me heart, and then,
+    Primed to the proper pitch, I posted to their den--
+    _Patmore_--they style their prison! I tip the turnkey, catch
+    My heart up, fix my face, and fearless lift the latch--
+    Both arms a-kimbo, in bounce with a good round oath
+    Ready for rapping out: no "Lawks" nor "By my troth!"
+
+    "'There sat my man, the father. He looked up: what one feels
+    When heart that leapt to mouth drops down again to heels!
+    He raised his hand.... Hast seen, when drinking out the night,
+    And in the day, earth grow another something quite
+    Under the sun's first stare? I stood a very stone.
+
+    "'"Woman!" (a fiery tear he put in every tone),
+    "How should my child frequent your house where lust is sport,
+    Violence--trade? Too true! I trust no vague report.
+    Her angel's hand, which stops the sight of sin, leaves clear
+    The other gate of sense, lets outrage through the ear.
+    What has she heard!--which, heard shall never be again.
+    Better lack food than feast, a Dives in the--wain
+    Or reign or train--of Charles!" (His language was not ours:
+    'T is my belief, God spoke: no tinker has such powers.)
+    "Bread, only bread they bring--my laces: if we broke
+    Your lump of leavened sin, the loaf's first crumb would choke!"
+
+    "'Down on my marrow-bones! Then all at once rose he:
+    His brown hair burst a-spread, his eyes were suns to see:
+    Up went his hands: "Through flesh, I reach, I read thy soul!
+    So may some stricken tree look blasted, bough and bole,
+    Champed by the fire-tooth, charred without, and yet, thrice-bound
+    With dreriment about, within may life be found,
+    A prisoned power to branch and blossom as before,
+    Could but the gardener cleave the cloister, reach the core,
+    Loosen the vital sap: yet where shall help be found?
+    Who says 'How save it?'--nor 'Why cumbers it the ground?'
+    Woman, that tree art thou! All sloughed about with scurf,
+    Thy stag-horns fright the sky, thy snake-roots sting the turf!
+    Drunkenness, wantonness, theft, murder gnash and gnarl
+    Thine outward, case thy soul with coating like the marle
+    Satan stamps flat upon each head beneath his hoof!
+    And how deliver such? The strong men keep aloof,
+    Lover and friend stand far, the mocking ones pass by,
+    Tophet gapes wide for prey: lost soul, despair and die!
+    What then? 'Look unto me and be ye saved!' saith God:
+    'I strike the rock, outstreats the life-stream at my rod!
+    Be your sins scarlet, wool shall they seem like,--although
+    As crimson red, yet turn white as the driven snow!'"
+
+    "'There, there, there! All I seem to somehow understand
+    Is--that, if I reached home, 't was through the guiding hand
+    Of his blind girl which led and led me through the streets
+    And out of town and up to door again. What greets
+    First thing my eye, as limbs recover from their swoon?
+    A book--this Book she gave at parting. "Father's boon--
+    The Book he wrote: it reads as if he spoke himself:
+    He cannot preach in bonds, so,--take it down from shelf
+    When you want counsel,--think you hear his very voice!"
+
+    "'Wicked dear Husband, first despair and then rejoice!
+    Dear wicked Husband, waste no tick of moment more,
+    Be saved like me, bald trunk! There's greenness yet at core,
+    Sap under slough! Read, read!'
+
+                                  "Let me take breath, my lords!
+    I'd like to know, are these--hers, mine, or Bunyan's words?
+    I'm 'wildered--scarce with drink,--nowise with drink alone!
+    You'll say, with heat: but heat's no stuff to split a stone
+    Like this black boulder--this flint heart of mine: the Book--
+    That dealt the crashing blow! Sirs, here's the fist that shook
+    His beard till Wrestler Jem howled like a just-lugged bear!
+    You had brained me with a feather: at once I grew aware
+    Christmas was meant for me. A burden at your back,
+    Good Master Christmas? Nay,--yours was that Joseph's sack,
+    --Or whose it was,--which held the cup,--compared with mine!
+    Robbery loads my loins, perjury cracks my chine,
+    Adultery ... nay, Tab, you pitched me as I flung!
+    One word, I'll up with fist.... No, sweet spouse, hold your tongue!
+
+    "I'm hasting to the end. The Book, sirs--take and read!
+    You have my history in a nutshell,--ay, indeed!
+    It must off, my burden! See,--slack straps and into pit,
+    Roll, reach, the bottom, rest, rot there--a plague on it!
+    For a mountain's sure to fall and bury Bedford Town,
+    'Destruction'--that's the name, and fire shall burn it down!
+    O 'scape the wrath in time! Time's now, if not too late.
+    How can I pilgrimage up to the wicket-gate?
+    Next comes Despond the slough: not that I fear to pull
+    Through mud, and dry my clothes at brave House Beautiful--
+    But it's late in the day, I reckon: had I left years ago
+    Town, wife, and children dear.... Well, Christmas did, you know!--
+    Soon I had met in the valley and tried my cudgel's strength
+    On the enemy horned and winged, a-straddle across its length!
+    Have at his horns, thwick--thwack: they snap, see! Hoof and hoof--
+    Bang, break the fetlock-bones! For love's sake, keep aloof
+    Angels! I'm man and match,--this cudgel for my flail,--
+    To thresh him, hoofs and horns, bat's wing and serpent's tail!
+    A chance gone by! But then, what else does Hopeful ding
+    Into the deafest ear except--hope, hope's the thing?
+    Too late i' the day for me to thrid the windings: but
+    There's still a way to win the race by death's short cut!
+    Did Master Faithful need climb the Delightful Mounts?
+    No, straight to Vanity Fair,--a fair, by all accounts,
+    Such as is held outside,--lords, ladies, grand and gay,--
+    Says he in the face of them, just what you hear me say.
+    And the Judges brought him in guilty, and brought him out
+    To die in the market-place--St. Peter's Green's about
+    The same thing: there they flogged, flayed, buffeted, lanced with
+          knives,
+    Pricked him with swords,--I'll swear, he'd full a cat's nine lives,--
+    So to his end at last came Faithful,--ha, ha, he!
+    Who holds the highest card? for there stands hid, you see,
+    Behind the rabble-rout, a chariot, pair and all:
+    He's in, he's off, he's up, through clouds, at trumpet-call,
+    Carried the nearest way to Heaven-gate! Odds my life--
+    Has nobody a sword to spare? not even a knife?
+    Then hang me, draw and quarter! Tab--do the same by her!
+    O Master Worldly-Wiseman ... that's Master Interpreter,
+    Take the will, not the deed! Our gibbet's handy close:
+    Forestall Last Judgment-Day! Be kindly, not morose!
+    There wants no earthly judge-and-jurying: here we stand--
+    Sentence our guilty selves: so, hang us out of hand!
+    Make haste for pity's sake! A single moment's loss
+    Means--Satan's lord once more: his whisper shoots across
+    All singing in my heart, all praying in my brain,
+    'It comes of heat and beer!'--hark how he guffaws plain!
+    'To-morrow you'll wake bright, and, in a safe skin, hug
+    Your sound selves, Tab and you, over a foaming jug!
+    You've had such qualms before, time out of mind!' He's right!
+    Did not we kick and cuff and curse away, that night,
+    When home we blindly reeled, and left poor humpback Joe
+    I' the lurch to pay for what ... somebody did, you know!
+    Both of us maundered then 'Lame humpback,--never more
+    Will he come limping, drain his tankard at our door!
+    He'll swing, while--somebody....' Says Tab, 'No, for I'll peach!'
+    'I'm for you, Tab,' cries I, 'there's rope enough for each!'
+    So blubbered we, and bussed, and went to bed upon
+    The grace of Tab's good thought: by morning, all was gone!
+    We laughed--'What's life to him, a cripple of no account?'
+    Oh, waves increase around--I feel them mount and mount!
+    Hang us! To-morrow brings Tom Bearward with his bears:
+    One new black-muzzled brute beats Sackerson, he swears:
+    (Sackerson, for my money!) And, baiting o'er, the Brawl
+    They lead on Turner's Patch,--lads, lasses, up tails all,--
+    I'm i' the thick o' the throng! That means the Iron Cage,
+    --Means the Lost Man inside! Where's hope for such as wage
+    War against light? Light's left, light's here, I hold light still,
+    So does Tab--make but haste to hang us both! You will?"
+
+    I promise, when he stopped you might have heard a mouse
+    Squeak, such a death-like hush sealed up the old Mote House.
+    But when the mass of man sank meek upon his knees,
+    While Tab, alongside, wheezed a hoarse "Do hang us, please!"
+    Why, then the waters rose, no eye but ran with tears,
+    Hearts heaved, heads thumped, until, paying all past arrears
+    Of pity and sorrow, at last a regular scream outbroke
+    Of triumph, joy and praise.
+
+                                      My Lord Chief Justice spoke,
+    First mopping brow and cheek, where still, for one that budged,
+    Another bead broke fresh: "What Judge, that ever judged
+    Since first the world began, judged such a case as this?
+    Why, Master Bratts, long since, folk smelt you out, I wis!
+    I had my doubts, i' faith, each time you played the fox
+    Convicting geese of crime in yonder witness-box--
+    Yea, much did I misdoubt, the thief that stole her eggs
+    Was hardly goosey's self at Reynard's game, i' feggs!
+    Yet thus much was to praise--you spoke to point, direct--
+    Swore you heard, saw the theft: no jury could suspect--
+    Dared to suspect,--I'll say,--a spot in white so clear:
+    Goosey was throttled, true: but thereof godly fear
+    Came of example set, much as our laws intend;
+    And, though a fox confessed, you proved the Judge's friend.
+    What if I had my doubts? Suppose I gave them breath,
+    Brought you to bar: what work to do, ere 'Guilty, Death,'--
+    Had paid our pains! What heaps of witnesses to drag
+    From holes and corners, paid from out the County's bag!
+    Trial three dog-days long! _Amicus CuriÊ_--that's
+    Your title, no dispute--truth-telling Master Bratts!
+    Thank you, too, Mistress Tab! Why doubt one word you say?
+    Hanging you both deserve, hanged both shall be this day!
+    The tinker needs must be a proper man. I've heard
+    He lies in Jail long since: if Quality's good word
+    Warrants me letting loose,--some householder, I mean--
+    Freeholder, better still,--I don't say but--between
+    Now and next Sessions.... Well! Consider of his case,
+    I promise to, at least: we owe him so much grace.
+    Not that--no, God forbid!--I lean to think, as you,
+    The grace that such repent is any jail-bird's due:
+    I rather see the fruit of twelve years' pious reign--
+    AstrÊa Redux, Charles restored his rights again!
+    --Of which, another time! I somehow feel a peace
+    Stealing across the world. May deeds like this increase!
+    So, Master Sheriff, stay that sentence I pronounced
+    On those two dozen odd: deserving to be trounced
+    Soundly, and yet ... well, well, at all events despatch
+    This pair of--shall I say, sinner-saints?--ere we catch
+    Their jail-distemper too. Stop tears, or I'll indite
+    All weeping Bedfordshire for turning Bunyanite!"
+
+    So, forms were galloped through. If Justice, on the spur,
+    Proved somewhat expeditious, would Quality demur?
+    And happily hanged were they,--why lengthen out my tale?--
+    Where Bunyan's Statue stands facing where stood his Jail.
+
+The effect which "Pilgrim's Progress" had on these two miserable beings,
+may be taken as typical of the enormous influence wielded by Bunyan in
+his own time. The most innocent among us had overwhelming qualms in
+regard to our sins, as children when we listened to our mothers read the
+book. I remember having confessed some childish peccadillo that was
+weighing on my small mind as the first result of my thoroughly aroused
+sense of guilt. In these early years of the Twentieth Century, such a
+feeling seems almost as far removed as the days of Bunyan. A sense of
+guilt is not a distinguishing characteristic of the child of the present
+day, and it may also be doubted whether such reprobates as Ned and his
+wife would to-day be affected much if at all by the "Pilgrim's
+Progress." There was probably great personal magnetism in Bunyan
+himself. We are told that after his discharge from prison, his
+popularity as a preacher widened rapidly. Such vast crowds of people
+flocked to hear him that his place of worship had to be enlarged. He
+went frequently to London on week days to deliver addresses in the large
+chapel in Southwark which was invariably thronged with eager worshipers.
+
+Browning's picture of Bunyan shows the instant effect of his personality
+upon Tab.
+
+    "There sat the man, the father. He looked up: what one feels
+    When heart that leapt to mouth drops down again to heels!
+    He raised his hand.... Hast seen, when drinking out the night,
+    And in the day, earth grow another something quite
+    Under the sun's first stare? I stood a very stone."
+
+And again
+
+                                    "Then all at once rose he:
+    His brown hair burst a-spread, his eyes were suns to see:
+    Up went his hands."
+
+It is like a clever bit of stage business to make Ned and Tab use the
+shoe laces to tie up the hands of their victims, and to bring on by this
+means the meeting between Tab and Bunyan. Of course, the blind
+daughter's part is imaginary, but yet it seems to bring very vividly
+before us this well loved child. Another touch, quite in keeping with
+the time, is the decision of the Judge that the remarkable change of
+heart in Ned and Tab was due to the piety of King Charles. Like every
+one else, however, he was impressed by what he heard of the Tinker, and
+inclined to see what he could do to give him his freedom. It seems that
+Bunyan's life in jail was a good deal lightened by the favor he always
+inspired. The story goes that from the first he was in favor with the
+jailor, who nearly lost his place for permitting him on one occasion to
+go as far as London. After this he was more strictly confined, but at
+last he was often allowed to visit his family, and remain with them all
+night. One night, however, when he was allowed this liberty Bunyan felt
+resistlessly impressed with the propriety of returning to the prison. He
+arrived after the keeper had shut up for the night, much to the
+official's surprise. But his impatience at being untimely disturbed was
+changed to thankfulness, when a little after a messenger came from a
+neighboring clerical magistrate to see that the prisoner was safe. "You
+may go now when you will" said the jailer; "for you know better than I
+can tell you when to come in again."
+
+[Illustration: John Bunyan
+
+Statue by J. E. Boehm]
+
+Though Bunyan is not primarily the subject of this poem, it is an
+appreciative tribute to his genius and to his force of character,
+only to be paralleled by Dowden's sympathetic critique in his "Puritan
+and Anglican Studies." What Browning makes Ned and Tab see through
+suddenly aroused feeling--namely that it is no book but
+
+                                                      "plays,
+    Songs, ballads and the like: here's no such strawy blaze,
+    But sky wide ope, sun, moon, and seven stars out full-flare,"
+
+Dowden puts in the colder language of criticism.
+
+"The 'Pilgrim's Progress' is a gallery of portraits, admirably
+discriminated, and as convincing in their self-verification as those of
+Holbein. His personages live for us as few figures outside the drama of
+Shakespeare live.... All his powers cooperated harmoniously in creating
+this book--his religious ardor, his human tenderness, his sense of
+beauty, nourished by the Scriptures, his strong common sense, even his
+gift of humor. Through his deep seriousness play the lighter faculties.
+The whole man presses into this small volume."
+
+"Halbert and Hob" belongs here merely for its wild North of England
+setting. We may imagine, if we choose, that this wild father and son
+dwelt in the beautiful country of Northumberland, in the North of
+England, but descriptions of the scenery could add nothing to the
+atmosphere of the poem, for Northumberland is surpassingly lovely.
+Doubtless, human beings of this type have existed in all parts of the
+globe. At any rate, these particular human beings were transported by
+Browning from Aristotle's "Ethics" to the North of England. The incident
+is told by Aristotle in illustration of the contention that anger and
+asperity are more natural than excessive and unnecessary desires. "Thus
+one who was accused of striking his father said, as an apology for it,
+that his own father, and even his grandfather, had struck his; 'and he
+also (pointing to his child) will strike me, when he becomes a man; for
+it runs in our family.' A certain person, also, being dragged by his
+son, bid him stop at the door, for he himself had dragged his father as
+far as that." The dryness of "Aristotle's cheeks" is as usual so
+enlivened by Browning that the fate of Halbert and Hob grows pathetic
+and comes close to our sympathies.
+
+
+    HALBERT AND HOB
+
+    Here is a thing that happened. Like wild beasts whelped, for den,
+    In a wild part of North England, there lived once two wild men
+    Inhabiting one homestead, neither a hovel nor hut,
+    Time out of mind their birthright: father and son, these--but--
+    Such a son, such a father! Most wildness by degrees
+    Softens away: yet, last of their line, the wildest and worst were
+          these.
+
+    Criminals, then? Why, no: they did not murder and rob;
+    But, give them a word, they returned a blow--old Halbert as young Hob:
+    Harsh and fierce of word, rough and savage of deed,
+    Hated or feared the more--who knows?--the genuine wild-beast breed.
+
+    Thus were they found by the few sparse folk of the countryside;
+    But how fared each with other? E'en beasts couch, hide by hide,
+    In a growling, grudged agreement: so, father and son aye curled
+    The closelier up in their den because the last of their kind in the
+          world.
+
+    Still, beast irks beast on occasion. One Christmas night of snow,
+    Came father and son to words--such words! more cruel because the blow
+    To crown each word was wanting, while taunt matched gibe, and curse
+    Completed with oath in wager, like pastime in hell,--nay, worse:
+    For pastime turned to earnest, as up there sprang at last
+    The son at the throat of the father, seized him and held him fast.
+
+    "Out of this house you go!"--(there followed a hideous oath)--
+    "This oven where now we bake, too hot to hold us both!
+    If there's snow outside, there's coolness: out with you, bide a spell
+    In the drift and save the sexton the charge of a parish shell!"
+
+    Now, the old trunk was tough, was solid as stump of oak
+    Untouched at the core by a thousand years: much less had its
+          seventy broke
+    One whipcord nerve in the muscly mass from neck to shoulder-blade
+    Of the mountainous man, whereon his child's rash hand like a
+          feather weighed.
+
+    Nevertheless at once did the mammoth shut his eyes,
+    Drop chin to breast, drop hands to sides, stand stiffened--arms
+          and thighs
+    All of a piece--struck mute, much as a sentry stands,
+    Patient to take the enemy's fire: his captain so commands.
+
+    Whereat the son's wrath flew to fury at such sheer scorn
+    Of his puny strength by the giant eld thus acting the babe new-born:
+    And "Neither will this turn serve!" yelled he. "Out with you!
+          Trundle, log!
+    If you cannot tramp and trudge like a man, try all-fours like a dog!"
+
+    Still the old man stood mute. So, logwise,--down to floor
+    Pulled from his fireside place, dragged on from hearth to door,--
+    Was he pushed, a very log, staircase along, until
+    A certain turn in the steps was reached, a yard from the
+          house-door-sill.
+
+    Then the father opened eyes--each spark of their rage extinct,--
+    Temples, late black, dead-blanched,--right-hand with left-hand
+          linked,--
+    He faced his son submissive; when slow the accents came,
+    They were strangely mild though his son's rash hand on his neck
+          lay all the same.
+
+    "Hob, on just such a night of a Christmas long ago,
+    For such a cause, with such a gesture, did I drag--so--
+    My father down thus far: but, softening here, I heard
+    A voice in my heart, and stopped: you wait for an outer word.
+
+    "For your own sake, not mine, soften you too! Untrod
+    Leave this last step we reach, nor brave the finger of God!
+    I dared not pass its lifting: I did well. I nor blame
+    Nor praise you. I stopped here: and, Hob, do you the same!"
+
+    Straightway the son relaxed his hold of the father's throat.
+    They mounted, side by side, to the room again: no note
+    Took either of each, no sign made each to either: last
+    As first, in absolute silence, their Christmas-night they passed.
+
+    At dawn, the father sate on, dead, in the self-same place,
+    With an outburst blackening still the old bad fighting-face:
+    But the son crouched all a-tremble like any lamb new-yeaned.
+
+    When he went to the burial, someone's staff he borrowed--tottered
+          and leaned.
+    But his lips were loose, not locked,--kept muttering, mumbling.
+          "There!
+    At his cursing and swearing!" the youngsters cried: but the elders
+          thought "In prayer."
+    A boy threw stones: he picked them up and stored them in his vest.
+
+    So tottered, muttered, mumbled he, till he died, perhaps found rest.
+    "Is there a reason in nature for these hard hearts?" O Lear,
+    That a reason out of nature must turn them soft, seems clear!
+
+In the "Inn Album," a degenerate type of Nineteenth-Century Englishman
+is dissected with the keen knife of a surgeon, which Browning knows so
+well how to wield. The villain of this poem was a real personage, a Lord
+de Ros, a friend of the Duke of Wellington. The story belongs to the
+annals of crime and is necessarily unpleasant, but in order to see how
+Browning has worked up the episode it is interesting to know the bare
+facts as Furnivall gives them in "Notes and Queries" March 25, 1876. He
+says "that the gambling lord showed the portrait of the lady he had
+seduced and abandoned and offered his dupe an introduction to her, as a
+bribe to induce him to wait for payment of the money he had won; that
+the young gambler eagerly accepted the offer; and that the lady
+committed suicide on hearing of the bargain between them." Dr. Furnivall
+heard the story from some one who well remembered the sensation it had
+made in London years ago. In his management of the story, Browning has
+intensified the villainy of the Lord at the same time that he has shown
+a possible streak of goodness in him. The young man, on the other hand,
+he has made to be of very good stuff, indeed, notwithstanding his year
+of tutelage from the older man. He makes one radical change in the story
+as well as several minor ones. In the poem the younger man had been in
+love with the girl whom the older man had dishonorably treated, and had
+never ceased to love her. Of course, the two men do not know this. By
+the advice of the elder man, the younger one has decided to settle down
+and marry his cousin, a charming young girl, who is also brought upon
+the scene. The other girl is represented as having married an old
+country parson, who sought a wife simply as a helpmeet in his work. By
+thus complicating the situations, room has been given for subtle psychic
+development. The action is all concentrated into one morning in the
+parlor of the old inn, reminding one much of the method of Ibsen in his
+plays of grouping his action about a final catastrophe. At the inn one
+is introduced first to the two gamblers in talk, the young man having
+won his ten thousand pounds from the older man, who had intended to
+fleece him. The inn album plays an important part in the action,
+innocent as its first appearance upon the scene seems to be. The
+description of this and the inn parlor opens the poem.
+
+
+    THE INN ALBUM
+
+    I
+
+    "That oblong book's the Album; hand it here!
+    Exactly! page on page of gratitude
+    For breakfast, dinner, supper, and the view!
+    I praise these poets: they leave margin-space;
+    Each stanza seems to gather skirts around,
+    And primly, trimly, keep the foot's confine,
+    Modest and maidlike; lubber prose o'er-sprawls
+    And straddling stops the path from left to right.
+    Since I want space to do my cipher-work,
+    Which poem spares a corner? What comes first?
+    '_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!_'
+    (Open the window, we burn daylight, boy!)
+    Or see--succincter beauty, brief and bold--
+    '_If a fellow can dine On rumpsteaks and port wine,
+    He needs not despair Of dining well here_--'
+    '_Here!_' I myself could find a better rhyme!
+    That bard's a Browning; he neglects the form:
+    But ah, the sense, ye gods, the weighty sense!
+    Still, I prefer this classic. Ay, throw wide!
+    I'll quench the bits of candle yet unburnt.
+    A minute's fresh air, then to cipher-work!
+    Three little columns hold the whole account:
+    _EcartÈ_, after which Blind Hookey, then
+    Cutting-the-Pack, five hundred pounds the cut.
+    'Tis easy reckoning: I have lost, I think."
+
+    Two personages occupy this room
+    Shabby-genteel, that's parlor to the inn
+    Perched on a view-commanding eminence;
+    --Inn which may be a veritable house
+    Where somebody once lived and pleased good taste
+    Till tourists found his coign of vantage out,
+    And fingered blunt the individual mark
+    And vulgarized things comfortably smooth.
+    On a sprig-pattern-papered wall there brays
+    Complaint to sky Sir Edwin's dripping stag;
+    His couchant coast-guard creature corresponds;
+    They face the Huguenot and Light o' the World.
+    Grim o'er the mirror on the mantlepiece,
+    Varnished and coffined, _Salmo ferox_ glares
+    --Possibly at the List of Wines which, framed
+    And glazed, hangs somewhat prominent on peg.
+
+    So much describes the stuffy little room--
+    Vulgar flat smooth respectability:
+    Not so the burst of landscape surging in,
+    Sunrise and all, as he who of the pair
+    Is, plain enough, the younger personage
+    Draws sharp the shrieking curtain, sends aloft
+    The sash, spreads wide and fastens back to wall
+    Shutter and shutter, shows you England's best.
+    He leans into a living glory-bath
+    Of air and light where seems to float and move
+    The wooded watered country, hill and dale
+    And steel-bright thread of stream, a-smoke with mist,
+    A-sparkle with May morning, diamond drift
+    O' the sun-touched dew. Except the red-roofed patch
+    Of half a dozen dwellings that, crept close
+    For hill-side shelter, make the village-clump
+    This inn is perched above to dominate--
+    Except such sign of human neighborhood,
+    (And this surmised rather than sensible)
+    There's nothing to disturb absolute peace,
+    The reign of English nature--which mean art
+    And civilized existence. Wildness' self
+    Is just the cultured triumph. Presently
+    Deep solitude, be sure, reveals a Place
+    That knows the right way to defend itself:
+    Silence hems round a burning spot of life.
+    Now, where a Place burns, must a village brood,
+    And where a village broods, an inn should boast--
+    Close and convenient: here you have them both.
+    This inn, the Something-arms--the family's--
+    (Don't trouble Guillim; heralds leave our half!)
+    Is dear to lovers of the picturesque,
+    And epics have been planned here; but who plan
+    Take holy orders and find work to do.
+    Painters are more productive, stop a week,
+    Declare the prospect quite a Corot,--ay,
+    For tender sentiment,--themselves incline
+    Rather to handsweep large and liberal;
+    Then go, but not without success achieved
+    --Haply some pencil-drawing, oak or beech,
+    Ferns at the base and ivies up the bole,
+    On this a slug, on that a butterfly.
+    Nay, he who hooked the _salmo_ pendent here,
+    Also exhibited, this same May-month,
+    '_Foxgloves: a study_'--so inspires the scene,
+    The air, which now the younger personage
+    Inflates him with till lungs o'erfraught are fain
+    Sigh forth a satisfaction might bestir
+    Even those tufts of tree-tops to the South
+    I' the distance where the green dies off to grey,
+    Which, easy of conjecture, front the Place;
+    He eyes them, elbows wide, each hand to cheek.
+    His fellow, the much older--either say
+    A youngish-old man or man oldish-young--
+    Sits at the table: wicks are noisome-deep
+    In wax, to detriment of plated ware;
+    Above--piled, strewn--is store of playing-cards,
+    Counters and all that's proper for a game.
+
+Circumstantial as the description of this parlor and the situation of
+the inn is, it is impossible to say which out of the many English inns
+Browning had in mind. Inns date back to the days of the Romans, who had
+ale-houses along the roads, the most interesting feature of which was
+the ivy garland or wreath of vine-leaves in honor of Bacchus, wreathed
+around a hoop at the end of a long pole to point out the way where good
+drink could be had. A curious survival of this in early English times
+was the "ale-stake," a tavern so called because it had a long pole
+projecting from the house front wreathed like the old Roman poles with
+furze, a garland of flowers or an ivy wreath. This decoration was called
+the "bush," and in time the London taverners so vied with each other in
+their attempt to attract attention by very long poles and very prominent
+bushes that in 1375 a law was passed according to which all taverners
+in the city of London owning ale-stakes projecting or extending over the
+King's highway more than seven feet in length, at the utmost, should be
+fined forty pence, and compelled to remove the sign. Here is the origin,
+too, of the proverb, "good wine needs no bush." In the later development
+of the inn the signs lost their Bacchic character and became most
+elaborate, often being painted by artists.
+
+The poet says this inn was the "Something-arms," and had perhaps once
+been a house. Many inns were the "Something (?) arms" and certainly many
+inns had been houses. One such is the Pounds Bridge Inn on a secluded
+road between Speldhurst and Penshurst in Kent. It was built by the
+rector of Penshurst, William Darkenoll, who lived in it only three
+years, when it became an inn. The inn of the poem might have been a
+combination in Browning's memory of this and the "White Horse" at
+Woolstone, which is described as a queerly pretty little inn with a
+front distantly resembling a Chippendale bureau-bookcase. "It is tucked
+away under the mighty sides of White Horse Hill, Berkshire, and
+additionally overhung with trees and encircled with shrubberies and
+under-woods, and is finally situated on a narrow road that presently
+leads, as it would seem, to the end of the known world." So writes the
+enthusiastic lover of inns, Charles Harper. Or, perhaps, since there is
+a river to be seen from the inn of the poem the "Swan" at Sandleford
+Water, where a foot bridge and a water splash on the river Enborne mark
+the boundaries of Hampshire and Berkshire. Here "You have the place
+wholly to yourself, or share it only with the squirrels and the birds of
+the overarching trees." The illustration given of the Black Bear Inn,
+Tewksbury, is a quite typical example of inn architecture, and may have
+helped the picture in Browning's mind, though its situation is not so
+rural as that described in the poem.
+
+Inns have, from time immemorial, been the scenes of romances and
+tragedies and crimes. There have been inns like the "Castle" where the
+"quality" loved to congregate. The "inn album" of this establishment had
+inscribed in it almost every eighteenth-century name of any distinction.
+There have been inns which were noted as the resort of the wits of the
+day. Ben Jonson loved to take "mine ease in mine inn," and Dr. Johnson
+declared that a seat in a tavern chair was the height of human felicity.
+"He was thinking," as it has been pertinently put, "not only of a
+comfortable sanded parlor, a roaring fire, and plenty of good cheer and
+good company, but also of the circle of humbly appreciative auditors who
+gathered round an accepted wit, hung upon his words, offered themselves
+as butts for his ironic or satiric humor, and--stood treat." Or there
+was the inn of sinister aspect where highwaymen might congregate, or
+inns with hosts who let their guests down through trap-doors in the
+middle of the night to rob and murder them--or is this only a vague
+remembrance of a fanciful inn of Dickens? Then there was the pilgrim's
+inn in the days when Chaucerian folks loved to go on pilgrimages, and in
+the last century the cyclists inn, and to-day the inn of the
+automobilist. The particular inn in the poem belongs to the class, rural
+inn, and in spite of its pictures by noted masters was "stuffy" as to
+the atmosphere.
+
+[Illustration: An English Inn]
+
+The "inn album" or visitors' book is a feature of inns. In this country
+we simply sign our names in the visitors' book, but the "album" feature
+of the visitors' book of an English inn is its glory and too often its
+shame, for as Mr. Harper says, "Bathos, ineptitude, and lines that
+refuse to scan are the stigmata of visitors' book verse. There is no
+worse poetry on earth than that which lurks between those covers, or in
+the pages of young ladies' albums." He declares that "The interesting
+pages of visitors' books are generally those that are not there, as an
+Irishman might say; for the world is populated very densely with those
+appreciative people who, whether from a love of literature, or with an
+instinct for collecting autographs that may have a realizable value,
+remove the signatures of distinguished men, and with them anything
+original they may have written."
+
+Browning pokes fun at the poetry of his inn album, but at the same time
+uses it as an important part of the machinery in the action. His English
+"Iago" writes in it the final damnation of his own character--the threat
+by means of which he hopes to ruin his victims, but which, instead,
+causes the lady to take poison and the young man to murder "Iago."
+
+The presence of the two men at this particular inn is explained in the
+following bit of conversation between them.
+
+    "You wrong your poor disciple. Oh, no airs!
+    Because you happen to be twice my age
+    And twenty times my master, must perforce
+    No blink of daylight struggle through the web
+    There's no unwinding? You entoil my legs,
+    And welcome, for I like it: blind me,--no!
+    A very pretty piece of shuttle-work
+    Was that--your mere chance question at the club--
+    '_Do you go anywhere this Whitsuntide?
+    I'm off for Paris, there's the Opera--there's
+    The Salon, there's a china-sale,--beside
+    Chantilly; and, for good companionship,
+    There's Such-and-such and So-and-so. Suppose
+    We start together?_' '_No such holiday!_'
+    I told you: '_Paris and the rest be hanged!
+    Why plague me who am pledged to home-delights?
+    I'm the engaged now; through whose fault but yours?
+    On duty. As you well know. Don't I drowse
+    The week away down with the Aunt and Niece?
+    No help: it's leisure, loneliness and love.
+    Wish I could take you; but fame travels fast,--
+    A man of much newspaper-paragraph,
+    You scare domestic circles; and beside
+    Would not you like your lot, that second taste
+    Of nature and approval of the grounds!
+    You might walk early or lie late, so shirk
+    Week-day devotions: but stay Sunday o'er,
+    And morning church is obligatory:
+    No mundane garb permissible, or dread
+    The butler's privileged monition! No!
+    Pack off to Paris, nor wipe tear away!_'
+    Whereon how artlessly the happy flash
+    Followed, by inspiration! '_Tell you what--
+    Let's turn their flank, try things on t'other side!
+    Inns for my money! Liberty's the life!
+    We'll lie in hiding: there's the crow-nest nook,
+    The tourist's joy, the Inn they rave about,
+    Inn that's out--out of sight and out of mind
+    And out of mischief to all four of us--
+    Aunt and niece, you and me. At night arrive;
+    At morn, find time for just a Pisgah-view
+    Of my friend's Land of Promise; then depart.
+    And while I'm whizzing onward by first train,
+    Bound for our own place (since my Brother sulks
+    And says I shun him like the plague) yourself--
+    Why, you have stepped thence, start from platform, gay
+    Despite the sleepless journey,--love lends wings,--
+    Hug aunt and niece who, none the wiser, wait
+    The faithful advent! Eh?_' '_With all my heart_,'
+    Said I to you; said I to mine own self:
+    '_Does he believe I fail to comprehend
+    He wants just one more final friendly snack
+    At friend's exchequer ere friend runs to earth,
+    Marries, renounces yielding friends such sport?_'
+    And did I spoil sport, pull face grim,--nay, grave?
+    Your pupil does you better credit! No!
+    I parleyed with my pass-book,--rubbed my pair
+    At the big balance in my banker's hands,--
+    Folded a cheque cigar-case-shape,--just wants
+    Filling and signing,--and took train, resolved
+    To execute myself with decency
+    And let you win--if not Ten thousand quite,
+    Something by way of wind-up-farewell burst
+    Of firework-nosegay! Where's your fortune fled?
+    Or is not fortune constant after all?
+    You lose ten thousand pounds: had I lost half
+    Or half that, I should bite my lips, I think.
+    You man of marble! Strut and stretch my best
+    On tiptoe, I shall never reach your height.
+    How does the loss feel! Just one lesson more!"
+
+    The more refined man smiles a frown away.
+
+On the way to the station where the older man is to take the train they
+have another talk, in which each tells the other of his experience, but
+they do not find out yet that they have both loved the same woman.
+
+                                      "Stop, my boy!
+    Don't think I'm stingy of experience! Life
+    --It's like this wood we leave. Should you and I
+    Go wandering about there, though the gaps
+    We went in and came out by were opposed
+    As the two poles, still, somehow, all the same,
+    By nightfall we should probably have chanced
+    On much the same main points of interest--
+    Both of us measured girth of mossy trunk,
+    Stript ivy from its strangled prey, clapped hands
+    At squirrel, sent a fir-cone after crow,
+    And so forth,--never mind what time betwixt.
+    So in our lives; allow I entered mine
+    Another way than you: 't is possible
+    I ended just by knocking head against
+    That plaguy low-hung branch yourself began
+    By getting bump from; as at last you too
+    May stumble o'er that stump which first of all
+    Bade me walk circumspectly. Head and feet
+    Are vulnerable both, and I, foot-sure,
+    Forgot that ducking down saves brow from bruise.
+    I, early old, played young man four years since
+    And failed confoundedly: so, hate alike
+    Failure and who caused failure,--curse her cant!"
+
+    "Oh, I see! You, though somewhat past the prime,
+    Were taken with a rosebud beauty! Ah--
+    But how should chits distinguish? She admired
+    Your marvel of a mind, I'll undertake!
+    But as to body ... nay, I mean ... that is,
+    When years have told on face and figure...."
+
+                                               "Thanks,
+    Mister _Sufficiently-Instructed_! Such
+    No doubt was bound to be the consequence
+    To suit your self-complacency: she liked
+    My head enough, but loved some heart beneath
+    Some head with plenty of brown hair a-top
+    After my young friend's fashion! What becomes
+    Of that fine speech you made a minute since
+    About the man of middle age you found
+    A formidable peer at twenty-one?
+    So much for your mock-modesty! and yet
+    I back your first against this second sprout
+    Of observation, insight, what you please.
+    My middle age, Sir, had too much success!
+    It's odd: my case occurred four years ago--
+    I finished just while you commenced that turn
+    I' the wood of life that takes us to the wealth
+    Of honeysuckle, heaped for who can reach.
+    Now, I don't boast: it's bad style, and beside,
+    The feat proves easier than it looks: I plucked
+    Full many a flower unnamed in that bouquet
+    (Mostly of peonies and poppies, though!)
+    Good nature sticks into my button-hole.
+    Therefore it was with nose in want of snuff
+    Rather than Ess or Psidium, that I chanced
+    On what--so far from '_rosebud beauty_'.... Well--
+    She's dead: at least you never heard her name;
+    She was no courtly creature, had nor birth
+    Nor breeding--mere fine-lady-breeding; but
+    Oh, such a wonder of a woman! Grand
+    As a Greek statue! Stick fine clothes on that,
+    Style that a Duchess or a Queen,--you know,
+    Artists would make an outcry: all the more,
+    That she had just a statue's sleepy grace
+    Which broods o'er its own beauty. Nay, her fault
+    (Don't laugh!) was just perfection: for suppose
+    Only the little flaw, and I had peeped
+    Inside it, learned what soul inside was like.
+    At Rome some tourist raised the grit beneath
+    A Venus' forehead with his whittling-knife--
+    I wish,--now,--I had played that brute, brought blood
+    To surface from the depths I fancied chalk!
+    As it was, her mere face surprised so much
+    That I stopped short there, struck on heap, as stares
+    The cockney stranger at a certain bust
+    With drooped eyes,--she's the thing I have in mind,--
+    Down at my Brother's. All sufficient prize--
+    Such outside! Now,--confound me for a prig!--
+    Who cares? I'll make a clean breast once for all!
+    Beside, you've heard the gossip. My life long
+    I've been a woman-liker,--liking means
+    Loving and so on. There's a lengthy list
+    By this time I shall have to answer for--
+    So say the good folk: and they don't guess half--
+    For the worst is, let once collecting-itch
+    Possess you, and, with perspicacity,
+    Keeps growing such a greediness that theft
+    Follows at no long distance,--there's the fact!
+    I knew that on my Leporello-list
+    Might figure this, that, and the other name
+    Of feminine desirability,
+    But if I happened to desire inscribe,
+    Along with these, the only Beautiful--
+    Here was the unique specimen to snatch
+    Or now or never. 'Beautiful' I said--
+    'Beautiful' say in cold blood,--boiling then
+    To tune of '_Haste, secure whate'er the cost
+    This rarity, die in the act, be damned,
+    So you complete collection, crown your list!_'
+    It seemed as though the whole world, once aroused
+    By the first notice of such wonder's birth,
+    Would break bounds to contest my prize with me
+    The first discoverer, should she but emerge
+    From that safe den of darkness where she dozed
+    Till I stole in, that country-parsonage
+    Where, country-parson's daughter, motherless,
+    Brotherless, sisterless, for eighteen years
+    She had been vegetating lily-like.
+    Her father was my brother's tutor, got
+    The living that way: him I chanced to see--
+    Her I saw--her the world would grow one eye
+    To see, I felt no sort of doubt at all!
+    '_Secure her!_' cried the devil: '_afterward
+    Arrange for the disposal of the prize!_'
+    The devil's doing! yet I seem to think--
+    Now, when all's done,--think with '_a head reposed_'
+    In French phrase--hope I think I meant to do
+    All requisite for such a rarity
+    When I should be at leisure, have due time
+    To learn requirement. But in evil day--
+    Bless me, at week's end, long as any year,
+    The father must begin '_Young Somebody,
+    Much recommended--for I break a rule--
+    Comes here to read, next Long Vacation_.' '_Young!_'
+    That did it. Had the epithet been '_rich_,'
+    '_Noble_,' '_a genius_,' even '_handsome_,'--but
+    --'_Young!_'"
+
+                        "I say--just a word! I want to know--
+    You are not married?"
+                          "I?"
+
+                              "Nor ever were?"
+    "Never! Why?"
+                  "Oh, then--never mind! Go on!
+    I had a reason for the question."
+
+                                      "Come,--
+    You could not be the young man?"
+                                    "No, indeed!
+    Certainly--if you never married her!"
+
+    "That I did not: and there's the curse, you'll see!
+    Nay, all of it's one curse, my life's mistake
+    Which, nourished with manure that's warranted
+    To make the plant bear wisdom, blew out full
+    In folly beyond field-flower-foolishness!
+    The lies I used to tell my womankind,
+    Knowing they disbelieved me all the time
+    Though they required my lies, their decent due,
+    This woman--not so much believed, I'll say,
+    As just anticipated from my mouth:
+    Since being true, devoted, constant--she
+    Found constancy, devotion, truth, the plain
+    And easy commonplace of character.
+    No mock-heroics but seemed natural
+    To her who underneath the face, I knew
+    Was fairness' self, possessed a heart, I judged
+    Must correspond in folly just as far
+    Beyond the common,--and a mind to match,--
+    Not made to puzzle conjurers like me
+    Who, therein, proved the fool who fronts you, Sir,
+    And begs leave to cut short the ugly rest!
+    '_Trust me!_' I said: she trusted. '_Marry me!_'
+    Or rather, '_We are married: when, the rite?_'
+    That brought on the collector's next-day qualm
+    At counting acquisition's cost. There lay
+    My marvel, there my purse more light by much
+    Because of its late lie-expenditure:
+    Ill-judged such moment to make fresh demand--
+    To cage as well as catch my rarity!
+    So, I began explaining. At first word
+    Outbroke the horror. '_Then, my truths were lies!_'
+    I tell you, such an outbreak, such new strange
+    All-unsuspected revelation--soul
+    As supernaturally grand as face
+    Was fair beyond example--that at once
+    Either I lost--or, if it please you, found
+    My senses,--stammered somehow--'_Jest! and now,
+    Earnest! Forget all else but--heart has loved,
+    Does love, shall love you ever! take the hand!_'
+    Not she! no marriage for superb disdain,
+    Contempt incarnate!"
+
+                        "Yes, it's different,--
+    It's only like in being four years since.
+    I see now!"
+
+                "Well, what did disdain do next,
+    Think you?"
+
+                "That's past me: did not marry you!--
+    That's the main thing I care for, I suppose.
+    Turned nun, or what?"
+
+                          "Why, married in a month
+    Some parson, some smug crop-haired smooth-chinned sort
+    Of curate-creature, I suspect,--dived down,
+    Down, deeper still, and came up somewhere else--
+    I don't know where--I've not tried much to know,--
+    In short, she's happy: what the clodpoles call
+    'Countrified' with a vengeance! leads the life
+    Respectable and all that drives you mad:
+    Still--where, I don't know, and that's best for both."
+
+    "Well, that she did not like you, I conceive.
+    But why should you hate her, I want to know?"
+
+    "My good young friend,--because or her or else
+    Malicious Providence I have to hate.
+    For, what I tell you proved the turning-point
+    Of my whole life and fortune toward success
+    Or failure. If I drown, I lay the fault
+    Much on myself who caught at reed not rope,
+    But more on reed which, with a packthread's pith,
+    Had buoyed me till the minute's cramp could thaw
+    And I strike out afresh and so be saved.
+    It's easy saying--I had sunk before,
+    Disqualified myself by idle days
+    And busy nights, long since, from holding hard
+    On cable, even, had fate cast me such!
+    You boys don't know how many times men fail
+    Perforce o' the little to succeed i' the large,
+    Husband their strength, let slip the petty prey,
+    Collect the whole power for the final pounce.
+    My fault was the mistaking man's main prize
+    For intermediate boy's diversion; clap
+    Of boyish hands here frightened game away
+    Which, once gone, goes forever. Oh, at first
+    I took the anger easily, nor much
+    Minded the anguish--having learned that storms
+    Subside, and teapot-tempests are akin.
+    Time would arrange things, mend whate'er might be
+    Somewhat amiss; precipitation, eh?
+    Reason and rhyme prompt--reparation! Tiffs
+    End properly in marriage and a dance!
+    I said 'We'll marry, make the past a blank'--
+    And never was such damnable mistake!
+    That interview, that laying bare my soul,
+    As it was first, so was it last chance--one
+    And only. Did I write? Back letter came
+    Unopened as it went. Inexorable
+    She fled, I don't know where, consoled herself
+    With the smug curate-creature: chop and change!
+    Sure am I, when she told her shaveling all
+    His Magdalen's adventure, tears were shed,
+    Forgiveness evangelically shown,
+    'Loose hair and lifted eye,'--as some one says.
+    And now, he's worshipped for his pains, the sneak!"
+
+    "Well, but your turning-point of life,--what's here
+    To hinder you contesting Finsbury
+    With Orton, next election? I don't see...."
+
+    "Not you! But _I_ see. Slowly, surely, creeps
+    Day by day o'er me the conviction--here
+    Was life's prize grasped at, gained, and then let go!
+    --That with her--may be, for her--I had felt
+    Ice in me melt, grow steam, drive to effect
+    Any or all the fancies sluggish here
+    I' the head that needs the hand she would not take
+    And I shall never lift now. Lo, your wood--
+    Its turnings which I likened life to! Well,--
+    There she stands, ending every avenue,
+    Her visionary presence on each goal
+    I might have gained had we kept side by side!
+    Still string nerve and strike foot? Her frown forbids:
+    The steam congeals once more: I'm old again!
+    Therefore I hate myself--but how much worse
+    Do not I hate who would not understand,
+    Let me repair things--no, but sent a-slide
+    My folly falteringly, stumblingly
+    Down, down and deeper down until I drop
+    Upon--the need of your ten thousand pounds
+    And consequently loss of mine! I lose
+    Character, cash, nay, common-sense itself
+    Recounting such a lengthy cock-and-bull
+    Adventure--lose my temper in the act...."
+
+    "And lose beside,--if I may supplement
+    The list of losses,--train and ten-o'clock!
+    Hark, pant and puff, there travels the swart sign!
+    So much the better! You're my captive now!
+    I'm glad you trust a fellow: friends grow thick
+    This way--that's twice said; we were thickish, though,
+    Even last night, and, ere night comes again,
+    I prophesy good luck to both of us!
+    For see now!--back to '_balmy eminence_'
+    Or '_calm acclivity_,' or what's the word!
+    Bestow you there an hour, concoct at ease
+    A sonnet for the Album, while I put
+    Bold face on, best foot forward, make for house,
+    March in to aunt and niece, and tell the truth--
+    (Even white-lying goes against my taste
+    After your little story). Oh, the niece
+    Is rationality itself! The aunt--
+    If she's amenable to reason too--
+    Why, you stooped short to pay her due respect,
+    And let the Duke wait (I'll work well the Duke).
+    If she grows gracious, I return for you;
+    If thunder's in the air, why--bear your doom,
+    Dine on rump-steaks and port, and shake the dust
+    Of aunty from your shoes as off you go
+    By evening-train, nor give the thing a thought
+    How you shall pay me--that's as sure as fate,
+    Old fellow! Off with you, face left about!
+    Yonder's the path I have to pad. You see,
+    I'm in good spirits, God knows why! Perhaps
+    Because the woman did not marry you
+    --Who look so hard at me,--and have the right,
+    One must be fair and own."
+
+                              The two stand still
+    Under an oak.
+
+                  "Look here!" resumes the youth.
+    "I never quite knew how I came to like
+    You--so much--whom I ought not court at all;
+    Nor how you had a leaning just to me
+    Who am assuredly not worth your pains.
+    For there must needs be plenty such as you
+    Somewhere about,--although I can't say where,--
+    Able and willing to teach all you know;
+    While--how can you have missed a score like me
+    With money and no wit, precisely each
+    A pupil for your purpose, were it--ease
+    Fool's poke of tutor's _honorarium_-fee?
+    And yet, howe'er it came about, I felt
+    At once my master: you as prompt descried
+    Your man, I warrant, so was bargain struck.
+    Now, these same lines of liking, loving, run
+    Sometimes so close together they converge--
+    Life's great adventures--you know what I mean--
+    In people. Do you know, as you advanced,
+    It got to be uncommonly like fact
+    We two had fallen in with--liked and loved
+    Just the same woman in our different ways?
+    I began life--poor groundling as I prove--
+    Winged and ambitious to fly high: why not?
+    There's something in 'Don Quixote' to the point,
+    My shrewd old father used to quote and praise--
+    '_Am I born man?_' asks Sancho: '_being man,
+    By possibility I may be Pope!_'
+    So, Pope I meant to make myself, by step
+    And step, whereof the first should be to find
+    A perfect woman; and I tell you this--
+    If what I fixed on, in the order due
+    Of undertakings, as next step, had first
+    Of all disposed itself to suit my tread,
+    And I had been, the day I came of age,
+    Returned at head of poll for Westminster
+    --Nay, and moreover summoned by the Queen
+    At week's end, when my maiden-speech bore fruit,
+    To form and head a Tory ministry--
+    It would not have seemed stranger, no, nor been
+    More strange to me, as now I estimate,
+    Than what did happen--sober truth, no dream.
+    I saw my wonder of a woman,--laugh,
+    I'm past that!--in Commemoration-week.
+    A plenty have I seen since, fair and foul,--
+    With eyes, too, helped by your sagacious wink;
+    But one to match that marvel--no least trace,
+    Least touch of kinship and community!
+    The end was--I did somehow state the fact,
+    Did, with no matter what imperfect words,
+    One way or other give to understand
+    That woman, soul and body were her slave
+    Would she but take, but try them--any test
+    Of will, and some poor test of power beside:
+    So did the strings within my brain grow tense
+    And capable of ... hang similitudes!
+    She answered kindly but beyond appeal.
+    '_No sort of hope for me, who came too late.
+    She was another's. Love went--mine to her,
+    Hers just as loyally to some one else._'
+    Of course! I might expect it! Nature's law--
+    Given the peerless woman, certainly
+    Somewhere shall be the peerless man to match!
+    I acquiesced at once, submitted me
+    In something of a stupor, went my way.
+    I fancy there had been some talk before
+    Of somebody--her father or the like--
+    To coach me in the holidays,--that's how
+    I came to get the sight and speech of her,--
+    But I had sense enough to break off sharp,
+    Save both of us the pain."
+
+                              "Quite right there!"
+                                                    "Eh?
+    Quite wrong, it happens! Now comes worst of all!
+    Yes, I did sulk aloof and let alone
+    The lovers--_I_ disturb the angel-mates?"
+
+    "Seraph paired off with cherub!"
+
+                                    "Thank you! While
+    I never plucked up courage to inquire
+    Who he was, even,--certain-sure of this,
+    That nobody I knew of had blue wings
+    And wore a star-crown as he needs must do,--
+    Some little lady,--plainish, pock-marked girl,--
+    Finds out my secret in my woful face,
+    Comes up to me at the Apollo Ball,
+    And pityingly pours her wine and oil
+    This way into the wound: '_Dear f-f-friend,
+    Why waste affection thus on--must I say,
+    A somewhat worthless object? Who's her choice--
+    Irrevocable as deliberate--
+    Out of the wide world? I shall name no names--
+    But there's a person in society,
+    Who, blessed with rank and talent, has grown gray
+    In idleness and sin of every sort
+    Except hypocrisy: he's thrice her age,
+    A by-word for "successes with the sex"
+    As the French say--and, as we ought to say,
+    Consummately a liar and a rogue,
+    Since--show me where's the woman won without
+    The help of this one lie which she believes--
+    That--never mind how things have come to pass,
+    And let who loves have loved a thousand times--
+    All the same he now loves her only, loves
+    Her ever! if by "won" you just mean "sold,"
+    That's quite another compact. Well, this scamp,
+    Continuing descent from bad to worse,
+    Must leave his fine and fashionable prey
+    (Who--fathered, brothered, husbanded,--are hedged
+    About with thorny danger) and apply
+    His arts to this poor country ignorance
+    Who sees forthwith in the first rag of man
+    Her model hero! Why continue waste
+    On such a woman treasures of a heart
+    Would yet find solace,--yes, my f-f-friend--
+    In some congenial_--fiddle-diddle-dee?'"
+
+    "Pray, is the pleasant gentleman described
+    Exact the portrait which my '_f-f-friends_'
+    Recognize as so like? 'T is evident
+    You half surmised the sweet original
+    Could be no other than myself, just now!
+    Your stop and start were flattering!"
+
+                                          "Of course
+    Caricature's allowed for in a sketch!
+    The longish nose becomes a foot in length,
+    The swarthy cheek gets copper-colored,--still,
+    Prominent beak and dark-hued skin are facts:
+    And '_parson's daughter_'--'_young man coachable_'--
+    '_Elderly party_'--'_four years since_'--were facts
+    To fasten on, a moment! Marriage, though--
+    That made the difference, I hope."
+
+                                      "All right!
+    I never married; wish I had--and then
+    Unwish it: people kill their wives, sometimes!
+    I hate my mistress, but I'm murder-free.
+    In your case, where's the grievance? You came last,
+    The earlier bird picked up the worm. Suppose
+    You, in the glory of your twenty-one,
+    Had happened to precede myself! 't is odds
+    But this gigantic juvenility,
+    This offering of a big arm's bony hand--
+    I'd rather shake than feel shake me, I know--
+    Had moved _my_ dainty mistress to admire
+    An altogether new Ideal--deem
+    Idolatry less due to life's decline
+    Productive of experience, powers mature
+    By dint of usage, the made man--no boy
+    That's all to make! I was the earlier bird--
+    And what I found, I let fall: what you missed
+    Who is the fool that blames you for?"
+
+They become so deeply interested in this talk that the train is missed,
+and, in the meantime, the lady who now lives in the neighborhood as the
+wife of the hard-working country parson meets the young girl at the inn.
+They are great friends and have come there, at the girl's invitation, to
+talk over her prospective husband. She desires her friend to come to her
+home and meet her fiancÈ, but the lady, who is in constant fear of
+meeting "Iago," never goes anywhere, and proposes a meeting with him at
+the inn. While she waits, "Iago" comes in upon her. There is a terrible
+scene of recrimination between these two, the man again daring to prefer
+his love. The lady scorns him. Horror is added to horror when the young
+man appears at the door, and recognizes the woman he really loves. His
+faith in her and his love are shaken for a moment, but return
+immediately and he stands her true friend and lover. The complete
+despicableness of "Iago's" nature finally reveals itself in the lines he
+writes in the album and gives to the lady to read. The poem is too long
+to quote in full. The closing scene, however, will give the reader a
+good idea of the poet's handling of this nineteenth-century tragedy.
+
+The true nobility of soul of the younger man links him with Mertoun
+among Browning's heroes and represents the Englishman or the man of any
+country for that matter at his highest. Whether redemption for the older
+man would have been possible had the lady believed him in the inn parlor
+is doubtful. Such natures are like Ibsen's "Peer Gynt." They need to be
+put into a button mould and moulded over again.
+
+                                  "Here's the lady back!
+    So, Madam, you have conned the Album-page
+    And come to thank its last contributor?
+    How kind and condescending! I retire
+    A moment, lest I spoil the interview,
+    And mar my own endeavor to make friends--
+    You with him, him with you, and both with me!
+    If I succeed--permit me to inquire
+    Five minutes hence! Friends bid good-by, you know."
+    And out he goes.
+
+    VII
+
+                    She, face, form, bearing, one
+    Superb composure--
+
+                      "He has told you all?
+    Yes, he has told you all, your silence says--
+    What gives him, as he thinks the mastery
+    Over my body and my soul!--has told
+    That instance, even, of their servitude
+    He now exacts of me? A silent blush!
+    That's well, though better would white ignorance
+    Beseem your brow, undesecrate before--
+    Ay, when I left you! I too learn at last
+    --Hideously learned as I seemed so late--
+    What sin may swell to. Yes,--I needed learn
+    That, when my prophet's rod became the snake
+    I fled from, it would, one day, swallow up
+    --Incorporate whatever serpentine
+    Falsehood and treason and unmanliness
+    Beslime earth's pavement: such the power of Hell,
+    And so beginning, ends no otherwise
+    The Adversary! I was ignorant,
+    Blameworthy--if you will; but blame I take
+    Nowise upon me as I ask myself
+    --_You_--how can you, whose soul I seemed to read
+    The limpid eyes through, have declined so deep
+    Even with him for consort? I revolve
+    Much memory, pry into the looks and words
+    Of that day's walk beneath the College wall,
+    And nowhere can distinguish, in what gleams
+    Only pure marble through my dusky past,
+    A dubious cranny where such poison-seed
+    Might harbor, nourish what should yield to-day
+    This dread ingredient for the cup I drink.
+    Do not I recognize and honor truth
+    In seeming?--take your truth and for return,
+    Give you my truth, a no less precious gift?
+    You loved me: I believed you. I replied
+    --How could I other? '_I was not my own_,'
+    --No longer had the eyes to see, the ears
+    To hear, the mind to judge, since heart and soul
+    Now were another's. My own right in me,
+    For well or ill, consigned away--my face
+    Fronted the honest path, deflection whence
+    Had shamed me in the furtive backward look
+    At the late bargain--fit such chapman's phrase!--
+    As though--less hasty and more provident--
+    Waiting had brought advantage. Not for me
+    The chapman's chance! Yet while thus much was true,
+    I spared you--as I knew you then--one more
+    Concluding word which, truth no less, seemed best
+    Buried away forever. Take it now
+    Its power to pain is past! Four years--that day--
+    Those lines that make the College avenue!
+    I would that--friend and foe--by miracle,
+    I had, that moment, seen into the heart
+    Of either, as I now am taught to see!
+    I do believe I should have straight assumed
+    My proper function, and sustained a soul,
+    Nor aimed at being just sustained myself
+    By some man's soul--the weaker woman's-want!
+    So had I missed the momentary thrill
+    Of finding me in presence of a god,
+    But gained the god's own feeling when he gives
+    Such thrill to what turns life from death before.
+    '_Gods many and Lords many_,' says the Book:
+    You would have yielded up your soul to me
+    --Not to the false god who has burned its clay
+    In his own image. I had shed my love
+    Like Spring dew on the clod all flowery thence,
+    Not sent up a wild vapor to the sun
+    that drinks and then disperses. Both of us
+    Blameworthy,--I first meet my punishment--
+    And not so hard to bear. I breathe again!
+    Forth from those arms' enwinding leprosy
+    At last I struggle--uncontaminate:
+    Why must I leave _you_ pressing to the breast
+    That's all one plague-spot? Did you love me once?
+    Then take love's last and best return! I think,
+    Womanliness means only motherhood;
+    All love begins and ends there,--roams enough,
+    But, having run the circle, rests at home.
+    Why is your expiation yet to make?
+    Pull shame with your own hands from your own head
+    Now,--never wait the slow envelopment
+    Submitted to by unelastic age!
+    One fierce throe frees the sapling: flake on flake
+    Lull till they leave the oak snow-stupefied.
+    Your heart retains its vital warmth--or why
+    That blushing reassurance? Blush, young blood!
+    Break from beneath this icy premature
+    Captivity of wickedness--I warn
+    Back, in God's name! No fresh encroachment here!
+    This May breaks all to bud--No Winter now!
+    Friend, we are both forgiven! Sin no more!
+    I am past sin now, so shall you become!
+    Meanwhile I testify that, lying once,
+    My foe lied ever, most lied last of all.
+    He, waking, whispered to your sense asleep
+    The wicked counsel,--and assent might seem;
+    But, roused, your healthy indignation breaks
+    The idle dream-pact. You would die--not dare
+    Confirm your dream-resolve,--nay, find the word
+    That fits the deed to bear the light of day!
+    Say I have justly judged you! then farewell
+    To blushing--nay, it ends in smiles, not tears!
+    Why tears now? I have justly judged, thank God!"
+
+    He does blush boy-like, but the man speaks out,
+    --Makes the due effort to surmount himself.
+
+    "I don't know what he wrote--how should I? Nor
+    How he could read my purpose which, it seems,
+    He chose to somehow write--mistakenly
+    Or else for mischief's sake. I scarce believe
+    My purpose put before you fair and plain
+    Would need annoy so much; but there's my luck--
+    From first to last I blunder. Still, one more
+    Turn at the target, try to speak my thought!
+    Since he could guess my purpose, won't you read
+    Right what he set down wrong? He said--let's think!
+    Ay, so!--he did begin by telling heaps
+    Of tales about you. Now, you see--suppose
+    Any one told me--my own mother died
+    Before I knew her--told me--to his cost!--
+    Such tales about my own dead mother: why,
+    You would not wonder surely if I knew,
+    By nothing but my own heart's help, he lied,
+    Would you? No reason's wanted in the case.
+    So with you! In they burnt on me, his tales,
+    Much as when madhouse-inmates crowd around,
+    Make captive any visitor and scream
+    All sorts of stories of their keeper--he's
+    Both dwarf and giant, vulture, wolf, dog, cat,
+    Serpent and scorpion, yet man all the same;
+    Sane people soon see through the gibberish!
+    I just made out, you somehow lived somewhere
+    A life of shame--I can't distinguish more--
+    Married or single--how, don't matter much:
+    Shame which himself had caused--that point was clear,
+    That fact confessed--that thing to hold and keep.
+    Oh, and he added some absurdity
+    --That you were here to make me--ha, ha, ha!--
+    Still love you, still of mind to die for you,
+    Ha, ha--as if that needed mighty pains!
+    Now, foolish as ... but never mind myself
+    --What I am, what I am not, in the eye
+    Of the world, is what I never cared for much.
+    Fool then or no fool, not one single word
+    In the whole string of lies did I believe,
+    But this--this only--if I choke, who cares?--
+    I believe somehow in your purity
+    Perfect as ever! Else what use is God?
+    He is God, and work miracles He can!
+    Then, what shall I do? Quite as clear, my course!
+    They've got a thing they call their Labyrinth
+    I' the garden yonder: and my cousin played
+    A pretty trick once, led and lost me deep
+    Inside the briery maze of hedge round hedge;
+    And there might I be staying now, stock-still,
+    But that I laughing bade eyes follow nose
+    And so straight pushed my path through let and stop
+    And soon was out in the open, face all scratched,
+    But well behind my back the prison-bars
+    In sorry plight enough, I promise you!
+    So here: I won my way to truth through lies--
+    Said, as I saw light,--if her shame be shame
+    I'll rescue and redeem her,--shame's no shame?
+    Then, I'll avenge, protect--redeem myself
+    The stupidest of sinners! Here I stand!
+    Dear,--let me once dare call you so,--you said
+    Thus ought you to have done, four years ago,
+    Such things and such! Ay, dear, and what ought I?
+    You were revealed to me: where's gratitude,
+    Where's memory even, where the gain of you
+    Discernible in my low after-life
+    Of fancied consolation? why, no horse
+    Once fed on corn, will, missing corn, go munch
+    Mere thistles like a donkey! I missed you,
+    And in your place found--him, made him my love,
+    Ay, did I,--by this token, that he taught
+    So much beast-nature that I meant ... God knows
+    Whether I bow me to the dust enough!...
+    To marry--yes, my cousin here! I hope
+    That was a master-stroke! Take heart of hers,
+    And give her hand of mine with no more heart
+    Than now you see upon this brow I strike!
+    What atom of a heart do I retain
+    Not all yours? Dear, you know it! Easily
+    May she accord me pardon when I place
+    My brow beneath her foot, if foot so deign,
+    Since uttermost indignity is spared--
+    Mere marriage and no love! And all this time
+    Not one word to the purpose! Are you free?
+    Only wait! only let me serve--deserve
+    Where you appoint and how you see the good!
+    I have the will--perhaps the power--at least
+    Means that have power against the world. For time--
+    Take my whole life for your experiment!
+    If you are bound--in marriage, say--why, still,
+    Still, sure, there's something for a friend to do,
+    Outside? A mere well-wisher, understand!
+    I'll sit, my life long, at your gate, you know,
+    Swing it wide open to let you and him
+    Pass freely,--and you need not look, much less
+    Fling me a '_Thank you--are you there, old friend_?'
+    Don't say that even: I should drop like shot!
+    So I feel now at least: some day, who knows?
+    After no end of weeks and months and years
+    You might smile '_I believe you did your best_!'
+    And that shall make my heart leap--leap such leap
+    As lands the feet in Heaven to wait you there!
+    Ah, there's just one thing more! How pale you look!
+    Why? Are you angry? If there's, after all,
+    Worst come to worst--if still there somehow be
+    The shame--I said was no shame,--none! I swear!--
+    In that case, if my hand and what it holds,--
+    My name,--might be your safeguard now--at once--
+    Why, here's the hand--you have the heart! Of course--
+    No cheat, no binding you, because I'm bound,
+    To let me off probation by one day,
+    Week, month, year, lifetime! Prove as you propose!
+    Here's the hand with the name to take or leave!
+    That's all--and no great piece of news, I hope!"
+
+    "Give me the hand, then!" she cries hastily.
+    "Quick, now! I hear his footstep!"
+                                      Hand in hand
+    The couple face him as he enters, stops
+    Short, stands surprised a moment, laughs away
+    Surprise, resumes the much-experienced man.
+
+    "So, you accept him?"
+                          "Till us death do part!"
+
+    "No longer? Come, that's right and rational!
+    I fancied there was power in common sense,
+    But did not know it worked thus promptly. Well--
+    At last each understands the other, then?
+    Each drops disguise, then? So, at supper-time
+    These masquerading people doff their gear,
+    Grand Turk his pompous turban, Quakeress
+    Her stiff-starched bib and tucker,--make-believe
+    That only bothers when, ball-business done,
+    Nature demands champagne and _mayonnaise_.
+    Just so has each of us sage three abjured
+    His and her moral pet particular
+    Pretension to superiority,
+    And, cheek by jowl, we henceforth munch and joke!
+    Go, happy pair, paternally dismissed
+    To live and die together--for a month,
+    Discretion can award no more! Depart
+    From whatsoe'er the calm sweet solitude
+    Selected--Paris not improbably--
+    At month's end, when the honeycomb's left wax,
+    --You, daughter, with a pocketful of gold
+    Enough to find your village boys and girls
+    In duffel cloaks and hobnailed shoes from May
+    To--what's the phrase?--Christmas-come-never-mas!
+    You, son and heir of mine, shall re-appear
+    Ere Spring-time, that's the ring-time, lose one leaf,
+    And--not without regretful smack of lip
+    The while you wipe it free of honey-smear--
+    Marry the cousin, play the magistrate,
+    Stand for the country, prove perfection's pink--
+    Master of hounds, gay-coated dine--nor die
+    Sooner than needs of gout, obesity,
+    And sons at Christ Church! As for me,--ah me,
+    I abdicate--retire on my success,
+    Four years well occupied in teaching youth
+    --My son and daughter the exemplary!
+    Time for me to retire now, having placed
+    Proud on their pedestal the pair: in turn,
+    Let them do homage to their master! You,--
+    Well, your flushed cheek and flashing eye proclaim
+    Sufficiently your gratitude: you paid
+    The _honorarium_, the ten thousand pounds
+    To purpose, did you not? I told you so!
+    And you, but, bless me, why so pale--so faint
+    At influx of good fortune? Certainly,
+    No matter how or why or whose the fault,
+    I save your life--save it, nor less nor more!
+    You blindly were resolved to welcome death
+    In that black boor-and-bumpkin-haunted hole
+    Of his, the prig with all the preachments! _You_
+    Installed as nurse and matron to the crones
+    And wenches, while there lay a world outside
+    Like Paris (which again I recommend)
+    In company and guidance of--first, this,
+    Then--all in good time--some new friend as fit--
+    What if I were to say, some fresh myself,
+    As I once figured? Each dog has his day,
+    And mine's at sunset: what should old dog do
+    But eye young litters' frisky puppyhood?
+    Oh I shall watch this beauty and this youth
+    Frisk it in brilliance! But don't fear! Discreet,
+    I shall pretend to no more recognize
+    My quondam pupils than the doctor nods
+    When certain old acquaintances may cross
+    His path in Park, or sit down prim beside
+    His plate at dinner-table: tip nor wink
+    Scares patients he has put, for reason good,
+    Under restriction,--maybe, talked sometimes
+    Of douche or horsewhip to,--for why? because
+    The gentleman would crazily declare
+    His best friend was--Iago! Ay, and worse--
+    The lady, all at once grown lunatic,
+    In suicidal monomania vowed,
+    To save her soul, she needs must starve herself!
+    They're cured now, both, and I tell nobody.
+    Why don't you speak? Nay, speechless, each of you
+    Can spare,--without unclasping plighted troth,--
+    At least one hand to shake! Left-hands will do--
+    Yours first, my daughter! Ah, it guards--it gripes
+    The precious Album fast--and prudently!
+    As well obliterate the record there
+    On page the last: allow me tear the leaf!
+    Pray, now! And afterward, to make amends,
+    What if all three of us contribute each
+    A line to that prelusive fragment,--help
+    The embarrassed bard who broke out to break down
+    Dumbfoundered at such unforeseen success?
+    '_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot_'
+    You begin--_place aux dames_! I'll prompt you then!
+    '_Here do I take the good the gods allot!_'
+    Next you, Sir! What, still sulky? Sing, O Muse!
+    '_Here does my lord in full discharge his shot!_'
+    Now for the crowning flourish! mine shall be...."
+
+    "Nothing to match your first effusion, mar
+    What was, is, shall remain your masterpiece!
+    Authorship has the alteration-itch!
+    No, I protest against erasure. Read,
+    My friend!" (she gasps out). "Read and quickly read
+    '_Before us death do part_,' what made you mine
+    And made me yours--the marriage-license here!
+    Decide if he is like to mend the same!"
+    And so the lady, white to ghastliness,
+    Manages somehow to display the page
+    With left-hand only, while the right retains
+    The other hand, the young man's,--dreaming-drunk
+    He, with this drench of stupefying stuff,
+    Eyes wide, mouth open,--half the idiot's stare
+    And half the prophet's insight,--holding tight,
+    All the same, by his one fact in the world--
+    The lady's right-hand: he but seems to read--
+    Does not, for certain; yet, how understand
+    Unless he reads?
+
+                    So, understand he does,
+    For certain. Slowly, word by word, _she_ reads
+    Aloud that license--or that warrant, say.
+
+    "'_One against two--and two that urge their odds
+    To uttermost--I needs must try resource!
+    Madam, I laid me prostrate, bade you spurn
+    Body and soul: you spurned and safely spurned
+    So you had spared me the superfluous taunt
+    "Prostration means no power to stand erect,
+    Stand, trampling on who trampled--prostrate now!"
+    So, with my other fool-foe: I was fain
+    Let the boy touch me with the buttoned foil,
+    And him the infection gains, he too must needs
+    Catch up the butcher's cleaver. Be it so!
+    Since play turns earnest, here's my serious fence.
+    He loves you; he demands your love: both know
+    What love means in my language. Love him then!
+    Pursuant to a pact, love pays my debt:
+    Therefore, deliver me from him, thereby
+    Likewise delivering from me yourself!
+    For, hesitate--much more, refuse consent--
+    I tell the whole truth to your husband. Flat
+    Cards lie on table, in our gamester-phrase!
+    Consent--you stop my mouth, the only way._'
+
+    "I did well, trusting instinct: knew your hand
+    Had never joined with his in fellowship
+    Over this pact of infamy. You known--
+    As he was known through every nerve of me.
+    Therefore I '_stopped his mouth the only way_'
+    But _my_ way! none was left for you, my friend--
+    The loyal--near, the loved one! No--no--no!
+    Threaten? Chastise? The coward would but quail.
+    Conquer who can, the cunning of the snake!
+    Stamp out his slimy strength from tail to head,
+    And still you leave vibration of the tongue.
+    His malice had redoubled--not on me
+    Who, myself, choose my own refining fire--
+    But on poor unsuspicious innocence;
+    And,--victim,--to turn executioner
+    Also--that feat effected, forky tongue
+    Had done indeed its office! One snake's 'mouth'
+    Thus '_open_'--how could mortal '_stop it_'?
+
+                                                "So!"
+    A tiger-flash--yell, spring, and scream: halloo!
+    Death's out and on him, has and holds him--ugh!
+    But _ne trucidet coram populo
+    Juvenis senem_! Right the Horatian rule!
+    There, see how soon a quiet comes to pass!
+
+    The youth is somehow by the lady's side.
+    His right-hand grasps her right-hand once again.
+    Both gaze on the dead body. Hers the word.
+    "And that was good but useless. Had I lived
+    The danger was to dread: but, dying now--
+    Himself would hardly become talkative,
+    Since talk no more means torture. Fools--what fools
+    These wicked men are! Had I borne four years,
+    Four years of weeks and months and days and nights,
+    Inured me to the consciousness of life
+    Coiled round by his life, with the tongue to ply,--
+    But that I bore about me, for prompt use
+    At urgent need, the thing that '_stops the mouth_'
+    And stays the venom? Since such need was now
+    Or never,--how should use not follow need?
+    Bear witness for me, I withdraw from life
+    By virtue of the license--warrant, say,
+    That blackens yet this Album--white again,
+    Thanks still to my one friend who tears the page!
+    Now, let me write the line of supplement,
+    As counselled by my foe there: '_each a line_!'"
+
+    And she does falteringly write to end.
+
+    "_I die now through the villain who lies dead,
+    Righteously slain. He would have outraged me,
+    So, my defender slew him. God protect
+    The right! Where wrong lay, I bear witness now.
+    Let man believe me, whose last breath is spent
+    In blessing my defender from my soul!_"
+
+    And so ends the Inn Album.
+
+                              As she dies,
+    Begins outside a voice that sounds like song,
+    And is indeed half song though meant for speech
+    Muttered in time to motion--stir of heart
+    That unsubduably must bubble forth
+    To match the fawn-step as it mounts the stair.
+
+    "All's ended and all's over! Verdict found
+    '_Not guilty_'--prisoner forthwith set free,
+    Mid cheers the Court pretends to disregard!
+    Now Portia, now for Daniel, late severe,
+    At last appeased, benignant! '_This young man--
+    Hem--has the young man's foibles but no fault.
+    He's virgin soil--a friend must cultivate.
+    I think no plant called "love" grows wild--a friend
+    May introduce, and name the bloom, the fruit!_'
+    Here somebody dares wave a handkerchief--
+    She'll want to hide her face with presently!
+    Good-by then! '_Cigno fedel, cigno fedel,
+    Addio!_' Now, was ever such mistake--
+    Ever such foolish ugly omen? Pshaw!
+    Wagner, beside! '_Amo te solo, te
+    Solo amai!_' That's worth fifty such!
+    But, mum, the grave face at the opened door!"
+
+    And so the good gay girl, with eyes and cheeks
+    Diamond and damask,--cheeks so white erewhile
+    Because of a vague fancy, idle fear
+    Chased on reflection!--pausing, taps discreet;
+    And then, to give herself a countenance,
+    Before she comes upon the pair inside,
+    Loud--the oft-quoted, long-laughed-over line--
+    "'_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!_'
+    Open the door!"
+
+                    No: let the curtain fall!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+In "Bishop Blougram's Apology" and "Christmas-Eve and Easter Day,"
+Browning has covered the main tendencies in religious thought of the
+nineteenth century in England; and possibly "Caliban" might be included
+as representative of Calvinistic survivals of the century.
+
+The two most strongly marked of these tendencies have been shown in the
+Tractarian Movement which took Anglican in the direction of High
+Churchism and Catholicism, and in the Scientific Movement which led in
+the direction of Agnosticism.
+
+The battle between the Church of Rome and the Church of England was
+waged the latter part of the first half of the century, and the greater
+battle between science and religion came on in its full strength the
+middle of the century when the influence of Spencer, Darwin, Tyndall,
+Huxley and other men of science began to make itself felt, as well as
+that of such critics of historical Christianity as Strauss in Germany
+and Renan in France. The influence of the dissenting bodies,--the
+Presbyterians and the Methodists--also became a power during the
+century. Broadly speaking, it may be said that the development has been
+in the direction of the utmost freedom of conscience in the matter of
+religion, though the struggles of humanity to arrive there even during
+this century are distressing to look back upon; and occasionally one is
+held up even in America to-day by the ghost of religious persecution.
+
+It is an open secret that in Bishop Blougram, Browning meant to portray
+Cardinal Wiseman, whose connection with the Tractarian Movement is of
+great interest in the history of this movement. Browning enjoyed hugely
+the joke that Cardinal Wiseman himself reviewed the poem. The Cardinal
+praised it as a poem, though he did not consider the attitude of a
+priest of Rome to be properly interpreted. A comparison of the poem with
+opinions expressed by the Cardinal as well as a glimpse into his
+activities will show how far Browning has done him justice.
+
+It is well to remember at the outset that the poet's own view is neither
+that of Blougram nor of the literary man Gigadibs, with whom Blougram
+talks over his wine. Gigadibs is an agnostic and cannot understand how a
+man of Blougram's fine intellectual and artistic perceptions is able so
+implicitly to believe in Catholic doctrine. Blougram's apology for
+himself amounts to this,--that he does not believe with absolute
+certainty any more than does Gigadibs; but, on the other hand, Gigadibs
+does not disbelieve with absolute certainty, so Blougram's state is one
+of belief shaken occasionally by doubt, while Gigadibs is one of
+unbelief shaken by fits of belief.
+
+
+    BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+      Now come, let's backward to the starting place.
+    See my way: we're two college friends, suppose.
+    Prepare together for our voyage, then;
+    Each note and check the other in his work,--
+    There's mine, a bishop's outfit; criticize!
+    What's wrong? why won't you be a bishop too?
+
+      What first, you don't believe, you don't, and can't,
+    (Not statedly, that is, and fixedly
+    And absolutely and exclusively)
+    In any revelation called divine.
+    No dogmas nail your faith; and what remains
+    But say so, like the honest man you are?
+    First, therefore, overhaul theology!
+    Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think,
+    Must find believing every whit as hard:
+    And if I do not frankly say as much,
+    The ugly consequence is clear enough.
+
+      Now wait, my friend: well, I do not believe--
+    If you'll accept no faith that is not fixed,
+    Absolute and exclusive, as you say.
+    You're wrong--I mean to prove it in due time.
+    Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie
+    I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall,
+    So give up hope accordingly to solve--
+    (To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then
+    With both of us, though in unlike degree,
+    Missing full credence--overboard with them!
+    I mean to meet you on your own premise:
+    Good, there go mine in company with yours!
+
+      And now what are we? unbelievers both,
+    Calm and complete, determinately fixed
+    To-day, to-morrow and forever, pray?
+    You'll guarantee me that? Not so, I think!
+    In no wise! all we've gained is, that belief.
+    As unbelief before, shakes us by fits,
+    Confounds us like its predecessor. Where's
+    The gain? how can we guard our unbelief,
+    Make it bear fruit to us?--the problem here.
+    Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch,
+    A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
+    A chorus-ending from Euripides,--
+    And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
+    As old and new at once as nature's self,
+    To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
+    Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,
+    Round the ancient idol, on his base again,--
+    The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly.
+    There the old misgivings, crooked questions are--
+    This good God,--what he could do, if he would,
+    Would, if he could--then must have done long since:
+    If so, when, where and how? some way must be,--
+    Once feel about, and soon or late you hit
+    Some sense, in which it might be, after all.
+    Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life?"
+
+The advantage of making belief instead of unbelief the starting point
+is, Blougram contends, that he lives by what he finds the most to his
+taste; giving him as it does, power, distinction and beauty in life as
+well as hope in the life to come.
+
+      Well, now, there's one great form of Christian faith
+    I happened to be born in--which to teach
+    Was given me as I grew up, on all hands,
+    As best and readiest means of living by;
+    The same on examination being proved
+    The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise
+    And absolute form of faith in the whole world--
+    Accordingly, most potent of all forms
+    For working on the world. Observe, my friend!
+    Such as you know me, I am free to say,
+    In these hard latter days which hamper one,
+    Myself--by no immoderate exercise
+    Of intellect and learning, but the tact
+    To let external forces work for me,
+    --Bid the street's stones be bread and they are bread;
+    Bid Peter's creed, or rather, Hildebrand's,
+    Exalt me o'er my fellows in the world
+    And make my life an ease and joy and pride;
+    It does so,--which for me's a great point gained,
+    Who have a soul and body that exact
+    A comfortable care in many ways.
+    There's power in me and will to dominate
+    Which I must exercise, they hurt me else:
+    In many ways I need mankind's respect,
+    Obedience, and the love that's born of fear:
+    While at the same time, there's a taste I have,
+    A toy of soul, a titillating thing,
+    Refuses to digest these dainties crude.
+    The naked life is gross till clothed upon:
+    I must take what men offer, with a grace
+    As though I would not, could I help it, take!
+    An uniform I wear though over-rich--
+    Something imposed on me, no choice of mine;
+    No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake
+    And despicable therefore! now folk kneel
+    And kiss my hand--of course the Church's hand.
+    Thus I am made, thus life is best for me,
+    And thus that it should be I have procured;
+    And thus it could not be another way,
+    I venture to imagine.
+
+                          You'll reply,
+    So far my choice, no doubt, is a success;
+    But were I made of better elements,
+    with nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you,
+    I hardly would account the thing success
+    Though it did all for me I say.
+
+                                    But, friend,
+    We speak of what is; not of what might be,
+    And how 'twere better if 'twere otherwise.
+    I am the man you see here plain enough:
+    Grant I'm a beast, why, beasts must lead beasts' lives!
+    Suppose I own at once to tail and claws;
+    The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed
+    I'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes
+    To dock their stump and dress their haunches up.
+    My business is not to remake myself,
+    But make the absolute best of what God made.
+
+      But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fast
+    I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes
+    Enumerated so complacently,
+    On the mere ground that you forsooth can find
+    In this particular life I choose to lead
+    No fit provision for them. Can you not?
+    Say you, my fault is I address myself
+    To grosser estimators than should judge?
+    And that's no way of holding up the soul,
+    Which, nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knows
+    One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools'--
+    Would like the two, but, forced to choose, takes that.
+    I pine among my million imbeciles
+    (You think) aware some dozen men of sense
+    Eye me and know me, whether I believe
+    In the last winking Virgin, as I vow,
+    And am a fool, or disbelieve in her
+    And am a knave,--approve in neither case,
+    Withhold their voices though I look their way:
+    Like Verdi when, at his worst opera's end
+    (The thing they gave at Florence,--what's its name?)
+    While the mad houseful's plaudits near outbang
+    His orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones,
+    He looks through all the roaring and the wreaths
+    Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.
+
+      Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here--
+    That even your prime men who appraise their kind
+    Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel,
+    See more in a truth than the truth's simple self,
+    Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street
+    Sixty the minute; what's to note in that?
+    You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack;
+    Him you must watch--he's sure to fall, yet stands!
+    Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.
+    The honest thief, the tender murderer,
+    The superstitious atheist, demirep
+    That loves and saves her soul in new French books--
+    We watch while these in equilibrium keep
+    The giddy line midway: one step aside,
+    They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line
+    Before your sages,--just the men to shrink
+    From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad
+    You offer their refinement. Fool or knave?
+    Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave
+    When there's a thousand diamond weights between?
+    So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you'll find,
+    Profess themselves indignant, scandalized
+    At thus being held unable to explain
+    How a superior man who disbelieves
+    May not believe as well: that's Schelling's way!
+    It's through my coming in the tail of time,
+    Nicking the minute with a happy tact.
+    Had I been born three hundred years ago
+    They'd say, "what's strange? Blougram of course believes;"
+    And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course."
+    But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yet
+    How can he?" All eyes turn with interest.
+    Whereas, step off the line on either side--
+    You, for example, clever to a fault,
+    The rough and ready man who write apace,
+    Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less--
+    You disbelieve! Who wonders and who cares?
+    Lord So-and-so--his coat bedropped with wax,
+    All Peter's chains about his waist, his back
+    Brave with the needlework of Noodledom--
+    Believes! Again, who wonders and who cares?
+    But I, the man of sense and learning too,
+    The able to think yet act, the this, the that,
+    I, to believe at this late time of day!
+    Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt.
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+      "Ay, but since really you lack faith," you cry,
+    "You run the same risk really on all sides,
+    In cool indifference as bold unbelief.
+    As well be Strauss as swing 'twixt Paul and him.
+    It's not worth having, such imperfect faith,
+    No more available to do faith's work
+    Than unbelief like mine. Whole faith, or none!"
+
+      Softly, my friend! I must dispute that point.
+    Once own the use of faith, I'll find you faith.
+    We're back on Christian ground. You call for faith:
+    I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.
+    The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,
+    If faith o'ercomes doubt. How I know it does?
+    By life and man's free will, God gave for that!
+    To mould life as we choose it, shows our choice:
+    That's our one act, the previous work's his own.
+    You criticize the soul? it reared this tree--
+    This broad life and whatever fruit it bears!
+    What matter though I doubt at every pore,
+    Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my finger's ends,
+    Doubts in the trivial work of every day,
+    Doubts at the very bases of my soul
+    In the grand moments when she probes herself--
+    If finally I have a life to show,
+    The thing I did, brought out in evidence
+    Against the thing done to me underground
+    By hell and all its brood, for aught I know?
+    I say, whence sprang this? shows it faith or doubt?
+    All's doubt in me; where's break of faith in this?
+    It is the idea, the feeling and the love,
+    God means mankind should strive for and show forth
+    Whatever be the process to that end,--
+    And not historic knowledge, logic sound,
+    And metaphysical acumen, sure!
+    "What think ye of Christ," friend? when all's done and said,
+    Like you this Christianity or not?
+    It may be false, but will you wish it true?
+    Has it your vote to be so if it can?
+    Trust you an instinct silenced long ago
+    That will break silence and enjoin you love
+    What mortified philosophy is hoarse,
+    And all in vain, with bidding you despise?
+    If you desire faith--then you've faith enough:
+    What else seeks God--nay, what else seek ourselves?
+    You form a notion of me, we'll suppose,
+    On hearsay; it's a favourable one:
+    "But still" (you add), "there was no such good man,
+    Because of contradiction in the facts.
+    One proves, for instance, he was born in Rome,
+    This Blougram; yet throughout the tales of him
+    I see he figures as an Englishman."
+    Well, the two things are reconcilable.
+    But would I rather you discovered that,
+    Subjoining--"Still, what matter though they be?
+    Blougram concerns me nought, born here or there."
+
+      Pure faith indeed--you know not what you ask!
+    Naked belief in God the Omnipotent,
+    Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much
+    The sense of conscious creatures to be borne.
+    It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare.
+    Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth:
+    I say it's meant to hide him all it can,
+    And that's what all the blessed evil's for.
+    Its use in Time is to environ us,
+    Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough
+    Against that sight till we can bear its stress.
+    Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain
+    And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart
+    Less certainly would wither up at once
+    Than mind, confronted with the truth of him.
+    But time and earth case-harden us to live;
+    The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child
+    Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place,
+    Plays on and grows to be a man like us.
+    With me, faith means perpetual unbelief
+    Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot
+    Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+              The sum of all is--yes, my doubt is great,
+    My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough.
+    I have read much, thought much, experienced much,
+    Yet would die rather than avow my fear
+    The Naples' liquefaction may be false,
+    When set to happen by the palace-clock
+    According to the clouds or dinner-time.
+    I hear you recommend, I might at least
+    Eliminate, decrassify my faith
+    Since I adopt it; keeping what I must
+    And leaving what I can--such points as this.
+    I won't--that is, I can't throw one away.
+    Supposing there's no truth in what I hold
+    About the need of trial to man's faith,
+    Still, when you bid me purify the same,
+    To such a process I discern no end.
+    Clearing off one excrescence to see two,
+    There's ever a next in size, now grown as big,
+    That meets the knife: I cut and cut again!
+    First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last
+    But Fichte's clever cut at God himself?
+    Experimentalize on sacred things!
+    I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain
+    To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike.
+    The first step, I am master not to take.
+
+      You'd find the cutting-process to your taste
+    As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned,
+    Nor see more danger in it,--you retort.
+    Your taste's worth mine; but my taste proves more wise
+    When we consider that the steadfast hold
+    On the extreme end of the chain of faith
+    Gives all the advantage, makes the difference
+    With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule:
+    We are their lords, or they are free of us,
+    Just as we tighten or relax our hold.
+    So, other matters equal, we'll revert
+    To the first problem--which, if solved my way
+    And thrown into the balance, turns the scale--
+    How we may lead a comfortable life,
+    How suit our luggage to the cabin's size.
+
+      Of course you are remarking all this time
+    How narrowly and grossly I view life,
+    Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule
+    The masses, and regard complacently
+    "The cabin," in our old phrase. Well, I do.
+    I act for, talk for, live for this world now,
+    As this world prizes action, life and talk:
+    No prejudice to what next world may prove,
+    Whose new laws and requirements, my best pledge
+    To observe then, is that I observe these now,
+    Shall do hereafter what I do meanwhile.
+    Let us concede (gratuitously though)
+    Next life relieves the soul of body, yields
+    Pure spiritual enjoyment: well, my friend,
+    Why lose this life i' the meantime, since its use
+    May be to make the next life more intense?
+
+      Do you know, I have often had a dream
+    (Work it up in your next month's article)
+    Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still
+    Losing true life for ever and a day
+    Through ever trying to be and ever being--
+    In the evolution of successive spheres--
+    _Before_ its actual sphere and place of life,
+    Halfway into the next, which having reached,
+    It shoots with corresponding foolery
+    Halfway into the next still, on and off!
+    As when a traveller, bound from North to South,
+    Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France?
+    In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain?
+    In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!
+    Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,
+    A superfluity at Timbuctoo.
+    When, through his journey, was the fool at ease?
+    I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world,
+    I take and like its way of life; I think
+    My brothers, who administer the means,
+    Live better for my comfort--that's good too;
+    And God, if he pronounce upon such life,
+    Approves my service, which is better still.
+    If he keep silence,--why, for you or me
+    Or that brute beast pulled-up in to-day's "Times,"
+    What odds is't, save to ourselves, what life we lead?
+
+Turning to the life of Cardinal Wiseman, it is of especial interest in
+connection with Browning's portrayal of him to observe his earlier
+years. He was born in Spain, having a Spanish father of English descent
+and an English mother, all Catholics, as Blougram says, "There's one
+great form of Christian faith I happened to be born in." His mother took
+him as an infant, and laid him upon the altar of the Cathedral of
+Seville, and consecrated him to the service of the Church.
+
+[Illustration: Cardinal Wiseman]
+
+His father having died when he was a tiny boy, his mother took him and
+his brother to England where he was trained at the Catholic college of
+Ushaw. From there he went to Rome to study at the English Catholic
+College there. Later he became Rector of this College. The sketch of
+Wiseman at this period given by his biographer, Wilfred Ward, is most
+attractive. "Scattered through his 'Recollections' are interesting
+impressions left by his student life. While mastering the regular course
+of scholastic philosophy and theology sufficiently to take his degree
+with credit, his tastes were not primarily in this direction. The study
+of Roman antiquities, Christian and Pagan, was congenial to him, as was
+also the study of Italian art--in which he ultimately became
+proficient--and of music: and he early devoted himself to the Syriac and
+Arabic languages. In all these pursuits the enthusiasm and eminence of
+men living in Rome itself at this era of renaissance was a potent
+stimulus to work. The hours he set aside for reading were many more than
+the rule demanded. But the daily walk and the occasional expedition to
+places of historic interest outside of Rome helped also to store his
+mind and to fire his imagination." Wiseman writes, himself, of this
+period, "The life of the student in Rome should be one of unblended
+enjoyment. His very relaxations become at once subsidiary to his work
+and yet most delightfully recreative. His daily walks may be through the
+field of art ... his wanderings along the stream of time ... a thousand
+memories, a thousand associations accompany him." From this letter and
+from accounts of him he would seem to have been possessed of a highly
+imaginative temperament, possibly more artistic than religious.
+Scholars, linguists, or historians, artists or antiquarians interested
+him far more than thinkers or theologians. In noting the effects on
+Wiseman's character of the thoughts and sights of Rome, "it must be
+observed," writes Ward, "that even the action of directly religious
+influences brought out his excessive impressionableness. His own inner
+life was as vivid a pageant to him as the history of the Church. He was
+liable at this time to the periods of spiritual exaltation--matched, as
+we shall see later on, by fits of intense despondency--which marked him
+through life."
+
+This remarkable intellectual activity brought with it doubts of
+religious truth. "The imaginative delight in Rome as a living witness to
+the faith entirely left him, and at the same time he was attacked by
+mental disturbances and doubts of the truth of Christianity. There are
+contemporary indications, and still plainer accounts in the letters of
+his later life, of acute suffering from these trials. The study of
+Biblical criticism, even in the early stages it had then reached, seems
+immediately to have occasioned them; and the suffering they caused him
+was aggravated into intense and almost alarming depression by the
+feebleness of his bodily health." He says, speaking of this phase in his
+life, "Many and many an hour have I passed, alone, in bitter tears, on
+the _loggia_ of the English College, when every one was reposing in the
+afternoon, and I was fighting with subtle thoughts and venomous
+suggestions of a fiendlike infidelity which I durst not confide to any
+one, for there was no one that could have sympathized with me. This
+lasted for years; but it made me study and think, to conquer the
+plague--for I can hardly call it danger--both for myself and for others.
+But during the actual struggle the simple submission of faith is the
+only remedy. Thoughts against faith must be treated at the time like
+temptations against any other virtue--put away; though in cooler moments
+they may be safely analyzed and unraveled." Again he wrote of these
+years as, "Years of solitude, of desolation, years of shattered nerves,
+dread often of instant insanity, consumptive weakness, of sleepless
+nights and weary days, and hours of tears which no one witnessed."
+
+"Of the effect of these years of desolation on his character he speaks
+as being simply invaluable. It completed what Ushaw had begun, the
+training in patience, self-reliance, and concentration in spite of
+mental depression. It was amid these trials, he adds, 'that I wrote my
+"HorÊ SyriacÊ" and collected my notes for the lectures on the
+"Connection between Science and Revealed Religion" and the "Eucharist."
+Without this training I should not have thrown myself into the Puseyite
+controversy at a later period.' Any usefulness which discovered itself
+in later years he considers the 'result of self-discipline' during his
+inner conflict. The struggle so absorbed his energies that his early
+life was passed almost wholly free from the special trials to which that
+period is liable. He speaks of his youth as in that respect 'almost
+temptationless.'" This state of mind seemed to last about five years and
+then he writes in a letter:
+
+"I have felt myself for some months gradually passing into a new state
+of mind and heart which I can hardly describe, but which I trust is the
+last stage of mental progress, in which I hope I may much improve, but
+out of which I trust I may never pass. I could hardly express the calm
+mild frame of mind in which I have lived; company and society I have
+almost entirely shunned, or have moved through it as a stranger; hardly
+a disturbing thought, hardly a grating sensation has crossed my being,
+of which a great feeling of love seems to have been the principle.
+Whither, I am inclined to ask myself, does all this tend? Whence does it
+proceed? I think I could make an interesting history of my mind's
+religious progress, if I may use a word shockingly perverted by modern
+fanatics, from the hard dry struggles I used to have when first I
+commenced to study on my own account, to the settling down into a state
+of stern conviction, and so after some years to the nobler and more
+soothing evidences furnished by the grand harmonies and beautiful
+features of religion, whether considered in contact with lower objects
+or viewed in her own crystal mirror. I find it curious, too, and
+interesting to trace the workings of those varied feelings upon my
+relations to the outward world. I remember how for years I lost all
+relish for the glorious ceremonies of the Church. I heeded not its
+venerable monuments and sacred records scattered over the city; or I
+studied them all with the dry eye of an antiquarian, looking in them for
+proofs, not for sensations, being ever actively alive to the collection
+of evidences and demonstrations of religious truth. But now that the
+time of my probation as I hope it was, is past, I feel as though the
+freshness of childhood's thoughts had once more returned to me, my
+heart expands with renewed delight and delicious feelings every time I
+see the holy objects and practices around me, and I might almost say
+that I am leading a life of spiritual epicureanism, opening all my
+senses to a rich draught of religious sensations."
+
+From these glimpses it would appear that Wiseman was a much more sincere
+man in his religious feeling than he is given credit for by Browning.
+His belief is with him not a matter of cold, hard calculation as to the
+attitude which will be, so to speak, the most politic from both a
+worldly and a spiritual point of view. The beautiful passage beginning
+"Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch" etc., comes nearer to
+the genuine enthusiasm of a Wiseman than any other in the poem. There is
+an essential difference between the minds of the poet and the man he
+portrays, which perhaps made it impossible for Browning fully to
+interpret Wiseman's attitude. Both have religious fervor, but Browning's
+is born of a consciousness of God revealed directly to himself, while
+Wiseman's consciousness of God comes to him primarily through the
+authority of the Church, that is through generations of authoritative
+believers the first of whom experienced the actuality of Revelation.
+Hundreds and thousands of people have minds of this caliber. They cannot
+see a truth direct for themselves, they must be told by some person
+clothed in authority that this or that is true or false. To Wiseman the
+beauty of his own form of religion with its special dogmas made so
+strong an appeal, that, since he could only believe through authority,
+under any circumstances, it was natural to him to adopt the particular
+form that gave him the most satisfaction. Proofs detrimental to belief
+do not worry long with doubts such a mind, because the authority they
+depend on is not the authority of knowledge, but the authority of
+belief. This comes out clearly enough in one of Wiseman's letters in
+which after enumerating a number of proofs brought forward by various
+scholars tending to cast discredit on the dogmas of the Church, he
+triumphantly exclaims, "And yet, who that has an understanding to judge,
+is driven for a moment from the holdings of faith by such comparisons as
+these!"
+
+[Illustration: Sacred Heart _F. Utenbach_]
+
+Upon looking through his writings there will always be found in his
+expression of belief, I think, that ring of true sincerity as well as
+what I should call an intense artistic delight in the essential beauty
+of his religion.
+
+As to Blougram's argument that he believed in living in the world while
+he was in it, Wiseman's life was certainly not that of a worldling
+alone, though he is described by one person as being "a genuine priest,
+very good looking and able bodied, and with much apparent practice in
+the world." He was far too much of a student and worker to be altogether
+so worldly-minded as Browning represents him.
+
+His chief interest for Englishmen is his connection with the Tractarian
+Movement. The wish of his soul was to aid the Catholic Revival in
+England, and with that end in view he visited England in 1835. Two years
+before, the movement at Oxford, known as the Tractarian Movement had
+begun. The opinions of the men in this movement were, as every one
+knows, printed in a series of ninety tracts of which Newman wrote
+twenty-four. It was an outgrowth of the conditions of the time. To sum
+up in the words of Withrow,[3] "The Church of England had distinctly
+lost ground as a directing and controlling force in the nation. The most
+thoughtful and earnest minds in the Church felt the need of a great
+religious awakening and an aggressive movement to regain its lost
+influence." As Dean Church describes them, the two characteristic forms
+of Christianity in the Church of England were the High Church, and the
+Evangelicals, or Low Church." Of the former he says: "Its better
+members were highly cultivated, benevolent men, intolerant of
+irregularities both of doctrine and life, whose lives were governed by
+an unostentatious but solid and unfaltering piety, ready to burst forth
+on occasion into fervid devotion. Its worse members were jobbers and
+hunters after preferment, pluralists who built fortunes and endowed
+families out of the Church, or country gentlemen in orders, who rode to
+hounds and shot and danced and farmed, and often did worse things."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] Religious Progress of the Century.
+
+But at Oxford was a group of men of intense moral earnestness including
+Newman, Pusey, Keble, Arnold, Maurice, Kingsley, and others, who began
+an active propaganda of the new or revised doctrines of the Oxford
+Movement.
+
+"The success of the Tracts," says Molesworth, "was much greater, and the
+outcry against them far louder and fiercer, than their authors had
+expected. The Tracts were at first small and simple, but became large
+and learned theological treatises. Changes, too, came over the views of
+some of the writers. Doctrines which probably would have shocked them at
+first were put forward with a recklessness which success had increased.
+Alarm was excited, remonstrances stronger and stronger were addressed to
+them. They were attacked as Romanizing in their tendency."
+
+"The effect of such writing was two-fold[4]--the public were dismayed
+and certain members of the Tractarian party avowed their intention of
+becoming Romanists. So decided was the setting of the tide towards Rome
+that Newman made a vigorous effort to turn it by his famous Tract No.
+90. In this he endeavored to show that it was possible to interpret the
+Thirty-nine Articles in the interest of Roman Catholicism. This tract
+aroused a storm of indignation. The violent controversy which it
+occasioned led to the discontinuance of the series."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] See Withrow.
+
+Such in little was this remarkable movement. When Tract No. 90 appeared
+Wiseman had been in England for some time, and had been a strong
+influence in taking many thinking men in the direction of Rome. His
+lectures and discourses upon his first visit to England had attracted
+remarkable attention. The account runs by one who attended his lectures
+to Catholics and Protestants: "Society in this country was impressed,
+and listened almost against its will, and listened not displeased. Here
+was a young Roman priest, fresh from the center of Catholicism, who
+showed himself master, not only of the intricacies of polemical
+discussion but of the amenities of civilized life. The spacious church
+of Moorfields was thronged on every evening of Dr. Wiseman's appearance.
+Many persons of position and education were converted, and all departed
+with abated prejudice, and with very different notions about Catholicism
+from those with which they had been prepossessed by their education."
+Wiseman, himself, wrote, "I had the consolation of witnessing the
+patient and edifying attention of a crowded audience, many of whom stood
+for two hours without any symptom of impatience."
+
+The great triumph for Wiseman, however, was when, shortly after Tract
+90, Newman, "a man," described "in many ways, the most remarkable that
+England has seen during the century, perhaps the most remarkable whom
+the English Church has produced in any century," went over to the Church
+of Rome and was confirmed by Wiseman. Others followed his example and by
+1853 as many as four hundred clergymen and laity had become Roman
+Catholics.
+
+The controversies and discussions of that time, it must be remembered,
+were more upon the dogmas of the church than upon what we should call
+to-day the essential truths of religion. Yet, to a certain order of mind
+dogmas seem important truths. There are those whose religious attitude
+cannot be preserved without belief in dogmas, and the advantage of the
+Catholic Church is that it holds firmly to its dogmas, come what may. It
+was expected, however, that this Romeward Movement would arouse intense
+antipathy. "The arguments by which it was justified were considered, in
+many cases, disingenuous, if not Jesuitical."
+
+In opposition of this sort we come nearer to Browning's attitude of
+mind. Because such arguments as Wiseman and the Tractarians used could
+not convince him, he takes the ordinary ground of the opposition, that
+in using such arguments they must be insincere, and they must be
+perfectly conscious of their insincerity. Still, in spite of the fact
+that Browning's mind could not get inside of Blougram's, he shows that
+he has some sympathy for the Bishop in the close of the poem where he
+says, "He said true things but called them by wrong names." Raise
+Blougram's philosophy to the plane of the mysticism of a Browning, and
+the arguments for belief would be much the same but the _counters_ in
+the arguments would become symbols instead of dogmas.
+
+In "Christmas-Eve and Easter Day," Browning becomes the true critic of
+the nineteenth-century religious movements. He passes in review in a
+series of dramatic pictures the three most diverse modes of religious
+thought of the century. The dissenter's view is symbolized by a scene in
+a very humble chapel in England, the Catholic view by a vision of high
+mass at St. Peter's and the Agnostic view by a vision of a lecture by a
+learned German professor,--while the view of the modern mystic who
+remains religious in the face of all destructive criticism is shown in
+the speaker of the poem. The intuitional, aspiring side of his nature is
+symbolized by the vision of Christ that appears to him, while the
+intensity of its power fluctuates as he either holds fast or lets go the
+garment of Christ. Opposed to his intuitional side is his reasoning
+side.
+
+Possibly the picture of the dissenting chapel is exaggeratedly humble,
+though if we suppose it to be a Methodist Chapel, it may be true to
+life, as Methodism was the form of religion which made its appeal to the
+lowest classes. Indeed, at the time of its first successes, it was the
+saving grace of England. "But for the moral antiseptic," writes Withrow,
+"furnished by Methodism, and the revival of religion in all the churches
+which it produced, the history of England would have been far other than
+it was. It would probably have been swept into the maelstrom of
+revolution and shared the political and religious convulsions of the
+neighboring nation," that is the French Revolution.
+
+"But Methodism had greatly changed the condition of the people. It had
+rescued vast multitudes from ignorance and barbarism, and raised them
+from almost the degradation of beasts to the condition of men and the
+fellowship of saints. The habits of thrift and industry which it
+fostered led to the accumulation, if not of wealth, at least to that of
+a substantial competence; and built up that safeguard of the
+Commonwealth, a great, intelligent, industrious, religious Middle-Class
+in the community."
+
+After the death of Wesley came various divisions in the Methodist
+Church; it has so flexible a system that it may be adapted to very
+varied needs of humanity, and in that has consisted its great power.
+The mission of the church was originally to the poor and lowly, but "It
+has won for itself in spite of scorn and persecution," says Dr. Schˆll,
+"a place of power in the State and church of Great Britain."
+
+[Illustration: The Nativity _Fra Lippo Lippi_]
+
+A scornful attitude is vividly brought before us in the opening of this
+poem, to be succeeded later by a more charitable point of view.
+
+
+    CHRISTMAS-EVE
+
+    I
+
+    Out of the little chapel I burst
+      Into the fresh night-air again.
+    Five minutes full, I waited first
+      In the doorway, to escape the rain
+    That drove in gusts down the common's centre
+      At the edge of which the chapel stands,
+    Before I plucked up heart to enter.
+      Heaven knows how many sorts of hands
+    Reached past me, groping for the latch
+    Of the inner door that hung on catch
+    More obstinate the more they fumbled,
+      Till, giving way at last with a scold
+    Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled
+      One sheep more to the rest in fold,
+    And left me irresolute, standing sentry
+    In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry,
+    Six feet long by three feet wide,
+    Partitioned off from the vast inside--
+      I blocked up half of it at least.
+    No remedy; the rain kept driving.
+      They eyed me much as some wild beast,
+    That congregation, still arriving,
+    Some of them by the main road, white
+    A long way past me into the night,
+    Skirting the common, then diverging;
+    Not a few suddenly emerging
+    From the common's self thro' the paling-gaps,
+    --They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,
+    Where the road stops short with its safeguard border
+    Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;--
+    But the most turned in yet more abruptly
+      From a certain squalid knot of alleys,
+    Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly,
+      Which now the little chapel rallies
+    And leads into day again,--its priestliness
+    Lending itself to hide their beastliness
+    So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),
+    And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on
+    Those neophytes too much in lack of it,
+      That, where you cross the common as I did,
+      And meet the party thus presided,
+    "Mount Zion" with Love-lane at the back of it,
+    They front you as little disconcerted
+    As, bound for the hills, her fate averted,
+    And her wicked people made to mind him,
+    Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him.
+
+    II
+
+    Well, from the road, the lanes or the common
+    In came the flock: the fat weary woman,
+    Panting and bewildered, down-clapping
+      Her umbrella with a mighty report,
+    Grounded it by me, wry and flapping,
+      A wreck of whalebones; then, with a snort,
+    Like a startled horse, at the interloper
+    (Who humbly knew himself improper,
+    But could not shrink up small enough)
+    --Round to the door, and in,--the gruff
+    Hinge's invariable scold
+    Making my very blood run cold.
+    Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered
+    On broken clogs, the many-tattered
+    Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother
+    Of the sickly babe she tried to smother
+    Somehow up, with its spotted face,
+    From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place;
+    She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry
+    Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby
+    Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping
+    Already from my own clothes' dropping,
+    Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on:
+      Then, stooping down to take off her pattens,
+    She bore them defiantly, in each hand one,
+    Planted together before her breast
+    And its babe, as good as a lance in rest.
+      Close on her heels, the dingy satins
+    Of a female something, past me flitted,
+      With lips as much too white, as a streak
+      Lay far too red on each hollow cheek;
+    And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied
+    All that was left of a woman once,
+    Holding at least its tongue for the nonce.
+    Then a tall yellow man, like the _Penitent Thief_,
+    With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief,
+    And eyelids screwed together tight,
+    Led himself in by some inner light.
+    And, except from him, from each that entered,
+      I got the same interrogation--
+    "What, you the alien, you have ventured
+      To take with us, the elect, your station?
+    A carer for none of it, a _Gallio_!"--
+      Thus, plain as print, I read the glance
+    At a common prey, in each countenance
+      As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho.
+    And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder,
+      The draught, it always sent in shutting,
+    Made the flame of the single tallow candle
+    In the cracked square lantern I stood under,
+      Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting
+    As it were, the luckless cause of scandal:
+    I verily fancied the zealous light
+    (In the chapel's secret, too!) for spite
+    Would shudder itself clean off the wick,
+    With the airs of a Saint John's Candlestick.
+    There was no standing it much longer.
+    "Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew stronger,
+    "This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor
+    When the weather sends you a chance visitor?
+    You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you,
+      And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you!
+    But still, despite the pretty perfection
+      To which you carry your trick of exclusiveness,
+    And, taking God's word under wise protection,
+      Correct its tendency to diffusiveness,
+    And bid one reach it over hot plough-shares,--
+      Still, as I say, though you've found salvation,
+    If should choose to cry, as now, 'Shares!'--
+      See if the best of you bars me my ration!
+    I prefer, if you please, for my expounder
+    Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder;
+    Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest
+      Supposing I don the marriage vestiment:
+      So, shut your mouth and open your Testament,
+    And carve me my portion at your quickliest!"
+    Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad
+      With wizened face in want of soap,
+      And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope,
+    (After stopping outside, for his cough was bad,
+    To get the fit over, poor gentle creature,
+    And so avoid disturbing the preacher)
+    --Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise
+    At the shutting door, and entered likewise,
+    Received the hinge's accustomed greeting,
+      And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle,
+      And found myself in full conventicle,
+    --To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting,
+    On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine,
+      Which, calling its flock to their special clover,
+      Found all assembled and one sheep over,
+    Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine.
+
+    III
+
+    I very soon had enough of it.
+      The hot smell and the human noises,
+    And my neighbor's coat, the greasy cuff of it,
+      Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises,
+    Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure
+      Of the preaching man's immense stupidity,
+    As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure,
+      To meet his audience's avidity.
+    You needed not the wit of the Sibyl
+      To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling:
+      No sooner our friend had got an inkling
+    Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible,
+    (Whene'er 'twas the thought first struck him,
+    How death, at unawares, might duck him
+    Deeper than the grave, and quench
+    The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench)
+    Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence,
+      As to hug the book of books to pieces:
+    And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance,
+      Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases,
+    Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,--
+    So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures.
+    And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt:
+      Nay, had but a single face of my neighbors
+      Appeared to suspect that the preacher's labors
+    Were help which the world could be saved without,
+    'Tis odds but I might have borne in quiet
+    A qualm or two at my spiritual diet,
+    Or (who can tell?) perchance even mustered
+      Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon:
+    But the flock sat on, divinely flustered,
+      Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon
+    With such content in every snuffle,
+    As the devil inside us loves to ruffle.
+    My old fat woman purred with pleasure,
+      And thumb round thumb went twirling faster,
+    While she, to his periods keeping measure,
+      Maternally devoured the pastor.
+    The man with the handkerchief untied it,
+    Showed us a horrible wen inside it,
+    Gave his eyelids yet another screwing,
+    And rocked himself as the woman was doing.
+    The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking,
+    Kept down his cough. 'Twas too provoking!
+    My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it;
+      So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple,
+      "I wanted a taste, and now there's enough of it,"
+    I flung out of the little chapel.
+
+    IV
+
+    There was a lull in the rain, a lull
+      In the wind too; the moon was risen,
+    And would have shone out pure and full,
+      But for the ramparted cloud-prison,
+    Block on block built up in the West,
+    For what purpose the wind knows best,
+    Who changes his mind continually.
+    And the empty other half of the sky
+    Seemed in its silence as if it knew
+    What, any moment, might look through
+    A chance gap in that fortress massy:--
+      Through its fissures you got hints
+      Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints,
+    Now, a dull lion-color, now, brassy
+    Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow,
+    Like furnace-smoke just ere flames bellow,
+    All a-simmer with intense strain
+    To let her through,--then blank again,
+    At the hope of her appearance failing.
+    Just by the chapel, a break in the railing
+    Shows a narrow path directly across;
+    'Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss--
+    Besides, you go gently all the way uphill.
+      I stooped under and soon felt better;
+    My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple,
+      As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter.
+    My mind was full of the scene I had left,
+      That placid flock, that pastor vociferant,
+      --How this outside was pure and different!
+    The sermon, now--what a mingled weft
+    Of good and ill! Were either less,
+      Its fellow had colored the whole distinctly;
+    But alas for the excellent earnestness,
+      And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly,
+    But as surely false, in their quaint presentment,
+    However to pastor and flock's contentment!
+    Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes,
+      With his provings and parallels twisted and twined,
+    Till how could you know them, grown double their size
+      In the natural fog of the good man's mind,
+    Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps,
+    Haloed about with the common's damps?
+    Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover;
+      The zeal was good, and the aspiration;
+    And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over,
+      Pharaoh received no demonstration,
+    By his Baker's dream of Baskets Three,
+    Of the doctrine of the Trinity,--
+    Although, as our preacher thus embellished it,
+    Apparently his hearers relished it
+    With so unfeigned a gust--who knows if
+    They did not prefer our friend to Joseph?
+    But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them!
+      These people have really felt, no doubt,
+    A something, the motion they style the _Call_ of them;
+      And this is their method of bringing about,
+    By a mechanism of words and tones,
+    (So many texts in so many groans)
+    A sort of reviving and reproducing,
+      More or less perfectly, (who can tell?)
+    The mood itself, which strengthens by using;
+      And how that happens, I understand well.
+    A tune was born in my head last week,
+    Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek
+      Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester;
+    And when, next week, I take it back again.
+    My head will sing to the engine's clack again,
+      While it only makes my neighbor's haunches stir,
+    --Finding no dormant musical sprout
+    In him, as in me, to be jolted out.
+    'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching;
+    He gets no more from the railway's preaching
+      Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I:
+    Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on.
+    Still, why paint over their door "Mount Zion,"
+      To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy?
+
+The reasoning which follows upon this is characteristic of Browning.
+Perceiving everywhere in the world transcendent power, and knowing love
+in little, from that transcendent love may be deduced. His reasoning
+finally brings him to a state of vision. His subjective intuitions
+become palpable objective symbols, a not infrequent occurrence in highly
+wrought and sensitive minds.
+
+    V
+
+    But wherefore be harsh on a single case?
+      After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve,
+    Does the self-same weary thing take place?
+      The same endeavor to make you believe,
+    And with much the same effect, no more:
+      Each method abundantly convincing,
+    As I say, to those convinced before,
+      But scarce to be swallowed without wincing
+    By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me,
+    I have my own church equally:
+    And in this church my faith sprang first!
+      (I said, as I reached the rising ground,
+    And the wind began again, with a burst
+      Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound
+    From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,
+    I entered his church-door, nature leading me)
+    --In youth I looked to these very skies,
+    And probing their immensities,
+    I found God there, his visible power;
+      Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense
+      Of the power, an equal evidence
+    That his love, there too, was the nobler dower.
+    For the loving worm within its clod,
+    Were diviner than a loveless god
+    Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.
+      You know what I mean: God's all, man's nought:
+      But also, God, whose pleasure brought
+    Man into being, stands away
+      As it were a handbreadth off, to give
+    Room for the newly-made to live,
+    And look at him from a place apart,
+    And use his gifts of brain and heart,
+    Given, indeed, but to keep for ever.
+    Who speaks of man, then, must not sever
+    Man's very elements from man,
+    Saying, "But all is God's"--whose plan
+    Was to create man and then leave him
+    Able, his own word saith, to grieve him,
+    But able to glorify him too,
+    As a mere machine could never do,
+    That prayed or praised, all unaware
+    Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer,
+    Made perfect as a thing of course.
+    Man, therefore, stands on his own stock
+    Of love and power as a pin-point rock:
+    And, looking to God who ordained divorce
+    Of the rock from his boundless continent,
+    Sees, in his power made evident,
+    Only excess by a million-fold
+    O'er the power God gave man in the mould.
+    For, note: man's hand, first formed to carry
+    A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry
+    Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain,
+      --Advancing in power by one degree;
+      And why count steps through eternity?
+    But love is the ever-springing fountain:
+    Man may enlarge or narrow his bed
+    For the water's play, but the water-head--
+    How can he multiply or reduce it?
+      As easy create it, as cause it to cease;
+    He may profit by it, or abuse it,
+      But 'tis not a thing to bear increase
+    As power does: be love less or more
+      In the heart of man, he keeps it shut
+      Or opes it wide, as he pleases, but
+    Love's sum remains what it was before.
+    So, gazing up, in my youth, at love
+    As seen through power, ever above
+    All modes which make it manifest,
+    My soul brought all to a single test--
+    That he, the Eternal First and Last,
+    Who, in his power, had so surpassed
+    All man conceives of what is might,--
+    Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,
+    --Would prove as infinitely good;
+    Would never, (my soul understood,)
+    With power to work all love desires,
+    Bestow e'en less than man requires;
+    That he who endlessly was teaching,
+    Above my spirit's utmost reaching,
+    What love can do in the leaf or stone,
+    (So that to master this alone,
+    This done in the stone or leaf for me,
+    I must go on learning endlessly)
+    Would never need that I, in turn,
+      Should point him out defect unheeded,
+    And show that God had yet to learn
+      What the meanest human creature needed,
+    --Not life, to wit, for a few short years,
+    Tracking his way through doubts and fears,
+    While the stupid earth on which I stay
+      Suffers no change, but passive adds
+      Its myriad years to myriads,
+    Though I, he gave it to, decay,
+    Seeing death come and choose about me,
+    And my dearest ones depart without me.
+    No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,
+      Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,
+    The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it,
+      Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it.
+    And I shall behold thee, face to face,
+    O God, and in thy light retrace
+    How in all I loved here, still wast thou!
+    Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now,
+    I shall find as able to satiate
+      The love, thy gift, as my spirit's wonder
+    Thou art able to quicken and sublimate,
+      With this sky of thine, that I now walk under,
+    And glory in thee for, as I gaze
+    Thus, thus! Oh, let men keep their ways
+    Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine--
+    Be this my way! And this is mine!
+
+    VI
+
+    For lo, what think you? suddenly
+    The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky
+    Received at once the full fruition
+    Of the moon's consummate apparition.
+    The black cloud-barricade was riven,
+    Ruined beneath her feet, and driven
+    Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless,
+      North and South and East lay ready
+    For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless,
+      Sprang across them and stood steady.
+    'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,
+    From heaven to heaven extending, perfect
+    As the mother-moon's self, full in face.
+    It rose, distinctly at the base
+      With its seven proper colors chorded,
+    Which still, in the rising, were compressed,
+    Until at last they coalesced,
+      And supreme the spectral creature lorded
+    In a triumph of whitest white,--
+    Above which intervened the night.
+    But above night too, like only the next,
+      The second of a wondrous sequence,
+      Reaching in rare and rarer frequence,
+    Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed,
+    Another rainbow rose, a mightier,
+    Fainter, flushier and flightier,--
+    Rapture dying along its verge.
+    Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,
+    Whose, from the straining topmost dark,
+    On to the keystone of that arc?
+
+    VII
+
+    This sight was shown me, there and then,--
+    Me, one out of a world of men,
+    Singled forth, as the chance might hap
+    To another if, in a thunderclap
+    Where I heard noise and you saw flame,
+    Some one man knew God called his name.
+    For me, I think I said, "Appear!
+    Good were it to be ever here.
+    If thou wilt, let me build to thee
+    Service-tabernacles three,
+    Where, forever in thy presence,
+    In ecstatic acquiescence,
+    Far alike from thriftless learning
+    And ignorance's undiscerning,
+    I may worship and remain!"
+      Thus at the show above me, gazing
+    With upturned eyes, I felt my brain
+      Glutted with the glory, blazing
+    Throughout its whole mass, over and under
+    Until at length it burst asunder
+    And out of it bodily there streamed,
+    The too-much glory, as it seemed,
+    Passing from out me to the ground,
+    Then palely serpentining round
+    Into the dark with mazy error.
+
+    VIII
+
+    All at once I looked up with terror.
+    He was there.
+    He himself with his human air.
+    On the narrow pathway, just before.
+    I saw the back of him, no more--
+    He had left the chapel, then, as I.
+    I forgot all about the sky.
+    No face: only the sight
+    Of a sweepy garment, vast and white,
+    With a hem that I could recognize.
+    I felt terror, no surprise;
+    My mind filled with the cataract,
+    At one bound of the mighty fact.
+    "I remember, he did say
+      Doubtless that, to this world's end,
+    Where two or three should meet and pray,
+      He would be in the midst, their friend;
+    Certainly he was there with them!"
+      And my pulses leaped for joy
+      Of the golden thought without alloy,
+    That I saw his very vesture's hem.
+    Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear,
+    With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear;
+    And I hastened, cried out while I pressed
+    To the salvation of the vest,
+    "But not so, Lord! It cannot be
+    That thou, indeed, art leaving me--
+    Me, that have despised thy friends!
+    Did my heart make no amends?
+    Thou art the love _of God_--above
+    His power, didst hear me place his love,
+    And that was leaving the world for thee.
+    Therefore thou must not turn from me
+    As I had chosen the other part!
+    Folly and pride o'ercame my heart.
+    Our best is bad, nor bears thy test;
+    Still, it should be our very best.
+    I thought it best that thou, the spirit,
+      Be worshipped in spirit and in truth,
+    And in beauty, as even we require it--
+      Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth,
+    I left but now, as scarcely fitted
+    For thee: I knew not what I pitied.
+    But, all I felt there, right or wrong,
+      What is it to thee, who curest sinning?
+    Am I not weak as thou art strong?
+      I have looked to thee from the beginning,
+    Straight up to thee through all the world
+    Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled
+    To nothingness on either side:
+    And since the time thou wast descried,
+    Spite of the weak heart, so have I
+    Lived ever, and so fain would die,
+    Living and dying, thee before!
+    But if thou leavest me----"
+
+    IX
+
+                                Less or more,
+    I suppose that I spoke thus.
+    When,--have mercy, Lord, on us!
+    The whole face turned upon me full.
+      And I spread myself beneath it,
+      As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it
+    In the cleansing sun, his wool,--
+    Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness
+      Some defiled, discolored web--
+    So lay I, saturate with brightness.
+      And when the flood appeared to ebb,
+    Lo, I was walking, light and swift,
+      With my senses settling fast and steadying,
+    But my body caught up in the whirl and drift
+      Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying
+    On, just before me, still to be followed,
+      As it carried me after with its motion:
+    What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed
+      And a man went weltering through the ocean,
+    Sucked along in the flying wake
+    Of the luminous water-snake.
+    Darkness and cold were cloven, as through
+    I passed, upborne yet walking too.
+    And I turned to myself at intervals,--
+    "So he said, so it befalls.
+    God who registers the cup
+      Of mere cold water, for his sake
+    To a disciple rendered up,
+      Disdains not his own thirst to slake
+    At the poorest love was ever offered:
+    And because my heart I proffered,
+    With true love trembling at the brim,
+    He suffers me to follow him
+    For ever, my own way,--dispensed
+    From seeking to be influenced
+    By all the less immediate ways
+      That earth, in worships manifold,
+    Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise,
+      The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold!"
+
+The vision of high mass at St. Peters in Rome is the antipode of the
+little Methodist Chapel. The Catholic Church is the church of all others
+which has gathered about itself the marvels of art in sculpture,
+painting and music. As the chapel depressed with its ugliness, the great
+cathedral entrances with its beauty.
+
+[Illustration: The Transfiguration _Fra Angelico_]
+
+    X
+
+    And so we crossed the world and stopped.
+      For where am I, in city or plain,
+      Since I am 'ware of the world again?
+    And what is this that rises propped
+    With pillars of prodigious girth?
+    Is it really on the earth,
+    This miraculous Dome of God?
+    Has the angel's measuring-rod
+    Which numbered cubits, gem from gem,
+    'Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem,
+    Meted it out,--and what he meted,
+    Have the sons of men completed?
+    --Binding, ever as he bade,
+    Columns in the colonnade
+    With arms wide open to embrace
+    The entry of the human race
+    To the breast of ... what is it, yon building,
+    Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding,
+    With marble for brick, and stones of price
+    For garniture of the edifice?
+    Now I see; it is no dream;
+    It stands there and it does not seem;
+    For ever, in pictures, thus it looks,
+    And thus I have read of it in books
+    Often in England, leagues away,
+    And wondered how these fountains play,
+    Growing up eternally
+    Each to a musical water-tree,
+    Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon,
+    Before my eyes, in the light of the moon,
+    To the granite lavers underneath.
+    Liar and dreamer in your teeth!
+    I, the sinner that speak to you,
+    Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew
+    Both this and more. For see, for see,
+    The dark is rent, mine eye is free
+    To pierce the crust of the outer wall,
+    And I view inside, and all there, all,
+    As the swarming hollow of a hive,
+    The whole Basilica alive!
+    Men in the chancel, body and nave,
+    Men on the pillars' architrave,
+    Men on the statues, men on the tombs
+    With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs,
+    All famishing in expectation
+    Of the main-altar's consummation.
+    For see, for see, the rapturous moment
+    Approaches, and earth's best endowment
+    Blends with heaven's; the taper-fires
+    Pant up, the winding brazen spires
+    Heave loftier yet the baldachin;
+    The incense-gaspings, long kept in,
+    Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant
+    Holds his breath and grovels latent,
+    As if God's hushing finger grazed him,
+    (Like Behemoth when he praised him)
+    At the silver bell's shrill tinkling,
+    Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling
+    On the sudden pavement strewed
+    With faces of the multitude.
+    Earth breaks up, time drops away,
+    In flows heaven, with its new day
+    Of endless life, when He who trod,
+    Very man and very God,
+    This earth in weakness, shame and pain,
+    Dying the death whose signs remain
+    Up yonder on the accursed tree,--
+    Shall come again, no more to be
+    Of captivity the thrall,
+    But the one God, All in all,
+    King of kings, Lord of lords,
+    As His servant John received the words,
+    "I died, and live for evermore!"
+
+    XI
+
+    Yet I was left outside the door.
+    "Why sit I here on the threshold-stone
+    Left till He return, alone
+    Save for the garment's extreme fold
+    Abandoned still to bless my hold?"
+    My reason, to my doubt, replied,
+    As if a book were opened wide,
+    And at a certain page I traced
+    Every record undefaced,
+    Added by successive years,--
+    The harvestings of truth's stray ears
+    Singly gleaned, and in one sheaf
+    Bound together for belief.
+    Yes, I said--that he will go
+    And sit with these in turn, I know.
+    Their faith's heart beats, though her head swims
+    Too giddily to guide her limbs,
+    Disabled by their palsy-stroke
+    From propping mine. Though Rome's gross yoke
+    Drops off, no more to be endured,
+    Her teaching is not so obscured
+    By errors and perversities,
+    That no truth shines athwart the lies:
+    And he, whose eye detects a spark
+    Even where, to man's the whole seems dark,
+    May well see flame where each beholder
+    Acknowledges the embers smoulder.
+    But I, a mere man, fear to quit
+    The clue God gave me as most fit
+    To guide my footsteps through life's maze,
+    Because himself discerns all ways
+    Open to reach him: I, a man
+    Able to mark where faith began
+    To swerve aside, till from its summit
+    Judgment drops her damning plummet,
+    Pronouncing such a fatal space
+    Departed from the founder's base:
+    He will not bid me enter too,
+    But rather sit, as now I do,
+    Awaiting his return outside.
+    --'Twas thus my reason straight replied
+    And joyously I turned, and pressed
+    The garment's skirt upon my breast,
+    Until, afresh its light suffusing me,
+    My heart cried--What has been abusing me
+    That I should wait here lonely and coldly,
+    Instead of rising, entering boldly,
+    Baring truth's face, and letting drift
+    Her veils of lies as they choose to shift?
+    Do these men praise him? I will raise
+    My voice up to their point of praise!
+    I see the error; but above
+    The scope of error, see the love.--
+    Oh, love of those first Christian days!
+    --Fanned so soon into a blaze,
+    From the spark preserved by the trampled sect,
+    That the antique sovereign Intellect
+    Which then sat ruling in the world,
+    Like a change in dreams, was hurled
+    From the throne he reigned upon:
+    You looked up and he was gone.
+    Gone, his glory of the pen!
+    --Love, with Greece and Rome in ken,
+    Bade her scribes abhor the trick
+    Of poetry and rhetoric,
+    And exult with hearts set free,
+    In blessed imbecility
+    Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet
+    Leaving Sallust incomplete.
+    Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter!
+    --Love, while able to acquaint her
+    While the thousand statues yet
+    Fresh from chisel, pictures wet
+    From brush, she saw on every side,
+    Chose rather with an infant's pride
+    To frame those portents which impart
+    Such unction to true Christian Art.
+    Gone, music too! The air was stirred
+    By happy wings: Terpander's bird
+    (That, when the cold came, fled away)
+    Would tarry not the wintry day,--
+    As more-enduring sculpture must,
+    Till filthy saints rebuked the gust
+    With which they chanced to get a sight
+    Of some dear naked Aphrodite
+    They glanced a thought above the toes of,
+    By breaking zealously her nose off.
+    Love, surely, from that music's lingering,
+    Might have filched her organ-fingering,
+    Nor chosen rather to set prayings
+    To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings.
+    Love was the startling thing, the new:
+    Love was the all-sufficient too;
+    And seeing that, you see the rest:
+    As a babe can find its mother's breast
+    As well in darkness as in light,
+    Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right.
+    True, the world's eyes are open now:
+    --Less need for me to disallow
+    Some few that keep Love's zone unbuckled,
+    Peevish as ever to be suckled,
+    Lulled by the same old baby-prattle
+    With intermixture of the rattle,
+    When she would have them creep, stand steady
+    Upon their feet, or walk already,
+    Not to speak of trying to climb.
+    I will be wise another time,
+    And not desire a wall between us,
+      When next I see a church-roof cover
+    So many species of one genus,
+      All with foreheads bearing _lover_
+    Written above the earnest eyes of them;
+      All with breasts that beat for beauty,
+    Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them,
+      In noble daring, steadfast duty,
+    The heroic in passion, or in action,--
+    Or, lowered for sense's satisfaction,
+    To the mere outside of human creatures,
+    Mere perfect form and faultless features.
+    What? with all Rome here, whence to levy
+      Such contributions to their appetite,
+    With women and men in a gorgeous bevy,
+      They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tight
+    On their southern eyes, restrained from feeding
+    On the glories of their ancient reading,
+    On the beauties of their modern singing,
+    On the wonders of the builder's bringing,
+    On the majesties of Art around them,--
+      And, all these loves, late struggling incessant,
+    When faith has at last united and bound them,
+      They offer up to God for a present?
+    Why, I will, on the whole, be rather proud of it,--
+      And, only taking the act in reference
+    To the other recipients who might have allowed it,
+      I will rejoice that God had the preference.
+
+    XII
+
+    So I summed up my new resolves:
+      Too much love there can never be.
+    And where the intellect devolves
+      Its function on love exclusively,
+    I, a man who possesses both,
+    Will accept the provision, nothing loth,
+    --Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere,
+    That my intellect may find its share.
+
+In his next experience the speaker learns what the effect of scientific
+criticism has been upon historical Christianity.
+
+The warfare between science and religion forms one of the most
+fascinating and terrible chapters in the annals of the development of
+the human mind. About the middle of the nineteenth century the war
+became general. It was no longer a question of a skirmish over this
+or that particular discovery in science which would cause some
+long-cherished dogma to totter; it was a full battle all along the line,
+and now that the smoke has cleared away, it is safe to say that science
+sees, on the one hand, it cannot conquer religion, and religion sees, on
+the other, it cannot conquer science. What each has done is to strip the
+other of its untruths, leaving its truths to grow by the light each
+holds up for the other. Together they advance toward the knowledge of
+the Most High.
+
+    XIII
+
+    No sooner said than out in the night!
+    My heart beat lighter and more light:
+    And still, as before, I was walking swift,
+      With my senses settling fast and steadying,
+    But my body caught up in the whirl and drift
+      Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying
+    On just before me, still to be followed,
+      As it carried me after with its motion,
+    --What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed,
+      And a man went weltering through the ocean,
+    Sucked along in the flying wake
+    Of the luminous water-snake.
+
+    XIV
+
+    Alone! I am left alone once more--
+      (Save for the garment's extreme fold
+      Abandoned still to bless my hold)
+    Alone, beside the entrance-door
+    Of a sort of temple,--perhaps a college,
+    --Like nothing I ever saw before
+    At home in England, to my knowledge.
+    The tall old quaint irregular town!
+      It may be ... though which, I can't affirm ... any
+      Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany;
+    And this flight of stairs where I sit down,
+    Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort
+    Or Gˆttingen, I have to thank for 't?
+    It may be Gˆttingen,--most likely.
+    Through the open door I catch obliquely
+    Glimpses of a lecture-hall;
+      And not a bad assembly neither,
+    Ranged decent and symmetrical
+      On benches, waiting what's to see there;
+    Which, holding still by the vesture's hem,
+    I also resolve to see with them,
+    Cautious this time how I suffer to slip
+    The chance of joining in fellowship
+    With any that call themselves his friends;
+      As these folk do, I have a notion.
+      But hist--a buzzing and emotion!
+    All settle themselves, the while ascends
+    By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk,
+      Step by step, deliberate
+      Because of his cranium's over-freight,
+    Three parts sublime to one grotesque,
+    If I have proved an accurate guesser,
+    The hawk-nosed high-cheek-boned Professor.
+    I felt at once as if there ran
+    A shoot of love from my heart to the man--
+    That sallow virgin-minded studious
+      Martyr to mild enthusiasm,
+    As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious
+      That woke my sympathetic spasm,
+    (Beside some spitting that made me sorry)
+    And stood, surveying his auditory
+    With a wan pure look, well nigh celestial,--
+      Those blue eyes had survived so much!
+      While, under the foot they could not smutch,
+    Lay all the fleshly and the bestial.
+    Over he bowed, and arranged his notes,
+    Till the auditory's clearing of throats
+    Was done with, died into a silence;
+      And, when each glance was upward sent,
+      Each bearded mouth composed intent,
+    And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence,--
+    He pushed back higher his spectacles,
+    Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells,
+    And giving his head of hair--a hake
+      Of undressed tow, for color and quantity--
+    One rapid and impatient shake,
+      (As our own Young England adjusts a jaunty tie
+    When about to impart, on mature digestion,
+    Some thrilling view of the surplice-question)
+    --The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse,
+    Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse.
+
+    XV
+
+    And he began it by observing
+      How reason dictated that men
+    Should rectify the natural swerving,
+      By a reversion, now and then,
+    To the well-heads of knowledge, few
+    And far away, whence rolling grew
+    The life-stream wide whereat we drink,
+    Commingled, as we needs must think,
+    With waters alien to the source;
+    To do which, aimed this eve's discourse;
+    Since, where could be a fitter time
+    For tracing backward to its prime
+    This Christianity, this lake,
+    This reservoir, whereat we slake,
+    From one or other bank, our thirst?
+    So, he proposed inquiring first
+    Into the various sources whence
+      This Myth of Christ is derivable;
+    Demanding from the evidence,
+      (Since plainly no such life was liveable)
+    How these phenomena should class?
+    Whether 'twere best opine Christ was,
+    Or never was at all, or whether
+    He was and was not, both together--
+    It matters little for the name,
+    So the idea be left the same.
+    Only, for practical purpose's sake,
+    'Twas obviously as well to take
+    The popular story,--understanding
+      How the ineptitude of the time,
+    And the penman's prejudice, expanding
+      Fact into fable fit for the clime,
+    Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it
+      Into this myth, this Individuum,--
+    Which, when reason had strained and abated it
+      Of foreign matter, left, for residuum,
+    A man!--a right true man, however,
+    Whose work was worthy a man's endeavor:
+    Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient
+      To his disciples, for rather believing
+    He was just omnipotent and omniscient,
+      As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving
+    His word, their tradition,--which, though it meant
+    Something entirely different
+    From all that those who only heard it,
+    In their simplicity thought and averred it,
+    Had yet a meaning quite as respectable:
+    For, among other doctrines delectable,
+    Was he not surely the first to insist on
+      The natural sovereignty of our race?--
+      Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place.
+    And while his cough, like a drouthy piston,
+    Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him,
+    I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him,
+    The vesture still within my hand.
+
+    XVI
+
+    I could interpret its command.
+    This time he would not bid me enter
+    The exhausted air-bell of the Critic.
+    Truth's atmosphere may grow mephitic
+    When Papist struggles with Dissenter,
+    Impregnating its pristine clarity,
+    --One, by his daily fare's vulgarity,
+      Its gust of broken meat and garlic;
+    --One, by his soul's too-much presuming
+    To turn the frankincense's fuming
+      And vapors of the candle starlike
+    Into the cloud her wings she buoys on.
+      Each, that thus sets the pure air seething,
+      May poison it for healthy breathing--
+    But the Critic leaves no air to poison;
+    Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity
+    Atom by atom, and leaves you--vacuity.
+    Thus much of Christ does he reject?
+    And what retain? His intellect?
+    What is it I must reverence duly?
+    Poor intellect for worship, truly,
+    Which tells me simply what was told
+      (If mere morality, bereft
+      Of the God in Christ, be all that's left)
+    Elsewhere by voices manifold;
+    With this advantage, that the stater
+      Made nowise the important stumble
+      Of adding, he, the sage and humble,
+    Was also one with the Creator.
+    You urge Christ's followers' simplicity:
+      But how does shifting blame, evade it?
+    Have wisdom's words no more felicity?
+      The stumbling-block, his speech--who laid it?
+    How comes it that for one found able
+    To sift the truth of it from fable,
+    Millions believe it to the letter?
+    Christ's goodness, then--does that fare better?
+    Strange goodness, which upon the score
+      Of being goodness, the mere due
+    Of man to fellow-man, much more
+      To God,--should take another view
+    Of its possessor's privilege,
+    And bid him rule his race! You pledge
+    Your fealty to such rule? What, all--
+    From heavenly John and Attic Paul,
+    And that brave weather-battered Peter,
+    Whose stout faith only stood completer
+    For buffets, sinning to be pardoned,
+    As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened,--
+    All, down to you, the man of men,
+    Professing here at Gˆttingen,
+    Compose Christ's flock! They, you and I,
+    Are sheep of a good man! And why?
+    The goodness,--how did he acquire it?
+    Was it self-gained, did God inspire it?
+    Choose which; then tell me, on what ground
+    Should its possessor dare propound
+    His claim to rise o'er us an inch?
+      Were goodness all some man's invention,
+      Who arbitrarily made mention
+    What we should follow, and whence flinch,--
+    What qualities might take the style
+      Of right and wrong,--and had such guessing
+      Met with as general acquiescing
+    As graced the alphabet erewhile,
+    When A got leave an Ox to be,
+    No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G,
+    For thus inventing thing and title
+    Worship were that man's fit requital.
+    But if the common conscience must
+    Be ultimately judge, adjust
+    Its apt name to each quality
+    Already known,--I would decree
+    Worship for such mere demonstration
+      And simple work of nomenclature,
+      Only the day I praised, not nature,
+      But Harvey, for the circulation.
+    I would praise such a Christ, with pride
+    And joy, that he, as none beside,
+    Had taught us how to keep the mind
+    God gave him, as God gave his kind,
+    Freer than they from fleshly taint:
+    I would call such a Christ our Saint,
+    As I declare our Poet, him
+    Whose insight makes all others dim:
+    A thousand poets pried at life,
+    And only one amid the strife
+    Rose to be Shakespeare: each shall take
+    His crown, I'd say, for the world's sake--
+    Though some objected--"Had we seen
+    The heart and head of each, what screen
+    Was broken there to give them light,
+    While in ourselves it shuts the sight,
+    We should no more admire, perchance,
+    That these found truth out at a glance,
+    Than marvel how the bat discerns
+    Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns,
+    Led by a finer tact, a gift
+    He boasts, which other birds must shift
+    Without, and grope as best they can."
+    No, freely I would praise the man,--
+    Nor one whit more, if he contended
+    That gift of his, from God descended.
+    Ah friend, what gift of man's does not?
+    No nearer something, by a jot,
+    Rise an infinity of nothings
+      Than one: take Euclid for your teacher:
+    Distinguish kinds: do crownings, clothings,
+      Make that creator which was creature?
+    Multiply gifts upon man's head,
+    And what, when all's done, shall be said
+    But--the more gifted he, I ween!
+      That one's made Christ, this other, Pilate,
+    And this might be all that has been,--
+      So what is there to frown or smile at?
+    What is left for us, save, in growth
+    Of soul, to rise up, far past both,
+    From the gift looking to the giver,
+    And from the cistern to the river,
+    And from the finite to infinity,
+    And from man's dust to God's divinity?
+
+    XVII
+
+    Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast
+    Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed:
+    Though he is so bright and we so dim,
+    We are made in his image to witness him:
+    And were no eye in us to tell,
+      Instructed by no inner sense,
+    The light of heaven from the dark of hell,
+      That light would want its evidence,--
+    Though justice, good and truth were still
+    Divine, if, by some demon's will,
+    Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed
+    Law through the worlds, and right misnamed.
+    No mere exposition of morality
+    Made or in part or in totality,
+    Should win you to give it worship, therefore:
+    And, if no better proof you will care for,
+    --Whom do you count the worst man upon earth?
+      Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more
+    Of what right is, than arrives at birth
+      In the best man's acts that we bow before:
+    This last knows better--true, but my fact is,
+    'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.
+    And thence conclude that the real God-function
+    Is to furnish a motive and injunction
+      For practising what we know already.
+    And such an injunction and such a motive
+      As the God in Christ, do you waive, and "heady,
+    High-minded," hang your tablet-votive
+    Outside the fane on a finger-post?
+    Morality to the uttermost,
+    Supreme in Christ as we all confess,
+      Why need we prove would avail no jot
+      To make him God, if God he were not?
+    What is the point where himself lays stress?
+    Does the precept run "Believe in good,
+    In justice, truth, now understand
+    For the first time?"--or, "Believe in me,
+    Who lived and died, yet essentially
+    Am Lord of Life?" Whoever can take
+    The same to his heart and for mere love's sake
+    Conceive of the love,--that man obtains
+    A new truth; no conviction gains
+    Of an old one only, made intense
+    By a fresh appeal to his faded sense.
+
+    XVIII
+
+    Can it be that he stays inside?
+      Is the vesture left me to commune with?
+      Could my soul find aught to sing in tune with
+    Even at this lecture, if she tried?
+    Oh, let me at lowest sympathize
+    With the lurking drop of blood that lies
+    In the desiccated brain's white roots
+    Without throb for Christ's attributes,
+    As the lecturer makes his special boast!
+    If love's dead there, it has left a ghost.
+    Admire we, how from heart to brain
+      (Though to say so strike the doctors dumb)
+    One instinct rises and falls again,
+      Restoring the equilibrium.
+    And how when the Critic had done his best,
+    And the pearl of price, at reason's test,
+    Lay dust and ashes levigable
+    On the Professor's lecture-table,--
+    When we looked for the inference and monition
+    That our faith, reduced to such condition,
+    Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole,--
+      He bids us, when we least expect it,
+    Take back our faith,--if it be not just whole,
+      Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it,
+    Which fact pays damage done rewardingly,
+    So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly!
+    "Go home and venerate the myth
+    I thus have experimented with--
+    This man, continue to adore him
+    Rather than all who went before him,
+    And all who ever followed after!"--
+      Surely for this I may praise you, my brother!
+    Will you take the praise in tears or laughter?
+      That's one point gained: can I compass another?
+    Unlearned love was safe from spurning--
+    Can't we respect your loveless learning?
+    Let us at least give learning honor!
+    What laurels had we showered upon her,
+    Girding her loins up to perturb
+    Our theory of the Middle Verb;
+    Or Turk-like brandishing a scimitar
+    O'er anapÊsts in comic-trimeter;
+    Or curing the halt and maimed 'Iketides,'
+    While we lounged on at our indebted ease:
+    Instead of which, a tricksy demon
+    Sets her at Titus or Philemon!
+    When ignorance wags his ears of leather
+    And hates God's word, 'tis altogether;
+    Nor leaves he his congenial thistles
+    To go and browse on Paul's Epistles.
+    --And you, the audience, who might ravage
+    The world wide, enviably savage,
+    Nor heed the cry of the retriever,
+    More than Herr Heine (before his fever),--
+    I do not tell a lie so arrant
+      As say my passion's wings are furled up,
+    And, without plainest heavenly warrant,
+      I were ready and glad to give the world up--
+    But still, when you rub brow meticulous,
+      And ponder the profit of turning holy
+      If not for God's, for your own sake solely,
+    --God forbid I should find you ridiculous!
+    Deduce from this lecture all that eases you,
+    Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you,
+    "Christians,"--abhor the deist's pravity,--
+    Go on, you shall no more move my gravity
+    Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse,
+      I find it in my heart to embarrass them
+    By hinting that their stick's a mock horse,
+    And they really carry what they say carries them.
+
+    XIX
+
+    So sat I talking with my mind.
+      I did not long to leave the door
+      And find a new church, as before,
+    But rather was quiet and inclined
+    To prolong and enjoy the gentle resting
+    From further tracking and trying and testing.
+    "This tolerance is a genial mood!"
+    (Said I, and a little pause ensued).
+    "One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf,
+      And sees, each side, the good effects of it,
+    A value for religion's self,
+      A carelessness about the sects of it.
+    Let me enjoy my own conviction,
+      Not watch my neighbor's faith with fretfulness,
+    Still spying there some dereliction
+      Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness!
+    Better a mild indifferentism,
+      Teaching that both our faiths (though duller
+    His shine through a dull spirit's prism)
+      Originally had one color!
+    Better pursue a pilgrimage
+      Through ancient and through modern times
+      To many peoples, various climes,
+    Where I may see saint, savage, sage
+    Fuse their respective creeds in one
+    Before the general Father's throne!"
+
+    XX
+
+    --'Twas the horrible storm began afresh!
+    The black night caught me in his mesh,
+    Whirled me up, and flung me prone.
+    I was left on the college-step alone.
+    I looked, and far there, ever fleeting
+    Far, far away, the receding gesture,
+    And looming of the lessening vesture!--
+    Swept forward from my stupid hand,
+    While I watched my foolish heart expand
+    In the lazy glow of benevolence,
+      O'er the various modes of man's belief.
+    I sprang up with fear's vehemence.
+      Needs must there be one way, our chief
+    Best way of worship: let me strive
+    To find it, and when found, contrive
+    My fellows also take their share!
+    This constitutes my earthly care:
+    God's is above it and distinct.
+    For I, a man, with men am linked
+    And not a brute with brutes; no gain
+    That I experience, must remain
+    Unshared: but should my best endeavor
+    To share it, fail--subsisteth ever
+    God's care above, and I exult
+    That God, by God's own ways occult,
+    May--doth, I will believe--bring back
+    All wanderers to a single track.
+    Meantime, I can but testify
+    God's care for me--no more, can I--
+    It is but for myself I know;
+      The world rolls witnessing around me
+      Only to leave me as it found me;
+    Men cry there, but my ear is slow:
+    Their races flourish or decay
+    --What boots it, while yon lucid way
+    Loaded with stars divides the vault?
+    But soon my soul repairs its fault
+    When, sharpening sense's hebetude,
+    She turns on my own life! So viewed,
+    No mere mote's-breadth but teems immense
+    With witnessings of providence:
+    And woe to me if when I look
+    Upon that record, the sole book
+    Unsealed to me, I take no heed
+    Of any warning that I read!
+    Have I been sure, this Christmas-Eve,
+    God's own hand did the rainbow weave,
+    Whereby the truth from heaven slid
+    Into my soul? I cannot bid
+    The world admit he stooped to heal
+    My soul, as if in a thunder-peal
+    Where one heard noise, and one saw flame,
+    I only knew he named my name:
+    But what is the world to me, for sorrow
+    Or joy in its censure, when to-morrow
+    It drops the remark, with just-turned head
+    Then, on again, "That man is dead"?
+    Yes, but for me--my name called,--drawn
+    As a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn,
+    He has dipt into on a battle-dawn:
+    Bid out of life by a nod, a glance,--
+    Stumbling, mute-mazed, at nature's chance,--
+    With a rapid finger circled round,
+    Fixed to the first poor inch of ground
+    To fight from, where his foot was found;
+    Whose ear but a minute since lay free
+    To the wide camp's buzz and gossipry--
+    Summoned, a solitary man
+    To end his life where his life began,
+    From the safe glad rear, to the dreadful van!
+    Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held
+      By the hem of the vesture!--
+
+    XXI
+
+                                    And I caught
+    At the flying robe, and unrepelled
+      Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught
+    With warmth and wonder and delight,
+    God's mercy being infinite.
+    For scarce had the words escaped my tongue,
+    When, at a passionate bound, I sprung,
+    Out of the wandering world of rain,
+    Into the little chapel again.
+
+He finds himself back in the chapel, all that has occurred having been a
+vision. His conclusions have that broadness of view which belongs only
+to those most advanced in thought. He has learned that not only must
+there be the essential truth behind every sincere effort to reach it,
+but that even his own vision of the truth is not necessarily the final
+way of truth but is merely the way which is true for him. The jump from
+the attitude of mind that persecutes those who do not believe according
+to one established rule to such absolute toleration of all forms because
+of their symbolizing an eternal truth gives the measure of growth in
+religious thought from the days of Wesley to Browning. The Wesleys and
+their fellow-helpers were stoned and mobbed, and some died of their
+wounds in the latter part of the eighteenth century, while in 1850, when
+"Christmas-Eve" was written, an Englishman could express a height of
+toleration and sympathy for religions not his own, as well as taking a
+religious stand for himself so exalted that it is difficult to imagine a
+further step in these directions. Perhaps we are suffering to-day from
+over-toleration, that is, we tolerate not only those whose aspiration
+takes a different form, but those whose ideals lead to degeneracy. It
+seems as though all virtues must finally develop their shadows. What,
+however, is a shadow but the darkness occasioned by the approach of some
+greater light.
+
+    XXII
+
+    How else was I found there, bolt upright
+      On my bench, as if I had never left it?
+    --Never flung out on the common at night,
+      Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it,
+    Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor,
+    Or the laboratory of the Professor!
+    For the Vision, that was true, I wist,
+    True as that heaven and earth exist.
+    There sat my friend, the yellow and tall,
+      With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place;
+    Yet my nearest neighbor's cheek showed gall.
+      She had slid away a contemptuous space:
+    And the old fat woman, late so placable,
+    Eyed me with symptoms, hardly mistakable,
+    Of her milk of kindness turning rancid.
+    In short, a spectator might have fancied
+    That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber,
+      Yet kept my seat, a warning ghastly,
+    Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number,
+      And woke up now at the tenth and lastly.
+    But again, could such disgrace have happened?
+      Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it;
+    And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end?
+      Unless I heard it, could I have judged it?
+    Could I report as I do at the close,
+    First, the preacher speaks through his nose:
+    Second, his gesture is too emphatic:
+      Thirdly, to waive what's pedagogic,
+      The subject-matter itself lacks logic:
+    Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic.
+    Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal,
+    Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call
+    Of making square to a finite eye
+    The circle of infinity,
+    And find so all-but-just-succeeding!
+    Great news! the sermon proves no reading
+    Where bee-like in the flowers I bury me,
+    Like Taylor's the immortal Jeremy!
+    And now that I know the very worst of him,
+    What was it I thought to obtain at first of him?
+    Ha! Is God mocked, as he asks?
+    Shall I take on me to change his tasks,
+    And dare, despatched to a river-head
+      For a simple draught of the element,
+    Neglect the thing for which he sent,
+      And return with another thing instead?--
+    Saying, "Because the water found
+    Welling up from underground,
+    Is mingled with the taints of earth,
+    While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth,
+    And couldst, at wink or word, convulse
+    The world with the leap of a river-pulse,--
+    Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy,
+      And bring thee a chalice I found, instead:
+    See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy!
+      One would suppose that the marble bled.
+    What matters the water? A hope I have nursed:
+    The waterless cup will quench my thirst."
+    --Better have knelt at the poorest stream
+    That trickles in pain from the straitest rift!
+    For the less or the more is all God's gift,
+      Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam.
+    And here, is there water or not, to drink?
+      I then, in ignorance and weakness,
+    Taking God's help, have attained to think
+      My heart does best to receive in meekness
+    That mode of worship, as most to his mind,
+    Where earthly aids being cast behind,
+    His All in All appears serene
+    With the thinnest human veil between,
+    Letting the mystic lamps, the seven,
+      The many motions of his spirit,
+    Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven.
+      For the preacher's merit or demerit,
+    It were to be wished the flaws were fewer
+      In the earthen vessel, holding treasure
+    Which lies as safe in a golden ewer;
+      But the main thing is, does it hold good measure?
+    Heaven soon sets right all other matters!--
+      Ask, else, these ruins of humanity,
+    This flesh worn out to rags and tatters,
+      This soul at struggle with insanity,
+    Who thence take comfort--can I doubt?--
+    Which an empire gained, were a loss without.
+    May it be mine! And let us hope
+    That no worse blessing befall the Pope,
+    Turned sick at last of to-day's buffoonery,
+      Of posturings and petticoatings,
+      Beside his Bourbon bully's gloatings
+    In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery!
+    Nor may the Professor forego its peace
+      At Gˆttingen presently, when, in the dusk
+    Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase,
+      Prophesied of by that horrible husk--
+    When thicker and thicker the darkness fills
+    The world through his misty spectacles,
+    And he gropes for something more substantial
+      Than a fable, myth or personification,--
+    May Christ do for him what no mere man shall,
+      And stand confessed as the God of salvation!
+    Meantime, in the still recurring fear
+      Lest myself, at unawares, be found,
+      While attacking the choice of my neighbors round,
+    With none of my own made--I choose here!
+    The giving out of the hymn reclaims me;
+    I have done: and if any blames me,
+    Thinking that merely to touch in brevity
+      The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,--
+    Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity,
+      On the bounds of the holy and the awful,--
+    I praise the heart, and pity the head of him,
+    And refer myself to THEE, instead of him,
+    Who head and heart alike discernest,
+      Looking below light speech we utter,
+      When frothy spume and frequent sputter
+    Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest!
+    May truth shine out, stand ever before us!
+    I put up pencil and join chorus
+    To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology,
+      The last five verses of the third section
+      Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's Collection,
+    To conclude with the doxology.
+
+In "Easter-Day" the interest is purely personal. It is a long and
+somewhat intricate discussion between two friends upon the basis of
+belief and gives no glimpses of the historical progress of belief. In
+brief, the poem discusses the relation of the finite life to the
+infinite life. The first speaker is not satisfied with the different
+points of view suggested by the second speaker. First, that one would be
+willing to suffer martyrdom in this life if only one could truly believe
+it would bring eternal joy. Or perhaps doubt is God's way of telling who
+are his friends, who are his foes. Or perhaps God is revealed in the law
+of the universe, or in the shows of nature, or in the emotions of the
+human heart. The first speaker takes the ground that the only
+possibility satisfying modern demands is an assurance that this world's
+gain is in its imperfectness surety for true gain in another world. An
+imaginatively pictured experience of his own soul is next presented,
+wherein he represents himself at the Judgment Day as choosing the finite
+life instead of the infinite life. As a result, he learns there is
+nothing in finite life except as related to infinite life. The way
+opened out toward the infinite through love is that which gives the
+light of life to all the good things of earth which he desired--all
+beauties, that of nature and art, and the joy of intellectual activity.
+
+
+    EASTER-DAY
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+    XV
+
+                              And as I said
+    This nonsense, throwing back my head
+    With light complacent laugh, I found
+    Suddenly all the midnight round
+    One fire. The dome of heaven had stood
+    As made up of a multitude
+    Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack
+    Of ripples infinite and black,
+    From sky to sky. Sudden there went,
+    Like horror and astonishment,
+    A fierce vindictive scribble of red
+    Quick flame across, as if one said
+    (The angry scribe of Judgment) "There--
+    Burn it!" And straight I was aware
+    That the whole ribwork round, minute
+    Cloud touching cloud beyond compute,
+    Was tinted, each with its own spot
+    Of burning at the core, till clot
+    Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire
+    Over all heaven, which 'gan suspire
+    As fanned to measure equable,--
+    Just so great conflagrations kill
+    Night overhead, and rise and sink,
+    Reflected. Now the fire would shrink
+    And wither off the blasted face
+    Of heaven, and I distinct might trace
+    The sharp black ridgy outlines left
+    Unburned like network--then, each cleft
+    The fire had been sucked back into,
+    Regorged, and out it surging flew
+    Furiously, and night writhed inflamed,
+    Till, tolerating to be tamed
+    No longer, certain rays world-wide
+    Shot downwardly. On every side
+    Caught past escape, the earth was lit;
+    As if a dragon's nostril split
+    And all his famished ire o'erflowed;
+    Then, as he winced at his lord's goad,
+    Back he inhaled: whereat I found
+    The clouds into vast pillars bound,
+    Based on the corners of the earth,
+    Propping the skies at top: a dearth
+    Of fire i' the violet intervals,
+    Leaving exposed the utmost walls
+    Of time, about to tumble in
+    And end the world.
+
+    XVI
+
+                      I felt begin
+    The Judgment-Day: to retrocede
+    Was too late now. "In very deed,"
+    (I uttered to myself) "that Day!"
+    The intuition burned away
+    All darkness from my spirit too:
+    There, stood I, found and fixed, I knew,
+    Choosing the world. The choice was made;
+    And naked and disguiseless stayed,
+    And unevadable, the fact.
+    My brain held all the same compact
+    Its senses, nor my heart declined
+    Its office; rather, both combined
+    To help me in this juncture. I
+    Lost not a second,--agony
+    Gave boldness: since my life had end
+    And my choice with it--best defend,
+    Applaud both! I resolved to say,
+    "So was I framed by thee, such way
+    I put to use thy senses here!
+    It was so beautiful, so near,
+    Thy world,--what could I then but choose
+    My part there? Nor did I refuse
+    To look above the transient boon
+    Of time; but it was hard so soon
+    As in a short life, to give up
+    Such beauty: I could put the cup
+    Undrained of half its fulness, by;
+    But, to renounce it utterly,
+    --That was too hard! Nor did the cry
+    Which bade renounce it, touch my brain
+    Authentically deep and plain
+    Enough to make my lips let go.
+    But Thou, who knowest all, dost know
+    Whether I was not, life's brief while,
+    Endeavoring to reconcile
+    Those lips (too tardily, alas!)
+    To letting the dear remnant pass,
+    One day,--some drops of earthly good
+    Untasted! Is it for this mood,
+    That Thou, whose earth delights so well,
+    Hast made its complement a hell?"
+
+    XVII
+
+    A final belch of fire like blood,
+    Overbroke all heaven in one flood
+    Of doom. Then fire was sky, and sky
+    Fire, and both, one brief ecstasy,
+    Then ashes. But I heard no noise
+    (Whatever was) because a voice
+    Beside me spoke thus, "Life is done,
+    Time ends, Eternity's begun,
+    And thou art judged for evermore."
+
+    XVIII
+
+    I looked up; all seemed as before;
+    Of that cloud-Tophet overhead
+    No trace was left: I saw instead
+    The common round me, and the sky
+    Above, stretched drear and emptily
+    Of life. 'Twas the last watch of night,
+    Except what brings the morning quite;
+    When the armed angel, conscience-clear,
+    His task nigh done, leans o'er his spear
+    And gazes on the earth he guards,
+    Safe one night more through all its wards,
+    Till God relieve him at his post.
+    "A dream--a waking dream at most!"
+    (I spoke out quick, that I might shake
+    The horrid nightmare off, and wake.)
+    "The world gone, yet the world is here?
+    Are not all things as they appear?
+    Is Judgment past for me alone?
+    --And where had place the great white throne?
+    The rising of the quick and dead?
+    Where stood they, small and great? Who read
+    The sentence from the opened book?"
+    So, by degrees, the blood forsook
+    My heart, and let it beat afresh;
+    I knew I should break through the mesh
+    Of horror, and breathe presently:
+    When, lo, again, the voice by me!
+
+    XIX
+
+    I saw.... Oh brother, 'mid far sands
+    The palm-tree-cinctured city stands,
+    Bright-white beneath, as heaven, bright-blue,
+    Leans o'er it, while the years pursue
+    Their course, unable to abate
+    Its paradisal laugh at fate!
+    One morn,--the Arab staggers blind
+    O'er a new tract of death, calcined
+    To ashes, silence, nothingness,--
+    And strives, with dizzy wits, to guess
+    Whence fell the blow. What if, 'twixt skies
+    And prostrate earth, he should surprise
+    The imaged vapor, head to foot,
+    Surveying, motionless and mute,
+    Its work, ere, in a whirlwind rapt
+    It vanished up again?--So hapt
+    My chance. HE stood there. Like the smoke
+    Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke,--
+    I saw Him. One magnific pall
+    Mantled in massive fold and fall
+    His head, and coiled in snaky swathes
+    About His feet: night's black, that bathes
+    All else, broke, grizzled with despair,
+    Against the soul of blackness there.
+    A gesture told the mood within--
+    That wrapped right hand which based the chin,
+    That intense meditation fixed
+    On His procedure,--pity mixed
+    With the fulfilment of decree.
+    Motionless, thus, He spoke to me,
+    Who fell before His feet, a mass,
+    No man now.
+
+    XX
+
+                  "All is come to pass.
+    Such shows are over for each soul
+    They had respect to. In the roll
+    Of judgment which convinced mankind
+    Of sin, stood many, bold and blind,
+    Terror must burn the truth into:
+    Their fate for them!--thou hadst to do
+    With absolute omnipotence,
+    Able its judgments to dispense
+    To the whole race, as every one
+    Were its sole object. Judgment done,
+    God is, thou art,--the rest is hurled
+    To nothingness for thee. This world,
+    This finite life, thou hast preferred,
+    In disbelief of God's plain word,
+    To heaven and to infinity.
+    Here the probation was for thee,
+    To show thy soul the earthly mixed
+    With heavenly, it must choose betwixt.
+    The earthly joys lay palpable,--
+    A taint, in each, distinct as well;
+    The heavenly flitted, faint and rare,
+    Above them, but as truly were
+    Taintless, so, in their nature, best.
+    Thy choice was earth: thou didst attest
+    'Twas fitter spirit should subserve
+    The flesh, than flesh refine to nerve
+    Beneath the spirit's play. Advance
+    No claim to their inheritance
+    Who chose the spirit's fugitive
+    Brief gleams, and yearned, 'This were to live
+    Indeed, if rays, completely pure
+    From flesh that dulls them, could endure,--
+    Not shoot in meteor-light athwart
+    Our earth, to show how cold and swart
+    It lies beneath their fire, but stand
+    As stars do, destined to expand,
+    Prove veritable worlds, our home!'
+    Thou saidst,--'Let spirit star the dome
+    Of sky, that flesh may miss no peak,
+    No nook of earth,--I shall not seek
+    Its service further!' Thou art shut
+    Out of the heaven of spirit; glut
+    Thy sense upon the world: 'tis thine
+    For ever--take it!"
+
+    XXI
+
+                          "How? Is mine,
+    The world?" (I cried, while my soul broke
+    Out in a transport.) "Hast Thou spoke
+    Plainly in that? Earth's exquisite
+    Treasures of wonder and delight,
+    For me?"
+
+    XXII
+
+              The austere voice returned,--
+    "So soon made happy? Hadst thou learned
+    What God accounteth happiness,
+    Thou wouldst not find it hard to guess
+    What hell may be his punishment
+    For those who doubt if God invent
+    Better than they. Let such men rest
+    Content with what they judged the best.
+    Let the unjust usurp at will:
+    The filthy shall be filthy still:
+    Miser, there waits the gold for thee!
+    Hater, indulge thine enmity!
+    And thou, whose heaven self-ordained
+    Was, to enjoy earth unrestrained,
+    Do it! Take all the ancient show!
+    The woods shall wave, the rivers flow,
+    And men apparently pursue
+    Their works, as they were wont to do,
+    While living in probation yet.
+    I promise not thou shalt forget
+    The past, now gone to its account;
+    But leave thee with the old amount
+    Of faculties, nor less nor more,
+    Unvisited, as heretofore,
+    By God's free spirit, that makes an end.
+    So, once more, take thy world! Expend
+    Eternity upon its shows,
+    Flung thee as freely as one rose
+    Out of a summer's opulence,
+    Over the Eden-barrier whence
+    Thou art excluded. Knock in vain!"
+
+    XXIII
+
+    I sat up. All was still again.
+    I breathed free: to my heart, back fled
+    The warmth. "But, all the world!"--I said.
+    I stooped and picked a leaf of fern,
+    And recollected I might learn
+    From books, how many myriad sorts
+    Of fern exist, to trust reports,
+    Each as distinct and beautiful
+    As this, the very first I cull.
+    Think, from the first leaf to the last!
+    Conceive, then, earth's resources! Vast
+    Exhaustless beauty, endless change
+    Of wonder! And this foot shall range
+    Alps, Andes,--and this eye devour
+    The bee-bird and the aloe-flower?
+
+    XXIV
+
+    Then the voice, "Welcome so to rate
+    The arras-folds that variegate
+    The earth, God's antechamber, well!
+    The wise, who waited there, could tell
+    By these, what royalties in store
+    Lay one step past the entrance-door.
+    For whom, was reckoned, not so much,
+    This life's munificence? For such
+    As thou,--a race, whereof scarce one
+    Was able, in a million,
+    To feel that any marvel lay
+    In objects round his feet all day;
+    Scarce one, in many millions more,
+    Willing, if able, to explore
+    The secreter, minuter charm!
+    --Brave souls, a fern-leaf could disarm
+    Of power to cope with God's intent,--
+    Or scared if the south firmament
+    With north-fire did its wings refledge!
+    All partial beauty was a pledge
+    Of beauty in its plenitude:
+    But since the pledge sufficed thy mood,
+    Retain it! plenitude be theirs
+    Who looked above!"
+
+    XXV
+
+                          Though sharp despairs
+    Shot through me, I held up, bore on.
+    "What matter though my trust were gone
+    From natural things? Henceforth my part
+    Be less with nature than with art!
+    For art supplants, gives mainly worth
+    To nature; 'tis man stamps the earth--
+    And I will seek his impress, seek
+    The statuary of the Greek,
+    Italy's painting--there my choice
+    Shall fix!"
+
+    XXVI
+
+                "Obtain it!" said the voice,
+    "--The one form with its single act,
+    Which sculptors labored to abstract,
+    The one face, painters tried to draw,
+    With its one look, from throngs they saw.
+    And that perfection in their soul,
+    These only hinted at? The whole,
+    They were but parts of? What each laid
+    His claim to glory on?--afraid
+    His fellow-men should give him rank
+    By mere tentatives which he shrank
+    Smitten at heart from, all the more,
+    That gazers pressed in to adore!
+    'Shall I be judged by only these?'
+    If such his soul's capacities,
+    Even while he trod the earth,--think, now,
+    What pomp in Buonarroti's brow,
+    With its new palace-brain where dwells
+    Superb the soul, unvexed by cells
+    That crumbled with the transient clay!
+    What visions will his right hand's sway
+    Still turn to forms, as still they burst
+    Upon him? How will he quench thirst,
+    Titanically infantine,
+    Laid at the breast of the Divine?
+    Does it confound thee,--this first page
+    Emblazoning man's heritage?--
+    Can this alone absorb thy sight,
+    As pages were not infinite,--
+    Like the omnipotence which tasks
+    Itself to furnish all that asks
+    The soul it means to satiate?
+    What was the world, the starry state
+    Of the broad skies,--what, all displays
+    Of power and beauty intermixed,
+    Which now thy soul is chained betwixt,--
+    What else than needful furniture
+    For life's first stage? God's work, be sure,
+    No more spreads wasted, than falls scant!
+    He filled, did not exceed, man's want
+    Of beauty in this life. But through
+    Life pierce,--and what has earth to do,
+    Its utmost beauty's appanage,
+    With the requirement of next stage?
+    Did God pronounce earth 'very good'?
+    Needs must it be, while understood
+    For man's preparatory state;
+    Nought here to heighten nor abate;
+    Transfer the same completeness here,
+    To serve a new state's use,--and drear
+    Deficiency gapes every side!
+    The good, tried once, were bad, retried.
+    See the enwrapping rocky niche,
+    Sufficient for the sleep in which
+    The lizard breathes for ages safe:
+    Split the mould--and as light would chafe
+    The creature's new world-widened sense,
+    Dazzled to death at evidence
+    Of all the sounds and sights that broke
+    Innumerous at the chisel's stroke,--
+    So, in God's eye, the earth's first stuff
+    Was, neither more nor less, enough
+    To house man's soul, man's need fulfil.
+    Man reckoned it immeasurable?
+    So thinks the lizard of his vault!
+    Could God be taken in default,
+    Short of contrivances, by you,--
+    Or reached, ere ready to pursue
+    His progress through eternity?
+    That chambered rock, the lizard's world,
+    Your easy mallet's blow has hurled
+    To nothingness for ever; so,
+    Has God abolished at a blow
+    This world, wherein his saints were pent,--
+    Who, though found grateful and content,
+    With the provision there, as thou,
+    Yet knew he would not disallow
+    Their spirit's hunger, felt as well,--
+    Unsated,--not unsatable,
+    As paradise gives proof. Deride
+    Their choice now, thou who sit'st outside!"
+
+    XXVII
+
+    I cried in anguish, "Mind, the mind,
+    So miserably cast behind,
+    To gain what had been wisely lost!
+    Oh, let me strive to make the most
+    Of the poor stinted soul, I nipped
+    Of budding wings, else now equipped
+    For voyage from summer isle to isle!
+    And though she needs must reconcile
+    Ambition to the life on ground,
+    Still, I can profit by late found
+    But precious knowledge. Mind is best--
+    I will seize mind, forego the rest,
+    And try how far my tethered strength
+    May crawl in this poor breadth and length.
+    Let me, since I can fly no more,
+    At least spin dervish-like about
+    (Till giddy rapture almost doubt
+    I fly) through circling sciences,
+    Philosophies and histories
+    Should the whirl slacken there, then verse,
+    Fining to music, shall asperse
+    Fresh and fresh fire-dew, till I strain
+    Intoxicate, half-break my chain!
+    Not joyless, though more favored feet
+    Stand calm, where I want wings to beat
+    The floor. At least earth's bond is broke!"
+
+    XXVIII
+
+    Then, (sickening even while I spoke)
+    "Let me alone! No answer, pray,
+    To this! I know what Thou wilt say!
+    All still is earth's,--to know, as much
+    As feel its truths, which if we touch
+    With sense, or apprehend in soul,
+    What matter? I have reached the goal--
+    'Whereto does knowledge serve!' will burn
+    My eyes, too sure, at every turn!
+    I cannot look back now, nor stake
+    Bliss on the race, for running's sake.
+    The goal's a ruin like the rest!--
+    And so much worse thy latter quest,"
+    (Added the voice) "that even on earth--
+    Whenever, in man's soul, had birth
+    Those intuitions, grasps of guess,
+    Which pull the more into the less,
+    Making the finite comprehend
+    Infinity,--the bard would spend
+    Such praise alone, upon his craft,
+    As, when wind-lyres obey the waft,
+    Goes to the craftsman who arranged
+    The seven strings, changed them and rechanged--
+    Knowing it was the South that harped.
+    He felt his song, in singing, warped;
+    Distinguished his and God's part: whence
+    A world of spirit as of sense
+    Was plain to him, yet not too plain,
+    Which he could traverse, not remain
+    A guest in:--else were permanent
+    Heaven on the earth its gleams were meant
+    To sting with hunger for full light,--
+    Made visible in verse, despite
+    The veiling weakness,--truth by means
+    Of fable, showing while it screens,--
+    Since highest truth, man e'er supplied,
+    Was ever fable on outside.
+    Such gleams made bright the earth an age;
+    Now the whole sun's his heritage!
+    Take up thy world, it is allowed,
+    Thou who hast entered in the cloud!"
+
+    XXIX
+
+    Then I--"Behold, my spirit bleeds,
+    Catches no more at broken reeds,--
+    But lilies flower those reeds above:
+    I let the world go, and take love!
+    Love survives in me, albeit those
+    I love be henceforth masks and shows,
+    Not living men and women: still
+    I mind how love repaired all ill,
+    Cured wrong, soothed grief, made earth amends
+    With parents, brothers, children, friends!
+    Some semblance of a woman yet
+    With eyes to help me to forget,
+    Shall look on me; and I will match
+    Departed love with love, attach
+    Old memories to new dreams, nor scorn
+    The poorest of the grains of corn
+    I save from shipwreck on this isle,
+    Trusting its barrenness may smile
+    With happy foodful green one day,
+    More precious for the pains. I pray,--
+    Leave to love, only!"
+
+    XXX
+
+                          At the word,
+    The form, I looked to have been stirred
+    With pity and approval, rose
+    O'er me, as when the headsman throws
+    Axe over shoulder to make end--
+    I fell prone, letting Him expend
+    His wrath, while thus the inflicting voice
+    Smote me. "Is this thy final choice?
+    Love is the best? 'Tis somewhat late!
+    And all thou dost enumerate
+    Of power and beauty in the world,
+    The mightiness of love was curled
+    Inextricably round about.
+    Love lay within it and without,
+    To clasp thee,--but in vain! Thy soul
+    Still shrunk from Him who made the whole,
+    Still set deliberate aside
+    His love!--Now take love! Well betide
+    Thy tardy conscience! Haste to take
+    The show of love for the name's sake,
+    Remembering every moment Who,
+    Beside creating thee unto
+    These ends, and these for thee, was said
+    To undergo death in thy stead
+    In flesh like thine: so ran the tale.
+    What doubt in thee could countervail
+    Belief in it? Upon the ground
+    'That in the story had been found
+    Too much love! How could God love so?'
+    He who in all his works below
+    Adapted to the needs of man,
+    Made love the basis of the plan,--
+    Did love, as was demonstrated:
+    While man, who was so fit instead
+    To hate, as every day gave proof,--
+    Man thought man, for his kind's behoof,
+    Both could and did invent that scheme
+    Of perfect love: 'twould well beseem
+    Cain's nature thou wast wont to praise,
+    Not tally with God's usual ways!"
+
+    XXXI
+
+    And I cowered deprecatingly--
+    "Thou Love of God! Or let me die,
+    Or grant what shall seem heaven almost!
+    Let me not know that all is lost,
+    Though lost it be--leave me not tied
+    To this despair, this corpse-like bride!
+    Let that old life seem mine--no more--
+    With limitation as before,
+    With darkness, hunger, toil, distress:
+    Be all the earth a wilderness!
+    Only let me go on, go on,
+    Still hoping ever and anon
+    To reach one eve the Better Land!"
+
+    XXXII
+
+    Then did the form expand, expand--
+    I knew Him through the dread disguise
+    As the whole God within His eyes
+    Embraced me.
+
+    XXXIII
+
+                  When I lived again,
+    The day was breaking,--the grey plain
+    I rose from, silvered thick with dew.
+    Was this a vision? False or true?
+    Since then, three varied years are spent,
+    And commonly my mind is bent
+    To think it was a dream--be sure
+    A mere dream and distemperature--
+    The last day's watching: then the night,--
+    The shock of that strange Northern Light
+    Set my head swimming, bred in me
+    A dream. And so I live, you see,
+    Go through the world, try, prove, reject,
+    Prefer, still struggling to effect
+    My warfare; happy that I can
+    Be crossed and thwarted as a man,
+    Not left in God's contempt apart,
+    With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart,
+    Tame in earth's paddock as her prize.
+    Thank God, she still each method tries
+    To catch me, who may yet escape,
+    She knows,--the fiend in angel's shape!
+    Thank God, no paradise stands barred
+    To entry, and I find it hard
+    To be a Christian, as I said!
+    Still every now and then my head
+    Raised glad, sinks mournful--all grows drear
+    Spite of the sunshine, while I fear
+    And think, "How dreadful to be grudged
+    No ease henceforth, as one that's judged.
+    Condemned to earth for ever, shut
+    From heaven!"
+                    But Easter-Day breaks! But
+    Christ rises! Mercy every way
+    Is infinite,--and who can say?
+
+This poem has often been cited as a proof of Browning's own belief in
+historical Christianity. It can hardly be said to be more than a
+doubtful proof, for it depends upon a subjective vision of which the
+speaker, himself, doubts the truth. The speaker in this poem belongs in
+the same category with Bishop Blougram. A belief in infinite Love can
+come to him only through the dogma of the incarnation, he therefore
+holds to that, no matter how tossed about by doubts. The failure of all
+human effort to attain the Absolute and, as a consequence, the belief in
+an Absolute beyond this life is a dominant note in Browning's own
+philosophy. The nature of that Absolute he further evolves from the
+intellectual observation of power that transcends human comprehension,
+and the even more deep-rooted sense of love in the human heart.
+
+Much of his thought resembles that of the English scientist, Herbert
+Spencer. The relativity of knowledge and the relativity of good and evil
+are cardinal doctrines with both of them. Herbert Spencer's mystery
+behind all phenomena and Browning's failure of human knowledge are
+identical--the negative proof of the absolute,--but where Spencer
+contents himself with the statement that though we cannot know the
+Absolute, yet it must transcend all that the human mind has conceived
+of perfection, Browning, as we have already seen, declares that we _can_
+know something of the nature of that Absolute through the love which we
+know in the human heart as well as the power we see displayed in Nature.
+
+In connection with this subject, which for lack of space can merely be
+touched on in the present volume, it will be instructive to round out
+Browning's presentations of his own contributions to nineteenth-century
+thought with two quotations, one from "The Parleyings:" "With Bernard de
+Mandeville," and one from a poem in his last volume "Reverie." In the
+first, human love is symbolized as the image made by a lens of the sun,
+which latter symbolizes Divine Love.
+
+
+    BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+    IX
+
+    Boundingly up through Night's wall dense and dark,
+    Embattled crags and clouds, outbroke the Sun
+    Above the conscious earth, and one by one
+    Her heights and depths absorbed to the last spark
+    His fluid glory, from the far fine ridge
+    Of mountain-granite which, transformed to gold,
+    Laughed first the thanks back, to the vale's dusk fold
+    On fold of vapor-swathing, like a bridge
+    Shattered beneath some giant's stamp. Night wist
+    Her work done and betook herself in mist
+    To marsh and hollow there to bide her time
+    Blindly in acquiescence. Everywhere
+    Did earth acknowledge Sun's embrace sublime
+    Thrilling her to the heart of things: since there
+    No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew,
+    No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew
+    Glad through the inrush--glad nor more nor less
+    Than, 'neath his gaze, forest and wilderness,
+    Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread,
+    The universal world of creatures bred
+    By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise--
+    All creatures but one only: gaze for gaze,
+    Joyless and thankless, who--all scowling can--
+    Protests against the innumerous praises? Man,
+    Sullen and silent.
+
+                      Stand thou forth then, state
+    Thy wrong, thou sole aggrieved--disconsolate--
+    While every beast, bird, reptile, insect, gay
+    And glad acknowledges the bounteous day!
+
+    X
+
+    Man speaks now:--"What avails Sun's earth-felt thrill
+    To me? Sun penetrates the ore, the plant--
+    They feel and grow: perchance with subtler skill
+    He interfuses fly, worm, brute, until
+    Each favored object pays life's ministrant
+    By pressing, in obedience to his will,
+    Up to completion of the task prescribed,
+    So stands and stays a type. Myself imbibed
+    Such influence also, stood and stand complete--
+    The perfect Man,--head, body, hands and feet,
+    True to the pattern: but does that suffice?
+    How of my superadded mind which needs
+    --Not to be, simply, but to do, and pleads
+    For--more than knowledge that by some device
+    Sun quickens matter: mind is nobly fain
+    To realize the marvel, make--for sense
+    As mind--the unseen visible, condense
+    --Myself--Sun's all-pervading influence
+    So as to serve the needs of mind, explain
+    What now perplexes. Let the oak increase
+    His corrugated strength on strength, the palm
+    Lift joint by joint her fan-fruit, ball and balm,--
+    Let the coiled serpent bask in bloated peace,--
+    The eagle, like some skyey derelict,
+    Drift in the blue, suspended glorying,--
+    The lion lord it by the desert-spring,--
+    What know or care they of the power which pricked
+    Nothingness to perfection? I, instead,
+    When all-developed still am found a thing
+    All-incomplete: for what though flesh had force
+    Transcending theirs--hands able to unring
+    The tightened snake's coil, eyes that could outcourse
+    The eagle's soaring, voice whereat the king
+    Of carnage couched discrowned? Mind seeks to see,
+    Touch, understand, by mind inside of me,
+    The outside mind--whose quickening I attain
+    To recognize--I only. All in vain
+    Would mind address itself to render plain
+    The nature of the essence. Drag what lurks
+    Behind the operation--that which works
+    Latently everywhere by outward proof--
+    Drag that mind forth to face mine? No! aloof
+    I solely crave that one of all the beams
+    Which do Sun's work in darkness, at my will
+    Should operate--myself for once have skill
+    To realize the energy which streams
+    Flooding the universe. Above, around,
+    Beneath--why mocks that mind my own thus found
+    Simply of service, when the world grows dark,
+    To half-surmise--were Sun's use understood,
+    I might demonstrate him supplying food,
+    Warmth, life, no less the while? To grant one spark
+    Myself may deal with--make it thaw my blood
+    And prompt my steps, were truer to the mark
+    Of mind's requirement than a half-surmise
+    That somehow secretly is operant
+    A power all matter feels, mind only tries
+    To comprehend! Once more--no idle vaunt
+    'Man comprehends the Sun's self!' Mysteries
+    At source why probe into? Enough: display,
+    Make demonstrable, how, by night as day,
+    Earth's centre and sky's outspan, all's informed
+    Equally by Sun's efflux!--source from whence
+    If just one spark I drew, full evidence
+    Were mine of fire ineffably enthroned--
+    Sun's self made palpable to Man!"
+
+    XI
+
+                                      Thus moaned
+    Man till Prometheus helped him,--as we learn,--
+    Offered an artifice whereby he drew
+    Sun's rays into a focus,--plain and true,
+    The very Sun in little: made fire burn
+    And henceforth do Man service--glass-conglobed
+    Though to a pin-point circle--all the same
+    Comprising the Sun's self, but Sun disrobed
+    Of that else-unconceived essential flame
+    Borne by no naked sight. Shall mind's eye strive
+    Achingly to companion as it may
+    The supersubtle effluence, and contrive
+    To follow beam and beam upon their way
+    Hand-breadth by hand-breadth, till sense faint--confessed
+    Frustrate, eluded by unknown unguessed
+    Infinitude of action? Idle quest!
+    Rather ask aid from optics. Sense, descry
+    The spectrum--mind, infer immensity!
+    Little? In little, light, warmth, life are blessed--
+    Which, in the large, who sees to bless? Not I
+    More than yourself: so, good my friend, keep still
+    Trustful with--me? with thee, sage Mandeville!
+
+The second "Reverie" has the effect of a triumphant swan song,
+especially the closing stanzas, the poem having been written very near
+the end of the poet's life.
+
+    "In a beginning God
+      Made heaven and earth." Forth flashed
+    Knowledge: from star to clod
+      Man knew things: doubt abashed
+    Closed its long period.
+
+    Knowledge obtained Power praise.
+      Had Good been manifest,
+    Broke out in cloudless blaze,
+      Unchequered as unrepressed,
+    In all things Good at best--
+
+    Then praise--all praise, no blame--
+      Had hailed the perfection. No!
+    As Power's display, the same
+      Be Good's--praise forth shall flow
+    Unisonous in acclaim!
+
+    Even as the world its life,
+      So have I lived my own--
+    Power seen with Love at strife,
+      That sure, this dimly shown,
+    --Good rare and evil rife.
+
+    Whereof the effect be--faith
+      That, some far day, were found
+    Ripeness in things now rathe,
+      Wrong righted, each chain unbound,
+    Renewal born out of scathe.
+
+    Why faith--but to lift the load,
+      To leaven the lump, where lies
+    Mind prostrate through knowledge owed
+      To the loveless Power it tries
+    To withstand, how vain! In flowed
+
+    Ever resistless fact:
+      No more than the passive clay
+    Disputes the potter's act,
+      Could the whelmed mind disobey
+    Knowledge the cataract.
+
+    But, perfect in every part,
+      Has the potter's moulded shape,
+    Leap of man's quickened heart,
+      Throe of his thought's escape,
+    Stings of his soul which dart
+
+    Through the barrier of flesh, till keen
+      She climbs from the calm and clear,
+    Through turbidity all between,
+      From the known to the unknown here,
+    Heaven's "Shall be," from Earth's "Has been"?
+
+    Then life is--to wake not sleep,
+      Rise and not rest, but press
+    From earth's level where blindly creep
+      Things perfected, more or less,
+    To the heaven's height, far and steep,
+
+    Where, amid what strifes and storms
+      May wait the adventurous quest,
+    Power is Love--transports, transforms
+      Who aspired from worst to best,
+    Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms'.
+
+    I have faith such end shall be:
+      From the first, Power was--I knew.
+    Life has made clear to me
+      That, strive but for closer view,
+    Love were as plain to see.
+
+    When see? When there dawns a day,
+      If not on the homely earth,
+    Then yonder, worlds away,
+      Where the strange and new have birth,
+    And Power comes full in play.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ART CRITICISM INSPIRED BY THE ENGLISH MUSICIAN, AVISON
+
+
+In the "Parleying" "With Charles Avison," Browning plunges into a
+discussion of the problem of the ephemeralness of musical expression.
+He hits upon Avison to have his colloquy with because a march by this
+musician came into his head, and the march came into his head for no
+better reason than that it was the month of March. Some interest
+would attach to Avison if it were only for the reason that he was
+organist of the Church of St. Nicholas in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In
+the earliest accounts St. Nicholas was styled simply, "The Church of
+Newcastle-upon-Tyne," but in 1785 it became a Cathedral. This was after
+Avison's death in 1770. All we know about the organ upon which Avison
+performed is found in a curious old history of Newcastle by Brand. "I
+have found," he writes, "no account of any organ in this church during
+the times of popery though it is very probable there has been one. About
+the year 1676, the corporation of Newcastle contributed £300 towards
+the erection of the present organ. They added a trumpet stop to it June
+22d, 1699."
+
+The year that Avison was born, 1710, it is recorded further that "the
+back front of this organ was finished which cost the said corporation
+£200 together with the expense of cleaning and repairing the whole
+instrument."
+
+June 26, 1749, the common council of Newcastle ordered a sweet stop to
+be added to the organ. This was after Avison became organist, his
+appointment to that post having been in 1736. So we know that he at
+least had a "trumpet stop" and a "sweet stop," with which to embellish
+his organ playing.
+
+The church is especially distinguished for the number and beauty of its
+chantries, and any who have a taste for examining armorial bearings will
+find two good-sized volumes devoted to a description of those in this
+church, by Richardson. Equal distinction attaches to the church owing to
+the beauty of its steeple, which has been called the pride and glory of
+the Northern Hemisphere. According to the enthusiastic Richardson it is
+justly esteemed on account of its peculiar excellency of design and
+delicacy of execution one of the finest specimens of architectural
+beauty in Europe. This steeple is as conspicuous a feature of Newcastle
+as the State House Dome is of Boston, situated, as it is, almost in the
+center of the town. Richardson gives the following minute description of
+this marvel. "It consists of a square tower forty feet in width, having
+great and small turrets with pinnacles at the angles and center of each
+front tower. From the four turrets at the angles spring two arches,
+which meet in an intersecting direction, and bear on their center an
+efficient perforated lanthorne, surmounted by a tall and beautiful
+spire: the angles of the lanthorne have pinnacles similar to those on
+the turrets, and the whole of the pinnacles, being twelve in number, and
+the spire, are ornamented with crockets and vanes."
+
+There is a stirring tradition in regard to this structure related by
+Bourne to the effect that in the time of the Civil Wars, when the Scots
+had besieged the town for several weeks, and were still as far as at
+first from taking it, the general sent a messenger to the mayor of the
+town, and demanded the keys, and the delivering up of the town, or he
+would immediately demolish the steeple of St. Nicholas. The mayor and
+aldermen upon hearing this, immediately ordered a certain number of the
+chiefest of the Scottish prisoners to be carried up to the top of the
+tower, the place below the lanthorne and there confined. After this,
+they returned the general an answer to this purpose,--that they would
+upon no terms deliver up the town, but would to the last moment defend
+it: that the steeple of St. Nicholas was indeed a beautiful and
+magnificent piece of architecture, and one of the great ornaments of the
+town; but yet should be blown into atoms before ransomed at such a rate:
+that, however, if it was to fall, it should not fall alone, that the
+same moment he destroyed the beautiful structure he should bathe his
+hands in the blood of his countrymen who were placed there on purpose
+either to preserve it from ruin or to die along with it. This message
+had the desired effect. The men were there kept prisoners during the
+whole time of the siege and not so much as one gun fired against it.
+
+Avison, however, had other claims to distinction, besides being organist
+of this ancient church. He was a composer, and was remembered by one of
+his airs, at least, into the nineteenth century, namely "Sound the Loud
+Timbrel." He appears not to be remembered, however, by his concertos, of
+which he published no less than five sets for a full band of stringed
+instruments, nor by his quartets and trios, and two sets of sonatas for
+the harpsichord and two violins. All we have to depend on now as to the
+quality of his music are the strictures of a certain Dr. Hayes, an
+Oxford Professor, who points out many errors against the rules of
+composition in the works of Avison, whence he infers that his skill in
+music is not very profound, and the somewhat more appreciative remarks
+of Hawkins who says "The music of Avison is light and elegant, but it
+wants originality, a necessary consequence of his too close attachment
+to the style of Geminiani which in a few particulars only he was able to
+imitate."
+
+Geminiani was a celebrated violin player and composer of the day, who
+had come to England from Italy. He is said to have held his pupil,
+Avison, in high esteem and to have paid him a visit at Newcastle in
+1760. Avison's early education was gained in Italy; and in addition to
+his musical attainments he was a scholar and a man of some literary
+acquirements. It is not surprising, considering all these educational
+advantages that he really made something of a stir upon the publication
+of his "small book," as Browning calls it, with, we may add, its "large
+title."
+
+  AN
+  ESSAY
+  ON
+  MUSICAL EXPRESSION
+  BY CHARLES AVISON
+  _Organist_ in NEWCASTLE
+  With ALTERATIONS and Large ADDITIONS
+
+  To which is added,
+  A LETTER to the AUTHOR
+  concerning the Music of the ANCIENTS
+  and some Passages in CLASSIC WRITERS
+  relating to the Subject.
+
+  LIKEWISE
+  Mr. AVISON'S REPLY to the Author of
+  _Remarks on the Essay on MUSICAL EXPRESSION_
+  In a Letter from Mr. _Avison_ to his Friend in _London_
+
+  THE THIRD EDITION
+  LONDON
+  Printed for LOCKYER DAVIS, in _Holborn_.
+  Printer to the ROYAL SOCIETY.
+  MDCCLXXV.
+
+The author of the "Remarks on the Essay on Musical Expression" was the
+aforementioned Dr. W. Hayes, and although the learned doctor's pamphlet
+seems to have died a natural death, some idea of its strictures may be
+gained from Avison's reply. The criticisms are rather too technical to
+be of interest to the general reader, but one is given here to show how
+gentlemanly a temper Mr. Avison possessed when he was under fire. His
+reply runs "His first critique, and, I think, his masterpiece, contains
+many circumstantial, but false and virulent remarks on the first allegro
+of these concertos, to which he supposes I would give the name of
+_fugue_. Be it just what he pleases to call it I shall not defend what
+the public is already in possession of, the public being the most proper
+judge. I shall only here observe, that our critic has wilfully, or
+ignorantly, confounded the terms _fugue_ and _imitation_, which latter
+is by no means subject to the same laws with the former.
+
+[Illustration: Handel]
+
+"Had I observed the method of answering the _accidental subjects_ in
+this _allegro_, as laid down by our critic in his remarks, they must
+have produced most shocking effects; which, though this mechanic in
+music, would, perhaps, have approved, yet better judges might, in
+reality, have imagined I had known no other art than that of the
+spruzzarino." There is a nice independence about this that would
+indicate Mr. Avison to be at least an aspirant in the right direction in
+musical composition. His criticism of Handel, too, at a time when the
+world was divided between enthusiasm for Handel and enthusiasm for
+Buononcini, shows a remarkably just and penetrating estimate of this
+great genius.
+
+"Mr. Handel is, in music, what his own Dryden was in poetry; nervous,
+exalted, and harmonious; but voluminous, and, consequently, not always
+correct. Their abilities equal to every thing; their execution
+frequently inferior. Born with genius capable of _soaring the boldest
+flights_; they have sometimes, to suit the vitiated taste of the age
+they lived in, _descended to the lowest_. Yet, as both their
+excellencies are infinitely more numerous than their deficiencies, so
+both their characters will devolve to latest posterity, not as models of
+perfection, yet glorious examples of those amazing powers that actuate
+the human soul."
+
+On the whole, Mr. Avison's "little book" on Musical Expression is
+eminently sensible as to the matter and very agreeable in style. He hits
+off well, for example, the difference between "musical expression" and
+imitation.
+
+"As dissonances and shocking sounds cannot be called Musical Expression,
+so neither do I think, can mere imitation of several other things be
+entitled to this name, which, however, among the generality of mankind
+hath often obtained it. Thus, the gradual rising or falling of the
+notes in a long succession is often used to denote ascent or descent;
+broken intervals, to denote an interrupted motion; a number of quick
+divisions, to describe swiftness or flying; sounds resembling laughter,
+to describe laughter; with a number of other contrivances of a parallel
+kind, which it is needless here to mention. Now all these I should chuse
+to style imitation, rather than expression; because it seems to me, that
+their tendency is rather to fix the hearer's attention on the similitude
+between the sounds and the things which they describe, and thereby to
+excite a reflex act of the understanding, than to affect the heart and
+raise the passions of the soul.
+
+"This distinction seems more worthy our notice at present, because some
+very eminent composers have attached themselves chiefly to the method
+here mentioned; and seem to think they have exhausted all the depths of
+expression, by a dextrous imitation of the meaning of a few particular
+words, that occur in the hymns or songs which they set to music. Thus,
+were one of these gentlemen to express the following words of _Milton_,
+
+                                  --Their songs
+    Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to heav'n:
+
+it is highly probable, that upon the word _divide_, he would run a
+_division_ of half a dozen bars; and on the subsequent part of the
+sentence, he would not think he had done the poet justice, or _risen_ to
+that _height_ of sublimity which he ought to express, till he had
+climbed up to the very top of his instrument, or at least as far as the
+human voice could follow him. And this would pass with a great part of
+mankind for musical expression; instead of that noble mixture of solemn
+airs and various harmony, which indeed elevates our thoughts, and gives
+that exquisite pleasure, which none but true lovers of harmony can
+feel." What Avison calls "musical expression," we call to-day "content."
+And thus Avison "tenders evidence that music in his day as much absorbed
+heart and soul then as Wagner's music now." It is not unlikely that this
+very passage may have started Browning off on his argumentative way
+concerning the question: how lasting and how fundamental are the powers
+of musical expression.
+
+The poet's memory goes back a hundred years only to reach "The bands-man
+Avison whose little book and large tune had led him the long way from
+to-day."
+
+
+    CHARLES AVISON
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+    And to-day's music-manufacture,--Brahms,
+    Wagner, Dvorak, Liszt,--to where--trumpets, shawms,
+    Show yourselves joyful!--Handel reigns--supreme?
+    By no means! Buononcini's work is theme
+    For fit laudation of the impartial few:
+    (We stand in England, mind you!) Fashion too
+    Favors Geminiani--of those choice
+    Concertos: nor there wants a certain voice
+    Raised in thy favor likewise, famed Pepusch
+    Dear to our great-grandfathers! In a bush
+    Of Doctor's wig, they prized thee timing beats
+    While Greenway trilled "Alexis." Such were feats
+    Of music in thy day--dispute who list--
+    Avison, of Newcastle organist!
+
+    V
+
+    And here's your music all alive once more--
+    As once it was alive, at least: just so
+    The figured worthies of a waxwork-show
+    Attest--such people, years and years ago,
+    Looked thus when outside death had life below,
+    --Could say "We are now," not "We were of yore,"
+    --"Feel how our pulses leap!" and not "Explore--
+    Explain why quietude has settled o'er
+    Surface once all-awork!" Ay, such a "Suite"
+    Roused heart to rapture, such a "Fugue" would catch
+    Soul heavenwards up, when time was: why attach
+    Blame to exhausted faultlessness, no match
+    For fresh achievement? Feat once--ever feat!
+    How can completion grow still more complete?
+    Hear Avison! He tenders evidence
+    That music in his day as much absorbed
+    Heart and soul then as Wagner's music now.
+    Perfect from center to circumference--
+    Orbed to the full can be but fully orbed:
+    And yet--and yet--whence comes it that "O Thou"--
+    Sighed by the soul at eve to Hesperus--
+    Will not again take wing and fly away
+    (Since fatal Wagner fixed it fast for us)
+    In some unmodulated minor? Nay,
+    Even by Handel's help!
+
+Having stated the problem that confronts him, namely, the change of
+fashion in music, the poet boldly goes on to declare that there is no
+truer truth obtainable by man than comes of music, because it does give
+direct expression to the moods of the soul, yet there is a hitch that
+balks her of full triumph, namely the musical form in which these moods
+are expressed does not stay fixed. This statement is enriched by a
+digression upon the meaning of the soul.
+
+    VI
+
+                                    I state it thus:
+    There is no truer truth obtainable
+    By Man than comes of music. "Soul"--(accept
+    A word which vaguely names what no adept
+    In word-use fits and fixes so that still
+    Thing shall not slip word's fetter and remain
+    Innominate as first, yet, free again,
+    Is no less recognized the absolute
+    Fact underlying that same other fact
+    Concerning which no cavil can dispute
+    Our nomenclature when we call it "Mind"--
+    Something not Matter)--"Soul," who seeks shall find
+    Distinct beneath that something. You exact
+    An illustrative image? This may suit.
+
+    VII
+
+    We see a work: the worker works behind,
+    Invisible himself. Suppose his act
+    Be to o'erarch a gulf: he digs, transports,
+    Shapes and, through enginery--all sizes, sorts,
+    Lays stone by stone until a floor compact
+    Proves our bridged causeway. So works Mind--by stress
+    Of faculty, with loose facts, more or less,
+    Builds up our solid knowledge: all the same,
+    Underneath rolls what Mind may hide not tame,
+    An element which works beyond our guess,
+    Soul, the unsounded sea--whose lift of surge,
+    Spite of all superstructure, lets emerge,
+    In flower and foam, Feeling from out the deeps
+    Mind arrogates no mastery upon--
+    Distinct indisputably. Has there gone
+    To dig up, drag forth, render smooth from rough
+    Mind's flooring,--operosity enough?
+    Still the successive labor of each inch,
+    Who lists may learn: from the last turn of winch
+    That let the polished slab-stone find its place,
+    To the first prod of pick-axe at the base
+    Of the unquarried mountain,--what was all
+    Mind's varied process except natural,
+    Nay, easy, even, to descry, describe,
+    After our fashion? "So worked Mind: its tribe
+    Of senses ministrant above, below,
+    Far, near, or now or haply long ago
+    Brought to pass knowledge." But Soul's sea,--drawn whence,
+    Fed how, forced whither,--by what evidence
+    Of ebb and flow, that's felt beneath the tread,
+    Soul has its course 'neath Mind's work over-head,--
+    Who tells of, tracks to source the founts of Soul?
+    Yet wherefore heaving sway and restless roll
+    This side and that, except to emulate
+    Stability above? To match and mate
+    Feeling with knowledge,--make as manifest
+    Soul's work as Mind's work, turbulence as rest,
+    Hates, loves, joys, woes, hopes, fears, that rise and sink
+    Ceaselessly, passion's transient flit and wink,
+    A ripple's tinting or a spume-sheet's spread
+    Whitening the wave,--to strike all this life dead,
+    Run mercury into a mould like lead,
+    And henceforth have the plain result to show--
+    How we Feel, hard and fast as what we Know--
+    This were the prize and is the puzzle!--which
+    Music essays to solve: and here's the hitch
+    That balks her of full triumph else to boast.
+
+Then follows his explanation of the "hitch," which necessitates a
+comparison with the other arts. His contention is that art adds nothing
+to the _knowledge_ of the mind. It simply moulds into a fixed form
+elements already known which before lay loose and dissociated, it
+therefore does not really create. But there is one realm, that of
+feeling, to which the arts never succeed in giving permanent form
+though all try to do it. What is it they succeed in getting? The poet
+does not make the point very clear, but he seems to be groping after the
+idea that the arts present only the _phenomena_ of feeling or the image
+of feeling instead of the _reality_. Like all people who are
+appreciative of music, he realizes that music comes nearer to expressing
+the spiritual reality of feeling than the other arts, and yet music of
+all the arts is the least permanent in its appeal.
+
+    VIII
+
+    All Arts endeavor this, and she the most
+    Attains thereto, yet fails of touching: why?
+    Does Mind get Knowledge from Art's ministry?
+    What's known once is known ever: Arts arrange,
+    Dissociate, re-distribute, interchange
+    Part with part, lengthen, broaden, high or deep
+    Construct their bravest,--still such pains produce
+    Change, not creation: simply what lay loose
+    At first lies firmly after, what design
+    Was faintly traced in hesitating line
+    Once on a time, grows firmly resolute
+    Henceforth and evermore. Now, could we shoot
+    Liquidity into a mould,--some way
+    Arrest Soul's evanescent moods, and keep
+    Unalterably still the forms that leap
+    To life for once by help of Art!--which yearns
+    To save its capture: Poetry discerns,
+    Painting is 'ware of passion's rise and fall,
+    Bursting, subsidence, intermixture--all
+    A-seethe within the gulf. Each Art a-strain
+    Would stay the apparition,--nor in vain:
+    The Poet's word-mesh, Painter's sure and swift
+    Color-and-line-throw--proud the prize they lift!
+    Thus felt Man and thus looked Man,--passions caught
+    I' the midway swim of sea,--not much, if aught,
+    Of nether-brooding loves, hates, hopes and fears,
+    Enwombed past Art's disclosure. Fleet the years,
+    And still the Poet's page holds Helena
+    At gaze from topmost Troy--"But where are they,
+    My brothers, in the armament I name
+    Hero by hero? Can it be that shame
+    For their lost sister holds them from the war?"
+    --Knowing not they already slept afar
+    Each of them in his own dear native land.
+    Still on the Painter's fresco, from the hand
+    Of God takes Eve the life-spark whereunto
+    She trembles up from nothingness. Outdo
+    Both of them, Music! Dredging deeper yet,
+    Drag into day,--by sound, thy master-net,--
+    The abysmal bottom-growth, ambiguous thing
+    Unbroken of a branch, palpitating
+    With limbs' play and life's semblance! There it lies,
+    Marvel and mystery, of mysteries
+    And marvels, most to love and laud thee for!
+    Save it from chance and change we most abhor!
+    Give momentary feeling permanence,
+    So that thy capture hold, a century hence,
+    Truth's very heart of truth as, safe to-day,
+    The Painter's Eve, the Poet's Helena,
+    Still rapturously bend, afar still throw
+    The wistful gaze! Thanks, Homer, Angelo!
+    Could Music rescue thus from Soul's profound,
+    Give feeling immortality by sound,
+    Then were she queenliest of Arts! Alas--
+    As well expect the rainbow not to pass!
+    "Praise 'Radaminta'--love attains therein
+    To perfect utterance! Pity--what shall win
+    Thy secret like 'Rinaldo'?"--so men said:
+    Once all was perfume--now, the flower is dead--
+    They spied tints, sparks have left the spar! Love, hate,
+    Joy, fear, survive,--alike importunate
+    As ever to go walk the world again,
+    Nor ghost-like pant for outlet all in vain
+    Till Music loose them, fit each filmily
+    With form enough to know and name it by
+    For any recognizer sure of ken
+    And sharp of ear, no grosser denizen
+    Of earth than needs be. Nor to such appeal
+    Is Music long obdurate: off they steal--
+    How gently, dawn-doomed phantoms! back come they
+    Full-blooded with new crimson of broad day--
+    Passion made palpable once more. Ye look
+    Your last on Handel? Gaze your first on Gluck!
+    Why wistful search, O waning ones, the chart
+    Of stars for you while Haydn, while Mozart
+    Occupies heaven? These also, fanned to fire,
+    Flamboyant wholly,--so perfections tire,--
+    Whiten to wanness, till ... let others note
+    The ever-new invasion!
+
+The poet makes no attempt to give any reason why music should be so
+ephemeral in its appeal. He merely refers to the development of harmony
+and modulation, nor does it seem to enter his head that there can be any
+question about the appeal being ephemeral. He imagines the possibility
+of resuscitating dead and gone music with modern harmonies and novel
+modulations, but gives that up as an irreverent innovation. His next
+mood is a historical one; dead and gone music may have something for us
+in a historical sense, that is, if we bring our life to kindle theirs,
+we may sympathetically enter into the life of the time.
+
+    IX
+
+                                      I devote
+    Rather my modicum of parts to use
+    What power may yet avail to re-infuse
+    (In fancy, please you!) sleep that looks like death
+    With momentary liveliness, lend breath
+    To make the torpor half inhale. O Relfe,
+    An all-unworthy pupil, from the shelf
+    Of thy laboratory, dares unstop
+    Bottle, ope box, extract thence pinch and drop
+    Of dusts and dews a many thou didst shrine
+    Each in its right receptacle, assign
+    To each its proper office, letter large
+    Label and label, then with solemn charge,
+    Reviewing learnedly the list complete
+    Of chemical reactives, from thy feet
+    Push down the same to me, attent below,
+    Power in abundance: armed wherewith I go
+    To play the enlivener. Bring good antique stuff!
+    Was it alight once? Still lives spark enough
+    For breath to quicken, run the smouldering ash
+    Red right-through. What, "stone-dead" were fools so rash
+    As style my Avison, because he lacked
+    Modern appliance, spread out phrase unracked
+    By modulations fit to make each hair
+    Stiffen upon his wig? See there--and there!
+    I sprinkle my reactives, pitch broadcast
+    Discords and resolutions, turn aghast
+    Melody's easy-going, jostle law
+    With license, modulate (no Bach in awe),
+    Change enharmonically (Hudl to thank),
+    And lo, up-start the flamelets,--what was blank
+    Turns scarlet, purple, crimson! Straightway scanned
+    By eyes that like new lustre--Love once more
+    Yearns through the Largo, Hatred as before
+    Rages in the Rubato: e'en thy March,
+    My Avison, which, sooth to say--(ne'er arch
+    Eyebrows in anger!)--timed, in Georgian years
+    The step precise of British Grenadiers
+    To such a nicety,--if score I crowd,
+    If rhythm I break, if beats I vary,--tap
+    At bar's off-starting turns true thunder-clap,
+    Ever the pace augmented till--what's here?
+    Titanic striding toward Olympus!
+
+    X
+
+                                      Fear
+    No such irreverent innovation! Still
+    Glide on, go rolling, water-like, at will--
+    Nay, were thy melody in monotone,
+    The due three-parts dispensed with!
+
+    XI
+
+                                      This alone
+    Comes of my tiresome talking: Music's throne
+    Seats somebody whom somebody unseats,
+    And whom in turn--by who knows what new feats
+    Of strength,--shall somebody as sure push down,
+    Consign him dispossessed of sceptre, crown,
+    And orb imperial--whereto?--Never dream
+    That what once lived shall ever die! They seem
+    Dead--do they? lapsed things lost in limbo? Bring
+    Our life to kindle theirs, and straight each king
+    Starts, you shall see, stands up, from head to foot
+    No inch that is not Purcell! Wherefore? (Suit
+    Measure to subject, first--no marching on
+    Yet in thy bold C Major, Avison,
+    As suited step a minute since: no: wait--
+    Into the minor key first modulate--
+    Gently with A, now--in the Lesser Third!)
+
+The really serious conclusion of the poem amounts to a doctrine of
+relativity in art and not only in art but in ethics and religion. It is
+a statement in poetry of the prevalent thought of the nineteenth
+century, of which the most widely known exponent was Herbert Spencer.
+The form in which every truth manifests itself is partial and therefore
+will pass, but the underlying truth, the absolute which unfolds itself
+in form after form is eternal. Every manifestation in form, according to
+Browning, however, has also its infinite value in relation to the truth
+which is preserved through it.
+
+    XII
+
+    Of all the lamentable debts incurred
+    By Man through buying knowledge, this were worst:
+    That he should find his last gain prove his first
+    Was futile--merely nescience absolute,
+    Not knowledge in the bud which holds a fruit
+    Haply undreamed of in the soul's Spring-tide,
+    Pursed in the petals Summer opens wide,
+    And Autumn, withering, rounds to perfect ripe,--
+    Not this,--but ignorance, a blur to wipe
+    From human records, late it graced so much.
+    "Truth--this attainment? Ah, but such and such
+    Beliefs of yore seemed inexpugnable.
+
+    "When we attained them! E'en as they, so will
+    This their successor have the due morn, noon,
+    Evening and night--just as an old-world tune
+    Wears out and drops away, until who hears
+    Smilingly questions--'This it was brought tears
+    Once to all eyes,--this roused heart's rapture once?'
+    So will it be with truth that, for the nonce,
+    Styles itself truth perennial: 'ware its wile!
+    Knowledge turns nescience,--foremost on the file,
+    Simply proves first of our delusions."
+
+    XIII
+
+                                      Now--
+    Blare it forth, bold C Major! Lift thy brow,
+    Man, the immortal, that wast never fooled
+    With gifts no gifts at all, nor ridiculed--
+    Man knowing--he who nothing knew! As Hope,
+    Fear, Joy, and Grief,--though ampler stretch and scope
+    They seek and find in novel rhythm, fresh phrase,--
+    Were equally existent in far days
+    Of Music's dim beginning--even so,
+    Truth was at full within thee long ago,
+    Alive as now it takes what latest shape
+    May startle thee by strangeness. Truths escape
+    Time's insufficient garniture; they fade,
+    They fall--those sheathings now grown sere, whose aid
+    Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine
+    And free through March frost: May dews crystalline
+    Nourish truth merely,--does June boast the fruit
+    As--not new vesture merely but, to boot,
+    Novel creation? Soon shall fade and fall
+    Myth after myth--the husk-like lies I call
+    New truth's corolla-safeguard: Autumn comes,
+    So much the better!
+
+As to the questions why music does not give feeling immortality through
+sound, and why it should be so ephemeral in its appeal, there are
+various things to be said. It is just possible that it may soon come to
+be recognized that the psychic growth of humanity is more perfectly
+reflected in music than any where else. Ephemeralness may be predicated
+of culture-music more certainly than of folk-music, why? Because
+culture-music often has occupied itself more with the technique than
+with the content, while folk-music, being the spontaneous expression of
+feeling must have content. Folk-music, it is true, is simple, but if it
+be genuine in its feeling I doubt whether it ever loses its power to
+move. Therefore, in folk-music is possibly made permanent simple states
+of feeling. Now in culture-music, the development has constantly been
+in the direction of the expression of the ultimate spiritual reality of
+emotions. Music is now actually trying to accomplish what Browning
+demands of it:
+
+                            "Dredging deeper yet,
+    Drag into day,--by sound, thy master-net,--
+    The abysmal bottom-growth, ambiguous thing
+    Unbroken of a branch, palpitating
+    With limbs' play and life's semblance! There it lies,
+    Marvel and mystery, of mysteries
+    And marvels, most to love and laud thee for!
+    Save it from chance and change we most abhor."
+
+This is true no matter what the emotion may be. Hate may have its
+"eidolon" as well as love. Above all arts, music has the power of
+raising evil into a region of the artistically beautiful. Doubt,
+despair, passion, become blossoms plucked by the hand of God when
+transmuted in the alembic of the brain of genius--which is not saying
+that he need experience any of these passions himself. In fact, it is
+his power of perceiving the eidolon of beauty in modes of passion or
+emotion not his own that makes him the great genius.
+
+It is doubtless true that whenever in culture-music there has really
+been content aroused by feeling, no matter what the stage of technique
+reached, _that_ music retains its power to move. It is also highly
+probably that in the earlier objective phases of music, even the
+contemporary audiences were not moved in the sense that we should be
+moved to-day. The audiences were objective also and their enthusiasm may
+have been aroused by merely the imitative aspects of music as Avison
+called them. It is certainly a fact that content and form are more
+closely linked in music than in any other art. Suppose, however, we
+imagine the development of melody, counterpoint, harmony, modulation,
+etc., to be symbolized by a series of concrete materials like clay
+bricks, silver bricks, gold bricks, diamond bricks; a beautiful thought
+might take as exquisite a form in bricks of clay as it would in diamond
+bricks, or diamond bricks might be flung together without any informing
+thought so that they would attract only the thoughtless by their
+glitter. But it also follows that, with the increase in the kinds of
+bricks, there is an increase in the possibilities for subtleties in
+psychic expression, therefore music to-day is coming nearer and nearer
+to the spiritual reality of feeling. It requires the awakened soul that
+Maeterlinck talks about, that is, the soul alive to the spiritual
+essences of things to recognize this new realm which composers are
+bringing to us in music.
+
+There are always, at least three kinds of appreciators of music, those
+who can see beauty only in the masters of the past, those who can see
+beauty only in the last new composer, and those who ecstatically welcome
+beauty past, present and to come. These last are not only psychically
+developed themselves, but they are able to retain delight in simpler
+modes of feeling. They may be raised to a seventh heaven of delight by a
+Bach fugue played on a clavichord by Mr. Dolmetsch, feeling as if angels
+were ministering unto them, or to a still higher heaven of delight by a
+Tschaikowsky symphony or a string quartet of Grieg, feeling that here
+the seraphim continually do cry, or they may enter into the very
+presence of the most High through some subtly exquisite and psychic song
+of an American composer, for some of the younger American composers are
+indeed approaching "Truth's very heart of truth," in their music.
+
+On the whole, one gets rather the impression that the poet has here
+tackled a problem upon which he did not have great insight. He passes
+from one mood to another, none of which seem especially satisfactory to
+himself, and concludes with one of the half-truths of nineteenth-century
+thought. It is true as far as it goes that forms evolve, and it is a
+good truth to oppose to the martinets of settled standards in poetry,
+music and painting; it is also true that the form is a partial
+expression of a whole truth, but there is the further truth that, let a
+work of art be really a work of genius, and the form as well as the
+content touches the infinite; that is, we have as Browning says in a
+poem already quoted, "Bernard de Mandeville," the very sun in little, or
+as he makes Abt Vogler say of his music, the broken arc which goes to
+the formation of the perfect round, or to quote still another poem of
+Browning's, "Cleon," the perfect rhomb or trapezoid that has its own
+place in a mosaic pavement.
+
+[Illustration: Avison's March]
+
+The poem closes in a rolicking frame of mind, which is not remarkably
+consistent with the preceding thought, except that the poet seems
+determined to get all he can out of the music of the past by enlivening
+it with his own jolly mood. To this end he sets a patriotic poem to the
+tune of Avison's march, in honor of our old friend, Pym. It is a clever
+_tour de force_ for the words are made to match exactly in rhythm and
+quantity the notes of the march. Truth to say, the essential goodness of
+the tune comes out by means of these enlivening words.
+
+    XIV
+
+                            Therefore--bang the drums,
+    Blow the trumpets, Avison! March-motive? that's
+    Truth which endures resetting. Sharps and flats,
+    Lavish at need, shall dance athwart thy score
+    When ophicleide and bombardon's uproar
+    Mate the approaching trample, even now
+    Big in the distance--or my ears deceive--
+    Of federated England, fitly weave
+    March-music for the Future!
+
+    XV
+
+                            Or suppose
+    Back, and not forward, transformation goes?
+    Once more some sable-stoled procession--say,
+    From Little-ease to Tyburn--wends its way,
+    Out of the dungeon to the gallows-tree
+    Where heading, hacking, hanging is to be
+    Of half-a-dozen recusants--this day
+    Three hundred years ago! How duly drones
+    Elizabethan plain-song--dim antique
+    Grown clarion-clear the while I humbly wreak
+    A classic vengeance on thy March! It moans--
+    Larges and Longs and Breves displacing quite
+    Crotchet-and-quaver pertness--brushing bars
+    Aside and filling vacant sky with stars
+    Hidden till now that day returns to night.
+
+    XVI
+
+    Nor night nor day: one purpose move us both,
+    Be thy mood mine! As thou wast minded, Man's
+    The cause our music champions: I were loth
+    To think we cheered our troop to Preston Pans
+    Ignobly: back to times of England's best!
+    Parliament stands for privilege--life and limb
+    Guards Hollis, Haselrig, Strode, Hampden, Pym,
+    The famous Five. There's rumor of arrest.
+    Bring up the Train Bands, Southwark! They protest:
+    Shall we not all join chorus? Hark the hymn,
+    --Rough, rude, robustious--homely heart a-throb,
+    Harsh voises a-hallo, as beseems the mob!
+    How good is noise! what's silence but despair
+    Of making sound match gladness never there?
+    Give me some great glad "subject," glorious Bach,
+    Where cannon-roar not organ-peal we lack!
+    Join in, give voice robustious rude and rough,--
+    Avison helps--so heart lend noise enough!
+
+    Fife, trump, drum, sound! and singers then,
+    Marching, say "Pym, the man of men!"
+    Up, head's, your proudest--out, throats, your loudest--
+    "Somerset's Pym!"
+
+    Strafford from the block, Eliot from the den,
+    Foes, friends, shout "Pym, our citizen!"
+    Wail, the foes he quelled,--hail, the friends he held,
+    "Tavistock's Pym!"
+
+    Hearts prompt heads, hands that ply the pen
+    Teach babes unborn the where and when
+    --Tyrants, he braved them,--
+    Patriots, he saved them--
+    "Westminster's Pym."
+
+Another English musician, Arthur Chappell, was the inspiration of a
+graceful little sonnet written by the poet in an album which was
+presented to Mr. Chappell in recognition of his popular concerts in
+London. Browning was a constant attendant at these. It gives a true
+glimpse of the poet in a highly appreciative mood:
+
+
+    THE FOUNDER OF THE FEAST
+
+    1884
+
+    "Enter my palace," if a prince should say--
+      "Feast with the Painters! See, in bounteous row,
+      They range from Titian up to Angelo!"
+    Could we be silent at the rich survey?
+    A host so kindly, in as great a way
+      Invites to banquet, substitutes for show
+      Sound that's diviner still, and bids us know
+    Bach like Beethoven; are we thankless, pray?
+
+    Thanks, then, to Arthur Chappell,--thanks to him
+      Whose every guest henceforth not idly vaunts
+      "Sense has received the utmost Nature grants,
+    My cup was filled with rapture to the brim,
+      When, night by night,--ah, memory, how it haunts!--
+      Music was poured by perfect ministrants,
+    By Halle, Schumann, Piatti, Joachim."
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber Notes
+
+Typographical inconsistencies have been changed and are listed below.
+
+Archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation are preserved.
+
+Author's punctuation style is preserved, except where noted.
+
+Some illustrations moved to one page later.
+
+Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Passages in bold indicated by =equal signs=.
+
+Emphasized words within italics indicated by plus +emphasis+.
+
+
+Transcriber Changes
+
+The following changes were made to the original text:
+
+  Page 10: Removed extra quote after Keats (What porridge had John
+           =Keats?=)
+
+  Page 21: Was 'blurrs' (Stray-leaves, fragments, =blurs= and blottings)
+
+  Page 49: Paragraph continued, no quote needed (=Tibullus= gives
+           Virgil equal credit for having in his writings touched
+           with telling truth)
+
+  Page 53: Was 'Shakesspeare' (Jonson wrote for the First Folio edition
+           of =Shakespeare= printed in 1623)
+
+  Page 53: Was 'B. I.' (=B. J.=)
+
+  Page 53: Added single quotes (Shakespeare's talk in "At the
+           ='Mermaid'=" grows out of the supposition)
+
+  Page 69: Was 'Shakepeare's' (He thinks the opening Sonnets are to the
+           Earl of Southampton, known to be =Shakespeare's= patron)
+
+  Page 81: Added comma after Strafford (not Pym, the leader of the
+           people, but =Strafford,= the supporter of the King.)
+
+  Page 85: Added end quote (some half-dozen years of immunity to the
+           'fretted tenement' of Strafford's 'fiery =soul'=)
+
+  Page 91: Capitalized King (The =King=, upon his visit to Scotland,
+           had been shocked)
+
+  Page 100: Was 'Finnees' (Hampden, Hollis, the younger Vane, Rudyard,
+            =Fiennes= and many of the Presbyterian Party)
+
+  Page 136: Removed extra start quote ("Be my friend =Of= friends!"--My
+            King! I would have....)
+
+  Page 137: Was 'brillance' (The else imperial =brilliance= of your mind)
+
+  Page 137: Was 'you way' (If Pym is busy,--=you may= write of Pym.)
+
+  Page 140: Capitalized King (the =King=, therefore, summoned it to meet
+            on the third of November.)
+
+  Page 142: Matching the original: leaving it hyphenated (the greatest
+            in England would have stood =dis-covered=.')
+
+  Page 172: Was 'Partiot' (The =Patriot= Pym, or the Apostate Strafford!)
+
+  Page 174: Was 'perfers' (The King =prefers= to leave the door ajar)
+
+  Page 178: Was 'her's' (I am =hers= now, and I will die.)
+
+  Page 193: Was 'Bethrothal' (Till death us do join past parting--that
+            sounds like =Betrothal= indeed!)
+
+  Page 200: Was 'canonade' (Such a castle seldom crumbles by sheer
+            stress of =cannonade=: 'Tis when foes are foiled and
+            fighting's finished that vile rains invade)
+
+  Page 203: Inserted stanza (=Down= I sat to cards, one evening)
+
+  Page 203: Added starting quote (="When= he found his voice, he
+            stammered 'That expression once again!')
+
+  Page 204: Added starting quote (='End= it! no time like the present!)
+
+  Page 224: Changed comma to period (the morning's lessons conned with
+            the =tutor.= There, too, it was that he impressed on the lad
+            those maxims)
+
+  Page 236: Added end quote (Why, he makes sure of her--"do you say,
+            =yes"=-- "She'll not say, no,"--what comes it to beside?)
+
+  Page 265: Added stanza ("'=I've= been about those laces we need for
+            ... never mind!)
+
+  Page 266: Keeping original spelling (With =dreriment= about, within
+            may life be found)
+
+  Page 267: Added stanza ("'=Wicked= dear Husband, first despair and
+            then rejoice!)
+
+  Page 276: Was 'checks' (The dryness of "Aristotle's =cheeks=" is as
+            usual so enlivened by Browning that the fate of Halbert and
+            Hob grows)
+
+  Page 289: Added starting quote (="You= wrong your poor disciple.)
+
+  Page 290: Removed end quote (Wish I could take you; but fame travels
+            =fast=)
+
+  Page 291: Was 'aud' (Aunt =and= niece, you and me.)
+
+  Page 294: Was 'oustide' (Such =outside=! Now,--confound me for a prig!)
+
+  Page 299: Changed singe quote to double (="Not= you! But I see.)
+
+  Page 315: Was 'Descretion' (To live and die together--for a month,
+            =Discretion= can award no more!)
+
+  Page 329: Removed starting quote ("He may believe; and yet, and yet
+            =How= can he?" All eyes turn with interest.)
+
+  Page 344: Left in ending quote with unknown start (High Church, and
+            the Evangelicals, or Low =Church."=)
+
+  Page 370: Changed period to comma (Judgment drops her damning
+            =plummet,= Pronouncing such a fatal space)
+
+  Page 421: Removed starting quote (=About= the year 1676, the
+            corporation of Newcastle contributed)
+
+  Page 429: Added period (whose little book and large tune had led him
+            the long way from =to-day.=")
+
+  Page 437: Was 'irreverant' (gives that up as an =irreverent=
+            innovation.)
+
+  Page 440: Added beginning quote (="When= we attained them!)
+
+  Page 445: Added comma (we have as Browning says in a poem already
+            =quoted,= "Bernard de Mandeville,")
+
+
+
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Browning’s England, by Helen Archibald Clarke</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Browning’s England<br />
+  A Study in English Influences in Browning</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Helen Archibald Clarke</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: July 10, 2009 [eBook #29365]<br />
+[Most recently updated: October 24, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Ted Garvin, Linda Cantoni (music), Katherine Ward and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING’S ENGLAND ***</div>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_1" id="linki_1"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus001.jpg" width="295" height="400" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="center">
+<h1>Browning's England</h1>
+
+<p>A STUDY OF<br />
+ENGLISH INFLUENCES IN BROWNING</p>
+
+<p class="padtop"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br />
+<span class="larger">HELEN ARCHIBALD CLARKE</span><br />
+<span class="smaller">Author of "<i>Browning's Italy</i>"</span></p>
+
+<p class="padtop">NEW YORK<br />
+THE BAKER &amp; TAYLOR COMPANY<br />
+MCMVIII</p>
+
+<p class="padtop smaller"><i>Copyright, 1908, by</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Baker &amp; Taylor Company</span></p>
+
+<p class="smaller">Published, October, 1908</p>
+
+<p class="padtop smaller"><i>The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+<p class="padtop" style="line-height: 1.5em;"><b>To</b><br />
+MY COLLEAGUE IN PLEASANT LITERARY PATHS<br />
+<span class="smcap">and</span><br />
+MANY YEARS FRIEND<br />
+<span class="larger">CHARLOTTE PORTER</span></p>
+
+</div>
+<hr />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table border='0' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' width='100%' summary='Contents'>
+<tr>
+  <td align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'><span class="smaller">CHAPTER</span></td>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align='right'><span class="smaller">PAGE</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>I.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class="smcap">English Poets, Friends, and Enthusiasms</span></td>
+  <td valign='middle' align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">1</a><br /></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>II.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class="smcap">Shakespeare's Portrait</span></td>
+  <td valign='middle' align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">42</a><br /></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>III.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class="smcap">A Crucial Period in English History</span></td>
+  <td valign='middle' align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">79</a><br /></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>IV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class="smcap">Social Aspects of English Life</span></td>
+  <td valign='middle' align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">211</a><br /></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>V.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class="smcap">Religious Thought in the Nineteenth Century</span></td>
+  <td valign='middle' align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">322</a><br /></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>VI.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class="smcap">Art Criticism Inspired by the English Musician, Avison</span></td>
+  <td valign='middle' align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">420</a><br /></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<table border='0' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' width='100%' summary='Illustration List'>
+<tr><td align='left'>Browning at 23</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_1"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'><span class="smaller">PAGE</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Percy Bysshe Shelley</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_2">4</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>John Keats</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_3">10</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>William Wordsworth</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_4">16</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Rydal Mount, the Home of Wordsworth</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_5">22</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>An English Lane</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_6">33</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>First Folio Portrait of Shakespeare</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_7">60</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Charles I in Scene of Impeachment</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_8">80</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_9">88</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Charles I</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_10">114</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Whitehall</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_11">120</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Westminster Hall</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_12">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Tower, London</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_13">170</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Tower, Traitors' Gate</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_14">183</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>An English Manor House</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_15">222</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>An English Park</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_16">240</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>John Bunyan</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_17">274</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>An English Inn</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_18">288</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Cardinal Wiseman</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_19">336</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Sacred Heart</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_20">342</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Nativity</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_21">351</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Transfiguration</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_22">366</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Handel</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_23">426</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Avison's March</td><td align='right'><a href="#linki_24">446</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">1</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<p class="subtitle">ENGLISH POETS, FRIENDS AND ENTHUSIASMS</p>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="dcap">To</span> any one casually trying to recall what
+England has given Robert Browning
+by way of direct poetical inspiration, it is
+more than likely that the little poem about
+Shelley, "Memorabilia" would at once occur:</p>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And did he stop and speak to you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And did you speak to him again?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How strange it seems and new!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"But you were living before that,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And also you are living after;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the memory I started at&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My starting moves your laughter!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">III</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I crossed a moor, with a name of its own<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And a certain use in the world, no doubt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Mid the blank miles round about:<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">2</a></span></p>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"For there I picked up on the heather<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And there I put inside my breast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Well, I forget the rest."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It puts into a mood and a symbol the almost
+worshipful admiration felt by Browning for
+the poet in his youth, which he had, many
+years before this little lyric was written, recorded
+in a finely appreciative passage in
+"Pauline."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou are gone from us; years go by and spring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gladdens and the young earth is beautiful,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet thy songs come not, other bards arise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But none like thee: they stand, thy majesties,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like mighty works which tell some spirit there<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till, its long task completed, it hath risen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And left us, never to return, and all<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rush in to peer and praise when all in vain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The air seems bright with thy past presence yet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But thou art still for me as thou hast been<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I have stood with thee as on a throne<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With all thy dim creations gathered round<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like mountains, and I felt of mould like them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with them creatures of my own were mixed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like things, half-lived, catching and giving life.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But thou art still for me who have adored<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tho' single, panting but to hear thy name<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">3</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Which I believed a spell to me alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scarce deeming thou wast as a star to men!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As one should worship long a sacred spring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scarce worth a moth's flitting, which long grasses cross,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And one small tree embowers droopingly&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Joying to see some wandering insect won<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To live in its few rushes, or some locust<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To pasture on its boughs, or some wild bird<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stoop for its freshness from the trackless air:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And then should find it but the fountain-head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long lost, of some great river washing towns<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And towers, and seeing old woods which will live<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But by its banks untrod of human foot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, when the great sun sinks, lie quivering<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In light as some thing lieth half of life<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before God's foot, waiting a wondrous change;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then girt with rocks which seek to turn or stay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its course in vain, for it does ever spread<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a sea's arm as it goes rolling on,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Being the pulse of some great country&mdash;so<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wast thou to me, and art thou to the world!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I, perchance, half feel a strange regret<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I am not what I have been to thee:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a girl one has silently loved long<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In her first loneliness in some retreat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, late emerged, all gaze and glow to view<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her fresh eyes and soft hair and lips which bloom<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a mountain berry: doubtless it is sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To see her thus adored, but there have been<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Moments when all the world was in our praise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweeter than any pride of after hours.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet, sun-treader, all hail! From my heart's heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I bid thee hail! E'en in my wildest dreams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I proudly feel I would have thrown to dust<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">4</a></span>
+<span class="i0">The wreaths of fame which seemed o'erhanging me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To see thee for a moment as thou art."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Browning was only fourteen when Shelley
+first came into his literary life. The story has
+often been told of how the young Robert,
+passing a bookstall one day spied in a box of
+second-hand volumes, a shabby little edition
+of Shelley advertised "Mr. Shelley's Atheistical
+Poems: very scarce." It seems almost
+incredible to us now that the name was an absolutely
+new one to him, and that only by
+questioning the bookseller did he learn that
+Shelley had written a number of volumes of
+poetry and that he was now dead. This accident
+was sufficient to inspire the incipient poet's
+curiosity, and he never rested until he was the
+owner of Shelley's works. They were hard
+to get hold of in those early days but the persistent
+searching of his mother finally unearthed
+them at Olliers' in Vere Street, London.
+She brought him also three volumes of Keats,
+who became a treasure second only to Shelley.</p>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_2" id="linki_2"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus002.jpg" width="335" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">Percy Bysshe Shelley</p>
+<p class="center">"Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The question of Shelley's influence on
+Browning's art has been one often discussed.
+There are many traces of Shelleyan music
+and idea in his early poems "Pauline," "Paracelsus,"
+and "Sordello," but no marked nor
+lasting impression was made upon Browning's
+development as a poet by Shelley. Upon<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">5</a></span>
+Browning's personal development Shelley exerted
+a short-lived though somewhat intense
+influence. We see the young enthusiast professing
+the atheism of his idol as the liberal
+views of Shelley were then interpreted, and
+even becoming a vegetarian. As time went
+on the discipleship vanished, and in its place
+came the recognition on Browning's part of a
+poetic spirit akin yet different from his own.
+The last trace of the disciple appears in
+"Sordello" when the poet addresses Shelley
+among the audience of dead great ones he has
+mustered to listen to the story of Sordello:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;"Stay&mdash;thou, spirit, come not near<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now&mdash;not this time desert thy cloudy place<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To scare me, thus employed, with that pure face!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I need not fear this audience, I make free<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With them, but then this is no place for thee!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Up out of memories of Marathon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would echo like his own sword's grinding screech<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Braying a Persian shield,&mdash;the silver speech<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turn intense as a trumpet sounding in<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Knights to tilt,&mdash;wert thou to hear!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Shelley appears in the work of Browning
+once more in the prose essay on Shelley
+which was written to a volume of spurious
+letters of that poet published in 1851. In
+this is summed up in a masterful paragraph<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">6</a></span>
+reflecting Browning's unusual penetration into
+the secret paths of the poetic mind, the characteristics
+of a poet of Shelley's order. The
+paragraph is as follows:</p>
+
+<p>"We turn with stronger needs to the genius
+of an opposite tendency&mdash;the subjective poet
+of modern classification. He, gifted like the
+objective poet, with the fuller perception of
+nature and man, is impelled to embody the
+thing he perceives, not so much with reference
+to the many below as to the One above him,
+the supreme Intelligence which apprehends
+all things in their absolute truth,&mdash;an ultimate
+view ever aspired to, if but partially
+attained, by the poet's own soul. Not what
+man sees, but what God sees,&mdash;the <i>Ideas</i> of
+Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly on
+the Divine Hand,&mdash;it is toward these that
+he struggles. Not with the combination
+of humanity in action, but with the primal
+elements of humanity, he has to do; and
+he digs where he stands,&mdash;preferring to seek
+them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of
+that absolute Mind, according to the intuitions
+of which he desires to perceive and speak.
+Such a poet does not deal habitually with the
+picturesque groupings and tempestuous tossings
+of the forest-trees, but with their roots
+and fibers naked to the chalk and stone. He<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">7</a></span>
+does not paint pictures and hang them on the
+walls, but rather carries them on the retina of
+his own eyes: we must look deep into his
+human eyes, to see those pictures on them. He
+is rather a seer, accordingly, than a fashioner,
+and what he produces will be less a work than
+an effluence. That effluence cannot be easily
+considered in abstraction from his personality,&mdash;being
+indeed the very radiance and aroma
+of his personality, projected from it but not
+separated. Therefore, in our approach to
+the poetry, we necessarily approach the personality
+of the poet; in apprehending it, we
+apprehend him, and certainly we cannot love
+it without loving him. Both for love's and for
+understanding's sake we desire to know him,
+and, as readers of his poetry, must be readers
+of his biography too."</p>
+
+<p>Finally, the little "Memorabilia" lyric gives
+a mood of cherished memory of the Sun-Treader,
+who beaconed him upon the heights
+in his youth, and has now become a molted
+eagle-feather held close to his heart.</p>
+
+<p>Keats' lesser but assured place in the poet's
+affections comes out in the pugnacious lyric,
+"Popularity," one of the old-time bits of
+ammunition shot from the guns of those who
+found Browning "obscure." The poem is an
+"apology" for any unappreciated poet with<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">8</a></span>
+the true stuff in him, but the allusion to Keats
+shows him to have been the fuse that fired this
+mild explosion against the dullards who pass
+by unknowing and uncaring of a genius,
+though he pluck with one hand thoughts
+from the stars, and with the other fight off
+want.</p>
+
+<h3>POPULARITY</h3>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Stand still, true poet that you are!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I know you; let me try and draw you.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some night you'll fail us: when afar<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You rise, remember one man saw you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knew you, and named a star!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My star, God's glow-worm! Why extend<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That loving hand of his which leads you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet locks you safe from end to end<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of this dark world, unless he needs you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just saves your light to spend?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">III</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His clenched hand shall unclose at last,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I know, and let out all the beauty:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My poet holds the future fast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Accepts the coming ages' duty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their present for this past.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That day, the earth's feast-master's brow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall clear, to God the chalice raising;<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span>
+<span class="i0">"Others give best at first, but thou<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Forever set'st our table praising,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keep'st the good wine till now!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">V</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Meantime, I'll draw you as you stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With few or none to watch and wonder:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll say&mdash;a fisher, on the sand<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By Tyre the old, with ocean-plunder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A netful, brought to land.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who has not heard how Tyrian shells<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Enclosed the blue, that dye of dyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whereof one drop worked miracles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And colored like Astarte's eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Raw silk the merchant sells?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And each bystander of them all<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Could criticise, and quote tradition<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How depths of blue sublimed some pall<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">&mdash;To get which, pricked a king's ambition;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worth sceptre, crown and ball.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet there's the dye, in that rough mesh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The sea has only just o'er-whispered!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Live whelks, each lip's beard dripping fresh<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As if they still the water's lisp heard<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thro' foam the rock-weeds thresh.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span></p>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Enough to furnish Solomon<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Such hangings for his cedar-house,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That, when gold-robed he took the throne<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In that abyss of blue, the Spouse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might swear his presence shone<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">X</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Most like the centre-spike of gold<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which burns deep in the blue-bell's womb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What time, with ardors manifold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The bee goes singing to her groom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drunken and overbold.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mere conchs! not fit for warp or woof!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till cunning come to pound and squeeze<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And clarify,&mdash;refine to proof<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The liquor filtered by degrees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the world stands aloof.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And there's the extract, flasked and fine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And priced and salable at last!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Hobbs, Nobbs, Stokes and Nokes combine<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To paint the future from the past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Put blue into their line.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hobbs hints blue,&mdash;straight he turtle eats:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nobbs prints blue,&mdash;claret crowns his cup:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Both gorge. Who fished the murex up?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What porridge had John <a name='TC_1'></a><ins title="Removed extra quote after Keats">Keats?</ins><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_3" id="linki_3"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus003.jpg" width="337" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">John Keats</p>
+
+<table style='margin: auto;' summary=''><tr><td>
+<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;'>
+"Who fished the murex up?<br />
+What porridge had John Keats?"</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span>
+Wordsworth, it appears, was, so to speak,
+the inverse inspiration of the stirring lines
+"The Lost Leader." Browning's strong sympathies
+with the Liberal cause are here portrayed
+with an ardor which is fairly intoxicating
+poetically, but one feels it is scarcely just
+to the mild-eyed, exemplary Wordsworth, and
+perhaps exaggeratedly sure of Shakespeare's
+attitude on this point. It is only fair to Browning,
+to point out how he himself felt later that
+his artistic mood had here run away with
+him, whereupon he made amends honorable in
+a letter in reply to the question whether he had
+Wordsworth in mind: "I can only answer,
+with something of shame and contrition, that
+I undoubtedly had Wordsworth in my mind&mdash;but
+simply as a model; you know an artist
+takes one or two striking traits in the features
+of his 'model,' and uses them to start his fancy
+on a flight which may end far enough from the
+good man or woman who happens to be sitting
+for nose and eye. I thought of the great Poet's
+abandonment of liberalism at an unlucky juncture,
+and no repaying consequence that I
+could ever see. But, once call my fancy-portrait
+<i>Wordsworth</i>&mdash;and how much more
+ought one to say!"</p>
+
+<p>The defection of Wordsworth from liberal
+sympathies is one of the commonplaces of<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span>
+literary history. There was a time when he
+figured in his poetry as a patriotic leader of
+the people, when in clarion tones he exhorted
+his countrymen to "arm and combine in defense
+of their common birthright." But this
+was in the enthusiasm of his youth when he
+and Southey and Coleridge were metaphorically
+waving their red caps for the principles of
+the French Revolution. The unbridled actions
+of the French Revolutionists, quickly
+cooled off their ardor, and as Taine cleverly
+puts it, "at the end of a few years, the three,
+brought back into the pale of State and Church,
+were, Coleridge, a Pittite journalist, Wordsworth,
+a distributor of stamps, and Southey,
+poet-laureate; all converted zealots, decided
+Anglicans, and intolerant conservatives."
+The "handful of silver" for which the patriot
+in the poem is supposed to have left the cause
+included besides the post of "distributor of
+stamps," given to him by Lord Lonsdale in
+1813, a pension of three hundred pounds a
+year in 1842, and the poet-laureateship in
+1843.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these offices was received so long
+after the cooling of Wordsworth's "Revolution"
+ardors which the events of 1793 had
+brought about that it can scarcely be said to
+have influenced his change of mind.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span>It was during Wordsworth's residence in
+France, from November 1791 to December
+1792, that his enthusiasm for the French
+Revolution reached white heat. How the
+change was wrought in his feelings is shown
+with much penetration and sympathy by
+Edward Dowden in his "French Revolution
+and English Literature." "When war between
+France and England was declared
+Wordsworth's nature underwent the most
+violent strain it had ever experienced. He
+loved his native land yet he could wish for
+nothing but disaster to her arms. As the
+days passed he found it more and more difficult
+to sustain his faith in the Revolution.
+First, he abandoned belief in the leaders but
+he still trusted to the people, then the people
+seemed to have grown insane with the intoxication
+of blood. He was driven back from
+his defense of the Revolution, in its historical
+development, to a bare faith in the abstract
+idea. He clung to theories, the free and joyous
+movement of his sympathies ceased;
+opinions stifled the spontaneous life of the
+spirit, these opinions were tested and retested
+by the intellect, till, in the end, exhausted by
+inward debate, he yielded up moral questions
+in despair ... by process of the understanding
+alone Wordsworth could attain no<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span>
+vital body of truth. Rather he felt that
+things of far more worth than political opinions&mdash;natural
+instincts, sympathies, passions, intuitions&mdash;were
+being disintegrated or denaturalized.
+Wordsworth began to suspect
+the analytic intellect as a source of moral
+wisdom. In place of humanitarian dreams
+came a deep interest in the joys and sorrows
+of individual men and women; through his
+interest in this he was led back to a study of
+the mind of man and those laws which connect
+the work of the creative imagination
+with the play of the passions. He had begun
+again to think nobly of the world and human
+life." He was, in fact, a more thorough
+Democrat socially than any but Burns of
+the band of poets mentioned in Browning's
+gallant company, not even excepting Browning
+himself.</p>
+
+<h3>THE LOST LEADER</h3>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Just for a handful of silver he left us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Just for a riband to stick in his coat&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lost all the others, she lets us devote;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So much was theirs who so little allowed:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How all our copper had gone for his service!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rags&mdash;were they purple, his heart had been proud!<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span>
+<span class="i0">We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Made him our pattern to live and to die!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Burns, Shelley, were with us,&mdash;they watch from their graves!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He alone breaks from the van and the freeman,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">&mdash;He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We shall march prospering,&mdash;not thro' his presence<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Songs may inspirit us,&mdash;not from his lyre;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deeds will be done,&mdash;while he boasts his quiescence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Life's night begins: let him never come back to us!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">There would be doubt, hesitation and pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forced praise on our part&mdash;the glimmer of twilight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Never glad confident morning again!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Best fight on well, for we taught him&mdash;strike gallantly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Menace our hearts ere we master his own;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Whether an artist is justified in taking the
+most doubtful feature of his model's physiognomy
+and building up from it a repellent
+portrait is question for debate, especially
+when he admits its incompleteness. But we<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span>
+may balance against this incompleteness, the
+fine fire of enthusiasm for the "cause" in the
+poem, and the fact that Wordsworth has
+not been at all harmed by it. The worst
+that has happened is the raising in our
+minds of a question touching Browning's
+good taste.</p>
+
+<p>Just here it will be interesting to speak of a
+bit of purely personal expression on the subject
+of Browning's known liberal standpoint,
+written by him in answer to the question propounded
+to a number of English men of letters
+and printed together with other replies in a
+volume edited by Andrew Reid in 1885.</p>
+
+<h3>"Why I am a Liberal."</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Why?' Because all I haply can and do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All that I am now, all I hope to be,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whence comes it save from fortune setting free<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Body and soul the purpose to pursue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">These shall I bid men&mdash;each in his degree<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Also God-guided&mdash;bear, and gayly too?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"But little do or can the best of us:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That little is achieved thro' Liberty.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who then dares hold, emancipated thus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His fellow shall continue bound? Not I,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A brother's right to freedom. That is 'Why.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_4" id="linki_4"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus004.jpg" width="346" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">William Wordsworth</p>
+
+<table style='margin: auto;' summary=''><tr><td>
+<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;'>
+"How all our copper had gone for his service.<br />
+Rags&mdash;were they purple, his heart had been proved."</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span>
+Enthusiasm for liberal views comes out
+again and again in the poetry of Browning.</p>
+
+<p>His fullest treatment of the cause of political
+liberty is in "Strafford," to be considered
+in the third chapter, but many are
+the hints strewn about his verse that bring
+home with no uncertain touch the fact that
+Browning lived man's "lover" and never
+man's "hater." Take as an example "The
+Englishman in Italy," where the sarcastic
+turn he gives to the last stanza shows clearly
+where his sympathies lie:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;"Such trifles!" you say?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fort&ugrave;, in my England at home,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Men meet gravely to-day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Be righteous and wise!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;If 't were proper, Scirocco should vanish<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In black from the skies!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>More the ordinary note of patriotism is
+struck in "Home-thoughts, from the Sea,"
+wherein the scenes of England's victories as
+they come before the poet arouse pride in her
+military achievements.</p>
+
+<h3>HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the dimmest North-east distance dawned Gibraltar grand and gray;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?"&mdash;say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In two instances Browning celebrates English
+friends in his poetry. The poems are
+"Waring" and "May and Death."</p>
+
+<p>Waring, who stands for Alfred Domett, is
+an interesting figure in Colonial history as
+well as a minor light among poets. But it is
+highly probable that he would not have been
+put into verse by Browning any more than
+many other of the poet's warm friends if it
+had not been for the incident described in
+the poem which actually took place, and
+made a strong enough impression to inspire a
+creative if not exactly an exalted mood on
+Browning's part. The incident is recorded in
+Thomas Powell's "Living Authors of England,"
+who writes of Domett, "We have a
+vivid recollection of the last time we saw him.
+It was at an evening party a few days before
+he sailed from England; his intimate friend,
+Mr. Browning, was also present. It happened
+that the latter was introduced that
+evening for the first time to a young author<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span>
+who had just then appeared in the literary
+world [Powell, himself]. This, consequently,
+prevented the two friends from conversation,
+and they parted from each other without
+the slightest idea on Mr. Browning's part that
+he was seeing his old friend Domett for the
+last time. Some days after when he found
+that Domett had sailed, he expressed in
+strong terms to the writer of this sketch the
+self-reproach he felt at having preferred the
+conversation of a stranger to that of his old
+associate."</p>
+
+<p>This happened in 1842, when with no good-bys,
+Domett sailed for New Zealand where
+he lived for thirty years, and held during that
+time many important official posts. Upon his
+return to England, Browning and he met again,
+and in his poem "Ranolf and Amohia," published
+the year after, he wrote the often quoted
+line so aptly appreciative of Browning's
+genius,&mdash;"Subtlest assertor of the soul in
+song."</p>
+
+<p>The poem belongs to the <i>vers de soci&eacute;t&eacute;</i>
+order, albeit the lightness is of a somewhat
+ponderous variety. It, however, has
+much interest as a character sketch from
+the life, and is said by those who had the
+opportunity of knowing to be a capital portrait.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>WARING</h3>
+
+<h4 class="poemctr">I</h4>
+<h5 class="sidenote">I</h5>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What's become of Waring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since he gave us all the slip,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Chose land-travel or seafaring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Boots and chest or staff and scrip,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rather than pace up and down<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Any longer London town?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h5 class="sidenote">II</h5>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who'd have guessed it from his lip<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or his brow's accustomed bearing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the night he thus took ship<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or started landward?&mdash;little caring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For us, it seems, who supped together<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Friends of his too, I remember)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And walked home thro' the merry weather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The snowiest in all December.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I left his arm that night myself<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For what's-his-name's, the new prose-poet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who wrote the book there, on the shelf&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How, forsooth, was I to know it<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If Waring meant to glide away<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a ghost at break of day?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Never looked he half so gay!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h5 class="sidenote">III</h5>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He was prouder than the devil:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How he must have cursed our revel!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ay and many other meetings,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Indoor visits, outdoor greetings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As up and down he paced this London,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With no work done, but great works undone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where scarce twenty knew his name.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why not, then, have earlier spoken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Written, bustled? Who's to blame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If your silence kept unbroken?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"True, but there were sundry jottings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stray-leaves, fragments, <a name='TC_2'></a><ins title="Was 'blurrs'">blurs</ins> and blottings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Certain first steps were achieved<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Already which"&mdash;(is that your meaning?)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Had well borne out whoe'er believed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In more to come!" But who goes gleaning<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hedgeside chance-glades, while full-sheaved<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o'erweening<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pride alone, puts forth such claims<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O'er the day's distinguished names.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h5 class="sidenote">IV</h5>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Meantime, how much I loved him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I find out now I've lost him.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I who cared not if I moved him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who could so carelessly accost him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Henceforth never shall get free<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of his ghostly company,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His eyes that just a little wink<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As deep I go into the merit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of this and that distinguished spirit&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His cheeks' raised color, soon to sink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As long I dwell on some stupendous<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Demoniaco-seraphic<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Penman's latest piece of graphic.<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, my very wrist grows warm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With his dragging weight of arm.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E'en so, swimmingly appears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through one's after-supper musings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some lost lady of old years<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With her beauteous vain endeavor<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And goodness unrepaid as ever;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The face, accustomed to refusings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We, puppies that we were.... Oh never<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Being aught like false, forsooth, to?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Telling aught but honest truth to?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What a sin, had we centupled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its possessor's grace and sweetness!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No! she heard in its completeness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Truth, for truth's a weighty matter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And truth, at issue, we can't flatter!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Well, 'tis done with; she's exempt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From damning us thro' such a sally;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so she glides, as down a valley,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Taking up with her contempt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Past our reach; and in, the flowers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shut her unregarded hours.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_5" id="linki_5"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus005.jpg" width="500" height="323" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">Rydal Mount, the Home of Wordsworth</p>
+</div>
+
+<h5 class="sidenote">V</h5>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh, could I have him back once more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This Waring, but one half-day more!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Back, with the quiet face of yore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So hungry for acknowledgment<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like mine! I'd fool him to his bent.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feed, should not he, to heart's content?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'd say, "to only have conceived,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Planned your great works, apart from progress,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Surpasses little works achieved!"<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span>
+<span class="i0">I'd lie so, I should be believed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'd make such havoc of the claims<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the day's distinguished names<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To feast him with, as feasts an ogress<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her feverish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or as one feasts a creature rarely<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Captured here, unreconciled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To capture; and completely gives<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its pettish humors license, barely<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Requiring that it lives.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h5 class="sidenote">VI</h5>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ichabod, Ichabod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The glory is departed!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Travels Waring East away?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who, of knowledge, by hearsay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Reports a man upstarted<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Somewhere as a god,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hordes grown European-hearted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Millions of the wild made tame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On a sudden at his fame?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Vishnu-land what Avatar?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the demurest of footfalls<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Over the Kremlin's pavement bright<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With serpentine and syenite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Steps, with five other Generals<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That simultaneously take snuff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For each to have pretext enough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And kerchiefwise unfold his sash<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, softness' self, is yet the stuff<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And leave the grand white neck no gash?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Waring in Moscow, to those rough<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Cold northern natures born perhaps,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the lambwhite maiden dear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the circle of mute kings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unable to repress the tear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each as his sceptre down he flings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To Dian's fane at Taurica,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where now a captive priestess, she alway<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amid their barbarous twitter!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ay, most likely 'tis in Spain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That we and Waring meet again<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its stiff gold blazing pall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From some black coffin-lid.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, best of all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I love to think<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The leaving us was just a feint;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Back here to London did he slink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And now works on without a wink<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of sleep, and we are on the brink<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of something great in fresco-paint:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some garret's ceiling, walls and floor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Up and down and o'er and o'er<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He splashes, as none splashed before<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since great Caldara Polidore.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or Music means this land of ours<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some favor yet, to pity won<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span>
+<span class="i0">By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Give me my so-long promised son,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let Waring end what I begun!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then down he creeps and out he steals<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only when the night conceals<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His face; in Kent 'tis cherry-time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or hops are picking: or at prime<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of March he wanders as, too happy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Years ago when he was young,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some mild eve when woods grew sappy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the early moths had sprung<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To life from many a trembling sheath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Woven the warm boughs beneath;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While small birds said to themselves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What should soon be actual song,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And young gnats, by tens and twelves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made as if they were the throng<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That crowd around and carry aloft<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of a myriad noises soft,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into a tone that can endure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amid the noise of a July noon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When all God's creatures crave their boon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All at once and all in tune,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And get it, happy as Waring then,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Having first within his ken<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What a man might do with men:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And far too glad, in the even-glow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To mix with the world he meant to take<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into his hand, he told you, so&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And out of it his world to make,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To contract and to expand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he shut or oped his hand.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh Waring, what's to really be?<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span>
+<span class="i0">A clear stage and a crowd to see!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some Garrick, say, out shall not he<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heart of Hamlet's mystery pluck?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, where most unclean beasts are rife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some Junius&mdash;am I right?&mdash;shall tuck<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some Chatterton shall have the luck<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of calling Rowley into life!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some one shall somehow run a muck<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With this old world for want of strife<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our men scarce seem in earnest now.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Distinguished names!&mdash;but 'tis, somehow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if they played at being names<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still more distinguished, like the games<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of children. Turn our sport to earnest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a visage of the sternest!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bring the real times back, confessed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still better than our very best!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<h4 class="poemctr">II</h4>
+<h5 class="sidenote">I</h5>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When I last saw Waring...."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(How all turned to him who spoke!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You saw Waring? Truth or joke?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In land-travel or sea-faring?)<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h5 class="sidenote">II</h5>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"We were sailing by Triest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where a day or two we harbored:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sunset was in the West,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, looking over the vessel's side,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span>
+<span class="i0">One of our company espied<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sudden speck to larboard.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as a sea-duck flies and swims<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At once, so came the light craft up,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With its sole lateen sail that trims<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And turns (the water round its rims<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dancing, as round a sinking cup)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And by us like a fish it curled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And drew itself up close beside,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its great sail on the instant furled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And o'er its thwarts a shrill voice cried,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Buy wine of us, you English Brig?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or fruit, tobacco and cigars?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A pilot for you to Triest?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without one, look you ne'er so big,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They'll never let you up the bay!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We natives should know best.'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I turned, and 'just those fellows' way,'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our captain said, 'The 'long-shore thieves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are laughing at us in their sleeves.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h5 class="sidenote">III</h5>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"In truth, the boy leaned laughing back;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And one, half-hidden by his side<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under the furled sail, soon I spied,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With great grass hat and kerchief black,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who looked up with his kingly throat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Said somewhat, while the other shook<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His hair back from his eyes to look<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their longest at us; then the boat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know not how, turned sharply round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laying her whole side on the sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a leaping fish does; from the lee<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the weather, cut somehow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her sparkling path beneath our bow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so went off, as with a bound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the rosy and golden half<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O' the sky, to overtake the sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And reach the shore, like the sea-calf<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its singing cave; yet I caught one<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Glance ere away the boat quite passed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And neither time nor toil could mar<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those features: so I saw the last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Waring!"&mdash;You? Oh, never star<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was lost here but it rose afar!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look East, where whole new thousands are!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Vishnu-land what Avatar?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"May and Death" is perhaps more interesting
+for the glimpse it gives of Browning's
+appreciation of English Nature than for
+its expression of grief for the death of a friend.</p>
+
+<h3>MAY AND DEATH</h3>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I wish that when you died last May,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Charles, there had died along with you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Three parts of spring's delightful things;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ay, and, for me, the fourth part too.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">There must be many a pair of friends<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Moon-births and the long evening-ends.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span></p>
+<h4 class="sidenote">III</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So, for their sake, be May still May!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Let their new time, as mine of old,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do all it did for me: I bid<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Only, one little sight, one plant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Woods have in May, that starts up green<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save a sole streak which, so to speak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is spring's blood, spilt its leaves between,&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">V</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That, they might spare; a certain wood<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Might miss the plant; their loss were small:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I,&mdash;whene'er the leaf grows there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Its drop comes from my heart, that's all.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The poet's one truly enthusiastic outburst
+in connection with English Nature he sings
+out in his longing for an English spring in
+the incomparable little lyric "Home-thoughts,
+from Abroad."</p>
+
+<h3>HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD</h3>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh, to be in England<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now that April's there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And whoever wakes in England<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sees, some morning, unaware,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span>
+<span class="i0">That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In England&mdash;now!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And after April, when May follows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leans to the field and scatters on the clover<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blossoms and dewdrops&mdash;at the bent spray's edge&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest you should think he never could recapture<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The first fine careless rapture!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All will be gay when noontide wakes anew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The buttercups, the little children's dower<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>After this it seems hardly possible that
+Browning, himself speaks in "De Gustibus,"
+yet long and happy living away from England
+doubtless dimmed his sense of the beauty of
+English landscape. "De Gustibus" was published
+ten years later than "Home-Thoughts
+from Abroad," when Italy and he had indeed
+become "lovers old." A deeper reason than
+mere delight in its scenery is also reflected
+in the poem; the sympathy shared with Mrs.
+Browning, for the cause of Italian independence.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span></p>
+<h3>"DE GUSTIBUS&mdash;&mdash;"</h3>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">(If our loves remain)<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">In an English lane,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hark, those two in the hazel coppice&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Making love, say,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The happier they!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Draw yourself up from the light of the moon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And let them pass, as they will too soon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">With the bean-flower's boon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And the blackbird's tune,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And May, and June!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What I love best in all the world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is a castle, precipice-encurled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or look for me, old fellow of mine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(If I get my head from out the mouth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And come again to the land of lands)&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a sea-side house to the farther South,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the baked cicala dies of drouth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And one sharp tree&mdash;'tis a cypress&mdash;stands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the many hundred years red-rusted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My sentinel to guard the sands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the water's edge. For, what expands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before the house, but the great opaque<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Blue breadth of sea without a break?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While, in the house, for ever crumbles<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some fragment of the frescoed walls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And says there's news to-day&mdash;the king<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;She hopes they have not caught the felons.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Italy, my Italy!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Queen Mary's saying serves for me&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">(When fortune's malice<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Lost her&mdash;Calais)&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Open my heart and you will see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Graved inside of it, "Italy."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such lovers old are I and she:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So it always was, so shall ever be!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Two or three English artists called forth
+appreciation in verse from Browning. There
+is the exquisite bit called "Deaf and Dumb,"
+after a group of statuary by Woolner, of Constance
+and Arthur&mdash;the deaf and dumb
+children of Sir Thomas Fairbairn.</p>
+
+<h3>DEAF AND DUMB</h3>
+
+<p class="poemctr">A GROUP BY WOOLNER.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Only the prism's obstruction shows aright<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The secret of a sunbeam, breaks its light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the jewelled bow from blankest white;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So may a glory from defect arise:<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Only by Deafness may the vexed Love wreak<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its insuppressive sense on brow and cheek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only by Dumbness adequately speak<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As favored mouth could never, through the eyes.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_6" id="linki_6"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus006.jpg" width="500" height="388" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">An English Lane</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>There is also the beautiful description in
+"Balaustion's Adventure" of the Alkestis by
+Sir Frederick Leighton.</p>
+
+<p>The flagrant anachronism of making a
+Greek girl at the time of the Fall of Athens
+describe an English picture cannot but be
+forgiven, since the artistic effect gained is so
+fine. The poet quite convinces the reader
+that Sir Frederick Leighton ought to have
+been a Kaunian painter, if he was not, and
+that Balaustion or no one was qualified to
+appreciate his picture at its full worth.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I know, too, a great Kaunian painter, strong<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As Herakles, though rosy with a robe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of grace that softens down the sinewy strength:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he has made a picture of it all.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There lies Alkestis dead, beneath the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She longed to look her last upon, beside<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sea, which somehow tempts the life in us<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To come trip over its white waste of waves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And try escape from earth, and fleet as free.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Behind the body, I suppose there bends<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Old Pheres in his hoary impotence;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And women-wailers, in a corner crouch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Four, beautiful as you four&mdash;yes, indeed!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Close, each to other, agonizing all,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span>
+<span class="i0">As fastened, in fear's rhythmic sympathy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To two contending opposite. There strains<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The might o' the hero 'gainst his more than match,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Death, dreadful not in thew and bone, but like<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The envenomed substance that exudes some dew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whereby the merely honest flesh and blood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will fester up and run to ruin straight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere they can close with, clasp and overcome<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The poisonous impalpability<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That simulates a form beneath the flow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of those grey garments; I pronounce that piece<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worthy to set up in our Poikil&eacute;!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And all came,&mdash;glory of the golden verse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And passion of the picture, and that fine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Frank outgush of the human gratitude<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which saved our ship and me, in Syracuse,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ay, and the tear or two which slipt perhaps<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Away from you, friends, while I told my tale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;It all came of this play that gained no prize!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why crown whom Zeus has crowned in soul before?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Once before had Sir Frederick Leighton
+inspired the poet in the exquisite lines on
+Eurydice.</p>
+
+<h3>EURYDICE TO ORPHEUS</h3>
+
+<p class="poemctr">A PICTURE BY LEIGHTON</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But give them me, the mouth, the eyes, the brow!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let them once more absorb me! One look now<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Will lap me round for ever, not to pass<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of its light, though darkness lie beyond:<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Hold me but safe again within the bond<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of one immortal look! All woe that was,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forgotten, and all terror that may be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Defied,&mdash;no past is mine, no future: look at me!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Beautiful as these lines are, they do not
+impress me as fully interpreting Leighton's
+picture. The expression of Eurydice is
+rather one of unthinking confiding affection&mdash;as
+if she were really unconscious or
+ignorant of the danger; while that of Orpheus
+is one of passionate agony as he tries
+to hold her off.</p>
+
+<p>Though English art could not fascinate the
+poet as Italian art did, for the fully sufficient
+reason that it does not stand for a great epoch
+of intellectual awakening, yet with what fair
+alchemy he has touched those few artists he
+has chosen to honor. Notwithstanding his
+avowed devotion to Italy, expressed in "De
+Gustibus," one cannot help feeling that in
+the poems mentioned in this chapter, there is
+that ecstasy of sympathy which goes only to
+the most potent influences in the formation
+of character. Something of what I mean is
+expressed in one of his latest poems, "Development."
+In this we certainly get a real
+peep at young Robert Browning, led by his
+wise father into the delights of Homer, by
+slow degrees, where all is truth at first, to<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span>
+end up with the devastating criticism of Wolf.
+In spite of it all the dream stays and is the
+reality. Nothing can obliterate the magic of
+a strong early enthusiasm, as "fact still held"
+"Spite of new Knowledge," in his "heart of
+hearts."</p>
+
+<h3>DEVELOPMENT</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My Father was a scholar and knew Greek.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I was five years old, I asked him once<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"What do you read about?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i18">"The siege of Troy."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"What is a siege and what is Troy?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i22">Whereat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He piled up chairs and tables for a town,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Set me a-top for Priam, called our cat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Helen, enticed away from home (he said)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By wicked Paris, who couched somewhere close<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under the footstool, being cowardly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But whom&mdash;since she was worth the pains, poor puss&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Towzer and Tray,&mdash;our dogs, the Atreidai,&mdash;sought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By taking Troy to get possession of<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Always when great Achilles ceased to sulk,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(My pony in the stable)&mdash;forth would prance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And put to flight Hector&mdash;our page-boy's self.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This taught me who was who and what was what:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So far I rightly understood the case<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At five years old: a huge delight it proved<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And still proves&mdash;thanks to that instructor sage<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My Father, who knew better than turn straight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Learning's full flare on weak-eyed ignorance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, worse yet, leave weak eyes to grow sand-blind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Content with darkness and vacuity.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span>
+<span class="i0">It happened, two or three years afterward,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That&mdash;I and playmates playing at Troy's Siege&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My Father came upon our make-believe.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"How would you like to read yourself the tale<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Properly told, of which I gave you first<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Merely such notion as a boy could bear?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pope, now, would give you the precise account<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of what, some day, by dint of scholarship,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You'll hear&mdash;who knows?&mdash;from Homer's very mouth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Learn Greek by all means, read the 'Blind Old Man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweetest of Singers'&mdash;<i>tuphlos</i> which means 'blind,'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Hedistos</i> which means 'sweetest.' Time enough!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Try, anyhow, to master him some day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Until when, take what serves for substitute,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Read Pope, by all means!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i18">So I ran through Pope,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enjoyed the tale&mdash;what history so true?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Also attacked my Primer, duly drudged,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grew fitter thus for what was promised next&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The very thing itself, the actual words,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I could turn&mdash;say, Buttmann to account.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Time passed, I ripened somewhat: one fine day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Quite ready for the Iliad, nothing less?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's Heine, where the big books block the shelf:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Don't skip a word, thumb well the Lexicon!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I thumbed well and skipped nowise till I learned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who was who, what was what, from Homer's tongue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there an end of learning. Had you asked<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The all-accomplished scholar, twelve years old,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Who was it wrote the Iliad?"&mdash;what a laugh!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Why, Homer, all the world knows: of his life<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Doubtless some facts exist: it's everywhere:<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span>
+<span class="i0">We have not settled, though, his place of birth:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He begged, for certain, and was blind beside:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seven cites claimed him&mdash;Scio, with best right,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thinks Byron. What he wrote? Those Hymns we have.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then there's the 'Battle of the Frogs and Mice,'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That's all&mdash;unless they dig 'Margites' up<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(I'd like that) nothing more remains to know."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thus did youth spend a comfortable time;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Until&mdash;"What's this the Germans say is fact<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Wolf found out first? It's unpleasant work<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their chop and change, unsettling one's belief:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the same, while we live, we learn, that's sure."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, I bent brow o'er <i>Prolegomena</i>.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, after Wolf, a dozen of his like<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Proved there was never any Troy at all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Neither Besiegers nor Besieged,&mdash;nay, worse,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No actual Homer, no authentic text,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No warrant for the fiction I, as fact,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had treasured in my heart and soul so long&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ay, mark you! and as fact held still, still hold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spite of new knowledge, in my heart of hearts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And soul of souls, fact's essence freed and fixed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From accidental fancy's guardian sheath.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Assuredly thenceforward&mdash;thank my stars!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">However it got there, deprive who could&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wring from the shrine my precious tenantry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Helen, Ulysses, Hector and his Spouse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Achilles and his Friend?&mdash;though Wolf&mdash;ah, Wolf!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why must he needs come doubting, spoil a dream?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But then "No dream's worth waking"&mdash;Browning says:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And here's the reason why I tell thus much<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I, now mature man, you anticipate,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span>
+<span class="i0">May blame my Father justifiably<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For letting me dream out my nonage thus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And only by such slow and sure degrees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Permitting me to sift the grain from chaff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Get truth and falsehood known and named as such.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why did he ever let me dream at all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not bid me taste the story in its strength?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Suppose my childhood was scarce qualified<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To rightly understand mythology,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Silence at least was in his power to keep:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I might have&mdash;somehow&mdash;correspondingly&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Well, who knows by what method, gained my gains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Been taught, by forthrights not meanderings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My aim should be to loathe, like Peleus's son,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A lie as Hell's Gate, love my wedded wife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like Hector, and so on with all the rest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could not I have excogitated this<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without believing such men really were?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That is&mdash;he might have put into my hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The "Ethics"? In translation, if you please,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Exact, no pretty lying that improves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To suit the modern taste: no more, no less&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The "Ethics": 'tis a treatise I find hard<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To read aright now that my hair is grey,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I can manage the original.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At five years old&mdash;how ill had fared its leaves!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now, growing double o'er the Stagirite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At least I soil no page with bread and milk,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor crumple, dogsear and deface&mdash;boys' way.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This chapter would not be complete without
+Browning's tribute to dog Tray, whose
+traits may not be peculiar to English dogs<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span>
+but whose name is proverbially English. Besides
+it touches a subject upon which the poet
+had strong feelings. Vivisection he abhorred,
+and in the controversies which were tearing
+the scientific and philanthropic world asunder
+in the last years of his life, no one was a more
+determined opponent of vivisection than he.</p>
+
+<h3>TRAY</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sing me a hero! Quench my thirst<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of soul, ye bards!<br /></span>
+<span class="i16">Quoth Bard the first:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Sir Olaf, the good knight, did don<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His helm and eke his habergeon...."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sir Olaf and his bard&mdash;&mdash;!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"That sin-scathed brow" (quoth Bard the second),<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"That eye wide ope as though Fate beckoned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My hero to some steep, beneath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which precipice smiled tempting death...."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You too without your host have reckoned!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A beggar-child" (let's hear this third!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Sat on a quay's edge: like a bird<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sang to herself at careless play,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'And fell into the stream. Dismay!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Help, you the standers-by!' None stirred.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Bystanders reason, think of wives<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And children ere they risk their lives.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Over the balustrade has bounced<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A mere instinctive dog, and pounced<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plumb on the prize. 'How well he dives!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span>
+<span class="i0">"'Up he comes with the child, see, tight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In mouth, alive too, clutched from quite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A depth of ten feet&mdash;twelve, I bet!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Good dog! What, off again? There's yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Another child to save? All right!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'How strange we saw no other fall!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It's instinct in the animal.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Good dog! But he's a long while under:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If he got drowned I should not wonder&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strong current, that against the wall!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Here he comes, holds in mouth this time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;What may the thing be? Well, that's prime!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now, did you ever? Reason reigns<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In man alone, since all Tray's pains<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have fished&mdash;the child's doll from the slime!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And so, amid the laughter gay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trotted my hero off,&mdash;old Tray,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till somebody, prerogatived<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With reason, reasoned: 'Why he dived,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His brain would show us, I should say.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'John, go and catch&mdash;or, if needs be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Purchase&mdash;that animal for me!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By vivisection, at expense<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of half-an-hour and eighteenpence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How brain secretes dog's soul, we'll see!'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<p class="subtitle">SHAKESPEARE'S PORTRAIT</p>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="dcap">Once</span> and once only did Browning depart
+from his custom of choosing people of
+minor note to figure in his dramatic monologues.
+In "At the 'Mermaid'" he ventures
+upon the consecrated ground of a heart-to-heart
+talk between Shakespeare, Ben Jonson,
+and the wits who gathered at the classic
+"Mermaid" Tavern in Cheapside, following
+this up with further glimpses into the inner
+recesses of Shakespeare's mind in the monologues
+"House" and "Shop." It is a particularly
+daring feat in the case of Shakespeare,
+for as all the world knows any attempt at
+getting in touch with the real man, Shakespeare,
+must, per force, be woven out of such
+"stuff as dreams are made on."</p>
+
+<p>In interpreting this portraiture of one great
+poet by another it will be of interest to
+glance at the actual facts as far as they are
+known in regard to the relations which
+existed between Shakespeare and Jonson.
+Praise and blame both are recorded on Jon<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span>son's
+part when writing of Shakespeare, yet
+the praise shows such undisguised admiration
+that the blame sinks into insignificance. Jonson's
+"learned socks" to which Milton refers
+probably tripped the critic up occasionally by
+reason of their weight.</p>
+
+<p>There is a charming story told of the
+friendship between the two men recorded by
+Sir Nicholas L'Estrange, within a very few
+years of Shakespeare's death, who attributed
+it to Dr. Donne. The story goes that
+"Shakespeare was godfather to one of Ben
+Jonson's children, and after the christening,
+being in a deep study, Jonson came
+to cheer him up and asked him why he was
+so melancholy. 'No, faith, Ben,' says he,
+'not I, but I have been considering a great
+while what should be the fittest gift for me
+to bestow upon my godchild, and I have resolved
+at last.' 'I prythee what?' says he.
+'I'faith, Ben, I'll e'en give him a dozen good
+Lattin spoons, and thou shalt translate them.'"
+If this must be taken with a grain of salt,
+there is another even more to the honor of
+Shakespeare reported by Rowe and considered
+credible by such Shakespearian scholars as
+Halliwell Phillipps and Sidney Lee. "His
+acquaintance with Ben Jonson" writes Rowe,
+"began with a remarkable piece of humanity<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span>
+and good nature; Mr. Jonson, who was at
+that time altogether unknown to the world,
+had offered one of his plays to the players in
+order to have it acted, and the persons into
+whose hands it was put, after having turned
+it carelessly and superciliously over, were
+just upon returning it to him with an ill-natured
+answer that it would be of no service
+to their company, when Shakespeare
+luckily cast his eye upon it, and found something
+so well in it as to engage him first to
+read it through, and afterwards to recommend
+Mr. Jonson and his writings to the
+public." The play in question was the famous
+comedy of "Every Man in His Humour,"
+which was brought out in September, 1598,
+by the Lord Chamberlain's company, Shakespeare
+himself being one of the leading actors
+upon the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Authentic history records a theater war in
+which Jonson and Shakespeare figured, on
+opposite sides, but if allusions in Jonson's
+play the "Poetaster" have been properly
+interpreted, their friendly relations were not
+deeply disturbed. The trouble began in the
+first place by the London of 1600 suddenly
+rushing into a fad for the company of boy
+players, recruited chiefly from the choristers
+of the Chapel Royal, and known as the "Chil<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span>dren
+of the Chapel." They had been acting
+at the new theater in Blackfriars since 1597,
+and their vogue became so great as actually
+to threaten Shakespeare's company and other
+companies of adult actors. Just at this time
+Ben Jonson was having a personal quarrel
+with his fellow dramatists, Marston and
+Dekker, and as he received little sympathy
+from the actors, he took his revenge by joining
+his forces with those of the Children of
+the Chapel. They brought out for him in
+1600 his satire of "Cynthia's Revels," in
+which he held up to ridicule Marston, Dekker
+and their friends the actors. Marston and
+Dekker, with the actors of Shakespeare's
+company, prepared to retaliate, but Jonson
+hearing of it forestalled them with his play
+the "Poetaster" in which he spared neither
+dramatists nor actors. Shakespeare's company
+continued the fray by bringing out at
+the Globe Theatre, in the following year,
+Dekker and Marston's "Satiro-Mastix, or
+The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet," and
+as Ward remarks, "the quarrel had now become
+too hot to last." The excitement,
+however, continued for sometime, theater-goers
+took sides and watched with interest
+"the actors and dramatists' boisterous war
+of personalities," to quote Mr. Lee, who<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span>
+goes on to point out that on May 10, 1601,
+the Privy Council called the attention of the
+Middlesex magistrates to the abuse covertly
+leveled by the actors of the "Curtain" at
+gentlemen "of good desert and quality," and
+directed the magistrates to examine all plays
+before they were produced.</p>
+
+<p>Jonson, himself, finally made apologies in
+verses appended to printed copies of the "Poetaster."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Now for the players 'tis true I tax'd them<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet but some, and those so sparingly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As all the rest might have sat still unquestioned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had they but had the wit or conscience<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To think well of themselves. But impotent they<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thought each man's vice belonged to their whole tribe;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And much good do it them. What they have done against me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am not moved with, if it gave them meat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or got them clothes, 'tis well: that was their end,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only amongst them I was sorry for<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some better natures by the rest so drawn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To run in that vile line."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Sidney Lee cleverly deduces Shakespeare's
+attitude in the quarrel in allusions to it in
+"Hamlet," wherein he "protested against the
+abusive comments on the men-actors of 'the
+common' stages or public theaters which
+were put into the children's mouths. Rosencrantz
+declared that the children 'so berattle<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span>
+[<i>i.e.</i> assail] the common stages&mdash;so they call
+them&mdash;that many wearing rapiers are afraid
+of goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither
+[<i>i.e.</i> to the public theaters].' Hamlet in pursuit
+of the theme pointed out that the writers
+who encouraged the vogue of the 'child actors'
+did them a poor service, because when
+the boys should reach men's estate they would
+run the risk, if they continued on the stage,
+of the same insults and neglect which now
+threatened their seniors.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Hamlet.</i> What are they children? Who
+maintains 'em? How are they escorted [<i>i.e.</i>
+paid]? Will they pursue the quality [<i>i.e.</i> the
+actor's profession] no longer than they can sing?
+Will they not say afterwards, if they should grow
+themselves to common players&mdash;as it is most
+like, if their means are no better&mdash;their writers
+do them wrong to make them exclaim against
+their own succession?</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Rosencrantz.</i> Faith, there has been much
+to do on both sides, and the nation holds it
+no sin to tarre [<i>i.e.</i> incite] them to controversy;
+there was for a while no money bid
+for argument, unless the poet and the player
+went to cuffs in the question.'"</p>
+
+<p>This certainly does not reflect a very belligerent
+attitude since it merely puts in a
+word for the grown-up actors rather than<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span>
+casting any slurs upon the children. Further
+indications of Shakespeare's mildness in regard
+to the whole matter are given in the
+Prologue to "Troylus and Cressida," where,
+as Mr. Lee says, he made specific reference
+to the strife between Ben Jonson and the
+players in the lines</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"And hither am I come<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Prologue arm'd, but not in confidence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Authors' pen, or Actors' voyce."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The most interesting bit of evidence to show
+that Shakespeare and Jonson remained friends,
+even in the heat of the conflict, may be gained
+from the "Poetaster" itself if we admit that
+the Virgil of the play, who is chosen peacemaker
+stands for Shakespeare; and who so fit to be
+peacemaker as Shakespeare for his amiable
+qualities seem to have impressed themselves
+upon all who knew him.</p>
+
+<p>Following Mr. Lee's lead, "Jonson figures
+personally in the 'Poetaster' under the name
+of Horace. Episodically Horace and his
+friends, Tibullus and Gallus, eulogize the
+work and genius of another character, Virgil,
+in terms so closely resembling those which
+Jonson is known to have applied to Shakespeare
+that they may be regarded as intended
+to apply to him (Act V, Scene I). Jonson points<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span>
+out that Virgil, by his penetrating intuition,
+achieved the great effects which others laboriously
+sought to reach through rules of art.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'His learning labors not the school-like gloss<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That most consists of echoing words and terms ...<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor any long or far-fetched circumstance&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wrapt in the curious generalities of arts&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But a direct and analytic sum<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of all the worth and first effects of art.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That it shall gather strength of life with being,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And live hereafter, more admired than now.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a name='TC_3'></a><ins title="Paragraph continued, no quote needed">Tibullus</ins> gives Virgil equal credit for having
+in his writings touched with telling truth
+upon every vicissitude of human existence:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'That which he hath writ<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is with such judgment labored and distilled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through all the needful uses of our lives<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That, could a man remember but his lines,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He should not touch at any serious point<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But he might breathe his spirit out of him.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Finally, Virgil in the play is nominated by
+C&aelig;sar to act as judge between Horace and
+his libellers, and he advises the administration
+of purging pills to the offenders."</p>
+
+<p>This neat little chain of evidence would
+have no weak link, if it were not for a passage
+in the play, "The Return from Parnassus,"<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span>
+acted by the students in St. John's College
+the same year, 1601. In this there is a dialogue
+between Shakespeare's fellow-actors,
+Burbage and Kempe. Speaking of the University
+dramatists, Kempe says:</p>
+
+<p>"Why here's our fellow Shakespeare puts
+them all down; aye, and Ben Jonson, too.
+O! that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow. He
+brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill;
+but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him
+a purge that made him bewray his credit."
+Burbage continues, "He is a shrewd fellow
+indeed." This has, of course, been taken to
+mean that Shakespeare was actively against
+Jonson in the Dramatists' and Actors' war.
+But as everything else points, as we have
+seen, to the contrary, one accepts gladly the
+loophole of escape offered by Mr. Lee.
+"The words quoted from 'The Return from
+Parnassus' hardly admit of a literal interpretation.
+Probably the 'purge' that Shakespeare
+was alleged by the author of 'The
+Return from Parnassus' to have given Jonson
+meant no more than that Shakespeare had
+signally outstripped Jonson in popular esteem."
+That this was an actual fact is proved
+by the lines of Leonard Digges, an admiring
+contemporary of Shakespeare's, printed in the
+1640 edition of Shakespeare's poems, com<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span>paring
+"Julius C&aelig;sar" and Jonson's play
+"Cataline:"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"So have I seen when C&aelig;sar would appear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And on the stage at half-sword parley were<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brutus and Cassius&mdash;oh, how the audience<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were ravish'd, with what wonder they went thence;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When some new day they would not brook a line<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of tedious, though well-labored, Cataline."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This reminds one of the famous witticism
+attributed to Eudymion Porter that "Shakespeare
+was sent from Heaven and Ben from
+College."</p>
+
+<p>If Jonson's criticisms of Shakespeare's work
+were sometime not wholly appreciative, the
+fact may be set down to the distinction between
+the two here so humorously indicated.
+"A Winter's Tale" and the "Tempest" both
+called forth some sarcasms from Jonson,
+the first for its error about the Coast of Bohemia
+which Shakespeare borrowed from
+Greene. Jonson wrote in the Induction to
+"Bartholemew Fair;" "If there be never a
+servant-monster in the Fair, who can help it
+he says? Nor a nest of Antics. He is loth
+to make nature afraid in his plays like those
+that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like
+Drolleries." The allusions here are very evidently
+to Caliban and the satyrs who figure in<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span>
+the sheep-shearing feast in "A Winter's Tale."
+The worst blast of all, however, occurs in
+Jonson's "Timber," but the blows are evidently
+given with a loving hand. He writes
+"I remember, the players have often mentioned
+it as an honor to Shakespeare that, in his
+writing, whatsoever he penn'd, hee never
+blotted out line. My answer hath beene,
+would he had blotted a thousand;&mdash;which
+they thought a malevolent speech. I had not
+told posterity this, but for their ignorance
+who choose that circumstance to commend
+their friend by wherein he most faulted; and
+to justifie mine owne candor,&mdash;for I lov'd
+the man, and doe honor his memory, on
+this side idolatry, as much as any. Hee was,
+indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature;
+had an excellent phantasie; brave notions
+and gentle expressions; wherein hee
+flow'd with that facility that sometime it was
+necessary he should be stop'd;&mdash;<i>sufflaminandus
+erat</i>, as Augustus said of Haterius. His
+wit was in his owne power;&mdash;would the rule
+of it had beene so too! Many times he fell
+into those things, could not escape laughter;
+as when he said in the person of C&aelig;sar, one
+speaking to him,&mdash;C&aelig;sar thou dost me wrong;
+hee replyed,&mdash;C&aelig;sar did never wrong but
+with just cause; and such like; which were<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span>
+ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices with
+his virtues. There was ever more in him to
+be praysed then to be pardoned."</p>
+
+<p>And even this criticism is altogether controverted
+by the wholly eulogistic lines Jonson
+wrote for the First Folio edition of <a name='TC_4'></a><ins title="Was 'Shakesspeare'">Shakespeare</ins>
+printed in 1623, "To the memory of
+my beloved, The Author Mr. William Shakespeare
+and what he hath left us."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>For the same edition he also wrote the
+following lines for the portrait reproduced in
+this volume, which it is safe to regard as the
+Shakespeare Ben Jonson remembered:</p>
+
+<h3>"TO THE READER</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This Figure, that thou here seest put,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherein the Graver had a strife<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With Nature, to out-doo the life:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O, could he but have drawne his wit<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As well in brasse, as he hath hit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His face; the Print would then surpasse<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All, that was ever writ in brasse.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, since he cannot, Reader, looke<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not on his Picture, but his Booke.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="i30">&nbsp;</span><a name='TC_5'></a><ins title="Was 'B. I.'">B. J.</ins>"</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare's talk in "At the <a name='TC_6'></a><ins title="Added single quotes">'Mermaid'</ins>"
+grows out of the supposition, not touched upon<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span>
+until the very last line that Ben Jonson had been
+calling him "Next Poet," a supposition quite
+justifiable in the light of Ben's praises of him.
+The poem also reflects the love and admiration
+in which Shakespeare the man was held
+by all who have left any record of their impressions
+of him. As for the portraiture of
+the poet's attitude of mind, it is deduced indirectly
+from his work. That he did not
+desire to become "Next Poet" may be argued
+from the fact that after his first outburst of
+poem and sonnet writing in the manner of the
+poets of the age, he gave up the career of
+gentleman-poet to devote himself wholly to
+the more independent if not so socially distinguished
+one of actor-playwright. "Venus
+and Adonis" and "Lucrece" were the only
+poems of his published under his supervision
+and the only works with the dedication to a
+patron such as it was customary to write at
+that time.</p>
+
+<p>I have before me as I write the recent Clarendon
+Press fac-similes of "Venus and Adonis"
+and "Lucrece," published respectively in 1593
+and 1594,&mdash;beautiful little quartos with exquisitely
+artistic designs in the title-pages,
+headpieces and initials; altogether worthy of
+a poet who might have designs upon Fame.
+The dedication to the first reads:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span>
+"<span class="smcap">to the right honorable</span><br />
+Henry Wriothesley, Earle of Southampton<br />
+and Baron of Litchfield</p>
+
+<blockquote><p><i>Right Honourable, I know not how I shall
+offend in dedicating my unpolisht lines to your
+Lordship, nor how the worlde will censure mee
+for choosing so strong a proppe to support so
+weake a burthen, onelye if your Honour seeme
+but pleased, I account my selfe highly praised,
+and vowe to take advantage of all idle houres,
+till I have honoured you with some great
+labour. But if the first heire of my invention
+prove deformed, I shall be sorie it had so noble a
+god-father: and never after eare so barren a
+land, for feare it yield me still so bad a harvest,
+I leave it to your Honourable Survey, and your
+Honor to your hearts content, which I wish
+may alwaies answere your owne wish, and the
+worlds hopeful expectation.</i></p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="center">
+Your Honors in all dutie<br />
+<span class="in4 smcap">William Shakespeare</span>."</p>
+
+<p>The second reads:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+"<span class="larger">TO THE RIGHT</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">honorable, henry</span><br />
+Wriothesley, Earle of Southampton<br />
+and Baron of Litchfield</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without
+end: wherof this Pamphlet without be<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span>ginning
+is a superfluous Moiety. The warrant
+I have of your Honourable disposition,
+nor the worth of my untutored Lines makes
+it assured of acceptance. What I have done
+is yours, what I have to doe is yours, being
+part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my
+worth greater, my duety would shew greater,
+meane time, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship;
+To whom I wish long life still lengthened
+with all happinesse.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="center">
+Your Lordships in all duety.<br />
+<span class="in4 smcap">William Shakespeare."</span></p>
+
+<p>No more after this does Shakespeare appear
+in the light of a poet with a patron. Even
+the sonnets, some of which evidently celebrate
+Southampton, were issued by a piratical
+publisher without Shakespeare's consent, while
+his plays found their way into print at the
+hands of other pirates who cribbed them from
+stage copies.</p>
+
+<p>Such hints as these have been worked up
+by Browning into a consistent characterization
+of a man who regards himself as having
+foregone his chances of laureateship or "Next
+Poet" by devoting himself to a form of
+literary art which would not appeal to the
+powers that be as fitting him for any such position.
+Such honors he claims do not go to<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span>
+the dramatic poet, who has never allowed the
+world to slip inside his breast, but has simply
+portrayed the joy and the sorrow of life as he
+saw it around him, and with an art which turns
+even sorrow into beauty.&mdash;"Do I stoop? I
+pluck a posy, do I stand and stare? all's
+blue;"&mdash;but to the subjective, introspective
+poet, out of tune with himself and with the
+universe. The allusions Shakespeare makes
+to the last "King" are not very definite, but,
+on the whole, they fit Edmund Spenser, whose
+poems from first to last are dedicated to people
+of distinction in court circles. His work,
+moreover, is full of wailing and woe in various
+keys, and also full of self-revelation. He allowed
+the world to slip inside his breast upon
+almost every occasion, and perhaps he may
+be said to have bought "his laurel," for it
+was no doubt extremely gratifying to Queen
+Elizabeth to see herself in the guise of the
+Faerie Queene, and even his dedication of the
+"Faerie Queene" to her, used as she was to flattery,
+must have been as music in her ears.
+"To the most high, mightie, and magnificent
+Empresse, renouned for piety, vertue, and all
+gratious government, Elizabeth, by the Grace
+of God, Queene of England, Frahnce, and
+Ireland and of Virginia. Defender of the
+Faith, &amp;c. Her most humble servant Edmund<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span>
+Spenser doth in all humilitie, Dedicate, present,
+and consecrate These his labours, To
+live with the eternity of her Fame." The
+next year Spenser received a pension from the
+crown of fifty pounds per annum.</p>
+
+<p>It is a careful touch on Browning's part to
+use the phrase "Next Poet," for the "laureateship"
+at that time was not a recognized
+official position. The term, "laureate," seems
+to have been used to designate poets who had
+attained fame and Royal favor, since Nash
+speaks of Spenser in his "Supplication of
+Piers Pennilesse" the same year the "Faerie
+Queene" was published as next laureate.</p>
+
+<p>The first really officially appointed Poet
+Laureate was Ben Jonson, himself, who in
+either 1616 or 1619 received the post from
+James I., later ratified by Charles I., who
+increased the annuity to one hundred pounds
+a year and a butt of wine from the King's
+cellars.</p>
+
+<p>Probably the allusion "Your Pilgrim" in the
+twelfth stanza of "At the Mermaid" is to
+"The Return from Parnassus" in which the
+pilgrims to Parnassus who figure in an earlier
+play "The Pilgrimage to Parnassus" discover
+the world to be about as dismal a place
+as it is described in this stanza.</p>
+
+<p>At first sight it might seem that the position<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span>
+taken by Shakespeare in the poem is almost
+too modest, yet upon second thoughts it will
+be remembered that though Shakespeare had
+a tremendous following among the people,
+attested by the frequency with which his
+plays were acted; that though there are instances
+of his being highly appreciated by
+contemporaries of importance; that though
+his plays were given before the Queen, he
+did not have the universal acceptance among
+learned and court circles which was accorded
+to Spenser.</p>
+
+<p>It is quite fitting that the scene should be
+set in the "Mermaid." No record exists to
+show that Shakespeare was ever there, it is
+true, but the "Mermaid" was a favorite haunt
+of Ben Jonson and his circle of wits, whose
+meetings there were immortalized by Beaumont
+in his poetical letter to Jonson:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"What things have we seen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Done at the Mermaid? heard words that have been<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So nimble and so full of subtle flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if that every one from whence they came<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And had resolved to live a fool the rest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of his dull life."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Add to this what Fuller wrote in his
+"Worthies," 1662, "Many were the wit-combats
+betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span>
+two I behold like a Spanish great galleon
+and an English man-of-war; Master Jonson
+(like the former) was built far higher in learning,
+solid but slow in his performances.
+Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war,
+lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could
+turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage
+of all winds by the quickness of his wit
+and invention," and there is sufficient poetic
+warrant for the "Mermaid" setting.</p>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_7" id="linki_7"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus007.jpg" width="382" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">First Folio Portrait of Shakespeare</p>
+<table style='margin: auto;' summary=''><tr><td>
+<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;'>
+"Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.<br />
+Do I stand and stare? All's blue."</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+</div>
+
+<p>The final touch is given in the hint that all
+the time Shakespeare is aware of his own
+greatness, perhaps to be recognized by a
+future age.</p>
+
+<p>Let Browning, himself, now show what he
+has done with the material.</p>
+
+<h3>AT THE "MERMAID"</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza smaller">
+<span class="i4">The figure that thou here seest.... Tut!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Was it for gentle Shakespeare put?<br /></span>
+<span class="i18"><span class="smcap">B. Jonson.</span> (<i>Adapted.</i>)</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I&mdash;"Next Poet?" No, my hearties,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I nor am nor fain would be!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Choose your chiefs and pick your parties,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not one soul revolt to me!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I, forsooth, sow song-sedition?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I, a schism in verse provoke?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I, blown up by bard's ambition,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Burst&mdash;your bubble-king? You joke.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span></p>
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Come, be grave! The sherris mantling<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still about each mouth, mayhap,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Breeds you insight&mdash;just a scantling&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Brings me truth out&mdash;just a scrap.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look and tell me! Written, spoken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Here's my life-long work: and where<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Where's your warrant or my token<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I'm the dead king's son and heir?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">III</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Here's my work: does work discover&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What was rest from work&mdash;my life?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did I live man's hater, lover?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Leave the world at peace, at strife?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Call earth ugliness or beauty?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">See things there in large or small?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Use to pay its Lord my duty?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Use to own a lord at all?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Blank of such a record, truly<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Here's the work I hand, this scroll,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yours to take or leave; as duly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mine remains the unproffered soul.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So much, no whit more, my debtors&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How should one like me lay claim<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To that largess elders, betters<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sell you cheap their souls for&mdash;fame?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">V</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Which of you did I enable<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Once to slip inside my breast,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span>
+<span class="i0">There to catalogue and label<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What I like least, what love best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hope and fear, believe and doubt of,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Seek and shun, respect&mdash;deride?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who has right to make a rout of<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rarities he found inside?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Rarities or, as he'd rather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rubbish such as stocks his own:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Need and greed (O strange) the Father<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fashioned not for him alone!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whence&mdash;the comfort set a-strutting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whence&mdash;the outcry "Haste, behold!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bard's breast open wide, past shutting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shows what brass we took for gold!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Friends, I doubt not he'd display you<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Brass&mdash;myself call orichalc,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Furnish much amusement; pray you<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Therefore, be content I balk<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Him and you, and bar my portal!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Here's my work outside: opine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What's inside me mean and mortal!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Take your pleasure, leave me mine!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Which is&mdash;not to buy your laurel<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As last king did, nothing loth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tale adorned and pointed moral<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Gained him praise and pity both.<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Out rushed sighs and groans by dozens,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Forth by scores oaths, curses flew:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Proving you were cater-cousins,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Kith and kindred, king and you!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whereas do I ne'er so little<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(Thanks to sherris) leave ajar<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bosom's gate&mdash;no jot nor tittle<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Grow we nearer than we are.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sinning, sorrowing, despairing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Body-ruined, spirit-wrecked,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should I give my woes an airing,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where's one plague that claims respect?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">X</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Have you found your life distasteful?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My life did, and does, smack sweet.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mine I saved and hold complete.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do your joys with age diminish?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When mine fail me, I'll complain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Must in death your daylight finish?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My sun sets to rise again.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What, like you, he proved&mdash;your Pilgrim&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This our world a wilderness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth still grey and heaven still grim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not a hand there his might press,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a heart his own might throb to,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Men all rogues and women&mdash;say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dolls which boys' heads duck and bob to,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Grown folk drop or throw away?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span></p>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My experience being other,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How should I contribute verse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worthy of your king and brother?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Balaam-like I bless, not curse.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I find earth not grey but rosy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Heaven not grim but fair of hue.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Do I stand and stare? All's blue.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Doubtless I am pushed and shoved by<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rogues and fools enough: the more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Good luck mine, I love, am loved by<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Some few honest to the core.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scan the near high, scout the far low!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"But the low come close:" what then?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Simpletons? My match is Marlowe;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sciolists? My mate is Ben.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XIV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Womankind&mdash;"the cat-like nature,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">False and fickle, vain and weak"&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What of this sad nomenclature<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Suits my tongue, if I must speak?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Does the sex invite, repulse so,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Tempt, betray, by fits and starts?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So becalm but to convulse so,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Decking heads and breaking hearts?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Well may you blaspheme at fortune!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I "threw Venus" (Ben, expound!)<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Never did I need importune<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her, of all the Olympian round.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blessings on my benefactress!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Cursings suit&mdash;for aught I know&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those who twitched her by the back tress,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Tugged and thought to turn her&mdash;so!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XVI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Therefore, since no leg to stand on<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thus I'm left with,&mdash;joy or grief<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be the issue,&mdash;I abandon<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hope or care you name me Chief!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Chief and king and Lord's anointed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I?&mdash;who never once have wished<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Death before the day appointed:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lived and liked, not poohed and pished!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XVII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Ah, but so I shall not enter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Scroll in hand, the common heart&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stopped at surface: since at centre<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Song should reach <i>Welt-schmerz</i>, world-smart!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Enter in the heart?" Its shelly<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Cuirass guard mine, fore and aft!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such song "enters in the belly<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And is cast out in the draught."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XVIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Back then to our sherris-brewage!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Kingship" quotha? I shall wait&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Waive the present time: some new age ...<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But let fools anticipate!<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Meanwhile greet me&mdash;"friend, good fellow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Gentle Will," my merry men!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As for making Envy yellow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With "Next Poet"&mdash;(Manners, Ben!)<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The first stanza of "House"&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Do I live in a house you would like to see?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Unlock my heart with a sonnet-key?'"&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>brings one face to face with the interminable
+controversies upon the autobiographical significance
+of Shakespeare's Sonnets. As volumes
+upon the subject have been written,
+it is not possible even adequately to review
+the various theories here. The controversialists
+may be broadly divided into those
+who read complicated autobiographical details
+into the sonnets, those who scout the
+idea of their being autobiographical at all, and
+those who take a middle ground. Of the
+first there are two factions: one of these
+believes that the opening sonnets were addressed
+to Lord William Herbert, Earl of
+Pembroke, and the other that they were addressed
+to Shakespeare's patron, the Earl of
+Southampton. The first theory dates back
+as far as 1832 when it was started by James
+Boaden, a journalist and the biographer of<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span>
+Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. This theory has
+had many supporters and is associated to-day
+with the name of Thomas Tyler, who, in his
+edition of the Sonnets published in 1890,
+claimed to have identified the dark lady of
+the Sonnets with a lady of the Court, Mary
+Fitton and the mistress of the Earl of Pembroke.
+The theory, like most things of the
+sort, has its fascinations, and few people can
+read the Sonnets without being more or less
+impressed by it. It is based, however, upon
+a supposition so unlikely that it may be said
+to be proved incorrect, namely, that the dedication
+of the Sonnets to their "Onlie Begettor,
+Mr. W.&nbsp;H." is intended for "Mr. William
+Herbert." There was a Mr. William Hall,
+later a master printer, and the friend of
+Thomas Thorpe, the publisher of the Sonnets,
+who is much more likely to be the person
+meant. Lord Herbert was far too important a
+person to be addressed as Mr. W.&nbsp;H. As Mr.
+Lee points out, when Thorpe did dedicate
+books to Herbert he was careful to give full
+prominence to the titles and distinction of his
+patron. The Sonnets as we have already
+seen were not published with Shakespeare's
+sanction. In those days the author had no
+protection, and if a manuscript fell into the
+hands of a printer he could print it if he felt<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span>
+so disposed. Mr. William Hall was in the
+habit of looking out for manuscripts and before
+he became a printer, in 1606, had one
+published by Southwell of which he himself
+wrote the dedication, to the "Vertuous Gentleman,
+Mathew Saunders, Esquire W.&nbsp;H.
+wisheth, with long life, a prosperous achievement
+of his good desires." "There is little
+doubt," writes Mr. Lee, "that the W.&nbsp;H. of
+the Southwell volume was Mr. William Hall,
+who, when he procured that manuscript for
+publication, was an humble auxiliary in the
+publishing army." To sum up in Mr. Lee's
+words his interesting and convincing chapter
+on "Thomas Thorpe and Mr. 'W.&nbsp;H.'"
+"'Mr. W.&nbsp;H.,' whom Thorpe described as the
+'only begetter of these ensuing sonnets,' was
+in all probability the acquirer or procurer
+of the manuscript, who, figuratively speaking,
+brought the book into being either by
+first placing the manuscript in Thorpe's
+hands or by pointing out the means by which
+a copy might be acquired. To assign such
+significance to the word 'begetter' was entirely
+in Thorpe's vein. Thorpe described
+his r&ocirc;le in the piratical enterprise of the
+'Sonnets' as that of 'the well-wishing adventurer
+in setting forth,' <i>i.e.</i>, the hopeful speculator
+in the scheme. 'Mr. W.&nbsp;H.' doubtless<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span>
+played the almost equally important part&mdash;one
+as well known then as now in commercial
+operations&mdash;of the 'vender' of the property
+to be exploited."</p>
+
+<p>The Southampton theory is reared into a
+fine air-castle by Gerald Massey in his lengthy
+book on the Sonnets&mdash;truly entertaining
+reading but too ingenious to be convincing.</p>
+
+<p>Finally Mr. Lee in his book looks at the
+subject in an unbiased and perfectly sane way.
+He thinks the opening Sonnets are to the Earl
+of Southampton, known to be <a name='TC_7'></a><ins title="Was 'Shakepeare's'">Shakespeare's</ins>
+patron, but he warns us that exaggerated devotion
+was the hall-mark of the Sonnets of
+the age, and therefore what Shakespeare
+says of his young patron in these Sonnets
+need not be taken too literally as expressing
+the poet's sentiments, though he admits there
+may be a note of genuine feeling in them.
+Also he thinks that some of the sonnets reflecting
+moods of melancholy or a sense of
+sin may reveal the writer's inner consciousness.
+Possibly, too, the story of the "dark
+lady" may have some basis in fact, though he
+insists, "There is no clue to the lady's identity,
+and speculation on the topic is useless."
+Furthermore, he thinks it doubtful whether
+all the words in these Sonnets are to be
+taken with the seriousness implied, the affair<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span>
+probably belonging only to the annals of gallantry.</p>
+
+<p>It will be seen from the poem that Browning
+took the uncompromisingly non-autobiographical
+view of the Sonnets. In this
+stand present authoritative opinion would not
+justify him, but it speaks well for his insight
+and sympathy that he was not fascinated by the
+William Herbert theory which, at the time he
+wrote the poem, was very much in the air.</p>
+
+<p>In "Shop" is given, in a way, the obverse
+side of the idea. If it is proved that
+the dramatic poet does not allow himself to
+appear in his work, the step toward regarding
+him as having no individuality aside from
+his work is an easy one. The allusions in
+the poem to the mercenariness of the "Shop-Keeper"
+seem to hit at the criticisms of Shakespeare's
+thrift, which enabled him to buy a
+home in his native place and retire there to
+live some years before the end of his life. In
+some quarters it has been customary to regard
+Shakespeare as devoting himself to dramatic
+literature in order to make money, as if this
+were a terrible slur on his character. The superiority
+of such an independent spirit over
+that of those who constantly sought patrons
+was quite manifest to Browning's mind or he
+would not have written this sarcastic bit of<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span>
+symbolism, between the lines of which can
+be read that Browning was on Shakespeare's
+side.</p>
+
+<h3>HOUSE</h3>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Do I live in a house you would like to see?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Unlock my heart with a sonnet key?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Invite the world, as my betters have done?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Take notice: this building remains on view,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its suites of reception every one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Its private apartment and bedroom too;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">III</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"For a ticket, apply to the Publisher."<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No: thanking the public, I must decline.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A peep through my window, if folk prefer;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But, please you, no foot over threshold of mine!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have mixed with a crowd and heard free talk<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In a foreign land where an earthquake chanced:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a house stood gaping, nought to balk<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Man's eye wherever he gazed or glanced.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">V</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The whole of the frontage shaven sheer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The inside gaped: exposed to day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Right and wrong and common and queer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bare, as the palm of your hand, it lay.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span></p>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The owner? Oh, he had been crushed, no doubt!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Odd tables and chairs for a man of wealth!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What a parcel of musty old books about!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He smoked,&mdash;no wonder he lost his health!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I doubt if he bathed before he dressed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A brasier?&mdash;the pagan, he burned perfumes!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You see it is proved, what the neighbors guessed:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His wife and himself had separate rooms."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Friends, the goodman of the house at least<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Kept house to himself till an earthquake came:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis the fall of its frontage permits you feast<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On the inside arrangement you praise or blame.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Outside should suffice for evidence:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And whoso desires to penetrate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deeper, must dive by the spirit-sense&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No optics like yours, at any rate!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">X</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Hoity toity! A street to explore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your house the exception! '<i>With this same key</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Shakespeare unlocked his heart</i>,' once more!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<h3>SHOP</h3>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So, friend, your shop was all your house!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Its front, astonishing the street,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Invited view from man and mouse<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To what diversity of treat<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Behind its glass&mdash;the single sheet!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What gimcracks, genuine Japanese:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Gape-jaw and goggle-eye, the frog;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dragons, owls, monkeys, beetles, geese;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Some crush-nosed, human-hearted dog:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Queer names, too, such a catalogue!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">III</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I thought "And he who owns the wealth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which blocks the window's vastitude,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Ah, could I peep at him by stealth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Behind his ware, pass shop, intrude<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On house itself, what scenes were viewed!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"If wide and showy thus the shop,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What must the habitation prove?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The true house with no name a-top&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The mansion, distant one remove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Once get him off his traffic-groove!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">V</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Pictures he likes, or books perhaps;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And as for buying most and best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Commend me to these City chaps!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or else he's social, takes his rest<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On Sundays, with a Lord for guest.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Some suburb-palace, parked about<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And gated grandly, built last year:<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span>
+<span class="i0">The four-mile walk to keep off gout;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or big seat sold by bankrupt peer:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But then he takes the rail, that's clear.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Or, stop! I wager, taste selects<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Some out o' the way, some all-unknown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Retreat: the neighborhood suspects<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Little that he who rambles lone<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Makes Rothschild tremble on his throne!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nowise! Nor Mayfair residence<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fit to receive and entertain,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor Hampstead villa's kind defence<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From noise and crowd, from dust and drain,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor country-box was soul's domain!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nowise! At back of all that spread<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of merchandize, woe's me, I find<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A hole i' the wall where, heels by head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The owner couched, his ware behind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">&mdash;In cupboard suited to his mind.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">X</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For why? He saw no use of life<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But, while he drove a roaring trade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To chuckle "Customers are rife!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To chafe "So much hard cash outlaid<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yet zero in my profits made!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"This novelty costs pains, but&mdash;takes?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Cumbers my counter! Stock no more!<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span>
+<span class="i0">This article, no such great shakes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fizzes like wildfire? Underscore<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The cheap thing&mdash;thousands to the fore!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Twas lodging best to live most nigh<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(Cramp, coffinlike as crib might be)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Receipt of Custom; ear and eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wanted no outworld: "Hear and see<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The bustle in the shop!" quoth he.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My fancy of a merchant-prince<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was different. Through his wares we groped<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our darkling way to&mdash;not to mince<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The matter&mdash;no black den where moped<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The master if we interloped!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XIV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shop was shop only: household-stuff?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What did he want with comforts there?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Walls, ceiling, floor, stay blank and rough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So goods on sale show rich and rare!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'<i>Sell and scud home</i>' be shop's affair!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What might he deal in? Gems, suppose!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Since somehow business must be done<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At cost of trouble,&mdash;see, he throws<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You choice of jewels, everyone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Good, better, best, star, moon and sun!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XVI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Which lies within your power of purse?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This ruby that would tip aright<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Solomon's sceptre? Oh, your nurse<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wants simply coral, the delight<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of teething baby,&mdash;stuff to bite!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XVII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Howe'er your choice fell, straight you took<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your purchase, prompt your money rang<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On counter,&mdash;scarce the man forsook<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His study of the "Times," just swang<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till-ward his hand that stopped the clang,&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XVIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then off made buyer with a prize,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Then seller to his "Times" returned;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so did day wear, wear, till eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Brightened apace, for rest was earned:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He locked door long ere candle burned.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XIX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And whither went he? Ask himself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not me! To change of scene, I think.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once sold the ware and pursed the pelf,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Chaffer was scarce his meat and drink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor all his music&mdash;money-chink.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Because a man has shop to mind<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In time and place, since flesh must live,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Needs spirit lack all life behind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All stray thoughts, fancies fugitive,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All loves except what trade can give?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I want to know a butcher paints,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A baker rhymes for his pursuit,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Candlestick-maker much acquaints<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His soul with song, or, haply mute,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Blows out his brains upon the flute!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But&mdash;shop each day and all day long!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Friend, your good angel slept, your star<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Suffered eclipse, fate did you wrong!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From where these sorts of treasures are,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">There should our hearts be&mdash;Christ, how far!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These poems are valuable not only for
+furnishing an interesting interpretation of
+Shakespeare's character as a man and artist,
+but for the glimpses they give into Browning's
+stand toward his own art. He wished
+to be regarded primarily as a dramatic artist,
+presenting and interpreting the souls of his
+characters, and he must have felt keenly the
+stupid attitude which insisted always in reading
+"Browning's Philosophy" into all his
+poems. The fact that his objective material
+was of the soul rather than of the external
+actions of life has no doubt lent force to the
+supposition that Browning himself can be
+seen in everything he writes. It is true, nevertheless,
+that while much of his work is Shakespearian
+in its dramatic intensity, he had too
+forceful a philosophy of life to keep it from
+sometimes coming to the front. Besides he<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span>
+has written many things avowedly personal
+as this chapter amply illustrates.</p>
+
+<p>To what intensity of feeling Browning could
+rise when contemplating the genius of Shakespeare
+is revealed in his direct and outspoken
+tribute. Here there breathes an almost reverential
+attitude toward the one supremely great
+man he has ventured to portray.</p>
+
+<h3>THE NAMES</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shakespeare!&mdash;to such name's sounding, what succeeds<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fitly as silence? Falter forth the spell,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Act follows word, the speaker knows full well;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor tampers with its magic more than needs.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Two names there are: That which the Hebrew reads<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With his soul only: if from lips it fell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Echo, back thundered by earth, heaven and hell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would own, "Thou didst create us!" Naught impedes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We voice the other name, man's most of might,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Awesomely, lovingly: let awe and love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mutely await their working, leave to sight<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All of the issue as&mdash;below&mdash;above&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shakespeare's creation rises: one remove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though dread&mdash;this finite from that infinite.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<p class="subtitle">A CRUCIAL PERIOD IN ENGLISH HISTORY</p>
+
+<p class="dropcapq"><small>"</small><span class="drop">W</span><span class="dcap">hom</span> the gods destroy they first
+make mad." Of no one in English
+history is this truer than of King Charles I.
+Just at a time when the nation was feeling
+the strength of its wings both in Church and
+State, when individuals were claiming the
+right to freedom of conscience in their form
+of worship and the people were growing more
+insistent for the recognition of their ancient
+rights and liberties, secured to them, in the
+first place, by the Magna Charta,&mdash;just at
+this time looms up the obstruction of a King
+so imbued with the defunct ideal of the divine
+right of Kings that he is blind to the tendencies
+of the age. What wonder, then, if
+the swirling waters of discontent should rise
+higher and higher until he became engulfed
+in their fury.</p>
+
+<p>The history of the reign of Charles I. is
+one full of involved details, yet the broader
+aspects of it, the great events which chiseled
+into shape the future of England stand out<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span>
+in bold relief in front of a background of
+interminable bickerings. There was constant
+quarreling between the factions within the
+English church, and between the Protestants
+and the Catholics, complicated by the discontent
+of the people and at times the nobles
+because of the autocratic, vacillating policy
+of the King.</p>
+
+<p>Among these epoch-bringing events were
+the emergence of the Puritans from the
+chaos of internecine church squabbles, the
+determined raising of the voice of the people
+in the Long Parliament, where King and
+people finally came to an open clash in the
+impeachment of the King's most devoted
+minister, Wentworth, Earl Strafford, by Pym,
+the great leader in the House of Commons,
+ending in Strafford's execution; the Grand
+Remonstrance, which sounded in no uncertain
+tones the tocsin of the coming revolution; and
+finally the King's impeachment of Pym,
+Hampden, Holles, Hazelrigg and Strode, one
+of the many ill-advised moves of this Monarch
+which at once precipitated the Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>These cataclysms at home were further
+intensified by the Scottish Invasion and the
+Irish Rebellion.</p>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_8" id="linki_8"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus008.jpg" width="500" height="355" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">Charles I in Scene of Impeachment</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is not surprising that Browning should<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span>
+have been attracted to this period of English
+history, when he contemplated the writing of
+a play on an English subject. His liberty-loving
+mind would naturally find congenial
+occupation in depicting this great English
+struggle for liberty. Yet the hero of the play
+is not Pym, the leader of the people, but
+<a name='TC_8'></a><ins title="Added comma after Strafford">Strafford,</ins> the supporter of the King. The
+dramatic reasons are sufficient to account for
+this. Strafford's career was picturesque and
+tragic and his personality so striking that more
+than one interpretation of his remarkable life
+is possible.</p>
+
+<p>The interpretation will differ according to
+whether one is partisan in hatred or admiration
+of his character and policy, or possesses
+the larger quality of sympathetic appreciation
+of the man and the problems with which
+he had to deal. Any one coming to judge him
+in this latter spirit would undoubtedly perceive
+all the fine points in Strafford's nature and
+would balance these against his theories of
+government to the better understanding of
+this extraordinary man.</p>
+
+<p>It is almost needless to say that Browning's
+perception of Strafford's character was
+penetrating and sympathetic. Strafford's devotion
+to his King had in it not only the
+element of loyalty to the liege, but an element<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span>
+of personal love which would make an especial
+appeal to Browning. He, in consequence,
+seizes upon this trait as the key-note of his
+portrayal of Strafford.</p>
+
+<p>The play is, on the whole, accurate in its
+historical details, though the poet's imagination
+has added many a flying buttress to the
+structure.</p>
+
+<p>Forster's lives of the English Statesmen in
+Lardner's Cyclop&aelig;dia furnished plenty of
+material, and he was besides familiar with
+some if not all of Forster's materials for the
+lives. One of the interesting surprises in
+connection with Browning's literary career
+was the fact divulged some years ago that he
+had actually helped Forster in the preparation
+of the Life of Strafford. Indeed it is
+thought that he wrote it almost entirely from
+the notes of Forster. Dr. Furnivall first called
+attention to this, and later the life of Strafford
+was reprinted as "Robert Browning's
+Prose Life of Strafford."<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> In his Forewords
+to this volume, Dr. Furnivall, who, among
+many other claims to distinction, was the
+president of the "London Browning Society,"
+writes, "Three times during his life
+did Browning speak to me about his prose
+'Life of Strafford.' The first time he said<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span>
+only&mdash;in the course of chat&mdash;that very few
+people had any idea of how much he had
+helped John Forster in it. The second time
+he told me at length that one day he went to
+see Forster and found him very ill, and anxious
+about the 'Life of Strafford,' which he had
+promised to write at once, to complete a
+volume of 'Lives of Eminent British Statesmen'
+for Lardner's 'Cabinet Cyclop&aelig;dia.'
+Forster had finished the 'Life of Eliot'&mdash;the
+first in the volume&mdash;and had just begun
+that of Strafford, for which he had made full
+collections and extracts; but illness had come
+on, he couldn't work, the book ought to be
+completed forthwith, as it was due in the
+serial issue of volumes; what <i>was</i> he to do?
+'Oh,' said Browning, 'don't trouble about it.
+I'll take your papers and do it for you.'
+Forster thanked his young friend heartily,
+Browning put the Strafford papers under his
+arm, walked off, worked hard, finished the
+Life, and it came out to time in 1836, to
+Forster's great relief, and passed under his
+name." Professor Gardiner, the historian, was
+of the opinion from internal evidence that the
+Life was more Browning's than Forster's.
+He said to Furnivall, "It is not a historian's
+conception of the character but a poet's. I
+am certain that it's not Forster's. Yes, it<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span>
+makes mistakes in facts and dates, but, it has
+got the man&mdash;in the main." In this opinion
+Furnivall concurs. Of the last paragraph in
+the history he exclaims, "I could swear it
+was Browning's":&mdash;The paragraph in question
+sums up the character of Strafford and is
+interesting in this connection, as giving hints,
+though not the complete picture of the Strafford
+of the Drama.</p>
+
+<p>"A great lesson is written in the life of this
+truly extraordinary person. In the career of
+Strafford is to be sought the justification of
+the world's 'appeal from tyranny to God.'
+In him Despotism had at length obtained an
+instrument with mind to comprehend, and
+resolution to act upon, her principles in their
+length and breadth,&mdash;and enough of her
+purposes were effected by him, to enable mankind
+to 'see as from a tower the end of all.'
+I cannot discern one false step in Strafford's
+public conduct, one glimpse of a recognition
+of an alien principle, one instance of a dereliction
+of the law of his being, which can come
+in to dispute the decisive result of the experiment,
+or explain away its failure. The least
+vivid fancy will have no difficulty in taking
+up the interrupted design, and by wholly
+enfeebling, or materially emboldening, the
+insignificant nature of Charles; and by accord<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span>ing
+some half-dozen years of immunity to the
+'fretted tenement' of Strafford's 'fiery <a name='TC_9'></a><ins title="Added end quote">soul'</ins>,&mdash;contemplate
+then, for itself, the perfect
+realization of the scheme of 'making the prince
+the most absolute lord in Christendom.'
+That done,&mdash;let it pursue the same course
+with respect to Eliot's noble imaginings, or
+to young Vane's dreamy aspirings, and apply
+in like manner a fit machinery to the working
+out the projects which made the dungeon of
+the one a holy place, and sustained the other
+in his self-imposed exile.&mdash;The result is great
+and decisive! It establishes, in renewed force,
+those principles of political conduct which
+have endured, and must continue to endure,
+'like truth from age to age.'" The history,
+on the whole, lacks the grasp in the portrayal
+of Wentworth to be found in the drama.
+C.&nbsp;H. Firth, commenting upon this says truly,
+"One might almost say that in the first,
+Strafford was represented as he appeared to
+his opponents, and in the second as he appeared
+to himself; or that, having painted
+Strafford as he was, Browning painted him
+again as he wished to be. In the biography
+Strafford is exhibited as a man of rare gifts
+and noble qualities; yet in his political capacity,
+merely the conscious, the devoted tool
+of a tyrant. In the tragedy, on the other<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span>
+hand, Strafford is the champion of the King's
+will against the people's, but yet looks forward
+to the ultimate reconciliation of Charles
+and his subjects, and strives for it after his
+own fashion. He loves the master he serves,
+and dies for him, but when the end comes he
+can proudly answer his accusers, 'I have
+loved England too.'"</p>
+
+<p>The play opens at the important moment of
+Wentworth's return to London from Ireland,
+where for some time he had been governor.
+The occasion of his return, according to
+Gardiner, was a personal quarrel with the
+Chancellor Loftus, of Ireland. Both men
+were allowed to come to England to plead their
+cause, which resulted in the victory of Wentworth.
+In the play Pym says, "Ay, the Court
+gives out His own concerns have brought him
+back: I know 'tis the King calls him." The
+authority for this remark is found in the
+Forster-Browning Life. "In the danger threatened
+by the Scots' Covenant, Wentworth was
+Charles's only hope; the King sent for him, saying
+he desired his personal counsel and attendance.
+He wrote: 'The Scots' Covenant begins
+to spread too far, yet, for all this, I will not
+have you take notice that I have sent for you,
+but pretend some other occasion of business.'"
+Certain it is that from this time Wentworth<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span>
+became the most trusted counsellor of Charles,
+that is, as far as Charles was capable of trusting
+any one. The condition of affairs to
+which Wentworth returned is brought out in
+the play in a thoroughly alive and human
+manner. We are introduced to the principal
+actors in the struggle for their rights and
+privileges against the government of Charles
+meeting in a house near Whitehall. Among
+the "great-hearted" men are Hampden, Hollis,
+the younger Vane, Rudyard, Fiennes&mdash;all
+leaders in the "Faction,"&mdash;Presbyterians,
+Loudon and other members of the Scots' commissioners.
+A bit of history has been drawn
+upon for this opening scene, for according
+to the Forster-Browning Life, "There is no
+doubt that a close correspondence with the
+Scotch commissioners, headed by Lords Loudon
+and Dumferling, was entered into under
+the management of Pym and Hampden.
+Whenever necessity obliged the meetings to
+be held in London, they took place at Pym's
+house in Gray's Inn Lane." In the talk between
+these men the political situation in
+England at the time from the point of view
+of the liberal party is brought vividly before
+the reader.</p>
+
+<p>There has been no Parliament in England
+for ten years, hence the people have had no<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span>
+say in the direction of the government. The
+growing dissatisfaction of the people at being
+thus deprived of their rights focussed itself
+upon the question of "ship-money." The
+taxes levied by the King for the maintainance
+of a fleet were loudly objected to upon all
+sides. That a fleet was a necessary means
+of protection in those threatening times is not
+to be doubted, but the objections of the people
+were grounded upon the fact that the King
+levied these taxes upon his own authority.
+"Ship-money, it was loudly declared," says
+Gardiner, "was undeniably a tax, and the ancient
+customs of the realm, recently embodied
+in the Petition of Right, had announced with
+no doubtful voice that no tax could be levied
+without consent of Parliament. Even this
+objection was not the full measure of the evil.
+If Charles could take this money without the
+consent of Parliament, he need not, unless
+some unforeseen emergency arose, ever summon
+a Parliament again. The true question
+at issue was whether Parliament formed
+an integral part of the Constitution or not."
+Other taxes were objected to on the same
+grounds, and the more determined the King
+was not to summon a Parliament, the greater
+became the political ferment.</p>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_9" id="linki_9"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus009.jpg" width="326" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>At the same time the religious ferment was<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span>
+centering itself upon hatred of Laud, the
+Archbishop of Canterbury. His policy was
+to silence opposition to the methods of worship
+then followed by the Church of England,
+by the terrors of the Star Chamber. The
+Puritans were smarting under the sentence
+which had been passed upon the three pamphleteers,
+William Prynne, Henry Burton,
+and John Bastwick, who had expressed their
+opinions of the practises of the church with
+great outspokenness. Prynne called upon
+pious King Charles "to do justice on the
+whole Episcopal order by which he had been
+robbed of the love of God and of his people,
+and which aimed at plucking the crown from
+his head, that they might set it on their own
+ambitious pates." Burton hinted that "the
+sooner the office of the Bishops was abolished
+the better it would be for the nation." Bastwick,
+who had been brought up in the straitest
+principles of Puritanism, had ended his pamphlet
+"<i>Flagellum Pontificis</i>," with this outburst,
+"Take notice, so far am I from flying
+or fearing, as I resolve to make war against
+the Beast, and every hint of Antichrist, all
+the days of my life. If I die in that battle,
+so much the sooner I shall be sent in a chariot
+of triumph to heaven; and when I come there,
+I will, with those that are under the altar cry,<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span>
+'How long, Lord, holy and true, dost Thou
+not judge and avenge our blood upon them
+that dwell upon the earth?'"</p>
+
+<p>These men were called before the Star
+Chamber upon a charge of libel. The sentence
+was a foregone conclusion, and was so
+outrageous that its result could only be the
+strengthening of opposition. The "muckworm"
+Cottington, as Browning calls him,
+suggested the sentence which was carried out.
+The men were condemned to lose their ears,
+to pay a fine of &pound;5000 each, and to be imprisoned
+for the remainder of their lives in
+the castles of Carnarvon, Launceston, and
+Lancaster. Finch, not satisfied with this,
+added the savage wish that Prynne should be
+branded on the cheek with the letters S.&nbsp;L.,
+to stand for "seditious libeller," and this was
+also done.</p>
+
+<p>The account of the execution of this sentence
+is almost too horrible to read. Some
+one who recorded the scene wrote, "The
+humours of the people were various; some
+wept, some laughed, and some were very
+reserved." Prynne, whose sufferings had been
+greatest for he had been burned as well as
+having his ears taken off, was yet able to indulge
+in a grim piece of humor touching the
+letters S.&nbsp;L. branded on his cheeks. He<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span>
+called them "Stigmata Laudis," the "Scars of
+Laud," on his way back to prison. Popular
+demonstrations in favor of the prisoners were
+made all along the road when they were taken
+to their respective prisons, where they were
+allowed neither pen, ink nor books. Fearful
+lest they might somehow still disseminate their
+heretical doctrines to the outer world, the
+council removed them to still more distant
+prisons, in the Scilly Isles, in Guernsey and
+in Jersey. Retaliation against this treatment
+found open expression. "A copy of the Star
+Chamber decree was nailed to a board. Its
+corners were cut off as the ears of Laud's
+victims had been cut off at Westminster. A
+broad ink mark was drawn round Laud's
+name. An inscription declared that 'The
+man that puts the saints of God into a pillory
+of wood stands here in a pillory of ink!'"</p>
+
+<p>Things were brought to a crisis in Scotland
+also, through hatred of Laud and the new
+prayer-book. The <a name='TC_10'></a><ins title="Capitalized King">King</ins>, upon his visit to
+Scotland, had been shocked at the slovenly
+appearance and the slovenly ritual of the
+Scottish Church, which reflected strongly survivals
+of the Presbyterianism of an earlier
+time. The King wrote to the Scottish Bishops
+soon after his return to England: "We, tendering
+the good and peace of that Church by<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span>
+having good and decent order and discipline
+observed therein, whereby religion and God's
+worship may increase, and considering that
+there is nothing more defective in that Church
+than the want of a Book of Common Prayer
+and uniform service to be kept in all the
+churches thereof, and the want of canons for
+the uniformity of the same, we are hereby
+pleased to authorise you as the representative
+body of that Church, and do herewith will and
+require you to condescend upon a form of
+Church service to be used therein, and to set
+down the canons for the uniformity of the
+discipline thereof." Laud, who as Archbishop
+of Canterbury had no jurisdiction over
+Scottish Bishops, put his finger into the pie
+as secretary of the King. As Gardiner says,
+"He conveyed instructions to the Bishops,
+remonstrated with proceedings which shocked
+his sense of order, and held out prospects of
+advancement to the zealous. Scotchmen naturally
+took offense. They did not trouble
+themselves to distinguish between the secretary
+and the archbishop. They simply said
+that the Pope of Canterbury was as bad as
+the Pope of Rome."</p>
+
+<p>The upshot of it all was that in May, 1637,
+the "new Prayer-book" was sent to Scotland,
+and every minister was ordered to buy two<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span>
+copies on pain of outlawry. Riots followed. It
+was finally decided that it must be settled
+once for all whether a King had any right to
+change the forms of worship without the
+sanction of a legislative assembly. Then
+came the Scottish Covenant which declared
+the intention of the signers to uphold religious
+liberty. The account of the signing of this
+covenant is one of the most impressive episodes
+in all history. The Covenant was carried on
+the 28th of February, 1638, to the Grey Friars'
+Church to which all the gentlemen present in
+Edinburgh had been summoned. The scene
+has been most sympathetically described by
+Gardiner.</p>
+
+<p>"At four o'clock in the grey winter evening,
+the noblemen, the Earl of Sutherland leading
+the way began to sign. Then came the gentlemen,
+one after the other until nearly eight.
+The next day the ministers were called on to
+testify their approval, and nearly three hundred
+signatures were obtained before night. The
+Commissioners of the boroughs signed at the
+same time.</p>
+
+<p>"On the third day the people of Edinburgh
+were called on to attest their devotion to the
+cause which was represented by the Covenant.
+Tradition long loved to tell how the honored
+parchment, carried back to the Grey Friars,<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span>
+was laid out on a tombstone in the churchyard,
+whilst weeping multitudes pressed round
+in numbers too great to be contained in any
+building. There are moments when the stern
+Scottish nature breaks out into an enthusiasm
+less passionate, but more enduring, than the
+frenzy of a Southern race. As each man and
+woman stepped forward in turn, with the
+right hand raised to heaven before the pen
+was grasped, every one there present knew
+that there would be no flinching amongst that
+band of brothers till their religion was safe
+from intrusive violence.</p>
+
+<p>"Modern narrators may well turn their attention
+to the picturesqueness of the scene,
+to the dark rocks of the Castle crag over
+against the churchyard, and to the earnest
+faces around. The men of the seventeenth
+century had no thought to spare for the
+earth beneath or for the sky above. What
+they saw was their country's faith trodden
+under foot, what they felt was the joy of those
+who had been long led astray, and had now
+returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of their
+souls."</p>
+
+<p>Such were the conditions that brought on
+the Scotch war, neither Charles nor Wentworth
+being wise enough to make concessions
+to the Covenanters.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span>
+The grievances against the King's Minister
+Wentworth are in this opening scene shown
+as being aggravated by the fact that the men
+of the "Faction" regard him as a deserter
+from their cause, Pym, himself being one of
+the number who is loth to think Wentworth
+stands for the King's policy.</p>
+
+<p>The historical ground for the assumption
+lies in the fact that Wentworth was one of
+the leaders of the opposition in the Parliament
+of 1628.</p>
+
+<p>The reason for this was largely personal,
+because of Buckingham's treatment of him.
+Wentworth had refused to take part in the
+collection of the forced loan of 1626, and was
+dismissed from his official posts in consequence.
+When he further refused to subscribe
+to that loan himself he was imprisoned
+in the Marshalsea and at Depford. Regarding
+himself as personally attacked by Buckingham,
+he joined the opposition. Yet, as
+Firth points out, "fiercely as he attacked the
+King's ministers, he was careful to exonerate
+the King." He concludes his list of grievances
+by saying, "This hath not been done
+by the King, but by projectors." Again,
+"Whether we shall look upon the King or his
+people, it did never more behove this great
+physician the parliament, to effect a true<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span>
+consent amongst the parties than now. Both
+are injured, both to be cured. By one and
+the same thing hath the King and people
+been hurt. I speak truly both for the interest
+of the King and the people."</p>
+
+<p>His intention was to find some means of
+cooperation which would leave the people
+their liberty and yet give the crown its prerogative,
+"Let us make what laws we can,
+there must&mdash;nay, there will be a trust left
+in the crown."</p>
+
+<p>It will be seen by any unbiased critic that
+Wentworth was only half for the people even
+at this time. On the other hand, it is not
+astonishing that men, heart and soul for the
+people, should consider Wentworth's subsequent
+complete devotion to the cause of the
+King sufficient to brand him as an apostate.
+The fact that he received so many official
+dignities from the King also leant color to the
+supposition that personal ambition was a
+leading motive with him. With true dramatic
+instinct Browning has centered this
+feeling and made the most of it in the attitude
+of Pym's party, while he offsets it later
+in the play by showing us the reality of the
+man Strafford.</p>
+
+<p>There is no very authentic source for the
+idea also brought out in this first scene that<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span>
+Strafford and Pym had been warm personal
+friends. The story is told by Dr. James
+Welwood, one of the physicians of William
+III., who, in the year 1700, published a
+volume entitled "Memoirs, of the most material
+transactions in England for the last
+hundred years preceding the Revolution of
+1688." Without mentioning any source he
+tells the following story; "There had been a
+long and intimate friendship between Mr.
+Pym and him [Wentworth], and they had
+gone hand in hand in everything in the
+House of Commons. But when Sir Thomas
+Wentworth was upon making his peace with
+the Court, he sent to Pym to meet him
+alone at Greenwich; where he began in a set
+speech to sound Mr. Pym about the dangers
+they were like to run by the courses
+they were in; and what advantages they
+might have if they would but listen to some
+offers which would probably be made them
+from the Court. Pym understanding his
+speech stopped him short with this expression:
+'You need not use all this art to tell me
+you have a mind to leave us; but remember
+what I tell you, you are going to be undone.
+But remember, that though you leave us now
+I will never leave you while your head is
+upon your shoulders.'"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span>
+Though only a tradition this was entirely
+too useful a suggestion not to be used. The
+intensity of the situation between the leaders
+on opposite sides is enhanced tenfold by
+bringing into the field a personal sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>The attitude of Pym's followers is reflected
+again in their opinion of Wentworth's Irish
+rule. Although Wentworth's policy seemed
+to be successful in Ireland, the very fact of its
+success would condemn it in the eyes of the
+popular party; besides later developments revealed
+its weaknesses. How it appeared to
+the eyes of a non-fanatical observer at this
+time may be gathered from the following letter
+of Sir Thomas Roe to the Queen of Bohemia,
+written in 1634.</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord Deputy of Ireland doth great
+wonders, and governs like a King, and hath
+taught that Kingdom to show us an example
+of envy, by having parliaments, and knowing
+wisely how to use them; for they have given
+the King six subsidies, which will arise to
+&pound;240,000, and they are like to have the liberty
+we contended for, and grace from his Majesty
+worth their gift double; and which is worth
+much more, the honor of good intelligence
+and love between the King and people, which
+I would to God our great wits had had eyes<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span>
+to see. This is a great service, and to give
+your Majesty a character of the man,&mdash;he is
+severe abroad and in business, and sweet in
+private conversation; retired in his friendships,
+but very firm; a terrible judge and a strong
+enemy; a servant violently zealous in his
+Master's ends, and not negligent of his own;
+one that will have what he will, and though
+of great reason, he can make his will greater
+when it may serve him; affecting glory by a
+seeming contempt; one that cannot stay long
+in the middle region of fortune, being entreprenant;
+but will either be the greatest man
+in England, or much less than he is; lastly,
+one that may (and his nature lies fit for it,
+for he is ambitious to do what others will not),
+do your Majesty very great service, if you can
+make him."</p>
+
+<p>In order to be in sympathy with the play
+throughout and especially with the first scene
+all this historical background must be kept
+in mind, for the talk gives no direct information,
+it merely in an absolutely dramatic
+fashion reveals the feelings and opinions of
+the men upon the situation, just as friends at
+a dinner party might discuss one of our own
+less strenuous political situations&mdash;all present
+being perfectly familiar with the issues at
+stake.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span></p>
+<div class="drama">
+<h3>STRAFFORD<br />
+<br />
+ACT I</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Scene I.</span>&mdash;<i>A House near Whitehall.</i></h4>
+
+<p class="center"><i><span class="smcap">Hampden, Hollis</span>,
+the <em>younger</em> <span class="smcap">Vane, Rudyard, <a name='TC_11'></a><ins title="Was 'Finnees'">Fiennes</ins></span> and many
+of the Presbyterian Party: <span class="smcap">Loudon</span> and other
+Scots' Commissioners.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i> I say, if he be here&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Rudyard.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>(And he is here!)&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i> For England's sake let every man be still<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Nor speak of him, so much as say his name,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Till Pym rejoin us! Rudyard! Henry Vane!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">One rash conclusion may decide our course<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And with it England's fate&mdash;think&mdash;England's fate!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Hampden, for England's sake they should be still!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i> You say so, Hollis? Well, I must be still.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">It is indeed too bitter that one man,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Any one man's mere presence, should suspend<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">England's combined endeavor: little need<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To name him!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Rudyard.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>For you are his brother, Hollis!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i> Shame on you, Rudyard! time to tell him that,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When he forgets the Mother of us all.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Rudyard.</i> Do I forget her?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>You talk idle hate<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Against her foe: is that so strange a thing?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is hating Wentworth all the help she needs?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>A Puritan.</i> The Philistine strode, cursing as he went:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But David&mdash;five smooth pebbles from the brook<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Within his scrip....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Rudyard.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Be you as still as David!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Fiennes.</i> Here's Rudyard not ashamed to wag a tongue<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span>Stiff with ten years' disuse of Parliaments;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Why, when the last sat, Wentworth sat with us!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Rudyard.</i> Let's hope for news of them now he returns&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He that was safe in Ireland, as we thought!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;But I'll abide Pym's coming.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>Now, by Heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">They may be cool who can, silent who will&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Some have a gift that way! Wentworth is here,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Here, and the King's safe closeted with him<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Ere this. And when I think on all that's past<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Since that man left us, how his single arm<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Rolled the advancing good of England back<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And set the woeful past up in its place,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Exalting Dagon where the Ark should be,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How that man has made firm the fickle King<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">(Hampden, I will speak out!)&mdash;in aught he feared<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To venture on before; taught tyranny<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Her dismal trade, the use of all her tools,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To ply the scourge yet screw the gag so close<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That strangled agony bleeds mute to death;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How he turns Ireland to a private stage<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For training infant villanies, new ways<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of wringing treasure out of tears and blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Unheard oppressions nourished in the dark<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To try how much man's nature can endure<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;If he dies under it, what harm? if not,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Why, one more trick is added to the rest<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Worth a king's knowing, and what Ireland bears<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">England may learn to bear:&mdash;how all this while<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That man has set himself to one dear task,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The bringing Charles to relish more and more<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Power, power without law, power and blood too<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;Can I be still?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>For that you should be still.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><i>Vane.</i> Oh Hampden, then and now! The year he left us,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The People in full Parliament could wrest<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Bill of Rights from the reluctant King;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And now, he'll find in an obscure small room<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A stealthy gathering of great-hearted men<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That take up England's cause: England is here!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i> And who despairs of England?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Rudyard.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>That do I,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">If Wentworth comes to rule her. I am sick<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To think her wretched masters, Hamilton,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The muckworm Cottington, the maniac Laud,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">May yet be longed-for back again. I say,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I do despair.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>And, Rudyard, I'll say this&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Which all true men say after me, not loud<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But solemnly and as you'd say a prayer!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This King, who treads our England underfoot,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Has just so much ... it may be fear or craft,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As bids him pause at each fresh outrage; friends,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He needs some sterner hand to grasp his own,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Some voice to ask, "Why shrink? Am I not by?"<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Now, one whom England loved for serving her,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Found in his heart to say, "I know where best<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The iron heel shall bruise her, for she leans<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Upon me when you trample." Witness, you!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">So Wentworth heartened Charles, so England fell.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But inasmuch as life is hard to take<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">From England....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Many Voices.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>Go on, Vane! 'Tis well said, Vane!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i> &mdash;Who has not so forgotten Runnymead!&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Voices.</i> 'Tis well and bravely spoken, Vane! Go on!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i> &mdash;There are some little signs of late she knows<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The ground no place for her. She glances round,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Wentworth has dropped the hand, is gone his way<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span>On other service: what if she arise?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">No! the King beckons, and beside him stands<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The same bad man once more, with the same smile<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And the same gesture. Now shall England crouch,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Or catch at us and rise?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Voices.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>The Renegade!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Haman! Ahithophel!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Gentlemen of the North,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">It was not thus the night your claims were urged,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And we pronounced the League and Covenant,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The cause of Scotland, England's cause as well:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Vane there, sat motionless the whole night through.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i> Hampden!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Fiennes.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>Stay, Vane!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Loudon.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>Be just and patient, Vane!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i> Mind how you counsel patience, Loudon! you<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Have still a Parliament, and this your League<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To back it; you are free in Scotland still:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">While we are brothers, hope's for England yet.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But know you wherefore Wentworth comes? to quench<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This last of hopes? that he brings war with him?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Know you the man's self? what he dares?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Loudon.</i><span class="i26">&nbsp;</span>We know,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">All know&mdash;'tis nothing new.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>And what's new, then,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In calling for his life? Why, Pym himself&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You must have heard&mdash;ere Wentworth dropped our cause<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He would see Pym first; there were many more<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Strong on the people's side and friends of his,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Eliot that's dead, Rudyard and Hampden here,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But for these Wentworth cared not; only, Pym<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He would see&mdash;Pym and he were sworn, 'tis said,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To live and die together; so, they met<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">At Greenwich. Wentworth, you are sure, was long,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span>Specious enough, the devil's argument<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Lost nothing on his lips; he'd have Pym own<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A patriot could not play a purer part<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Than follow in his track; they two combined<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Might put down England. Well, Pym heard him out;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">One glance&mdash;you know Pym's eye&mdash;one word was all:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">"You leave us, Wentworth! while your head is on,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I'll not leave you."</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Has he left Wentworth, then?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Has England lost him? Will you let him speak,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Or put your crude surmises in his mouth?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Away with this! Will you have Pym or Vane?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Voices.</i> Wait Pym's arrival! Pym shall speak.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i><span class="i26">&nbsp;</span>Meanwhile<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Let Loudon read the Parliament's report<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">From Edinburgh: our last hope, as Vane says,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is in the stand it makes. Loudon!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>No, no!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Silent I can be: not indifferent!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i> Then each keep silence, praying God to spare<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">His anger, cast not England quite away<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In this her visitation!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>A Puritan.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Seven years long<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Midianite drove Israel into dens<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And caves. Till God sent forth a mighty man,</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i><span class="smcap">Pym</span> enters</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st">Even Gideon!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>Wentworth's come: nor sickness, care,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The ravaged body nor the ruined soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">More than the winds and waves that beat his ship,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Could keep him from the King. He has not reached<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Whitehall: they've hurried up a Council there<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To lose no time and find him work enough.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Where's Loudon? your Scots' Parliament....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Loudon.</i><span class="i26">&nbsp;</span>Holds firm:<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We were about to read reports.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>The King<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Has just dissolved your Parliament.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Loudon and other Scots.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Great God!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">An oath-breaker! Stand by us, England, then!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> The King's too sanguine; doubtless Wentworth's here;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But still some little form might be kept up.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i> Now speak, Vane! Rudyard, you had much to say!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i> The rumor's false, then....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>Ay, the Court gives out<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">His own concerns have brought him back: I know<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">'Tis the King calls him. Wentworth supersedes<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The tribe of Cottingtons and Hamiltons<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Whose part is played; there's talk enough, by this,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Merciful talk, the King thinks: time is now<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To turn the record's last and bloody leaf<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Which, chronicling a nation's great despair,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Tells they were long rebellious, and their lord<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Indulgent, till, all kind expedients tried,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He drew the sword on them and reigned in peace.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Laud's laying his religion on the Scots<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Was the last gentle entry: the new page<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Shall run, the King thinks, "Wentworth thrust it down<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">At the sword's point."</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>A Puritan.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>I'll do your bidding, Pym,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">England's and God's&mdash;one blow!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>A goodly thing&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We all say, friends, it is a goodly thing<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To right that England. Heaven grows dark above:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Let's snatch one moment ere the thunder fall,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To say how well the English spirit comes out<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span>Beneath it! All have done their best, indeed,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">From lion Eliot, that grand Englishman,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To the least here: and who, the least one here,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When she is saved (for her redemption dawns<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Dimly, most dimly, but it dawns&mdash;it dawns)<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Who'd give at any price his hope away<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of being named along with the Great Men?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We would not&mdash;no, we would not give that up!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i> And one name shall be dearer than all names.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When children, yet unborn, are taught that name<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">After their fathers',&mdash;taught what matchless man....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> ... Saved England? What if Wentworth's should be still<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That name?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Rudyard and others.</i> We have just said it, Pym! His death<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Saves her! We said it&mdash;there's no way beside!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I'll do God's bidding, Pym! They struck down Joab<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And purged the land.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>No villanous striking-down!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Rudyard.</i> No, a calm vengeance: let the whole land rise<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And shout for it. No Feltons!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>Rudyard, no!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">England rejects all Feltons; most of all<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Since Wentworth ... Hampden, say the trust again<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of England in her servants&mdash;but I'll think<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You know me, all of you. Then, I believe,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Spite of the past, Wentworth rejoins you, friends!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane and others.</i> Wentworth? Apostate! Judas! Double-dyed<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A traitor! Is it Pym, indeed....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>... Who says<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Vane never knew that Wentworth, loved that man,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span>Was used to stroll with him, arm locked in arm,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Along the streets to see the people pass,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And read in every island-countenance<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Fresh argument for God against the King,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Never sat down, say, in the very house<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Where Eliot's brow grew broad with noble thoughts,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">(You've joined us, Hampden&mdash;Hollis, you as well,)<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And then left talking over Gracchus' death....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i> To frame, we know it well, the choicest clause<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In the Petition of Right: he framed such clause<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">One month before he took at the King's hand<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">His Northern Presidency, which that Bill<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Denounced.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>Too true! Never more, never more<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Walked we together! Most alone I went.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I have had friends&mdash;all here are fast my friends&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But I shall never quite forget that friend.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And yet it could not but be real in him!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You, Vane,&mdash;you, Rudyard, have no right to trust<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To Wentworth: but can no one hope with me?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Hampden, will Wentworth dare shed English blood<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Like water?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>Ireland is Aceldama.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> Will he turn Scotland to a hunting-ground<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To please the King, now that he knows the King?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The People or the King? and that King, Charles!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i> Pym, all here know you: you'll not set your heart<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">On any baseless dream. But say one deed<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of Wentworth's since he left us....</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Shouting without.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>There! he comes,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And they shout for him! Wentworth's at Whitehall,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The King embracing him, now, as we speak,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span>And he, to be his match in courtesies,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Taking the whole war's risk upon himself,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Now, while you tell us here how changed he is!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Hear you?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>And yet if 'tis a dream, no more,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That Wentworth chose their side, and brought the King<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To love it as though Laud had loved it first,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And the Queen after;&mdash;that he led their cause<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Calm to success, and kept it spotless through,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">So that our very eyes could look upon<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The travail of our souls, and close content<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That violence, which something mars even right<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Which sanctions it, had taken off no grace<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">From its serene regard. Only a dream!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i> We meet here to accomplish certain good<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">By obvious means, and keep tradition up<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of free assemblages, else obsolete,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In this poor chamber: nor without effect<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Has friend met friend to counsel and confirm,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As, listening to the beats of England's heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We spoke its wants to Scotland's prompt reply<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">By these her delegates. Remains alone<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That word grow deed, as with God's help it shall&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But with the devil's hindrance, who doubts too?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Looked we or no that tyranny should turn<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Her engines of oppression to their use?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Whereof, suppose the worst be Wentworth here&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Shall we break off the tactics which succeed<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In drawing out our formidablest foe,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Let bickering and disunion take their place?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Or count his presence as our conquest's proof,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And keep the old arms at their steady play?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Proceed to England's work! Fiennes, read the list!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Fiennes.</i> Ship-money is refused or fiercely paid<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span>In every county, save the northern parts<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Where Wentworth's influence....</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Shouting.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>I, in England's name,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Declare her work, this way, at end! Till now,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Up to this moment, peaceful strife was best.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We English had free leave to think; till now,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We had a shadow of a Parliament<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In Scotland. But all's changed: they change the first,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">They try brute-force for law, they, first of all....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Voices.</i> Good! Talk enough! The old true hearts with Vane!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i> Till we crush Wentworth for her, there's no act<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Serves England!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Voices.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>Vane for England!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>Pym should be<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Something to England. I seek Wentworth, friends.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the second scene of the first act, the man
+upon whom the popular party has been heaping
+opprobrium appears to speak for himself.
+Again the historical background must be
+known in order that the whole drift of the
+scene may be understood. Wentworth is
+talking with Lady Carlisle, a woman celebrated
+for her beauty and her wit, and fond
+of having friendships with great men. Various
+opinions of this beautiful woman have
+been expressed by those who knew her.
+"Her beauty," writes one, "brought her
+adorers of all ranks, courtiers, and poets, and
+statesmen; but she remained untouched by
+their worship." Sir Toby Mathews who pre<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span>fixed
+to a collection of letters published in
+1660 "A character of the most excellent Lady,
+Lucy, Countess of Carlisle," writes that she
+will "freely discourse of love, and hear both the
+fancies and powers of it; but if you will needs
+bring it within knowledge, and boldly direct
+it to herself, she is likely to divert the discourse,
+or, at least, seem not to understand
+it. By which you may know her humour,
+and her justice; for since she cannot love in
+earnest she would have nothing from love."
+According to him she filled her mind "with
+gallant fancies, and high and elevated
+thoughts," and "her wit being most eminent
+among the rest of her great abilities," even
+the conversation of those most famed for it
+was affected. Quite another view of her is
+given in a letter of Voiture's written to Mr.
+Gordon on leaving England in 1623.</p>
+
+<p>"In one human being you let me see more
+treasures than there are there [the Tower], and
+even more lions and leopards. It will not be
+difficult for you to guess after this that I
+speak of the Countess of Carlisle. For there
+is nobody else of whom all this good and evil
+can be said. No matter how dangerous it is
+to let the memory dwell upon her, I have not,
+so far, been able to keep mine from it, and,
+quite honestly, I would not give the picture of<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span>
+her that lingers in my mind, for all the loveliest
+things I have seen in my life. I must
+confess that she is an enchanting personality,
+and there would not be a woman under heaven
+so worthy of affection, if she only knew what
+it was, and if she had as sensitive a nature
+as she has a reasonable mind. But with the
+temperament we know she possesses, there is
+nothing to be said except that she is the most
+lovable of all things not good, and the most
+delightful poison that nature ever concocted."
+Browning himself says he first sketched her
+character from Mathews, but finding that
+rather artificial, he used Voiture and Waller,
+who referred to her as the "bright Carlisle of
+the Court of Heaven." It should be remembered
+that she had become a widow and was
+considerably older at the time of her friendship
+with Wentworth than when Voiture
+wrote of her, and was probably better balanced,
+and truly worthy of Wentworth's own
+appreciation of her when he wrote, "A nobler
+nor a more intelligent friendship did I never
+meet with in my life." A passage in a letter
+to Laud indicates that Wentworth was well
+aware of the practical advantage in having
+such a friend as Lady Carlisle at Court. "I
+judge her ladyship very considerable. She is
+often in place, and extremely well skilled how<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span>
+to speak with advantage and spirit for those
+friends she professeth unto, which will not
+be many. There is this further in her disposition,
+she will not seem to be the person
+she is not, an ingenuity I have always observed
+and honoured her for."</p>
+
+<p>It is something of a shock to learn that even
+before the Wentworth episode was well over,
+she became a friend of his bitterest foe, Pym.
+Gardiner sums up her character in as fair a
+way as any one,&mdash;and not at all inconsistent
+with Browning's portrayal of her.</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Carlisle had now been for many
+years a widow. She had long been the reigning
+beauty at Court, and she loved to mingle
+political intrigue with social intercourse. For
+politics as a serious occupation she had no
+aptitude; but, in middle age, she felt a woman's
+pride in attaching to herself the strong heads
+by which the world was ruled, as she had
+attached to herself in youth, the witty courtier
+or the agile dancer. It was worth a statesman's
+while to cultivate her acquaintance.
+She could make him a power in society as
+well as in Council, could worm out a secret
+which it behoved him to know, and could convey
+to others his suggestions with assured fidelity.
+The calumny which treated Strafford,
+as it afterwards treated Pym, as her accepted<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span>
+lover, may be safely disregarded. But there
+can be no doubt that purely personal motives
+attached her both to Strafford and Pym.
+For Strafford's theory of Monarchical government
+she cared as little as she cared for Pym's
+theory of Parliamentary government. It may
+be, too, that some mingled feeling may have
+arisen in Strafford's breast. It was something
+to have an ally at Court ready at all
+times to plead his cause with gay enthusiasm,
+to warn him of hidden dangers, and to offer
+him the thread of that labyrinth which, under
+the name of 'the Queen's side,' was such a
+mystery to him. It was something, too, no
+doubt, that this advocate was not a grey haired
+statesman, but a woman, in spite of growing
+years, of winning grace and sparkling vivacity
+of eye and tongue."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span></p>
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_10" id="linki_10"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus010.jpg" width="419" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">Charles I</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Strafford, himself, Browning brings before
+us, ill, and worn out with responsibility as he
+was upon his return to England at this time.
+Carlisle tactfully lets him know how he will
+have to face criticisms from other councillors
+about the King, and how even the confidence
+of the fickle King cannot be relied upon. In
+his conference with the King in this scene,
+Strafford, at last, wins the confidence of the
+King as history relates. Wentworth, horrified
+at the way in which a war with Scotland has
+been precipitated, carries his point, that Parliaments
+should be called in Ireland and England.
+This will give time for preparation,
+and at the same time an opportunity of convincing
+the people that the war is justified by
+Scotland's treason, so causing them willingly
+to grant subsidies for the expense of the war.
+To turn from the play to history, Commissioners
+from the Scottish Parliament, the Earls
+of Loudon and Dumferling had arrived in
+London to ask that the acts of the Scottish
+Parliament might receive confirmation from
+the King. This question was referred to a
+committee of eight Privy Councillors. Propositions
+were made to put the Scotch Commissioners
+in prison; however, the King
+finally decided to dismiss them without treating
+with them. Scottish indignation of course
+ran high at this proceeding, and here Wentworth
+stepped in and won the King to his
+policy of ruling Scotland directly from England.
+"He insisted," writes Gardiner, "that
+a Parliament, and a Parliament alone, was
+the remedy fitted for the occasion. Laud and
+Hamilton gave him their support. He carried
+his point with the Committee. What was of
+more importance he carried it with the King."
+And as one writer expressed it the Lords were
+of the opinion that "his Majesty should make<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span>
+trial of that once more, that so he might leave
+his people without excuse, and have where
+withal to justify himself to God and the
+world that in his own inclination he desired
+the old way; but that if his people should
+not cheerfully, according to their duties,
+meet him in that, especially in this exigent
+when his kingdom and person are in apparent
+danger, the world might see he is
+forced, contrary to his own inclination, to
+use extraordinary means rather than, by
+the peevishness of some few factious spirits,
+to suffer his state and government to be
+lost."</p>
+
+<p>In the play as in history, Charles now confers
+upon Wentworth an Earldom. Shortly
+after this the King "was prepared," says
+Gardiner, "to confer upon his faithful Minister
+that token of his confidence which he
+had twice refused before. On January 12,
+Wentworth received the Earldom of Strafford,
+and a week later he exchanged the title of
+Lord-Deputy of Ireland for the higher dignity
+of Lord-Lieutenant."</p>
+
+<p>In his conference with Pym, Strafford who,
+in talking to Carlisle, had shown a slight
+wavering toward the popular party, because
+of finding himself so surrounded by difficulties,
+stands firm; this episode is a striking<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span>
+working up of the tradition of the friendship
+between these two men.</p>
+
+<p>The influence of the Queen upon Charles
+is the last strand in this tangled skein of human
+destiny brought out by Browning in
+the scene. The Parliament that Wentworth
+wants she is afraid of lest it should ask for
+a renewal of the persecution of the Catholics.
+The vacillating Charles, in an instant, is ready
+to repudiate his interview with Wentworth,
+and act only to please the Queen.</p>
+
+<div class="drama">
+<h4><span class="smcap">Scene II.</span>&mdash;<i>Whitehall.</i></h4>
+
+<p class="center"><i><em>Lady</em> <span class="smcap">Carlisle</span> and <span class="smcap">Wentworth</span></i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> And the King?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Wentworth, lean on me! Sit then!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I'll tell you all; this horrible fatigue<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Will kill you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>No;&mdash;or, Lucy, just your arm;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I'll not sit till I've cleared this up with him:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">After that, rest. The King?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Confides in you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> Why? or, why now?&mdash;They have kind throats, the knaves!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Shout for me&mdash;they!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>You come so strangely soon:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Yet we took measures to keep off the crowd&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Did they shout for you?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Wherefore should they not?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Does the King take such measures for himself?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span>Besides, there's such a dearth of malcontents,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You say!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> I said but few dared carp at you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> At me? at us, I hope! The King and I!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He's surely not disposed to let me bear<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The fame away from him of these late deeds<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In Ireland? I am yet his instrument<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Be it for well or ill? He trusts me too!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> The King, dear Wentworth, purposes, I said,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To grant you, in the face of all the Court....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> All the Court! Evermore the Court about us!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Savile and Holland, Hamilton and Vane<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">About us,&mdash;then the King will grant me&mdash;what?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That he for once put these aside and say&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">"Tell me your whole mind, Wentworth!"</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>You professed<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You would be calm.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>Lucy, and I am calm!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How else shall I do all I come to do,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Broken, as you may see, body and mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How shall I serve the King? Time wastes meanwhile,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You have not told me half. His footstep! No.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Quick, then, before I meet him,&mdash;I am calm&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Why does the King distrust me?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>He does not<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Distrust you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> Lucy, you can help me; you<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Have even seemed to care for me: one word!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is it the Queen?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>No, not the Queen: the party<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That poisons the Queen's ear, Savile and Holland.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> I know, I know: old Vane, too, he's one too?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span>Go on&mdash;and he's made Secretary. Well?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Or leave them out and go straight to the charge&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The charge!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Oh, there's no charge, no precise charge;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Only they sneer, make light of&mdash;one may say,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Nibble at what you do.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>I know! but, Lucy,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I reckoned on you from the first!&mdash;Go on!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;Was sure could I once see this gentle friend<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When I arrived, she'd throw an hour away<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To help her ... what am I?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>You thought of me,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Dear Wentworth?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>But go on! The party here!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> They do not think your Irish government<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of that surpassing value....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>The one thing<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of value! The one service that the crown<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">May count on! All that keeps these very Vanes<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In power, to vex me&mdash;not that they do vex,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Only it might vex some to hear that service<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Decried, the sole support that's left the King!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> So the Archbishop says.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>Ah? well, perhaps<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The only hand held up in my defence<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">May be old Laud's! These Hollands then, these Saviles<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Nibble? They nibble?&mdash;that's the very word!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Your profit in the Customs, Bristol says,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Exceeds the due proportion: while the tax....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> Enough! 'tis too unworthy,&mdash;I am not<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">So patient as I thought. What's Pym about?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Pym?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>Pym and the People.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>O, the Faction!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span>Extinct&mdash;of no account: there'll never be<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Another Parliament.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Tell Savile that!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You may know&mdash;(ay, you do&mdash;the creatures here<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Never forget!) that in my earliest life<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I was not ... much that I am now! The King<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">May take my word on points concerning Pym<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Before Lord Savile's, Lucy, or if not,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I bid them ruin their wise selves, not me,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">These Vanes and Hollands! I'll not be their tool<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Who might be Pym's friend yet.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>But there's the King!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Where is he?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Just apprised that you arrive.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> And why not here to meet me? I was told<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He sent for me, nay, longed for me.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Because,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He is now ... I think a Council's sitting now<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">About this Scots affair.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>A Council sits?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">They have not taken a decided course<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Without me in the matter?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>I should say....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> The war? They cannot have agreed to that?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Not the Scots' war?&mdash;without consulting me&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Me, that am here to show how rash it is,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How easy to dispense with?&mdash;Ah, you too<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Against me! well,&mdash;the King may take his time.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;Forget it, Lucy! Cares make peevish: mine<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Weigh me (but 'tis a secret) to my grave.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> For life or death I am your own, dear friend!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Goes out.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> Heartless! but all are heartless here. Go now,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Forsake the People!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>I did not forsake<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The People: they shall know it, when the King<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Will trust me!&mdash;who trusts all beside at once,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">While I have not spoke Vane and Savile fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And am not trusted: have but saved the throne:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Have not picked up the Queen's glove prettily,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And am not trusted. But he'll see me now.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Weston is dead: the Queen's half English now&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">More English: one decisive word will brush<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">These insects from ... the step I know so well!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The King! But now, to tell him ... no&mdash;to ask<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What's in me he distrusts:&mdash;or, best begin<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">By proving that this frightful Scots affair<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is just what I foretold. So much to say,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And the flesh fails, now, and the time is come,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And one false step no way to be repaired.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You were avenged, Pym, could you look on me.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i><span class="smcap">Pym</span> enters.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> I little thought of you just then.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i32">&nbsp;</span>No? I<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Think always of you, Wentworth.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>The old voice!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I wait the King, sir.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>True&mdash;you look so pale!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A Council sits within; when that breaks up<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He'll see you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>Sir, I thank you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>Oh, thank Laud!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You know when Laud once gets on Church affairs<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The case is desperate: he'll not be long<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To-day: he only means to prove, to-day,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We English all are mad to have a hand<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In butchering the Scots for serving God<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">After their fathers' fashion: only that!</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_11" id="linki_11"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus011.jpg" width="500" height="321" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">Whitehall</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="drama">
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span>
+<span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> Sir, keep your jests for those who relish them!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">(Does he enjoy their confidence?) 'Tis kind<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To tell me what the Council does.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>You grudge<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That I should know it had resolved on war<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Before you came? no need: you shall have all<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The credit, trust me!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Have the Council dared&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">They have not dared ... that is&mdash;I know you not.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Farewell, sir: times are changed.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>&mdash;Since we two met<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">At Greenwich? Yes: poor patriots though we be,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You cut a figure, makes some slight return<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For your exploits in Ireland! Changed indeed,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Could our friend Eliot look from out his grave!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Ah, Wentworth, one thing for acquaintance' sake,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Just to decide a question; have you, now,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Felt your old self since you forsook us?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>Sir!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> Spare me the gesture! you misapprehend.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Think not I mean the advantage is with me.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I was about to say that, for my part,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I never quite held up my head since then&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Was quite myself since then: for first, you see,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I lost all credit after that event<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With those who recollect how sure I was<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Wentworth would outdo Eliot on our side.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Forgive me: Savile, old Vane, Holland here,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Eschew plain-speaking: 'tis a trick I keep.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> How, when, where, Savile, Vane, and Holland speak,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Plainly or otherwise, would have my scorn,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">All of my scorn, sir....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>... Did not my poor thoughts<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Claim somewhat?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>Keep your thoughts! believe the King<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Mistrusts me for their prattle, all these Vanes<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And Saviles! make your mind up, o' God's love,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That I am discontented with the King!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> Why, you may be: I should be, that I know,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Were I like you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>Like me?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>I care not much<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For titles: our friend Eliot died no lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Hampden's no lord, and Savile is a lord;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But you care, since you sold your soul for one.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I can't think, therefore, your soul's purchaser<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Did well to laugh you to such utter scorn<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When you twice prayed so humbly for its price,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The thirty silver pieces ... I should say,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Earldom you expected, still expect,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And may. Your letters were the movingest!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Console yourself: I've borne him prayers just now<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">From Scotland not to be oppressed by Laud,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Words moving in their way: he'll pay, be sure,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As much attention as to those you sent.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> False, sir! Who showed them you? Suppose it so,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The King did very well ... nay, I was glad<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When it was shown me: I refused, the first!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">John Pym, you were my friend&mdash;forbear me once!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> Oh, Wentworth, ancient brother of my soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That all should come to this!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Leave me!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i28">&nbsp;</span>My friend,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Why should I leave you?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>To tell Rudyard this,<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span><span class="hang1st">And Hampden this!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Whose faces once were bright<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">At my approach, now sad with doubt and fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Because I hope in you&mdash;yes, Wentworth, you<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Who never mean to ruin England&mdash;you<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Who shake off, with God's help, an obscene dream<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In this Ezekiel chamber, where it crept<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Upon you first, and wake, yourself, your true<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And proper self, our Leader, England's Chief,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And Hampden's friend!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>This is the proudest day!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Come, Wentworth! Do not even see the King!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The rough old room will seem itself again!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We'll both go in together: you've not seen<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Hampden so long: come: and there's Fiennes: you'll have<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To know young Vane. This is the proudest day!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>The <span class="smcap">King</span> enters. <span class="smcap">Wentworth</span> lets fall <span class="smcap">Pym's</span> hand.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> Arrived, my lord?&mdash;This gentleman, we know<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Was your old friend.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>The Scots shall be informed<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What we determine for their happiness.</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i><span class="smcap">Pym</span> goes out.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st">You have made haste, my lord.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>Sir, I am come....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> To see an old familiar&mdash;nay, 'tis well;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Aid us with his experience: this Scots' League<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And Covenant spreads too far, and we have proofs<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That they intrigue with France: the Faction too,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Whereof your friend there is the head and front,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Abets them,&mdash;as he boasted, very like.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> Sir, trust me! but for this once, trust me, sir!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> What can you mean?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> That you should trust me, sir!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span><span class="hang1st">Oh&mdash;not for my sake! but 'tis sad, so sad<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That for distrusting me, you suffer&mdash;you<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Whom I would die to serve: sir, do you think<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That I would die to serve you?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>But rise, Wentworth!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> What shall convince you? What does Savile do<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To prove him.... Ah, one can't tear out one's heart<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And show it, how sincere a thing it is!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> Have I not trusted you?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Say aught but that!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">There is my comfort, mark you: all will be<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">So different when you trust me&mdash;as you shall!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">It has not been your fault,&mdash;I was away,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Mistook, maligned, how was the King to know?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I am here, now&mdash;he means to trust me, now&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">All will go on so well!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Be sure I do&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I've heard that I should trust you: as you came,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your friend, the Countess, told me....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>No,&mdash;hear nothing&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Be told nothing about me!&mdash;you're not told<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your right-hand serves you, or your children love you!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> You love me, Wentworth: rise!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>I can speak now.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I have no right to hide the truth. 'Tis I<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Can save you: only I. Sir, what must be?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> Since Laud's assured (the minutes are within)<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;Loath as I am to spill my subjects' blood....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> That is, he'll have a war: what's done is done!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> They have intrigued with France; that's clear to Laud.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> Has Laud suggested any way to meet<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The war's expense?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span>
+<span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>He'd not decide so far<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Until you joined us.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Most considerate!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He's certain they intrigue with France, these Scots?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The People would be with us.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Pym should know.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> The People for us&mdash;were the People for us!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Sir, a great thought comes to reward your trust:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Summon a Parliament! in Ireland first,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Then, here.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>In truth?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>That saves us! that puts off<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The war, gives time to right their grievances&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To talk with Pym. I know the Faction,&mdash;Laud<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">So styles it,&mdash;tutors Scotland: all their plans<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Suppose no Parliament: in calling one<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You take them by surprise. Produce the proofs<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of Scotland's treason; then bid England help:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Even Pym will not refuse.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>You would begin<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With Ireland?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> Take no care for that: that's sure<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To prosper.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> You shall rule me. You were best<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Return at once: but take this ere you go!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Now, do I trust you? You're an Earl: my Friend<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of Friends: yes, while.... You hear me not!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> Say it all o'er again&mdash;but once again:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The first was for the music: once again!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> Strafford, my friend, there may have been reports,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Vain rumors. Henceforth touching Strafford is<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To touch the apple of my sight: why gaze<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">So earnestly?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> I am grown young again,<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span><span class="hang1st">And foolish. What was it we spoke of?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>Ireland,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Parliament,&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>I may go when I will?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;Now?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> Are you tired so soon of us?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>My King!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But you will not so utterly abhor<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A Parliament? I'd serve you any way.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> You said just now this was the only way.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i> Sir, I will serve you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>Strafford, spare yourself:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You are so sick, they tell me.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>'Tis my soul<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That's well and prospers now.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>This Parliament&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We'll summon it, the English one&mdash;I'll care<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For everything. You shall not need them much.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> If they prove restive....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>I shall be with you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> Ere they assemble?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Wentworth.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>I will come, or else<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Deposit this infirm humanity<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I' the dust. My whole heart stays with you, my King!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>As <span class="smcap">Wentworth</span> goes out, the <span class="smcap">Queen</span> enters.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> That man must love me.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>Is it over then?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Why, he looks yellower than ever! Well,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">At least we shall not hear eternally<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of service&mdash;services: he's paid at least.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> Not done with: he engages to surpass<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">All yet performed in Ireland.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>I had thought<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Nothing beyond was ever to be done.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The war, Charles&mdash;will he raise supplies enough?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span>
+<span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> We've hit on an expedient; he ... that is,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I have advised ... we have decided on<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The calling&mdash;in Ireland&mdash;of a Parliament.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i> O truly! You agree to that? Is that<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The first fruit of his counsel? But I guessed<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As much.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>This is too idle, Henriette!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I should know best. He will strain every nerve,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And once a precedent established....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>Notice<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How sure he is of a long term of favor!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He'll see the next, and the next after that;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">No end to Parliaments!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Well, it is done.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He talks it smoothly, doubtless. If, indeed,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Commons here....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Here! you will summon them<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Here? Would I were in France again to see<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A King!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> But, Henriette....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Oh, the Scots see clear!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Why should they bear your rule?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>But listen, sweet!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i> Let Wentworth listen&mdash;you confide in him!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> I do not, love,&mdash;I do not so confide!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Parliament shall never trouble us<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">... Nay, hear me! I have schemes, such schemes: we'll buy<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The leaders off: without that, Wentworth's counsel<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Had ne'er prevailed on me. Perhaps I call it<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To have excuse for breaking it for ever,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And whose will then the blame be? See you not?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Come, dearest!&mdash;look, the little fairy, now,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That cannot reach my shoulder! Dearest, come!</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span>
+In the second act, the historical episode,
+which pervades the act is the assembling and
+the dissolution of the Short Parliament. Only
+the salient points of the political situation have
+been seized upon by Browning. As in the
+first act, the popular party in private conclave
+is introduced. From the talk it is gathered
+that feeling runs high against Strafford, by
+whose advice the Parliament had been called,
+because of the exorbitant demands made upon
+it for money to support an army, this army to
+crush Scotland whose cause was so nearly like
+its own. The popular party or the Faction
+had supposed the Parliament would be a
+means for the redressing of its long list of
+grievances which had been accumulating during
+the years since the last Parliament had
+been held. Instead of that the Commons
+was deliberately informed by Charles that
+there would be no discussions of its demands
+until it had granted the subsidies for
+which it had been asked. The play gives
+one a much more lively sense of the indignant
+feelings of the duped men than can possibly
+be gained by reading many more pages
+of history with its endless minor details. Upon
+this gathering, Pym suddenly enters again,
+and to the reproaches of him for his belief in
+Strafford, makes the reply that the Parliament<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span>
+has been dissolved, the King has cast Strafford
+off forever, and henceforth Strafford will be on
+their side,&mdash;a conclusion not warranted by
+history, and, of course, found out to be erroneous
+by Pym and his followers in the next
+scene. Again there is the dramatic need to
+emphasize the human side of life even in an
+essentially political play, by showing that Pym's
+friendship and loyalty to Wentworth were no
+uncertain elements in his character. The moment
+it could be proved beyond a doubt that
+Wentworth was in the eyes of Pym, England's
+enemy, that moment Pym knew it would become
+his painful duty to crush Wentworth utterly,
+therefore Pym had for his own conscience'
+sake to make the uttermost trial of his faith.</p>
+
+<p>The second scene, as in the first act, brings
+out the other side. It is in the main true to
+history though much condensed. History relates
+that after the Short Parliament was
+dissolved, "voices were raised at Whitehall
+in condemnation of Strafford." His policy
+of raising subsidies from the Parliament having
+failed, criticisms would, of course, be
+made upon his having pushed ahead a war
+without the proper means of sustaining it.
+Charles himself was also frightened by the
+manifestations of popular discontent and failed
+to uphold Wentworth in his policy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span>
+Northumberland had been appointed commander-in-chief
+of the army, but besides having
+little heart for an enterprise so badly prepared
+for, he was ill in bed and could not take
+command of the army, so the King appointed
+Strafford in his place. A hint of Strafford
+as he appears in this scene may be taken from
+Clarendon who writes "The earl of Strafford
+was scarce recovered from a great sickness,
+yet was willing to undertake the charge out
+of pure indignation to see how few men were
+forward to serve the King with that vigor of
+mind they ought to do; but knowing well the
+malicious designs which were contrived against
+himself, he would rather serve as lieutenant-general
+under the earl of Northumberland,
+than that he should resign his commission:
+and so, with and under that qualification, he
+made all possible haste towards the north before
+he had strength enough for the journey."
+Browning makes the King tell Strafford in
+this interview that he has dissolved the Parliament.
+He represents Strafford as horrified
+by the news and driven in this extremity to
+suggest the desperate measure of debasing
+the coinage as a means of obtaining funds.
+Strafford actually counseled this, when all
+else failed, namely, the proposed loan from
+the city, and one from the Spanish govern<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span>ment,
+but, according to history, he himself
+voted for the dissolution of Parliament, though
+the play is accurate in laying the necessity of
+the dissolution at the door of old Vane. It
+was truly his ill-judged vehemence, for, not
+able to brook the arguments of the Commons,
+"He rose," says Gardiner, "to state that the
+King would accept nothing less than the twelve
+subsidies which he had demanded in his
+message. Upon this the Committee broke up
+without coming to a resolution, postponing
+further consideration of the matter to the
+following day." The next morning the King
+who had called his councillors together early
+"announced his intention of proceeding to
+a dissolution. Strafford, who arrived late,
+begged that the question might first be seriously
+discussed, and that the opinions of the
+Councillors, who were also members of the
+Lower House, might first be heard. Vane
+declared that there was no hope that the Commons
+'would give one penny.' On this the
+votes were taken. Northumberland and Holland
+were alone in wishing to avert a dissolution.
+Supported by the rest of the Council
+the King hurried to the House of Lords and
+dissolved Parliament."</p>
+
+<p>Wholly imaginary is the episode in this scene
+where Pym and his followers break in upon<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span>
+the interview of Wentworth and the King.
+Just at the climax of Wentworth's sorrowful
+rage at the King's treatment of him, they come
+to claim Wentworth for their side.</p>
+
+<div class="drama">
+<p><span class="hang1st">That you would say I did advise the war;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And if, through your own weakness, or what's worse,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">These Scots, with God to help them, drive me back,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You will not step between the raging People<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And me, to say....<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>I knew it! from the first<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I knew it! Never was so cold a heart!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Remember that I said it&mdash;that I never<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Believed you for a moment!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>&mdash;And, you loved me?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You thought your perfidy profoundly hid<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Because I could not share the whisperings<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With Vane, with Savile? What, the face was masked?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I had the heart to see, sir! Face of flesh,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But heart of stone&mdash;of smooth cold frightful stone!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Ay, call them! Shall I call for you? The Scots<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Goaded to madness? Or the English&mdash;Pym&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Shall I call Pym, your subject? Oh, you think<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I'll leave them in the dark about it all?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">They shall not know you? Hampden, Pym shall not?</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i><span class="smcap">Pym, Hampden, Vane</span>, etc., enter.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st">[<i>Dropping on his knee.</i>] Thus favored with your gracious countenance<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What shall a rebel League avail against<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your servant, utterly and ever yours?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">So, gentlemen, the King's not even left<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The privilege of bidding me farewell<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span><span class="hang1st">Who haste to save the People&mdash;that you style<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your People&mdash;from the mercies of the Scots<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And France their friend?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">[<i>To <span class="smcap">Charles</span>.</i>] <span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Pym's grave grey eyes are fixed<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Upon you, sir!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Your pleasure, gentlemen?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i> The King dissolved us&mdash;'tis the King we seek<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And not Lord Strafford.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>&mdash;Strafford, guilty too<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of counselling the measure. [<i>To <span class="smcap">Charles</span>.</i>] (Hush ... you know&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You have forgotten&mdash;sir, I counselled it)<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A heinous matter, truly! But the King<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Will yet see cause to thank me for a course<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Which now, perchance ... (Sir, tell them so!)&mdash;he blames.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Well, choose some fitter time to make your charge:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I shall be with the Scots, you understand?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Then yelp at me!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Meanwhile, your Majesty<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Binds me, by this fresh token of your trust....</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Under the pretence of an earnest farewell, <span class="smcap">Strafford</span> conducts
+<span class="smcap">Charles</span> to the door, in such a manner as to hide
+his agitation from the rest: as the King disappears, they
+turn as by one impulse to <span class="smcap">Pym</span>, who has not changed his
+original posture of surprise.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i> Leave we this arrogant strong wicked man!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane and others.</i> Hence, Pym! Come out of this unworthy place<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To our old room again! He's gone.</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i><span class="smcap">Strafford</span>, just about to follow the <span class="smcap">King</span>, looks back.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>Not gone!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">[<i>To <span class="smcap">Strafford</span>.</i>] Keep tryst! the old appointment's made anew:<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span><span class="hang1st">Forget not we shall meet again!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>So be it!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And if an army follows me?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>His friends<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Will entertain your army!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>I'll not say<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You have misreckoned, Strafford: time shows.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i34">&nbsp;</span>Perish<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Body and spirit! Fool to feign a doubt,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Pretend the scrupulous and nice reserve<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of one whose prowess shall achieve the feat!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What share have I in it? Do I affect<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To see no dismal sign above your head<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When God suspends his ruinous thunder there?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Strafford is doomed. Touch him no one of you!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i><span class="smcap">Pym, Hampden</span>, etc., go out.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> Pym, we shall meet again!</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the final talk of this scene with Carlisle,
+the pathos of Strafford's position is wonderfully
+brought out&mdash;the man who loves his King
+so overmuch that no perfidy on the King's
+part can make his resolution to serve him
+waver for an instant.</p>
+
+<div class="drama">
+<p class="center"><i><em>Lady</em> <span class="smcap">Carlisle</span> enters.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>You here, child?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i26">&nbsp;</span>Hush&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I know it all: hush, Strafford!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Ah? you know?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Well. I shall make a sorry soldier, Lucy!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">All knights begin their enterprise, we read,<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span><span class="hang1st">Under the best of auspices; 'tis morn,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Lady girds his sword upon the Youth<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">(He's always very young)&mdash;the trumpets sound,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Cups pledge him, and, why, the King blesses him&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You need not turn a page of the romance<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To learn the Dreadful Giant's fate. Indeed,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We've the fair Lady here; but she apart,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A poor man, rarely having handled lance,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And rather old, weary, and far from sure<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">His Squires are not the Giant's friends. All's one:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Let us go forth!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>Go forth?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>What matters it?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We shall die gloriously&mdash;as the book says.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> To Scotland? Not to Scotland?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i26">&nbsp;</span>Am I sick<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Like your good brother, brave Northumberland?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Beside, these walls seem falling on me.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>Strafford,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The wind that saps these walls can undermine<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your camp in Scotland, too. Whence creeps the wind?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Have you no eyes except for Pym? Look here!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A breed of silken creatures lurk and thrive<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In your contempt. You'll vanquish Pym? Old Vane<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Can vanquish you. And Vane you think to fly?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Rush on the Scots! Do nobly! Vane's slight sneer<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Shall test success, adjust the praise, suggest<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The faint result: Vane's sneer shall reach you there.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;You do not listen!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Oh,&mdash;I give that up!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">There's fate in it: I give all here quite up.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Care not what old Vane does or Holland does<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Against me! 'Tis so idle to withstand!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In no case tell me what they do!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>But, Strafford....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> I want a little strife, beside; real strife;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This petty palace-warfare does me harm:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I shall feel better, fairly out of it.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>Why do you smile?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> I got to fear them, child!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I could have torn his throat at first, old Vane's,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As he leered at me on his stealthy way<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To the Queen's closet. Lord, one loses heart!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I often found it on my lips to say<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">"Do not traduce me to her!"</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>But the King....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> The King stood there, 'tis not so long ago,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;There; and the whisper, Lucy, "Be my friend<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><a name='TC_12'></a><ins title="Removed extra start quote">Of</ins> friends!"&mdash;My King! I would have....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>... Died for him?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> Sworn him true, Lucy: I can die for him.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> But go not, Strafford! But you must renounce<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This project on the Scots! Die, wherefore die?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Charles never loved you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>And he never will.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He's not of those who care the more for men<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That they're unfortunate.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Then wherefore die<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For such a master?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>You that told me first<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How good he was&mdash;when I must leave true friends<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To find a truer friend!&mdash;that drew me here<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">From Ireland,&mdash;"I had but to show myself<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And Charles would spurn Vane, Savile, and the rest"&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You, child, to ask me this?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>(If he have set<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">His heart abidingly on Charles!)<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>Then, friend,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I shall not see you any more.</span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Yes, Lucy.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">There's one man here I have to meet.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>(The King!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What way to save him from the King?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i26">&nbsp;</span>My soul&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That lent from its own store the charmed disguise<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Which clothes the King&mdash;he shall behold my soul!)<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Strafford,&mdash;I shall speak best if you'll not gaze<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Upon me: I had never thought, indeed,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To speak, but you would perish too, so sure!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Could you but know what 'tis to bear, my friend,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">One image stamped within you, turning blank<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The else imperial <a name='TC_13'></a><ins title="Was 'brillance'">brilliance</ins> of your mind,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A weakness, but most precious,&mdash;like a flaw<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I' the diamond, which should shape forth some sweet face<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Yet to create, and meanwhile treasured there<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Lest nature lose her gracious thought for ever!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> When could it be? no! Yet ... was it the day<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We waited in the anteroom, till Holland<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Should leave the presence-chamber?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>What?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>&mdash;That I<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Described to you my love for Charles?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>(Ah, no&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">One must not lure him from a love like that!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Oh, let him love the King and die! 'Tis past.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I shall not serve him worse for that one brief<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And passionate hope, silent for ever now!)<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And you are really bound for Scotland then?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I wish you well: you must be very sure<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of the King's faith, for Pym and all his crew<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Will not be idle&mdash;setting Vane aside!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> If Pym is busy,&mdash;<a name='TC_14'></a><ins title="Was 'you way'">you may</ins> write of Pym.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> What need, since there's your King to take your part?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He may endure Vane's counsel; but for Pym&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Think you he'll suffer Pym to....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>Child, your hair<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is glossier than the Queen's!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Is that to ask<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A curl of me?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>Scotland&mdash;&mdash;the weary way!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Stay, let me fasten it.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i28">&nbsp;</span>&mdash;A rival's, Strafford?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford</i> [<i>showing the George</i>]. He hung it there: twine yours around it, child!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> No&mdash;no&mdash;another time&mdash;I trifle so!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And there's a masque on foot. Farewell. The Court<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is dull; do something to enliven us<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In Scotland: we expect it at your hands.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> I shall not fail in Scotland.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>Prosper&mdash;if<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You'll think of me sometimes!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>How think of him<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And not of you? of you, the lingering streak<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">(A golden one) in my good fortune's eve.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Strafford.... Well, when the eve has its last streak<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The night has its first star.</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>She goes out.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>That voice of hers&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You'd think she had a heart sometimes! His voice<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is soft too.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Only God can save him now.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Be Thou about his bed, about his path!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">His path! Where's England's path? Diverging wide,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And not to join again the track my foot<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span><span class="hang1st">Must follow&mdash;whither? All that forlorn way<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Among the tombs! Far&mdash;far&mdash;till.... What, they do<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Then join again, these paths? For, huge in the dusk,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">There's&mdash;Pym to face!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Why then, I have a foe<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To close with, and a fight to fight at last<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Worthy my soul! What, do they beard the King,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And shall the King want Strafford at his need?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Am I not here?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Not in the market-place,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Pressed on by the rough artisans, so proud<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To catch a glance from Wentworth! They lie down<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Hungry yet smile "Why, it must end some day:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is he not watching for our sake?" Not there!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But in Whitehall, the whited sepulchre,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The....<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>Curse nothing to-night! Only one name<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">They'll curse in all those streets to-night. Whose fault?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Did I make kings? set up, the first, a man<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To represent the multitude, receive<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">All love in right of them&mdash;supplant them so,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Until you love the man and not the king&mdash;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The man with the mild voice and mournful eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Which send me forth.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>&mdash;To breast the bloody sea<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That sweeps before me: with one star for guide.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Night has its first, supreme, forsaken star.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>During the third act, the long Parliament
+is in session, and Pym is making his great
+speech impeaching Wentworth.</p>
+
+<p>The conditions of affairs at the time of this
+Parliament were well-nigh desperate for Charles
+and Wentworth. Things had not gone well<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span>
+with the Scottish war and Wentworth was falling
+more and more into disfavor. England
+was now threatened with a Scottish invasion.
+Still, even with this danger to face it was impossible
+to raise money to support the army.
+The English had a suspicion that the Scotch
+cause was their own. The universal demand
+for a Parliament could no longer be ignored;
+the <a name='TC_15'></a><ins title="Capitalized King">King</ins>, therefore, summoned it to meet on
+the third of November. As Firth observes,
+"To Strafford this meant ruin, but he hardly
+realized the greatness of the danger in which
+he stood. On October 8, the Scotch Commissioners
+in a public paper denounced him
+as an incendiary, and declared that they meant
+to insist on his punishment.</p>
+
+<p>"As soon as the Parliament opened Charles
+discovered that it was necessary for his service
+to have Strafford again by his side, and
+summoned him to London. There is evidence
+that his friends urged him to pass over
+to Ireland where the army rested at his devotion,
+or to transport himself to foreign Kingdoms
+till fairer weather here should invite
+him home. The Marquis of Hamilton advised
+him to fly, but as Hamilton told the
+King, the Earl was too great-hearted to fear.
+Though conscious of the peril of obedience,
+he set out to London to stand by his Master."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span>
+The enmity of the Court party to Strafford is
+touched upon in the first scene, and in the
+second, Strafford's return, unsuspecting of the
+great blow that awaits him. He had indeed
+meditated a blow on his own part. According
+to Firth, he felt that "One desperate
+resource remained. The intrigues of the parliamentary
+leaders with the Scots had come
+to Strafford's knowledge, and he had determined
+to impeach them of high treason. He
+could prove that Pym and his friends had
+secretly communicated with the rebels, and
+invited them to bring a Scottish army into
+England. Strafford arrived in London on
+Monday, November 9, 1640, and spent Tuesday
+in resting after his journey. On the
+morning of Wednesday the 11th, he took his
+seat in the House of Lords, but did not strike
+the blow." Upon that day he was impeached
+of high treason by Pym. Gardiner's account
+here has much the same dramatic force as
+the play.</p>
+
+<p>"Followed by a crowd of approving members,
+Pym carried up the message. Whilst
+the Lords were still debating on this unusual
+request for imprisonment before the charge
+had been set forth, the news of the impeachment
+was carried to Strafford. 'I will go,'
+he proudly said 'and look my accusers in the<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span>
+face.' With haughty mien and scowling brow
+he strode up the floor of the House to his place
+of honor. There were those amongst the Peers
+who had no wish to allow him to speak, lest he
+should accuse them of complicity with the
+Scots. The Lords, as a body, felt even more
+personally aggrieved by his method of government
+than the Commons. Shouts of 'Withdraw!
+withdraw!' rose from every side. As
+soon as he was gone an order was passed
+sequestering the Lord-Lieutenant from his
+place in the House and committing him to the
+custody of the Gentleman Usher. He was then
+called in and bidden to kneel whilst the order
+was read. He asked permission to speak, but
+his request was sternly refused. Maxwell,
+the Usher of the Black Rod, took from him his
+sword, and conducted him out of the House.
+The crowd outside gazed pitilessly on the
+fallen minister, 'No man capping to him,
+before whom that morning the greatest in
+England would have stood <a name='TC_16'></a><ins title="Matching the original: leaving it hyphenated">dis-covered</ins>.' 'What
+is the matter?' they asked. 'A small matter,
+I warrant you,' replied Strafford with
+forced levity. 'Yes, indeed,' answered a bystander,
+'high treason is a small matter.'"</p>
+
+<p>This passage brings up the scene in a
+manner so similar to that of the play, it is
+safe to say that Gardiner was here <span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span>influenced
+by Browning, the history having been
+written many years after the play.</p>
+
+<div class="drama">
+<h4><span class="smcap">Scene II.</span>&mdash;<i>Whitehall.</i></h4>
+
+<p class="center"><i>The <span class="smcap">Queen</span> and <em>Lady</em> <span class="smcap">Carlisle</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i> It cannot be.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>It is so.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>Why, the House<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Have hardly met.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> They met for that.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>No, no!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Meet to impeach Lord Strafford? 'Tis a jest.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> A bitter one.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Consider! 'Tis the House<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We summoned so reluctantly, which nothing<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But the disastrous issue of the war<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Persuaded us to summon. They'll wreak all<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Their spite on us, no doubt; but the old way<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is to begin by talk of grievances:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">They have their grievances to busy them.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Pym has begun his speech.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i26">&nbsp;</span>Where's Vane?&mdash;That is,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Pym will impeach Lord Strafford if he leaves<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">His Presidency; he's at York, we know,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Since the Scots beat him: why should he leave York?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Because the King sent for him.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i30">&nbsp;</span>Ah&mdash;but if<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The King did send for him, he let him know<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We had been forced to call a Parliament&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A step which Strafford, now I come to think,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Was vehement against.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>The policy<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span><span class="hang1st">Escaped him, of first striking Parliaments<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To earth, then setting them upon their feet<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And giving them a sword: but this is idle.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Did the King send for Strafford? He will come.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i> And what am I to do?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> What do? Fail, madam!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Be ruined for his sake! what matters how,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">So it but stand on record that you made<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">An effort, only one?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>The King away<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">At Theobald's!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Send for him at once: he must<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Dissolve the House.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Wait till Vane finds the truth<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of the report: then....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>&mdash;It will matter little<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What the King does. Strafford that lends his arm<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And breaks his heart for you!</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i><em>Sir</em> <span class="smcap">H. Vane</span> enters.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>The Commons, madam,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Are sitting with closed doors. A huge debate,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">No lack of noise; but nothing, I should guess,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Concerning Strafford: Pym has certainly<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Not spoken yet.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen</i> [<i>to <em>Lady</em> <span class="smcap">Carlisle</span></i>]. You hear?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>I do not hear<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That the King's sent for!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Savile will be able<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To tell you more.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i><span class="smcap">Holland</span> enters.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>The last news, Holland?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Holland.</i><span class="i26">&nbsp;</span>Pym<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is raging like a fire. The whole House means<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span><span class="hang1st">To follow him together to Whitehall<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And force the King to give up Strafford.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i28">&nbsp;</span>Strafford?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Holland.</i> If they content themselves with Strafford! Laud<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is talked of, Cottington and Windebank too.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Pym has not left out one of them&mdash;I would<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You heard Pym raging!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Vane, go find the King!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Tell the King, Vane, the People follow Pym<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To brave us at Whitehall!</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i><span class="smcap">Savile</span> enters.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Savile.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>Not to Whitehall&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">'Tis to the Lords they go: they seek redress<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">On Strafford from his peers&mdash;the legal way,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">They call it.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>(Wait, Vane!)</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Savile.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>But the adage gives<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Long life to threatened men. Strafford can save<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Himself so readily: at York, remember,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In his own country: what has he to fear?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Commons only mean to frighten him<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">From leaving York. Surely, he will not come.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i> Lucy, he will not come!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Once more, the King<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Has sent for Strafford. He will come.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i26">&nbsp;</span>Oh doubtless!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And bring destruction with him: that's his way.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What but his coming spoilt all Conway's plan?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The King must take his counsel, choose his friends,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Be wholly ruled by him! What's the result?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The North that was to rise, Ireland to help,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What came of it? In my poor mind, a fright<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is no prodigious punishment.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span>
+<span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>A fright?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Pym will fail worse than Strafford if he thinks<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To frighten him. [<i>To the <span class="smcap">Queen</span>.</i>] You will not save him then?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Savile.</i> When something like a charge is made, the King<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Will best know how to save him: and t'is clear,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">While Strafford suffers nothing by the matter,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The King may reap advantage: this in question,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">No dinning you with ship-money complaints!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen</i> [<i>to <em>Lady</em> <span class="smcap">Carlisle</span></i>]. If we dissolve them, who will pay the army?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Protect us from the insolent Scots?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>In truth,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I know not, madam. Strafford's fate concerns<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Me little: you desired to learn what course<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Would save him: I obey you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>Notice, too,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">There can't be fairer ground for taking full<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Revenge&mdash;(Strafford's revengeful)&mdash;than he'll have<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Against his old friend Pym.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>Why, he shall claim<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Vengeance on Pym!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>And Strafford, who is he<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To 'scape unscathed amid the accidents<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That harass all beside? I, for my part,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Should look for something of discomfiture<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Had the King trusted me so thoroughly<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And been so paid for it.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Holland.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>He'll keep at York:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">All will blow over: he'll return no worse,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Humbled a little, thankful for a place<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Under as good a man. Oh, we'll dispense<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With seeing Strafford for a month or two!</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i><span class="smcap">Strafford</span> enters.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i> You here!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>The King sends for me, madam.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i30">&nbsp;</span>Sir,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The King....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>An urgent matter that imports the King!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">[<i>To <em>Lady</em> <span class="smcap">Carlisle</span>.</i>] Why, Lucy, what's in agitation now,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That all this muttering and shrugging, see,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Begins at me? They do not speak!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>'Tis welcome!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For we are proud of you&mdash;happy and proud<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To have you with us, Strafford! You were staunch<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">At Durham: you did well there! Had you not<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Been stayed, you might have ... we said, even now,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Our hope's in you!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane</i> [<i>to <em>Lady</em> <span class="smcap">Carlisle</span></i>]. The Queen would speak with you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> Will one of you, his servants here, vouchsafe<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To signify my presence to the King?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Savile.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>An urgent matter?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> None that touches you,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Lord Savile! Say, it were some treacherous<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Sly pitiful intriguing with the Scots&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You would go free, at least! (They half divine<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My purpose!) Madam, shall I see the King?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The service I would render, much concerns<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">His welfare.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>But his Majesty, my lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">May not be here, may....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Its importance, then,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Must plead excuse for this withdrawal, madam,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And for the grief it gives Lord Savile here.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen</i> [<i>who has been conversing with <span class="smcap">Vane</span> and <span class="smcap">Holland</span></i>].<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The King will see you, sir!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">[<i>To <em>Lady</em> <span class="smcap">Carlisle</span>.</i>]<span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Mark me: Pym's worst<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span><span class="hang1st">Is done by now: he has impeached the Earl,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Or found the Earl too strong for him, by now.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Let us not seem instructed! We should work<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">No good to Strafford, but deform ourselves<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With shame in the world's eye. [<i>To <span class="smcap">Strafford</span>.</i>] His Majesty<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Has much to say with you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Time fleeting, too!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">[<i>To <em>Lady</em> <span class="smcap">Carlisle</span>.</i>] No means of getting them away? And She&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What does she whisper? Does she know my purpose?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What does she think of it? Get them away!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Queen</i> [<i>to <em>Lady</em> <span class="smcap">Carlisle</span></i>]. He comes to baffle Pym&mdash;he thinks the danger<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Far off: tell him no word of it! a time<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For help will come; we'll not be wanting then.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Keep him in play, Lucy&mdash;you, self-possessed<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And calm! [<i>To <span class="smcap">Strafford</span>.</i>] To spare your lordship some delay<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I will myself acquaint the King. [<i>To <em>Lady</em> <span class="smcap">Carlisle</span>.</i>] Beware!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>The <span class="smcap">Queen, Vane, Holland</span>, and <span class="smcap">Savile</span> go out.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> She knows it?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Tell me, Strafford!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i26">&nbsp;</span>Afterward!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This moment's the great moment of all time.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">She knows my purpose?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>Thoroughly: just now<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">She bade me hide it from you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Quick, dear child,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The whole o' the scheme?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>(Ah, he would learn if they<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Connive at Pym's procedure! Could they but<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Have once apprised the King! But there's no time<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For falsehood, now.) Strafford, the whole is known.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> Known and approved?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Hardly discountenanced.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> And the King&mdash;say, the King consents as well?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> The King's not yet informed, but will not dare<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To interpose.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>What need to wait him, then?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He'll sanction it! I stayed, child, tell him, long!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">It vexed me to the soul&mdash;this waiting here.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You know him, there's no counting on the King.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Tell him I waited long!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>(What can he mean?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Rejoice at the King's hollowness?)</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>I knew<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">They would be glad of it,&mdash;all over once,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I knew they would be glad: but he'd contrive,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Queen and he, to mar, by helping it,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">An angel's making.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>(Is he mad?) Dear Strafford,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You were not wont to look so happy.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>Sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I tried obedience thoroughly. I took<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The King's wild plan: of course, ere I could reach<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My army, Conway ruined it. I drew<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The wrecks together, raised all heaven and earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And would have fought the Scots: the King at once<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Made truce with them. Then, Lucy, then, dear child,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">God put it in my mind to love, serve, die<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For Charles, but never to obey him more!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">While he endured their insolence at Ripon<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I fell on them at Durham. But you'll tell<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The King I waited? All the anteroom<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is filled with my adherents.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span>
+<span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Strafford&mdash;Strafford,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What daring act is this you hint?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>No, no!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">'Tis here, not daring if you knew? all here!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Drawing papers from his breast.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1">Full proof, see, ample proof&mdash;does the Queen know<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I have such damning proof? Bedford and Essex,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Brooke, Warwick, Savile (did you notice Savile?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The simper that I spoilt?), Saye, Mandeville&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Sold to the Scots, body and soul, by Pym!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>Great heaven!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> From Savile and his lords, to Pym<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And his losels, crushed!&mdash;Pym shall not ward the blow<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Nor Savile creep aside from it! The Crew<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And the Cabal&mdash;I crush them!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>And you go&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Strafford,&mdash;and now you go?&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>&mdash;About no work<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In the background, I promise you! I go<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Straight to the House of Lords to claim these knaves.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Mainwaring!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Stay&mdash;stay, Strafford!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>She'll return,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Queen&mdash;some little project of her own!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">No time to lose: the King takes fright perhaps.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Pym's strong, remember!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>Very strong, as fits<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Faction's head&mdash;with no offence to Hampden,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Vane, Rudyard and my loving Hollis: one<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And all they lodge within the Tower to-night<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In just equality. Bryan! Mainwaring!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Many of his <em>Adherents</em> enter.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st">The Peers debate just now (a lucky chance)<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">On the Scots' war; my visit's opportune.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span><span class="hang1st">When all is over, Bryan, you proceed<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To Ireland: these dispatches, mark me, Bryan,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Are for the Deputy, and these for Ormond:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We want the army here&mdash;my army, raised<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">At such a cost, that should have done such good,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And was inactive all the time! no matter,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We'll find a use for it. Willis ... or, no&mdash;you!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You, friend, make haste to York: bear this, at once ...<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Or,&mdash;better stay for form's sake, see yourself<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The news you carry. You remain with me<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To execute the Parliament's command,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Mainwaring! Help to seize these lesser knaves,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Take care there's no escaping at backdoors:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I'll not have one escape, mind me&mdash;not one!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I seem revengeful, Lucy? Did you know<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What these men dare!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>It is so much they dare!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> I proved that long ago; my turn is now.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Keep sharp watch, Goring, on the citizens!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Observe who harbors any of the brood<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That scramble off: be sure they smart for it!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Our coffers are but lean.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>And you, child, too,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Shall have your task; deliver this to Laud.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Laud will not be the slowest in thy praise:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">"Thorough" he'll cry!&mdash;Foolish, to be so glad!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This life is gay and glowing, after all:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">'Tis worth while, Lucy, having foes like mine<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Just for the bliss of crushing them. To-day<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is worth the living for.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>That reddening brow!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You seem....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>Well&mdash;do I not? I would be well&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I could not but be well on such a day!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span><span class="hang1st">And, this day ended, 'tis of slight import<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How long the ravaged frame subjects the soul<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In Strafford.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Noble Strafford!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>No farewell!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I'll see you anon, to-morrow&mdash;the first thing.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;If She should come to stay me!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>Go&mdash;'tis nothing&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Only my heart that swells: it has been thus<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Ere now: go, Strafford!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>To-night, then, let it be.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I must see Him: you, the next after Him.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I'll tell how Pym looked. Follow me, friends!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You, gentlemen, shall see a sight this hour<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To talk of all your lives. Close after me!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">"My friend of friends!"</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i><span class="smcap">Strafford</span> and the rest go out.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>The King&mdash;ever the King!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">No thought of one beside, whose little word<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Unveils the King to him&mdash;one word from me,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Which yet I do not breathe!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>Ah, have I spared<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Strafford a pang, and shall I seek reward<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Beyond that memory? Surely too, some way<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He is the better for my love. No, no&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He would not look so joyous&mdash;I'll believe<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">His very eye would never sparkle thus,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Had I not prayed for him this long, long while.</span></p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Scene III.</span>&mdash;<i>The Antechamber of the House of Lords.</i></h4>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Many of the Presbyterian Party. The <em>Adherents</em> of <span class="smcap">Strafford</span>,
+etc.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>A Group of Presbyterians.</i> &mdash;1. I tell you he struck Maxwell: Maxwell sought<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To stay the Earl: he struck him and passed on.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">2. Fear as you may, keep a good countenance<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Before these rufflers.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">3.<span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Strafford here the first,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With the great army at his back!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">4.<span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>No doubt.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I would Pym had made haste: that's Bryan, hush&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The gallant pointing.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford's Followers.</i> &mdash;1. Mark these worthies, now!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">2. A goodly gathering! "Where the carcass is<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">There shall the eagles"&mdash;what's the rest?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">3.<span class="i30">&nbsp;</span>For eagles<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Say crows.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>A Presbyterian.</i> Stand back, sirs!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>One of Strafford's Followers.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>Are we in Geneva?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>A Presbyterian.</i> No, nor in Ireland; we have leave to breathe.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>One of Strafford's Followers.</i> Truly? Behold how privileged we be<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That serve "King Pym"! There's Some-one at Whitehall<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Who skulks obscure; but Pym struts....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>The Presbyterian.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Nearer.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>A Follower of Strafford.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Higher,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We look to see him. [<i>To his <em>Companions</em>.</i>] I'm to have St. John<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In charge; was he among the knaves just now<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That followed Pym within there?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Another.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>The gaunt man<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Talking with Rudyard. Did the Earl expect<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Pym at his heels so fast? I like it not.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i><span class="smcap">Maxwell</span> enters.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Another.</i> Why, man, they rush into the net! Here's Maxwell&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Ha, Maxwell? How the brethren flock around<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The fellow! Do you feel the Earl's hand yet<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Upon your shoulder, Maxwell?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Maxwell.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Gentlemen,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Stand back! a great thing passes here.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>A Follower of Strafford</i> [<i>To another</i>].<span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>The Earl<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is at his work! [<i>To <em>M.</em></i>] Say, Maxwell, what great thing!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Speak out! [<i>To a <em>Presbyterian</em>.</i>] Friend, I've a kindness for you! Friend,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I've seen you with St. John: O stockishness!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Wear such a ruff, and never call to mind<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">St. John's head in a charger? How, the plague,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Not laugh?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Another.</i> Say, Maxwell, what great thing!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Another.</i><span class="i26">&nbsp;</span>Nay, wait:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The jest will be to wait.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>First.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>And who's to bear<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">These demure hypocrites? You'd swear they came ...<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Came ... just as we come!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>A <em>Puritan</em> enters hastily and without observing <span class="smcap">Strafford's</span>
+<em>Followers</em>.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>The Puritan.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>How goes on the work?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Has Pym....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>A Follower of Strafford.</i> The secret's out at last. Aha,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The carrion's scented! Welcome, crow the first!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Gorge merrily, you with the blinking eye!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">"King Pym has fallen!"</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>The Puritan.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Pym?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>A Strafford.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Pym!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>A Presbyterian.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>Only Pym?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Many of Strafford's Followers.</i> No, brother, not Pym only; Vane as well,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Rudyard as well, Hampden, St. John as well!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>A Presbyterian.</i> My mind misgives: can it be true?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span>
+<span class="hang1st line1"><i>Another.</i><span class="i32">&nbsp;</span>Lost! Lost!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>A Strafford.</i> Say we true, Maxwell?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>The Puritan.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Pride before destruction,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A haughty spirit goeth before a fall.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Many of Strafford's Followers.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>Ah now! The very thing! A word in season!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A golden apple in a silver picture,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To greet Pym as he passes!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>The doors at the back begin to open, noise and
+light issuing.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Maxwell.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>Stand back, all!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Many of the Presbyterians.</i> I hold with Pym! And I!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford's Followers.</i> Now for the text!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He comes! Quick!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>The Puritan.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>How hath the oppressor ceased!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The sceptre of the rulers, he who smote<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The people in wrath with a continual stroke,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That ruled the nations in his anger&mdash;he<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is persecuted and none hindreth!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>The doors open, and <span class="smcap">Strafford</span> issues in the greatest
+disorder, and amid cries from within of "<em>Void the
+House</em>!"</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> Impeach me! Pym! I never struck, I think,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The felon on that calm insulting mouth<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When it proclaimed&mdash;Pym's mouth proclaimed me ... God!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Was it a word, only a word that held<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The outrageous blood back on my heart&mdash;which beats!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Which beats! Some one word&mdash;"Traitor," did he say,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Bending that eye, brimful of bitter fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Upon me?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Maxwell.</i> In the Commons' name, their servant<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Demands Lord Strafford's sword.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>What did you say?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Maxwell.</i> The Commons bid me ask your lordship's sword.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> Let us go forth: follow me, gentlemen!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Draw your swords too: cut any down that bar us.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">On the King's service! Maxwell, clear the way!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>The <em>Presbyterians</em> prepare to dispute his passage.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> I stay: the King himself shall see me here.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your tablets, fellow!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">[<i>To <span class="smcap">Mainwaring</span>.</i>]<span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>Give that to the King!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Yes, Maxwell, for the next half-hour, let be!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Nay, you shall take my sword!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i><span class="smcap">Maxwell</span> advances to take it.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>Or, no&mdash;not that!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Their blood, perhaps, may wipe out all thus far,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">All up to that&mdash;not that! Why, friend, you see<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When the King lays your head beneath my foot<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">It will not pay for that. Go, all of you!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Maxwell.</i> I dare, my lord, to disobey: none stir!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> This gentle Maxwell!&mdash;Do not touch him, Bryan!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">[<i>To the <em>Presbyterians</em>.</i>] Whichever cur of you will carry this<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Escapes his fellow's fate. None saves his life?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">None?<br /></span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Cries from within of "<span class="smcap">Strafford</span>!"</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st"><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>Slingsby, I've loved you at least: make haste!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Stab me! I have not time to tell you why.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You then, my Bryan! Mainwaring, you then!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is it because I spoke so hastily<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">At Allerton? The King had vexed me.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">[<i>To the <em>Presbyterians</em>.</i>]<span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>You!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;Not even you? If I live over this,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The King is sure to have your heads, you know!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But what if I can't live this minute through?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Pym, who is there with his pursuing smile!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Louder cries of "<span class="smcap">Strafford</span>!"</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span><span class="hang1st">The King! I troubled him, stood in the way<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of his negotiations, was the one<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Great obstacle to peace, the Enemy<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of Scotland: and he sent for me, from York,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My safety guaranteed&mdash;having prepared<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A Parliament&mdash;I see! And at Whitehall<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Queen was whispering with Vane&mdash;I see<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The trap!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Tearing off the George.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st"><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>I tread a gewgaw underfoot,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And cast a memory from me. One stroke, now!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>His own <em>Adherents</em> disarm him. Renewed cries of
+"<span class="smcap">Strafford</span>!"</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st">England! I see thy arm in this and yield.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Pray you now&mdash;Pym awaits me&mdash;pray you now!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i><span class="smcap">Strafford</span> reaches the doors: they open wide. <span class="smcap">Hampden</span>
+and a crowd discovered, and, at the bar, <span class="smcap">Pym</span> standing
+apart. As <span class="smcap">Strafford</span> kneels, the scene shuts.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_12" id="linki_12"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus012.jpg" width="500" height="289" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">Westminster Hall</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The history of the fourth act deals with
+further episodes of Strafford's trial, especially
+with the change in the procedure from Impeachment
+to a Bill of Attainder against
+Strafford. The details of this great trial are
+complicated and cannot be followed in all their
+ramifications here. There was danger that
+the Impeachment would not go through.
+Strafford, himself, felt confident that in law
+his actions could not be found treasonable.</p>
+
+<p>After Strafford's brilliant defense of himself,
+it was decided to bring in a Bill of Attainder.
+New evidence against Strafford con<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span>tained
+in some notes which the younger Vane
+had found among his father's papers were
+used to strengthen the charge of treason.
+In these notes Strafford had advised the King
+to act "loose and absolved from all rules of
+government," and had reminded him that
+there was an army in Ireland, ready to reduce
+the Kingdom. These notes were found by
+the merest accident. The younger Vane who
+had just been knighted and was about to be
+married, borrowed his father's keys in order
+to look up some law papers. In his search
+he fell upon these notes taken at a committee
+that met immediately after the dissolution of
+the short Parliament. He made a copy and
+carried it to Pym who also made a copy.</p>
+
+<p>According to Baillie, the "secret" of the
+change from the Impeachment to the Bill was
+"to prevent the hearing of the Earl's lawyers,
+who give out that there is no law yet in force
+whereby he can be condemned to die for
+aught yet objected against him, and therefore
+their intent by this Bill to supply the
+defect of the laws therein." To this may be
+added the opinion of a member of the Commons.
+"If the House of Commons proceeds
+to demand judgment of the Lords, without
+doubt they will acquit him, there being no
+law extant whereby to condemn him of treason.<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span>
+Wherefore the Commons are determined to
+desert the Lord's judicature, and to proceed
+against him by Bill of Attainder, whereby he
+shall be adjudged to death upon a treason
+now to be declared."</p>
+
+<p>One of the chief results in this change of
+procedure, emphasized by Browning in an intense
+scene between Pym and Charles was
+that it altered entirely the King's attitude
+towards Strafford's trial. As Baillie expresses
+it, "Had the Commons gone on in the former
+way of pursuit, the King might have been a
+patient, and only beheld the striking off of
+Strafford's head; but now they have put them
+on a Bill which will force the King either to
+be our agent and formal voicer to his death,
+or else do the world knows not what."</p>
+
+<p>For the sake of a gain in dramatic power,
+Browning has once more departed from history
+by making Pym the moving power in
+the Bill of Attainder, and Hampden in favor
+of it; while in reality they were opposed to
+the change in procedure, and believed that
+the Impeachment could have been carried
+through.</p>
+
+<p>The relentless, scourging force of Pym in
+the play, pursuing the arch-foe of England as
+he regarded Wentworth to the death, once he
+is convinced that England's welfare demands<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span>
+it, would have been weakened had he been
+represented in favor of the policy which was
+abandoned, instead of with the policy that
+succeeded. But Pym is made to intimate
+that he will abandon the Bill unless the King
+gives his word that he will ratify it, and
+further, Pym declares, should he not ratify
+the Bill his next step will be against the King
+himself.</p>
+
+<div class="drama">
+
+<p class="center"><i>Enter <span class="smcap">Hampden</span> and <span class="smcap">Vane</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i> O Hampden, save the great misguided man!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Plead Strafford's cause with Pym! I have remarked<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He moved no muscle when we all declaimed<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Against him: you had but to breathe&mdash;he turned<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Those kind calm eyes upon you.</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Enter <span class="smcap">Pym</span>, the <em>Solicitor-General</em> <span class="smcap">St. John</span>, the <em>Managers</em>
+of the Trial, <span class="smcap">Fiennes, Rudyard</span>, etc.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Rudyard.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>Horrible!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Till now all hearts were with you: I withdraw<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For one. Too horrible! But we mistake<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your purpose, Pym: you cannot snatch away<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The last spar from the drowning man.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Fiennes.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>He talks<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With St. John of it&mdash;see, how quietly!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">[<i>To other <em>Presbyterians</em>.</i>] You'll join us? Strafford may deserve the worst:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But this new course is monstrous. Vane, take heart!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This Bill of his Attainder shall not have<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">One true man's hand to it.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>Consider, Pym!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Confront your Bill, your own Bill: what is it?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You cannot catch the Earl on any charge,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span><span class="hang1st">No man will say the law has hold of him<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">On any charge; and therefore you resolve<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To take the general sense on his desert,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As though no law existed, and we met<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To found one. You refer to Parliament<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To speak its thought upon the abortive mass<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of half-borne-out assertions, dubious hints<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Hereafter to be cleared, distortions&mdash;ay,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And wild inventions. Every man is saved<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The task of fixing any single charge<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">On Strafford: he has but to see in him<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The enemy of England.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>A right scruple!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I have heard some called England's enemy<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With less consideration.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Pity me!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Indeed you made me think I was your friend!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I who have murdered Strafford, how remove<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That memory from me?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>I absolve you, Vane.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Take you no care for aught that you have done!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i> John Hampden, not this Bill! Reject this Bill!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He staggers through the ordeal: let him go,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Strew no fresh fire before him! Plead for us!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When Strafford spoke, your eyes were thick with tears!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i> England speaks louder: who are we, to play<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The generous pardoner at her expense,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Magnanimously waive advantages,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And, if he conquer us, applaud his skill?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i> He was your friend.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>I have heard that before.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Fiennes.</i> And England trusts you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hampden.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>Shame be his, who turns<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The opportunity of serving her<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span><span class="hang1st">She trusts him with, to his own mean account&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Who would look nobly frank at her expense!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Fiennes.</i> I never thought it could have come to this.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> But I have made myself familiar, Fiennes,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With this one thought&mdash;have walked, and sat, and slept,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This thought before me. I have done such things,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Being the chosen man that should destroy<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The traitor. You have taken up this thought<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To play with, for a gentle stimulant,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To give a dignity to idler life<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">By the dim prospect of emprise to come,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But ever with the softening, sure belief,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That all would end some strange way right at last.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Fiennes.</i> Had we made out some weightier charge!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i34">&nbsp;</span>You say<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That these are petty charges: can we come<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To the real charge at all? There he is safe<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In tyranny's stronghold. Apostasy<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is not a crime, treachery not a crime:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The cheek burns, the blood tingles, when you speak<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The words, but where's the power to take revenge<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Upon them? We must make occasion serve,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The oversight shall pay for the main sin<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That mocks us.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Rudyard.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>But his unexampled course,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This Bill!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>By this, we roll the clouds away<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of precedent and custom, and at once<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Bid the great beacon-light God sets in all,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The conscience of each bosom, shine upon<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The guilt of Strafford: each man lay his hand<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Upon his breast, and judge!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>I only see<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Strafford, nor pass his corpse for all beyond!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Rudyard and others.</i> Forgive him! He would join us, now he finds<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What the King counts reward! The pardon, too,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Should be your own. Yourself should bear to Strafford<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The pardon of the Commons.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>Meet him? Strafford?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Have we to meet once more, then? Be it so!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And yet&mdash;the prophecy seemed half fulfilled<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When, at the Trial, as he gazed, my youth,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Our friendship, divers thoughts came back at once<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And left me, for a time.... 'Tis very sad!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To-morrow we discuss the points of law<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With Lane&mdash;to-morrow?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Vane.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Not before to-morrow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">So, time enough! I knew you would relent!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> The next day, Haselrig, you introduce<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Bill of his Attainder. Pray for me!</span></p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Scene III.</span>&mdash;<i>Whitehall.</i></h4>
+
+<p class="center"><i>The <span class="smcap">King</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> My loyal servant! To defend himself<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Thus irresistibly,&mdash;withholding aught<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That seemed to implicate us!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>We have done<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Less gallantly by Strafford. Well, the future<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Must recompense the past.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>She tarries long.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I understand you, Strafford, now!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i26">&nbsp;</span>The scheme&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Carlisle's mad scheme&mdash;he'll sanction it, I fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For love of me. 'Twas too precipitate:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Before the army's fairly on its march,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He'll be at large: no matter.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>Well, Carlisle?</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span>
+<i>Enter <span class="smcap">Pym</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> Fear me not, sir:&mdash;my mission is to save,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This time.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>To break thus on me! Unannounced!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> It is of Strafford I would speak.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>No more<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of Strafford! I have heard too much from you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> I spoke, sir, for the People; will you hear<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A word upon my own account?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Of Strafford?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">(So turns the tide already? Have we tamed<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The insolent brawler?&mdash;Strafford's eloquence<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is swift in its effect.) Lord Strafford, sir,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Has spoken for himself.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Sufficiently.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I would apprise you of the novel course<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The People take: the Trial fails.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>Yes, yes:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We are aware, sir: for your part in it<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Means shall be found to thank you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>Pray you, read<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This schedule! I would learn from your own mouth<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;(It is a matter much concerning me)&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Whether, if two Estates of us concede<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The death of Strafford, on the grounds set forth<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Within that parchment, you, sir, can resolve<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To grant your own consent to it. This Bill<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is framed by me. If you determine, sir,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That England's manifested will should guide<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your judgment, ere another week such will<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Shall manifest itself. If not,&mdash;I cast<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Aside the measure.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>You can hinder, then,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The introduction of this Bill?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>I can.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> He is my friend, sir: I have wronged him: mark you,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Had I not wronged him, this might be. You think<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Because you hate the Earl ... (turn not away,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We know you hate him)&mdash;no one else could love<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Strafford: but he has saved me, some affirm.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Think of his pride! And do you know one strange,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">One frightful thing? We all have used the man<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As though a drudge of ours, with not a source<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of happy thoughts except in us; and yet<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Strafford has wife and children, household cares,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Just as if we had never been. Ah sir,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You are moved, even you, a solitary man<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Wed to your cause&mdash;to England if you will!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> Yes&mdash;think, my soul&mdash;to England! Draw not back!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> Prevent that Bill, sir! All your course seems fair<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Till now. Why, in the end, 'tis I should sign<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The warrant for his death! You have said much<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I ponder on; I never meant, indeed,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Strafford should serve me any more. I take<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Commons' counsel; but this Bill is yours&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Nor worthy of its leader: care not, sir,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For that, however! I will quite forget<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You named it to me. You are satisfied?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> Listen to me, sir! Eliot laid his hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Wasted and white, upon my forehead once;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Wentworth&mdash;he's gone now!&mdash;has talked on, whole nights,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And I beside him; Hampden loves me: sir,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How can I breathe and not wish England well,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And her King well?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>I thank you, sir, who leave<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span><span class="hang1st">That King his servant. Thanks, sir!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>Let me speak!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;Who may not speak again; whose spirit yearns<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For a cool night after this weary day:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;Who would not have my soul turn sicker yet<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In a new task, more fatal, more august,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">More full of England's utter weal or woe.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I thought, sir, could I find myself with you,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">After this trial, alone, as man to man&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I might say something, warn you, pray you, save&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Mark me, King Charles, save&mdash;&mdash;you!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But God must do it. Yet I warn you, sir&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">(With Strafford's faded eyes yet full on me)<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As you would have no deeper question moved<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;"How long the Many must endure the One,"<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Assure me, sir, if England give assent<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To Strafford's death, you will not interfere!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Or&mdash;&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> God forsakes me. I am in a net<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And cannot move. Let all be as you say!</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Enter <em>Lady</em> <span class="smcap">Carlisle</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> He loves you&mdash;looking beautiful with joy<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Because you sent me! he would spare you all<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The pain! he never dreamed you would forsake<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your servant in the evil day&mdash;nay, see<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your scheme returned! That generous heart of his!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He needs it not&mdash;or, needing it, disdains<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A course that might endanger you&mdash;you, sir,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Whom Strafford from his inmost soul....<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">[<i>Seeing <span class="smcap">Pym</span>.</i>]<span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>Well met!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">No fear for Strafford! All that's true and brave<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">On your own side shall help us: we are now<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Stronger than ever.<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</a></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>Ha&mdash;what, sir, is this?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">All is not well! What parchment have you there?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> Sir, much is saved us both.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>This Bill! Your lip<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Whitens&mdash;you could not read one line to me<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your voice would falter so!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>No recreant yet!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The great word went from England to my soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And I arose. The end is very near.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> I am to save him! All have shrunk beside;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">'Tis only I am left. Heaven will make strong<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The hand now as the heart. Then let both die!</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In the last act Browning has drawn upon
+his imagination more than in any other part
+of the play. Strafford in prison in the Tower
+is the center around which all the other elements
+of the drama are made to revolve. A
+glimpse, the first, of the man in a purely
+human capacity is given in the second scene
+with Strafford and his children. From all
+accounts little Anne was a precocious child
+and Browning has sketched her accordingly.
+The scene is like a gleam of sunshine in the
+gathering gloom.</p>
+
+<p>The genuine grief felt by the historical
+Charles over the part he played in the ruin
+of Strafford is brought out in an interview
+between Strafford and Charles, who is represented
+as coming disguised to the prison.
+Strafford who has been hoping for pardon<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span>
+from the King learns from Hollis, in the King's
+presence, that the King has signed his death
+warrant. He receives this shock with the
+remark which history attributes to him.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">"Put not your trust<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In princes, neither in the sons of men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In whom is no salvation!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>History tells us of two efforts to rescue
+Strafford. One of these was an attempt to
+bribe Balfour to allow him to escape from
+the tower. This hint the Poet has worked
+up into the episode of Charles, calling Balfour
+and begging him to go at once to Parliament,
+to say he will grant all demands, and that he
+chooses to pardon Strafford. History, however,
+does not say that Lady Carlisle was
+implicated in any plan for the rescue of
+Strafford, of which Browning makes so much.
+According to Gardiner, she was by this time
+bestowing her favors upon Pym. Devotion
+to the truth here on Browning's part would
+have completely ruined the inner unity of the
+play. Carlisle, the woman ready to devote
+herself to Strafford's utmost need, while Strafford
+is more or less indifferent to her is the
+artistic compliment of Strafford the man devoted
+to the unresponsive King. The failure
+of the escape through Pym's intervention is a<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span>
+final dramatic climax bringing face to face
+not so much the two individual men as the
+two principles of government for which England
+was warring, the Monarchical and the
+Parliamentary. To the last, Strafford is loyal
+to the King and the Kingly idea, while Pym
+crushing his human feelings under foot, calmly
+contemplates the sacrifice not only of Strafford,
+but even of the King, if England's need
+demand it.</p>
+
+<p>In this supreme moment of agony when
+Strafford and Pym meet face to face both men
+are made to realize an abiding love for each
+other beneath all their earthly differences.
+"A great poet of our own day," writes Gardiner,
+"clothing the reconciling spirit of the
+nineteenth century in words which never could
+have been spoken in the seventeenth, has
+breathed a high wish. On his page an imaginary
+Pym, recalling an imaginary friendship,
+looks forward hopefully to a reunion in a
+better and brighter world."</p>
+
+<div class="drama">
+<h4><span class="smcap">Scene II.</span>&mdash;<i>The Tower.</i></h4>
+
+<p class="center"><i><span class="smcap">Strafford</span> sitting with his <em>Children</em>. They sing.</i></p>
+
+<p class="song"><span class="hang1st">O bell 'andare<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Per barca in mare,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Verso la sera<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Di Primavera!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span>
+<span class="hang1st line1"><i>William.</i> The boat's in the broad moonlight all this while&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p class="song"><span class="hang1st">Verso la sera<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Di Primavera!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st">And the boat shoots from underneath the moon<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Into the shadowy distance; only still<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You hear the dipping oar&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p class="song"><span class="hang1st">Verso la sera,</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st">And faint, and fainter, and then all's quite gone,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Music and light and all, like a lost star.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Anne.</i> But you should sleep, father; you were to sleep.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> I do sleep, Anne; or if not&mdash;you must know<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">There's such a thing as....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>William.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>You're too tired to sleep?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> It will come by-and-by and all day long,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In that old quiet house I told you of:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We sleep safe there.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Anne.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Why not in Ireland?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>No!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Too many dreams!&mdash;That song's for Venice, William:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You know how Venice looks upon the map&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Isles that the mainland hardly can let go?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>William.</i> You've been to Venice, father?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>I was young, then.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>William.</i> A city with no King; that's why I like<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Even a song that comes from Venice.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>William!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>William.</i> Oh, I know why! Anne, do you love the King?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But I'll see Venice for myself one day.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> See many lands, boy&mdash;England last of all,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That way you'll love her best.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_13" id="linki_13"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus013.jpg" width="295" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">The Tower, London</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="drama">
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>William.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>Why do men say<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You sought to ruin her then?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>Ah,&mdash;they say that.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>William.</i> Why?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>I suppose they must have words to say,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As you to sing.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Anne.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>But they make songs beside:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Last night I heard one, in the street beneath,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That called you.... Oh, the names!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>William.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>Don't mind her, father!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">They soon left off when I cried out to them.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> We shall so soon be out of it, my boy!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">'Tis not worth while: who heeds a foolish song?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>William.</i> Why, not the King.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Well: it has been the fate<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of better; and yet,&mdash;wherefore not feel sure<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That Time, who in the twilight comes to mend<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">All the fantastic day's caprice, consign<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To the low ground once more the ignoble Term,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And raise the Genius on his orb again,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That Time will do me right?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Anne.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>(Shall we sing, William?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He does not look thus when we sing.)</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>For Ireland,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Something is done: too little, but enough<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To show what might have been.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>William.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>(I have no heart<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To sing now! Anne, how very sad he looks!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Oh, I so hate the King for all he says!)</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> Forsook them! What, the common songs will run<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That I forsook the People? Nothing more?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Ay, Fame, the busy scribe, will pause, no doubt,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Turning a deaf ear to her thousand slaves<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span><span class="hang1st">Noisy to be enrolled,&mdash;will register<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The curious glosses, subtle notices,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Ingenious clearings-up one fain would see<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Beside that plain inscription of The Name&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The <a name='TC_17'></a><ins title="Was 'Partiot'">Patriot</ins> Pym, or the Apostate Strafford!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>The <em>Children</em> resume their song timidly, but break off.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Enter <span class="smcap">Hollis</span> and an <em>Attendant</em>.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> No,&mdash;Hollis? in good time!&mdash;Who is he?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i><span class="i30">&nbsp;</span>One<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That must be present.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Ah&mdash;I understand.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">They will not let me see poor Laud alone.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How politic! They'd use me by degrees<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To solitude: and, just as you came in,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I was solicitous what life to lead<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When Strafford's "not so much as Constable<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In the King's service." Is there any means<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To keep oneself awake? What would you do<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">After this bustle, Hollis, in my place?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i> Strafford!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>Observe, not but that Pym and you<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Will find me news enough&mdash;news I shall hear<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Under a quince-tree by a fish-pond side<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">At Wentworth. Garrard must be re-engaged<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My newsman. Or, a better project now&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What if when all's consummated, and the Saints<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Reign, and the Senate's work goes swimmingly,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What if I venture up, some day, unseen,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To saunter through the Town, notice how Pym,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your Tribune, likes Whitehall, drop quietly<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Into a tavern, hear a point discussed,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As, whether Strafford's name were John or James&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And be myself appealed to&mdash;I, who shall<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span><span class="hang1st">Myself have near forgotten!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>I would speak....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> Then you shall speak,&mdash;not now. I want just now,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To hear the sound of my own tongue. This place<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is full of ghosts.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Nay, you must hear me, Strafford!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> Oh, readily! Only, one rare thing more,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The minister! Who will advise the King,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Turn his Sejanus, Richelieu and what not,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And yet have health&mdash;children, for aught I know&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My patient pair of traitors! Ah,&mdash;but, William&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Does not his cheek grow thin?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>William.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>'Tis you look thin, Father!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> A scamper o'er the breezy wolds<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Sets all to-rights.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>You cannot sure forget<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A prison-roof is o'er you, Strafford?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>No,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Why, no. I would not touch on that, the first.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I left you that. Well, Hollis? Say at once,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The King can find no time to set me free!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A mask at Theobald's?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Hold: no such affair<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Detains him.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>True: what needs so great a matter?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Queen's lip may be sore. Well: when he pleases,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Only, I want the air: it vexes flesh<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To be pent up so long.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>The King&mdash;I bear<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">His message, Strafford: pray you, let me speak!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> Go, William! Anne, try o'er your song again!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>The <em>Children</em> retire.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span>They shall be loyal, friend, at all events.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I know your message: you have nothing new<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To tell me: from the first I guessed as much.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I know, instead of coming here himself,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Leading me forth in public by the hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The King <a name='TC_18'></a><ins title="Was 'perfers'">prefers</ins> to leave the door ajar<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As though I were escaping&mdash;bids me trudge<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">While the mob gapes upon some show prepared<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">On the other side of the river! Give at once<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">His order of release! I've heard, as well<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of certain poor man&oelig;uvres to avoid<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The granting pardon at his proper risk;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">First, he must prattle somewhat to the Lords,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Must talk a trifle with the Commons first,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Be grieved I should abuse his confidence,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And far from blaming them, and.... Where's the order?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i> Spare me!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>Why, he'd not have me steal away?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With an old doublet and a steeple hat<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Like Prynne's? Be smuggled into France, perhaps?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Hollis, 'tis for my children! 'Twas for them<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I first consented to stand day by day<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And give your Puritans the best of words,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Be patient, speak when called upon, observe<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Their rules, and not return them prompt their lie!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What's in that boy of mine that he should prove<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Son to a prison-breaker? I shall stay<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And he'll stay with me. Charles should know as much,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He too has children!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">[<i>Turning to <span class="smcap">Hollis's</span> <em>Companion</em>.</i>] Sir, you feel for me!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">No need to hide that face! Though it have looked<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Upon me from the judgment-seat ... I know<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Strangely, that somewhere it has looked on me, ...<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your coming has my pardon, nay, my thanks:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For there is one who comes not.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>Whom forgive,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As one to die!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>True, all die, and all need<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Forgiveness: I forgive him from my soul.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i> 'Tis a world's wonder: Strafford, you must die!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> Sir, if your errand is to set me free<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This heartless jest mars much. Ha! Tears in truth?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We'll end this! See this paper, warm&mdash;feel&mdash;warm<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With lying next my heart! Whose hand is there?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Whose promise? Read, and loud for God to hear!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">"Strafford shall take no hurt"&mdash;read it, I say!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">"In person, honor, nor estate"&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>The King....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> I could unking him by a breath! You sit<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Where Loudon sat, who came to prophesy<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The certain end, and offer me Pym's grace<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">If I'd renounce the King: and I stood firm<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">On the King's faith. The King who lives....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i><span class="i28">&nbsp;</span>To sign<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The warrant for your death.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>"Put not your trust<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In princes, neither in the sons of men,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In whom is no salvation!"</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>Trust in God!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The scaffold is prepared: they wait for you:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He has consented. Cast the earth behind!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> You would not see me, Strafford, at your foot!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">It was wrung from me! Only, curse me not!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis</i> [<i>to <span class="smcap">Strafford</span></i>]. As you hope grace and pardon in your need,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Be merciful to this most wretched man.</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Voices from within.</i></p>
+
+<p class="song"><span class="hang1st">Verso la sera<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Di Primavera</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> You'll be good to those children, sir? I know<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You'll not believe her, even should the Queen<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Think they take after one they rarely saw.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I had intended that my son should live<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A stranger to these matters: but you are<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">So utterly deprived of friends! He too<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Must serve you&mdash;will you not be good to him?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Or, stay, sir, do not promise&mdash;do not swear!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You, Hollis&mdash;do the best you can for me!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I've not a soul to trust to: Wandesford's dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And you've got Radcliffe safe, Laud's turn comes next:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I've found small time of late for my affairs,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But I trust any of you, Pym himself&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">No one could hurt them: there's an infant, too.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">These tedious cares! Your Majesty could spare them.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Nay&mdash;pardon me, my King! I had forgotten<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your education, trials, much temptation,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Some weakness: there escaped a peevish word&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">'Tis gone: I bless you at the last. You know<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">All's between you and me: what has the world<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To do with it? Farewell!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles</i> [<i>at the door</i>]. Balfour! Balfour!</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Enter <span class="smcap">Balfour</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st">The Parliament!&mdash;go to them: I grant all<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Demands. Their sittings shall be permanent:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Tell them to keep their money if they will:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I'll come to them for every coat I wear<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And every crust I eat: only I choose<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To pardon Strafford. As the Queen shall choose!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;You never heard the People howl for blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Beside!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Balfour.</i> Your Majesty may hear them now:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The walls can hardly keep their murmurs out:<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span><span class="hang1st">Please you retire!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Take all the troops, Balfour!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Balfour.</i> There are some hundred thousand of the crowd.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Charles.</i> Come with me, Strafford! You'll not fear, at least!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> Balfour, say nothing to the world of this!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I charge you, as a dying man, forget<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You gazed upon this agony of one ...<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of one ... or if ... why you may say, Balfour,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The King was sorry: 'tis no shame in him:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Yes, you may say he even wept, Balfour,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And that I walked the lighter to the block<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Because of it. I shall walk lightly, sir!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Earth fades, heaven breaks on me: I shall stand next<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Before God's throne: the moment's close at hand<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When man the first, last time, has leave to lay<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">His whole heart bare before its Maker, leave<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To clear up the long error of a life<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And choose one happiness for evermore.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With all mortality about me, Charles,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The sudden wreck, the dregs of violent death&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What if, despite the opening angel-song,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">There penetrate one prayer for you? Be saved<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Through me! Bear witness, no one could prevent<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My death! Lead on! ere he awake&mdash;best, now!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">All must be ready: did you say, Balfour,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The crowd began to murmur? They'll be kept<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Too late for sermon at St. Antholin's!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Now! But tread softly&mdash;children are at play<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In the next room. Precede! I follow&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Enter <em>Lady</em> <span class="smcap">Carlisle</span> with many <em>Attendants</em>.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>Me!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Follow me, Strafford, and be saved! The King?<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span><span class="hang1st">[<i>To the <span class="smcap">King</span>.</i>] Well&mdash;as you ordered, they are ranged without,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The convoy.... [<i>seeing the <span class="smcap">King's</span> state.</i>]<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">[<i>To <span class="smcap">Strafford</span>.</i>] You know all, then! Why I thought<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">It looked best that the King should save you,&mdash;Charles<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Alone; 'tis a shame that you should owe me aught.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Or no, not shame! Strafford, you'll not feel shame<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">At being saved by me?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>All true! Oh Strafford,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">She saves you! all her deed! this lady's deed!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And is the boat in readiness? You, friend,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Are Billingsley, no doubt. Speak to her, Strafford!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">See how she trembles, waiting for your voice!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The world's to learn its bravest story yet.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Talk afterward! Long nights in France enough,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To sit beneath the vines and talk of home.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> You love me, child? Ah, Strafford can be loved<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As well as Vane! I could escape, then?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>Haste!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Advance the torches, Bryan!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>I will die.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">They call me proud: but England had no right,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When she encountered me&mdash;her strength to mine&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To find the chosen foe a craven. Girl,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I fought her to the utterance, I fell,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I am <a name='TC_19'></a><ins title="Was 'her's'">hers</ins> now, and I will die. Beside,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The lookers-on! Eliot is all about<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This place, with his most uncomplaining brow.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Strafford!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>I think if you could know how much<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I love you, you would be repaid, my friend!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Then, for my sake!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>Even for your sweet sake,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I stay.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Hollis.</i> For <i>their</i> sake!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>To bequeath a stain?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Leave me! Girl, humor me and let me die!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Bid him escape&mdash;wake, King! Bid him escape!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> True, I will go! Die, and forsake the King?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I'll not draw back from the last service.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Strafford!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>And, after all, what is disgrace to me?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Let us come, child! That it should end this way!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Lead them! but I feel strangely: it was not<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To end this way.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> Lean&mdash;lean on me!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>My King!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Oh, had he trusted me&mdash;his friend of friends!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> I can support him, Hollis!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>Not this way!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This gate&mdash;I dreamed of it, this very gate.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> It opens on the river: our good boat<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is moored below, our friends are there.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>The same:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Only with something ominous and dark,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Fatal, inevitable.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>Strafford! Strafford!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> Not by this gate! I feel what will be there!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I dreamed of it, I tell you: touch it not!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Lady Carlisle.</i> To save the King,&mdash;Strafford, to save the King!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>As <span class="smcap">Strafford</span> opens the door, <span class="smcap">Pym</span> is discovered
+with <span class="smcap">Hampden, Vane</span>, etc. <span class="smcap">Strafford</span> falls
+back; <span class="smcap">Pym</span> follows slowly and confronts him.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> Have I done well? Speak, England! Whose sole sake<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I still have labored for, with disregard<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To my own heart,&mdash;for whom my youth was made<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Barren, my manhood waste, to offer up<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Her sacrifice&mdash;this friend, this Wentworth here&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Who walked in youth with me, loved me, it may be,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And whom, for his forsaking England's cause,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I hunted by all means (trusting that she<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Would sanctify all means) even to the block<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Which waits for him. And saying this, I feel<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">No bitterer pang than first I felt, the hour<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I swore that Wentworth might leave us, but I<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Would never leave him: I do leave him now.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I render up my charge (be witness, God!)<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To England who imposed it. I have done<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Her bidding&mdash;poorly, wrongly,&mdash;it may be,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With ill effects&mdash;for I am weak, a man:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Still, I have done my best, my human best,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Not faltering for a moment. It is done.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And this said, if I say ... yes, I will say<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I never loved but one man&mdash;David not<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">More Jonathan! Even thus, I love him now:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And look for my chief portion in that world<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Where great hearts led astray are turned again,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">(Soon it may be, and, certes, will be soon:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My mission over, I shall not live long,)&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Ay, here I know I talk&mdash;I dare and must,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of England, and her great reward, as all<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I look for there; but in my inmost heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Believe, I think of stealing quite away<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To walk once more with Wentworth&mdash;my youth's friend<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Purged from all error, gloriously renewed,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And Eliot shall not blame us. Then indeed....<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span><span class="hang1st">This is no meeting, Wentworth! Tears increase<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Too hot. A thin mist&mdash;is it blood?&mdash;enwraps<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The face I loved once. Then, the meeting be!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> I have loved England too; we'll meet then, Pym.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As well die now! Youth is the only time<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To think and to decide on a great course:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Manhood with action follows; but 'tis dreary,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To have to alter our whole life in age&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The time past, the strength gone! As well die now.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When we meet, Pym, I'd be set right&mdash;not now!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Best die. Then if there's any fault, fault too<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Dies, smothered up. Poor grey old little Laud<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">May dream his dream out, of a perfect Church,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In some blind corner. And there's no one left.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I trust the King now wholly to you, Pym!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And yet, I know not: I shall not be there:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Friends fail&mdash;if he have any. And he's weak,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And loves the Queen, and.... Oh, my fate is nothing&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Nothing! But not that awful head&mdash;not that!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> If England shall declare such will to me....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> Pym, you help England! I, that am to die,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What I must see! 'tis here&mdash;all here! My God,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Let me but gasp out, in one word of fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How thou wilt plague him, satiating hell!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What? England that you help, become through you<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A green and putrefying charnel, left<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Our children ... some of us have children, Pym&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Some who, without that, still must ever wear<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A darkened brow, an over-serious look,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And never properly be young! No word?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What if I curse you? Send a strong curse forth<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Clothed from my heart, lapped round with horror till<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">She's fit with her white face to walk the world<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Scaring kind natures from your cause and you&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span><span class="hang1st">Then to sit down with you at the board-head,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The gathering for prayer.... O speak, but speak!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">... Creep up, and quietly follow each one home,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You, you, you, be a nestling care for each<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To sleep with,&mdash;hardly moaning in his dreams.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">She gnaws so quietly,&mdash;till, lo he starts,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Gets off with half a heart eaten away!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Oh, shall you 'scape with less if she's my child?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You will not say a word&mdash;to me&mdash;to Him?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> If England shall declare such will to me....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> No, not for England now, not for Heaven now,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">See, Pym, for my sake, mine who kneel to you!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">There, I will thank you for the death, my friend!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This is the meeting: let me love you well!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Pym.</i> England,&mdash;I am thine own! Dost thou exact<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That service? I obey thee to the end.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Strafford.</i> O God, I shall die first&mdash;I shall die first!</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>A lively picture of Cavalier sentiment is
+given in the "Cavalier Tunes"&mdash;which
+ought to furnish conclusive proof that
+Browning does not always put himself into
+his work. They may be compared with the
+words set to Avison's march given in the last
+chapter which presents just as sympathetically
+"Roundhead" sentiment.</p>
+
+<h3>I. MARCHING ALONG</h3>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing:<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And, pressing a troop unable to stoop<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Marched them along, fifty-score strong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_14" id="linki_14"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus014.jpg" width="500" height="318" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">The Tower: Traitors' Gate</p>
+</div>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">God for King Charles! Pym and such carles<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous parles!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cavaliers, up! Lips from the cup,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till you're&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><span class="smcap">Chorus.</span>&mdash;<i>Marching along, fifty-score strong,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i12"><i>Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">III</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hampden to hell, and his obsequies' knell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">England, good cheer! Rupert is near!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><span class="smcap">Chorus.</span>&mdash;<i>Marching along, fifty-score strong,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i12"><i>Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song?</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then, God for King Charles! Pym and his snarls<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hold by the right, you double your might;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><span class="smcap">Chorus.</span>&mdash;<i>March we along, fifty-score strong,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i12"><i>Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!</i><br /></span>
+</div></div><p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>II. GIVE A ROUSE</h3>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">King Charles, and who'll do him right now?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">King Charles!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who gave me the goods that went since?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who raised me the house that sank once?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who helped me to gold I spent since?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who found me in wine you drank once?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><span class="smcap">Chorus.</span>&mdash;<i>King Charles, and who'll do him right now?</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i12"><i>King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i12"><i>Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i12"><i>King Charles!</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">III</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To whom used my boy George quaff else,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the old fool's side that begot him?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For whom did he cheer and laugh else,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While Noll's damned troopers shot him?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><span class="smcap">Chorus.</span>&mdash;<i>King Charles, and who'll do him right now?</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i12"><i>King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i12"><i>Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i12"><i>King Charles!</i><br /></span>
+</div></div><p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>III. BOOT AND SADDLE</h3>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rescue my castle before the hot day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brightens to blue from its silvery grey,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><span class="smcap">Chorus.</span>&mdash;"<i>Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Many's the friend there, will listen and pray<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><span class="smcap">Chorus.</span>&mdash;"<i>Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">III</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flouts Castle Brancepeth the Roundheads' array:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who laughs, "Good fellows ere this, by my fay,"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><span class="smcap">Chorus.</span>&mdash;"<i>Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who? My wife Gertrude; that, honest and gay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laughs when you talk of surrendering, "Nay!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I've better counsellors; what counsel they?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><span class="smcap">Chorus.</span>&mdash;"<i>Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Though not illustrative of the subject in
+hand, "Martin Relph" is included here on
+account of the glimpse it gives of an episode,
+interesting in English History, though devoid
+of serious consequences, since it marked the
+final abortive struggle of a dying cause.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span>
+An imaginary incident of the rebellion in
+the time of George II., forms the background
+of "Martin Relph," the point of the story
+being the life-long agony of reproach suffered
+by Martin who let his envy and jealousy conquer
+him at a crucial moment. The history
+of the attempt of Charles Edward to get back
+the crown of England, supported by a few
+thousand Highlanders, of his final defeat at
+the Battle of Culloden, and of the decay henceforth
+of Jacobitism, needs no telling. The
+treatment of spies as herein shown is a common-place
+of war-times, but that a reprieve
+exonerating the accused should be prevented
+from reaching its destination in time through
+the jealousy of the only person who saw it
+coming gives the episode a tragic touch lifting
+it into an atmosphere of peculiar individual
+pathos.</p>
+
+<h3>MARTIN RELPH</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<i><span class="i0">My grandfather says he remembers he saw, when a youngster long ago,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On a bright May day, a strange old man, with a beard as white as snow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stand on the hill outside our town like a monument of woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, striking his bare bald head the while, sob out the reason&mdash;so!<br /></span></i>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If I last as long at Methuselah I shall never forgive myself:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But&mdash;God forgive me, that I pray, unhappy Martin Relph,<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span><span class="i0">As coward, coward I call him&mdash;him, yes, him! Away from me!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Get you behind the man I am now, you man that I used to be!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What can have sewed my mouth up, set me a-stare, all eyes, no tongue?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">People have urged "You visit a scare too hard on a lad so young!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You were taken aback, poor boy," they urge, "no time to regain your wits:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Besides it had maybe cost you life." Ay, there is the cap which fits!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So, cap me, the coward,&mdash;thus! No fear! A cuff on the brow does good:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The feel of it hinders a worm inside which bores at the brain for food.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See now, there certainly seems excuse: for a moment, I trust, dear friends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fault was but folly, no fault of mine, or if mine, I have made amends!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For, every day that is first of May, on the hill-top, here stand I,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Martin Relph, and I strike my brow, and publish the reason why,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When there gathers a crowd to mock the fool. No fool, friends, since the bite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of a worm inside is worse to bear: pray God I have balked him quite!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I'll tell you. Certainly much excuse! It came of the way they cooped<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Us peasantry up in a ring just here, close huddling because tight-hooped<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span><span class="i0">By the red-coats round us villagers all: they meant we should see the sight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And take the example,&mdash;see, not speak, for speech was the Captain's right.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"You clowns on the slope, beware!" cried he: "This woman about to die<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gives by her fate fair warning to such acquaintance as play the spy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Henceforth who meddle with matters of state above them perhaps will learn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That peasants should stick to their plough-tail, leave to the King the King's concern.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Here's a quarrel that sets the land on fire, between King George and his foes:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What call has a man of your kind&mdash;much less, a woman&mdash;to interpose?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet you needs must be meddling, folk like you, not foes&mdash;so much the worse!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The many and loyal should keep themselves unmixed with the few perverse.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Is the counsel hard to follow? I gave it you plainly a month ago,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And where was the good? The rebels have learned just all that they need to know.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a month since in we quietly marched: a week, and they had the news,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From a list complete of our rank and file to a note of our caps and shoes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"All about all we did and all we were doing and like to do!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only, I catch a letter by luck, and capture who wrote it, too.<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span><span class="i0">Some of you men look black enough, but the milk-white face demure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Betokens the finger foul with ink: 'tis a woman who writes, be sure!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Is it 'Dearie, how much I miss your mouth!'&mdash;good natural stuff, she pens?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some sprinkle of that, for a blind, of course: with talk about cocks and hens,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How 'robin has built on the apple-tree, and our creeper which came to grief<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the frost, we feared, is twining afresh round casement in famous leaf.'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"But all for a blind! She soon glides frank into 'Horrid the place is grown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With Officers here and Privates there, no nook we may call our own:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Farmer Giles has a tribe to house, and lodging will be to seek<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the second Company sure to come ('tis whispered) on Monday week.'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And so to the end of the chapter! There! The murder you see, was out:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Easy to guess how the change of mind in the rebels was brought about!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Safe in the trap would they now lie snug, had treachery made no sign:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But treachery meets a just reward, no matter if fools malign!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"That traitors had played us false, was proved&mdash;sent news which fell so pat:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the murder was out&mdash;this letter of love, the sender of this sent that!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span><span class="i0">'Tis an ugly job, though, all the same&mdash;a hateful, to have to deal<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a case of the kind, when a woman's in fault: we soldiers need nerves of steel!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"So, I gave her a chance, despatched post-haste a message to Vincent Parkes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whom she wrote to; easy to find he was, since one of the King's own clerks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ay, kept by the King's own gold in the town close by where the rebels camp:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sort of a lawyer, just the man to betray our sort&mdash;the scamp!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'If her writing is simple and honest and only the lover-like stuff it looks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And if you yourself are a loyalist, nor down in the rebels' books,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come quick,' said I, 'and in person prove you are each of you clear of crime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or martial law must take its course: this day next week's the time!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Next week is now: does he come? Not he! Clean gone, our clerk, in a trice!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He has left his sweetheart here in the lurch: no need of a warning twice!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His own neck free, but his partner's fast in the noose still, here she stands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To pay for her fault. 'Tis an ugly job: but soldiers obey commands.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And hearken wherefore I make a speech! Should any acquaintance share<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The folly that led to the fault that is now to be punished, let fools beware!<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Look black, if you please, but keep hands white: and, above all else, keep wives&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or sweethearts or what they may be&mdash;from ink! Not a word now, on your lives!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Black? but the Pit's own pitch was white to the Captain's face&mdash;the brute<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the bloated cheeks and the bulgy nose and the bloodshot eyes to suit!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He was muddled with wine, they say: more like, he was out of his wits with fear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He had but a handful of men, that's true,&mdash;a riot might cost him dear.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And all that time stood Rosamund Page, with pinioned arms and face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bandaged about, on the turf marked out for the party's firing-place.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I hope she was wholly with God: I hope 'twas His angel stretched a hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To steady her so, like the shape of stone you see in our church-aisle stand.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I hope there was no vain fancy pierced the bandage to vex her eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No face within which she missed without, no questions and no replies&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Why did you leave me to die?"&mdash;"Because...." Oh, fiends, too soon you grin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At merely a moment of hell, like that&mdash;such heaven as hell ended in!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let mine end too! He gave the word, up went the guns in a line.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those heaped on the hill were blind as dumb,&mdash;for, of all eyes, only mine<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Looked over the heads of the foremost rank. Some fell on their knees in prayer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some sank to the earth, but all shut eyes, with a sole exception there.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That was myself, who had stolen up last, had sidled behind the group:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am highest of all on the hill-top, there stand fixed while the others stoop!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From head to foot in a serpent's twine am I tightened: <i>I</i> touch ground?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No more than a gibbet's rigid corpse which the fetters rust around!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Can I speak, can I breathe, can I burst&mdash;aught else but see, see, only see?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And see I do&mdash;for there comes in sight&mdash;a man, it sure must be!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who staggeringly, stumblingly rises, falls, rises, at random flings his weight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On and on, anyhow onward&mdash;a man that's mad he arrives too late!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Else why does he wave a something white high-flourished above his head?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why does not he call, cry,&mdash;curse the fool!&mdash;why throw up his arms instead?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O take his fist in your own face, fool! Why does not yourself shout "Stay!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here's a man comes rushing, might and main, with something he's mad to say?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And a minute, only a moment, to have hell-fire boil up in your brain,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And ere you can judge things right, choose heaven,&mdash;time's over, repentance vain!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They level: a volley, a smoke and the clearing of smoke: I see no more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the man smoke hid, nor his frantic arms, nor the something white he bore.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But stretched on the field, some half-mile off, is an object. Surely dumb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deaf, blind were we struck, that nobody heard, not one of us saw him come!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has he fainted through fright? One may well believe! What is it he holds so fast?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turn him over, examine the face! Heyday! What, Vincent Parkes at last?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Dead! dead as she, by the self-same shot: one bullet has ended both,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her in the body and him in the soul. They laugh at our plighted troth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Till death us do part?" Till death us do join past parting&mdash;that sounds like<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><a name='TC_20'></a><ins title="Was 'Bethrothal'">Betrothal</ins> indeed! O Vincent Parkes, what need has my fist to strike?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I helped you: thus were you dead and wed: one bound, and your soul reached hers!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is clenched in your hand the thing, signed, sealed, the paper which plain avers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She is innocent, innocent, plain as print, with the King's Arms broad engraved:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No one can hear, but if any one high on the hill can see, she's saved!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span><span class="i0">And torn his garb and bloody his lips with heart-break&mdash;plain it grew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How the week's delay had been brought about: each guess at the end proved true.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It was hard to get at the folk in power: such waste of time! and then<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such pleading and praying, with, all the while, his lamb in the lion's den!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And at length when he wrung their pardon out, no end to the stupid forms&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The license and leave: I make no doubt&mdash;what wonder if passion warms<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pulse in a man if you play with his heart?&mdash;he was something hasty in speech;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Anyhow, none would quicken the work: he had to beseech, beseech!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And the thing once signed, sealed, safe in his grasp,&mdash;what followed but fresh delays?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the floods were out, he was forced to take such a roundabout of ways!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And 'twas "Halt there!" at every turn of the road, since he had to cross the thick<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the red-coats: what did they care for him and his "Quick, for God's sake, quick!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Horse? but he had one: had it how long? till the first knave smirked "You brag<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yourself a friend of the King's? then lend to a King's friend here your nag!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Money to buy another? Why, piece by piece they plundered him still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With their "Wait you must;&mdash;no help: if aught can help you, a guinea will!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span><span class="i0">And a borough there was&mdash;I forget the name&mdash;whose Mayor must have the bench<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Justices ranged to clear a doubt: for "Vincent," thinks he, sounds French!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It well may have driven him daft, God knows! all man can certainly know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is&mdash;rushing and falling and rising, at last he arrived in a horror&mdash;so!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When a word, cry, gasp, would have rescued both! Ay bite me! The worm begins<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At his work once more. Had cowardice proved&mdash;that only&mdash;my sin of sins!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Friends, look you here! Suppose ... suppose.... But mad I am, needs must be!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Judas the Damned would never have dared such a sin as I dream! For, see!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Suppose I had sneakingly loved her myself, my wretched self, and dreamed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the heart of me "She were better dead than happy and his!"&mdash;while gleamed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A light from hell as I spied the pair in a perfectest embrace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He the savior and she the saved,&mdash;bliss born of the very murder-place!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No! Say I was scared, friends! Call me fool and coward, but nothing worse!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Jeer at the fool and gibe at the coward! 'Twas ever the coward's curse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That fear breeds fancies in such: such take their shadow for substance still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;A fiend at their back. I liked poor Parkes,&mdash;loved Vincent, if you will!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span><span class="i0">And her&mdash;why, I said "Good morrow" to her, "Good even," and nothing more:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The neighborly way! She was just to me as fifty had been before.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, coward it is and coward shall be! There's a friend, now! Thanks! A drink<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of water I wanted: and now I can walk, get home by myself, I think.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This poem, on an incident in Clive's life, is
+also included on account of its English historical
+setting.</p>
+
+<p>The remarkable career of Robert Clive
+cannot be gone into here. Suffice it to refresh
+one's memory with a few principal
+events of his life. He was born in Shopshire
+in 1725. He entered the service of the East
+India Company at eighteen and was sent to
+Madras. Here, on account of his falling into
+debt, and being in danger of losing his situation,
+he twice tried to shoot himself. The
+pistol failed to go off, however, and he became
+impressed with the idea that some great
+destiny was awaiting him. His feeling was
+fully realized as his subsequent career in
+India shows. At twenty-seven, when he returned
+to England he had made the English
+the first military power in India. On his
+return to India (1755-59) he took a further
+step and secured for the English a political<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span>
+supremacy. Finally, on his last visit, he
+crowned his earlier exploits by putting the
+English dominance on a sounder basis of
+integrity than it had before been.</p>
+
+<p>The incident related in the poem by the
+old man, Browning heard from Mrs. Jameson,
+who had shortly before heard it from Macaulay
+at Lansdowne House. Macaulay mentions
+it in his essay: "Of his personal courage he
+had, while still a writer [clerk] given signal
+proof by a desperate duel with a military
+bully who was the terror of Fort St. David."</p>
+
+<p>The old gentleman in the poem evidently
+mixed up his dates slightly, for he says this
+incident occurred when Clive was twenty-one,
+and he represents him as committing suicide
+twenty-five years afterwards. Clive was actually
+forty-nine when he took his own life.</p>
+
+<h3>CLIVE</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I and Clive were friends&mdash;and why not? Friends! I think you laugh, my lad.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clive it was gave England India, while your father gives&mdash;egad,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">England nothing but the graceless boy who lures him on to speak&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Well, Sir, you and Clive were comrades&mdash;" with a tongue thrust in your cheek!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Very true: in my eyes, your eyes, all the world's eyes, Clive was man,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span>
+<span class="i0">I was, am and ever shall be&mdash;mouse, nay, mouse of all its clan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sorriest sample, if you take the kitchen's estimate for fame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the man Clive&mdash;he fought Plassy, spoiled the clever foreign game,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Conquered and annexed and Englished!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><span class="i24" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>Never mind! As o'er my punch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(You away) I sit of evenings,&mdash;silence, save for biscuit-crunch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Black, unbroken,&mdash;thought grows busy, thrids each pathway of old years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Notes this forthright, that meander, till the long-past life appears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like an outspread map of country plodded through, each mile and rood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once, and well remembered still: I'm startled in my solitude<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ever and anon by&mdash;what's the sudden mocking light that breaks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On me as I slap the table till no rummer-glass but shakes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While I ask&mdash;aloud, I do believe, God help me!&mdash;"Was it thus?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can it be that so I faltered, stopped when just one step for us&mdash;"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Us,&mdash;you were not born, I grant, but surely some day born would be)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"&mdash;One bold step had gained a province" (figurative talk, you see)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Got no end of wealth and honor,&mdash;yet I stood stock still no less?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;"For I was not Clive," you comment: but it needs no Clive to guess<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wealth were handy, honor ticklish, did no writing on the wall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Warn me "Trespasser, 'ware man-traps!" Him who braves that notice&mdash;call<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Hero! none of such heroics suit myself who read plain words,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Doff my hat, and leap no barrier. Scripture says the land's the Lord's:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Louts them&mdash;what avail the thousand, noisy in a smock-frocked ring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All-agog to have me trespass, clear the fence, be Clive their king?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Higher warrant must you show me ere I set one foot before<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">T'other in that dark direction, though I stand for evermore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Poor as Job and meek as Moses. Evermore? No! By-and-by<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Job grows rich and Moses valiant, Clive turns out less wise than I.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Don't object "Why call him friend, then?" Power is power, my boy, and still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Marks a man,&mdash;God's gift magnific, exercised for good or ill.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You've your boot now on my hearth-rug, tread what was a tiger's skin:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rarely such a royal monster as I lodged the bullet in!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">True, he murdered half a village, so his own death came to pass;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still, for size and beauty, cunning, courage&mdash;ah, the brute he was!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, that Clive,&mdash;that youth, that greenhorn, that quill-driving clerk, in fine,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He sustained a siege in Arcot.... But the world knows! Pass the wine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where did I break off at? How bring Clive in? Oh, you mentioned "fear"!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just so: and, said I, that minds me of a story you shall hear.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We were friends then, Clive and I: so, when the clouds, about the orb<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Late supreme, encroaching slowly, surely, threatened to absorb<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ray by ray its noontide brilliance,&mdash;friendship might, with steadier eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drawing near, bear what had burned else, now no blaze&mdash;all majesty.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too much bee's-wing floats my figure? Well, suppose a castle's new:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">None presume to climb its ramparts, none find foothold sure for shoe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twixt those squares and squares of granite plating the impervious pile<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As his scale-mail's warty iron cuirasses a crocodile.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Reels that castle thunder-smitten, storm-dismantled? From without<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scrambling up by crack and crevice, every cockney prates about<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Towers&mdash;the heap he kicks now! turrets&mdash;just the measure of his cane!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will that do? Observe moreover&mdash;(same similitude again)&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such a castle seldom crumbles by sheer stress of <a name='TC_21'></a><ins title="Was 'canonade'">cannonade</ins>:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis when foes are foiled and fighting's finished that vile rains invade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grass o'ergrows, o'ergrows till night-birds congregating find no holes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fit to build in like the topmost sockets made for banner-poles.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So Clive crumbled slow in London&mdash;crashed at last.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="i34" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>A week before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dining with him,&mdash;after trying churchyard-chat of days of yore,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both of us stopped, tired as tombstones, head-piece, foot-piece, when they lean<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Each to other, drowsed in fog-smoke, o'er a coffined Past between.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As I saw his head sink heavy, guessed the soul's extinguishment<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the glazing eyeball, noticed how the furtive fingers went<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where a drug-box skulked behind the honest liquor,&mdash;"One more throw<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Try for Clive!" thought I: "Let's venture some good rattling question!" So&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Come, Clive, tell us"&mdash;out I blurted&mdash;"what to tell in turn, years hence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When my boy&mdash;suppose I have one&mdash;asks me on what evidence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I maintain my friend of Plassy proved a warrior every whit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worth your Alexanders, C&aelig;sars, Marlboroughs and&mdash;what said Pitt?&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Frederick the Fierce himself! Clive told me once"&mdash;I want to say&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Which feat out of all those famous doings bore the bell away<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;In his own calm estimation, mark you, not the mob's rough guess&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which stood foremost as evincing what Clive called courageousness!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come! what moment of the minute, what speck-center in the wide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Circle of the action saw your mortal fairly deified?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Let alone that filthy sleep-stuff, swallow bold this wholesome Port!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If a friend has leave to question,&mdash;when were you most brave, in short?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Up he arched his brows o' the instant&mdash;formidably Clive again.<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span>
+<span class="i0">"When was I most brave? I'd answer, were the instance half as plain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As another instance that's a brain-lodged crystal&mdash;curse it!&mdash;here<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Freezing when my memory touches&mdash;ugh!&mdash;the time I felt most fear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ugh! I cannot say for certain if I showed fear&mdash;anyhow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fear I felt, and, very likely, shuddered, since I shiver now."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Fear!" smiled I. "Well, that's the rarer: that's a specimen to seek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ticket up in one's museum, <i>Mind-Freaks</i>, <i>Lord Clive's Fear</i>, <i>Unique</i>!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Down his brows dropped. On the table painfully he pored as though<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tracing, in the stains and streaks there, thoughts encrusted long ago.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When he spoke 'twas like a lawyer reading word by word some will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some blind jungle of a statement,&mdash;beating on and on until<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out there leaps fierce life to fight with.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="i28" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>"This fell in my factor-days.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Desk-drudge, slaving at St. David's, one must game, or drink, or craze.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I chose gaming: and,&mdash;because your high-flown gamesters hardly take<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Umbrage at a factor's elbow if the factor pays his stake,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I was winked at in a circle where the company was choice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Captain This and Major That, men high of color, loud of voice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet indulgent, condescending to the modest juvenile<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Who not merely risked but lost his hard-earned guineas with a smile.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"<a name='TC_22'></a><ins title="Inserted stanza">Down</ins> I sat to cards, one evening,&mdash;had for my antagonist<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Somebody whose name's a secret&mdash;you'll know why&mdash;so, if you list,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Call him Cock o' the Walk, my scarlet son of Mars from head to heel!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Play commenced: and, whether Cocky fancied that a clerk must feel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quite sufficient honor came of bending over one green baize,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I the scribe with him the warrior,&mdash;guessed no penman dared to raise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shadow of objection should the honor stay but playing end<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More or less abruptly,&mdash;whether disinclined he grew to spend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Practice strictly scientific on a booby born to stare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At&mdash;not ask of&mdash;lace-and-ruffles if the hand they hide plays fair,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Anyhow, I marked a movement when he bade me 'Cut!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="i34" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>"I rose.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Such the new man&oelig;uvre, Captain? I'm a novice: knowledge grows.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What, you force a card, you cheat, Sir?'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="i26" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>"Never did a thunder-clap<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cause emotion, startle Thyrsis locked with Chloe in his lap,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As my word and gesture (down I flung my cards to join the pack)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fired the man of arms, whose visage, simply red before, turned black.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><a name='TC_23'></a><ins title="Added starting quote">"When</ins> he found his voice, he stammered 'That expression once again!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span><span class="i0">"'Well, you forced a card and cheated!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="i26" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>"'Possibly a factor's brain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Busied with his all-important balance of accounts, may deem<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weighing words superfluous trouble: <i>cheat</i> to clerkly ears may seem<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just the joke for friends to venture: but we are not friends, you see!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When a gentleman is joked with,&mdash;if he's good at repartee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He rejoins, as do I&mdash;Sirrah, on your knees, withdraw in full!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beg my pardon, or be sure a kindly bullet through your skull<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lets in light and teaches manners to what brain it finds! Choose quick&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have your life snuffed out or, kneeling, pray me trim yon candle-wick!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Well, you cheated!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="i12" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>"Then outbroke a howl from all the friends around.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To his feet sprang each in fury, fists were clenched and teeth were ground.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><a name='TC_24'></a><ins title="Added starting quote">'End</ins> it! no time like the present! Captain, yours were our disgrace!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No delay, begin and finish! Stand back, leave the pair a space!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let civilians be instructed: henceforth simply ply the pen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fly the sword! This clerk's no swordsman? Suit him with a pistol, then!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even odds! A dozen paces 'twixt the most and least expert<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make a dwarf a giant's equal: nay, the dwarf, if he's alert,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Likelier hits the broader target!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span><span class="i0"><span class="i22" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>"Up we stood accordingly.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As they handed me the weapon, such was my soul's thirst to try<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then and there conclusions with this bully, tread on and stamp out<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Every spark of his existence, that,&mdash;crept close to, curled about<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By that toying tempting teasing fool-fore-finger's middle joint,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Don't you guess?&mdash;the trigger yielded. Gone my chance! and at the point<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of such prime success moreover: scarce an inch above his head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Went my ball to hit the wainscot. He was living, I was dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Up he marched in flaming triumph&mdash;'twas his right, mind!&mdash;up, within<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just an arm's length. 'Now, my clerkling,' chuckled Cocky with a grin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the levelled piece quite touched me, 'Now, Sir Counting-House, repeat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That expression which I told you proved bad manners! Did I cheat?'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Cheat you did, you knew you cheated, and, this moment, know as well.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As for me, my homely breeding bids you&mdash;fire and go to Hell!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Twice the muzzle touched my forehead. Heavy barrel, flurried wrist,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Either spoils a steady lifting. Thrice: then, 'Laugh at Hell who list,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span>
+<span class="i0">I can't! God's no fable either. Did this boy's eye wink once? No!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's no standing him and Hell and God all three against me,&mdash;so,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I did cheat!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="i6" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>"And down he threw the pistol, out rushed&mdash;by the door<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Possibly, but, as for knowledge if by chimney, roof or floor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He effected disappearance&mdash;I'll engage no glance was sent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That way by a single starer, such a blank astonishment<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swallowed up their senses: as for speaking&mdash;mute they stood as mice.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Mute not long, though! Such reaction, such a hubbub in a trice!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Rogue and rascal! Who'd have thought it? What's to be expected next,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When His Majesty's Commission serves a sharper as pretext<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For.... But where's the need of wasting time now? Nought requires delay:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Punishment the Service cries for: let disgrace be wiped away<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Publicly, in good broad daylight! Resignation? No, indeed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drum and fife must play the Rogue's March, rank and file be free to speed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tardy marching on the rogue's part by appliance in the rear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Kicks administered shall right this wronged civilian,&mdash;never fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mister Clive, for&mdash;though a clerk&mdash;you bore yourself&mdash;suppose we say&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just as would beseem a soldier!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="i20" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>"'Gentlemen, attention&mdash;pray!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">First, one word!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span><span class="i0"><span class="i8" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>"I passed each speaker severally in review.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I had precise their number, names and styles, and fully knew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Over whom my supervision thenceforth must extend,&mdash;why, then&mdash;&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Some five minutes since, my life lay&mdash;as you all saw, gentlemen&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the mercy of your friend there. Not a single voice was raised<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In arrest of judgment, not one tongue&mdash;before my powder blazed&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ventured "Can it be the youngster blundered, really seemed to mark<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some irregular proceeding? We conjecture in the dark,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Guess at random,&mdash;still, for sake of fair play&mdash;what if for a freak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a fit of absence,&mdash;such things have been!&mdash;if our friend proved weak<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;What's the phrase?&mdash;corrected fortune! Look into the case, at least!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who dared interpose between the altar's victim and the priest?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet he spared me! You eleven! Whosoever, all or each,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the disadvantage of the man who spared me, utters speech<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;To his face, behind his back,&mdash;that speaker has to do with me:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Me who promise, if positions change and mine the chance should be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not to imitate your friend and waive advantage!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="i34" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>"Twenty-five<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Years ago this matter happened: and 'tis certain," added Clive,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span>
+<span class="i0">"Never, to my knowledge, did Sir Cocky have a single breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Breathed against him: lips were closed throughout his life, or since his death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For if he be dead or living I can tell no more than you.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All I know is&mdash;Cocky had one chance more; how he used it,&mdash;grew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of such unlucky habits, or relapsed, and back again<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brought the late-ejected devil with a score more in his train,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That's for you to judge. Reprieval I procured, at any rate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ugh&mdash;the memory of that minute's fear makes gooseflesh rise! Why prate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Longer? You've my story, there's your instance: fear I did, you see!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Well"&mdash;I hardly kept from laughing&mdash;"if I see it, thanks must be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wholly to your Lordship's candor. Not that&mdash;in a common case&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When a bully caught at cheating thrusts a pistol in one's face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I should underrate, believe me, such a trial to the nerve!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis no joke, at one-and-twenty, for a youth to stand nor swerve.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fear I naturally look for&mdash;unless, of all men alive,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am forced to make exception when I come to Robert Clive.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since at Arcot, Plassy, elsewhere, he and death&mdash;the whole world knows&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Came to somewhat closer quarters."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><span class="i22" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>Quarters? Had we come to blows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clive and I, you had not wondered&mdash;up he sprang so, out he rapped<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such a round of oaths&mdash;no matter! I'll endeavor to adapt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To our modern usage words he&mdash;well, 'twas friendly license&mdash;flung<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At me like so many fire-balls, fast as he could wag his tongue.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span><span class="i0">"You&mdash;a soldier? You&mdash;at Plassy? Yours the faculty to nick<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Instantaneously occasion when your foe, if lightning-quick,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;At his mercy, at his malice,&mdash;has you, through some stupid inch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Undefended in your bulwark? Thus laid open,&mdash;not to flinch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;That needs courage, you'll concede me. Then, look here! Suppose the man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Checking his advance, his weapon still extended, not a span<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Distant from my temple,&mdash;curse him!&mdash;quietly had bade me 'There!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keep your life, calumniator!&mdash;worthless life I freely spare:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine you freely would have taken&mdash;murdered me and my good fame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both at once&mdash;and all the better! Go, and thank your own bad aim<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which permits me to forgive you!' What if, with such words as these,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He had cast away his weapon? How should I have borne me, please?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, I'll spare you pains and tell you. This, and only this, remained&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pick his weapon up and use it on myself. I so had gained<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sleep the earlier, leaving England probably to pay on still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rent and taxes for half India, tenant at the Frenchman's will."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Such the turn," said I, "the matter takes with you? Then I abate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;No, by not one jot nor tittle,&mdash;of your act my estimate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fear&mdash;I wish I could detect there: courage fronts me, plain enough&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Call it desperation, madness&mdash;never mind! for here's in rough<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, had mine been such a trial, fear had overcome disgrace.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">True, disgrace were hard to bear: but such a rush against God's face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;None of that for me, Lord Plassy, since I go to church at times,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Say the creed my mother taught me! Many years in foreign climes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rub some marks away&mdash;not all, though! We poor sinners reach life's brink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Overlook what rolls beneath it, recklessly enough, but think<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's advantage in what's left us&mdash;ground to stand on, time to call<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Lord, have mercy!' ere we topple over&mdash;do not leap, that's all!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh, he made no answer,&mdash;re-absorbed into his cloud. I caught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Something like "Yes&mdash;courage: only fools will call it fear."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><span class="i42" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>If aught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comfort you, my great unhappy hero Clive, in that I heard,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Next week, how your own hand dealt you doom, and uttered just the word<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Fearfully courageous!"&mdash;this, be sure, and nothing else I groaned.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'm no Clive, nor parson either: Clive's worst deed&mdash;we'll hope condoned.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<p class="subtitle">SOCIAL ASPECTS OF ENGLISH LIFE</p>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="dcap">Browning</span>'s poetry presents no such
+complete panorama of phases of social
+life in England as it does of those in Italy,
+perhaps, because there is a poise and solidity
+about the English character which does not
+lend itself to so great a variety of mood as
+one may find in the peculiarly artistic temperament
+of the Italians, especially those of
+the Renaissance period. Even such irregular
+proceedings as murders have their philosophical
+after-claps which show their usefulness
+in the divine scheme of things, while unfortunate
+love affairs work such beneficent results
+in character that they are shorn of much of
+their tragedy of sorrow. There is quite a
+group of love-lyrics with no definite setting
+that might be put down as English in temper.
+It does not require much imagination to think
+of the lover who sings so lofty a strain in "One
+Way of Love" as English:&mdash;</p>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span>
+<span class="i0">All June I bound the rose in sheaves.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And strew them where Pauline may pass.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She will not turn aside? Alas!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let them lie. Suppose they die?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The chance was they might take her eye.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How many a month I strove to suit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These stubborn fingers to the lute!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To-day I venture all I know.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She will not hear my music? So!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Break the string; fold music's wing:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">III</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My whole life long I learned to love.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This hour my utmost art I prove<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And speak my passion&mdash;heaven or hell?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lose who may&mdash;I still can say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those who win heaven, blest are they!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And is not this treatment of a "pretty
+woman" more English than not?</p>
+
+<h3>A PRETTY WOMAN</h3>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And the blue eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Dear and dewy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that infantine fresh air of hers!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span></p>
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To think men cannot take you, Sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And enfold you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Ay, and hold you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so keep you what they make you, Sweet!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">III</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You like us for a glance, you know&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">For a word's sake<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Or a sword's sake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All's the same, whate'er the chance, you know.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And in turn we make you ours, we say&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">You and youth too,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Eyes and mouth too,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the face composed of flowers, we say.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">V</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All's our own, to make the most of, Sweet&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Sing and say for,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Watch and pray for,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keep a secret or go boast of, Sweet!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But for loving, why, you would not, Sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Though we prayed you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Paid you, brayed you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a mortar&mdash;for you could not, Sweet!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So, we leave the sweet face fondly there:<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Be its beauty<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Its sole duty!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let all hope of grace beyond, lie there!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span></p>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And while the face lies quiet there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Who shall wonder<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">That I ponder<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A conclusion? I will try it there.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As,&mdash;why must one, for the love foregone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Scout mere liking?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Thunder-striking<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth,&mdash;the heaven, we looked above for, gone!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">X</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why, with beauty, needs there money be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Love with liking?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Crush the fly-king<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In his gauze, because no honey-bee?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">May not liking be so simple-sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">If love grew there<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">'Twould undo there<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All that breaks the cheek to dimples sweet?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Is the creature too imperfect, say?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Would you mend it<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And so end it?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since not all addition perfects aye!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Or is it of its kind, perhaps,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Just perfection&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Whence, rejection<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of a grace not to its mind, perhaps?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span></p>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XIV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Shall we burn up, tread that face at once<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Into tinder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And so hinder<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sparks from kindling all the place at once?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Or else kiss away one's soul on her?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Your love-fancies!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">&mdash;A sick man sees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Truer, when his hot eyes roll on her!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XVI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thus the craftsman thinks to grace the rose,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Plucks a mould-flower<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">For his gold flower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Uses fine things that efface the rose:<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XVII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Rosy rubies make its cup more rose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Precious metals<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Ape the petals,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Last, some old king locks it up, morose!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XVIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then how grace a rose? I know a way!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Leave it, rather.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Must you gather?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smell, kiss, wear it&mdash;at last, throw away!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"The Last Ride Together" may be cited
+as another example of the philosophy which
+an Englishman, or at any rate a Browning,
+can evolve from a more or less painful episode.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span></p>
+<h3>THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER</h3>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I said&mdash;Then, dearest, since 'tis so,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since now at length my fate I know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since nothing all my love avails,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since all my life seemed meant for, fails,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Since this was written and needs must be&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My whole heart rises up to bless<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your name in pride and thankfulness!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take back the hope you gave,&mdash;I claim<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only a memory of the same,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;And this beside, if you will not blame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your leave for one more last ride with me.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My mistress bent that brow of hers;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When pity would be softening through,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fixed me a breathing-while or two<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With life or death in the balance: right!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The blood replenished me again;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My last thought was at least not vain:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I and my mistress, side by side<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall be together, breathe and ride,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, one day more am I deified.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who knows but the world may end to-night?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">III</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hush! if you saw some western cloud<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By many benedictions&mdash;sun's&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And moon's and evening-star's at once<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And so, you, looking and loving best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Conscious grew, your passion drew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down on you, near and yet more near,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus leant she and lingered&mdash;joy and fear!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thus lay she a moment on my breast.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then we began to ride. My soul<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Freshening and fluttering in the wind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Past hopes already lay behind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What need to strive with a life awry?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had I said that, had I done this,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So might I gain, so might I miss.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might she have loved me? just as well<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She might have hated, who can tell!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where had I been now if the worst befell?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And here we are riding, she and I.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">V</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fail I alone, in words and deeds?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, all men strive and who succeeds?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saw other regions, cities new,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As the world rushed by on either side.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I thought,&mdash;All labor, yet no less<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bear up beneath their unsuccess.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look at the end of work, contrast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The petty done, the undone vast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This present of theirs with the hopeful past!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I hoped she would love me; here we ride.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span></p>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What hand and brain went ever paired?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What heart alike conceived and dared?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What act proved all its thought had been?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What will but felt the fleshly screen?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We ride and I see her bosom heave.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's many a crown for who can reach.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ten lines, a stateman's life in each!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The flag stuck on a heap of bones,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A soldier's doing! what atones?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My riding is better, by their leave.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">What does it all mean, poet? Well,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What we felt only; you expressed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You hold things beautiful the best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have you yourself what's best for men?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are you&mdash;poor, sick, old ere your time&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nearer one whit your own sublime<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than we who never have turned a rhyme?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And you, great sculptor&mdash;so, you gave<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A score of years to Art, her slave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that's your Venus, whence we turn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To yonder girl that fords the burn!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You acquiesce, and shall I repine?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What, man of music, you grown grey<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With notes and nothing else to say,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Is this your sole praise from a friend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Greatly his opera's strains intend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But in music we know how fashions end!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Proposed bliss here should sublimate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My being&mdash;had I signed the bond&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still one must lead some life beyond,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This foot once planted on the goal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This glory-garland round my soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could I descry such? Try and test!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I sink back shuddering from the quest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">X</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And yet&mdash;she has not spoke so long!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What if heaven be that, fair and strong<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At life's best, with our eyes upturned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whither life's flower is first discerned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We, fixed so, ever should so abide?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What if we still ride on, we two<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With life for ever old yet new,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Changed not in kind but in degree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The instant made eternity,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And heaven just prove that I and she<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ride, ride together, for ever ride?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"James Lee's Wife" is also English in
+temper as the English name indicates suffi<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span>ciently,
+though the scene is laid out of England.
+This wife has her agony over the faithless
+husband, but she plans vengeance against
+neither him nor the other women who attract
+him. She realizes that his nature is not a
+deep and serious one like her own, and in her
+highest reach she sees that her own nature has
+been lifted up by means of her true and loyal
+feeling, that this gain to herself is her reward,
+or will be in some future state. The stanzas
+giving this thought are among the most beautiful
+in the poem.</p>
+
+<h3>AMONG THE ROCKS</h3>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This autumn morning! How he sets his bones<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the ripple to run over in its mirth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Listening the while, where on the heap of stones<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If you loved only what were worth your love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Make the low nature better by your throes!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!<br /></span>
+</div></div><p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Two of the longer poems have distinctly
+English settings: "A Blot in the Scutcheon"
+and "The Inn Album;" while, of the shorter
+ones, "Ned Bratts" has an English theme,
+and "Halbert and Hob" though not founded
+upon an English story has been given an English
+<i>mis en sc&egrave;ne</i> by Browning.</p>
+
+<p>In the "Blot," we get a glimpse of
+Eighteenth Century aristocratic England.
+The estate over which Lord Tresham presided
+was one of those typical country kingdoms,
+which have for centuries been so conspicuous
+a feature of English life, and which
+through the assemblies of the great, often
+gathered within their walls, wielded potent
+influences upon political life. The play opens
+with the talk of a group of retainers, such as
+formed the household of these lordly establishments.
+It was not a rare thing for the servants
+of the great to be admitted into intimacy
+with the family, as was the case with
+Gerard. They were often people of a superior
+grade, hardly to be classed with servants
+in the sense unfortunately given to that
+word to-day.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the house and the park which
+figure in the play, such an estate had
+many acres of land devoted to agriculture&mdash;some
+of it, called the demesne, which was<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span>
+cultivated for the benefit of the owner, and
+some land held in villeinage which the unfree
+tenants, called villeins, were allowed to till
+for themselves. All this land might be in
+one large tract, or the demesne might be separate
+from the other. Mertoun speaks of their
+demesnes touching each other. Over the
+villeins presided the Bailiff, who kept strict
+watch to see that they performed their work
+punctually. His duties were numerous, for
+he directed the ploughing, sowing and reaping,
+gave out the seed, watched the harvest, gathered
+and looked after the stock and horses.
+A church, a mill and an inn were often
+included in such an estate.</p>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_15" id="linki_15"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus015.jpg" width="500" height="317" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">An English Manor House</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Pride in their ancient lineage was, of course,
+common to noble families, though probably
+few of them could boast as Tresham did that
+there was no blot in their escutcheon. Some
+writers have even declared that most of the
+nobles are descended from tradesmen. According
+to one of these "The great bulk of
+our peerage is comparatively modern, so far
+as the titles go; but it is not the less noble that
+it has been recruited to so large an extent from
+the ranks of honorable industry. In olden
+times, the wealth and commerce of London,
+conducted as it was by energetic and enterprising
+men was a prolific source of peerages.<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span>
+Thus, the earldom of Cornwallis was founded
+by Thomas Cornwallis, the Cheapside merchant;
+that of Essex by William Capel, the
+draper; and that of Craven by William Craven,
+the merchant tailor. The modern Earl of
+Warwick is not descended from 'the King-maker,'
+but from William Greville, the
+woolstapler; whilst the modern Dukes of Northumberland
+find their head, not in the Percies,
+but in Hugh Smithson, a respectable London
+apothecary. The founders of the families of
+Dartmouth, Radnor, Ducie, and Pomfret were
+respectively a skinner, a silk manufacturer,
+a merchant tailor, and a Calais merchant;
+whilst the founders of the peerages of Tankerville,
+Dormer, and Coventry were mercers.
+The ancestors of Earl Romney, and Lord
+Dudley and Ward, were goldsmiths and jewelers;
+and Lord Dacres was a banker in the
+reign of Charles I., as Lord Overstone is in
+that of Queen Victoria. Edward Osborne,
+the founder of the dukedom of Leeds, was
+apprentice to William Hewet, a rich cloth
+worker on London Bridge, whose only daughter
+he courageously rescued from drowning, by
+leaping into the Thames after her, and eventually
+married. Among other peerages founded
+by trade are those of Fitzwilliam, Leigh, Petre,
+Cowper, Darnley, Hill, and Carrington."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span>
+Perhaps the imaginary house of Tresham
+may be said to find its closest counterpart in
+the Sidney family, for many generations
+owners of Penshurst, and with a traditional
+character according to which the men were
+all brave and the women were all pure. Sir
+Philip Sidney was himself the type of all the
+virtues of the family, while his father's care
+for his proper bringing up was not unlike
+Tresham's for Mildred. In the words of a
+recent writer: "The most famous scion of
+this Kentish house was above all things, the
+moral and intellectual product of Penshurst
+Place. In the park may still be seen an
+avenue of trees, under which the father, in
+his afternoon walks with the boy, tested his
+recollection of the morning's lessons conned
+with the <a name='TC_25'></a><ins title="Changed comma to period">tutor.</ins> There, too, it was that he
+impressed on the lad those maxims for the
+conduct of life, afterwards emphasized in the
+correspondence still extant among the Penshurst
+archives.</p>
+
+<p>"Philip was to begin every day with lifting
+up his mind to the Almighty in hearty prayer,
+as well as feelingly digesting all he prayed for.
+He was also, early or late, to be obedient to
+others, so that in due time others might obey
+him. The secret of all success lay in a moderate
+diet with rare use of wine. A gloomy<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span>
+brow was, however, to be avoided. Rather
+should the youth give himself to be merry,
+so as not to degenerate from his father. Above
+all things should he keep his wit from biting
+words, or indeed from too much talk of any
+kind. Had not nature ramparted up the
+tongue with teeth and the lips with hair as
+reins and bridles against the tongue's loose
+use. Heeding this, he must be sure to tell
+no untruth even in trifles; for that was a
+naughty custom, nor could there be a greater
+reproach to a gentleman than to be accounted
+a liar. <i>Noblesse oblige</i> formed the keynote
+of the oral and written precepts with which
+the future Sir Philip Sidney was paternally
+supplied. By his mother, too, Lady Mary
+Dudley, the boy must remember himself to
+be of noble blood. Let him beware, therefore,
+through sloth and vice, of being accounted
+a blemish on his race."</p>
+
+<p>Furthermore, the brotherly and sisterly relations
+of Tresham and Mildred are not unlike
+those of Sir Philip Sidney and his sister Mary.
+They studied and worked together in great
+sympathy, broken into only by the tragic fate
+of Sir Philip. Although the education of
+women in those days was chiefly domestic,
+with a smattering of accomplishments, yet
+there were exceptional girls who aspired to<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span>
+learning and who became brilliant women.
+Mildred under her brother's tutelage bid fare
+to be one of this sort.</p>
+
+<p>The ideals of the Sidneys, it is true, were
+sixteenth-century ideals. Eighteenth-century
+ideals were proverbially low. England, then,
+had not recovered from the frivolities inaugurated
+after the Restoration. The slackness
+and unbelief among the clergy, and the looseness
+of morals in society were notorious, but
+this degeneration could not have been universal.
+There are always a few Noahs and
+their families left to repeople the world with
+righteousness after a deluge of degeneracy,
+and Browning is quite right in his portrayal
+of an eighteenth-century knight <i>sans peur et
+sans reproche</i> who defends the honor of his
+house with his sword, because of his high moral
+ideals. Besides, the Methodist revival led by
+the Wesleys gained constantly in power. It
+affected not only the people of the middle and
+lower classes, rescuing them from brutality
+of mind and manners, but it affected the established
+church for the better, and made its
+mark upon the upper classes. "Religion,
+long despised and contemned by the titled
+and the great" writes Withrow, "began to
+receive recognition and support by men high
+in the councils of the nation. Many ladies of<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span>
+high rank became devout Christians. A new
+element of restraint, compelling at least some
+outward respect for the decencies of life and
+observances of religion, was felt at court, where
+too long corruption and back-stair influence
+had sway."</p>
+
+<p>Like all of his kind, no matter what the
+century, Tresham is more than delighted at
+the thought of an alliance between his house
+and the noble house to which Mertoun
+belonged. The youth of Mildred was no obstacle,
+for marriages were frequently contracted
+in those days between young boys and
+girls. The writer's English grand-father and
+mother were married at the respective ages
+of sixteen and fifteen within the boundaries
+of the nineteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>The first two scenes of the play present episodes
+thoroughly illustrative of the life lived
+by the "quality."</p>
+
+<div class="drama">
+<h3>ACT I</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Scene I.</span>&mdash;<i>The interior of a lodge in <span class="smcap">Lord Tresham's</span>
+park. Many Retainers crowded at the window, supposed
+to command a view of the entrance to his mansion.</i></h4>
+
+<p class="hang1st"><i><span class="smcap">Gerard</span>, the warrener, his back to a table on which are
+flagons, etc.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>1st Retainer.</i> Ye, do! push, friends, and then you'll push down me!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;What for? Does any hear a runner's foot<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span>Or a steed's trample or a coach-wheel's cry?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is the Earl come or his least poursuivant?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But there's no breeding in a man of you<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Save Gerard yonder: here's a half-place yet,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Old Gerard!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Gerard.</i> Save your courtesies, my friend.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Here is my place.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>2nd Retainer.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>Now, Gerard, out with it!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What makes you sullen, this of all the days<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I' the year? To-day that young rich bountiful<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Handsome Earl Mertoun, whom alone they match<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With our Lord Tresham through the country side,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is coming here in utmost bravery<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To ask our master's sister's hand?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Gerard.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>What then?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>2nd Retainer.</i> What then? Why, you, she speaks to if she meets<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your worship, smiles on as you hold apart<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The boughs to let her through her forest walks<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You, always favorite for your no deserts<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You've heard, these three days, how Earl Mertoun sues<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To lay his heart and house and broad lands too<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">At Lady Mildred's feet: and while we squeeze<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Ourselves into a mousehole lest we miss<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">One congee of the least page in his train,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You sit o' one side&mdash;"there's the Earl," say I&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">"What then," say you!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>3rd Retainer.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>I'll wager he has let<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Both swans be tamed for Lady Mildred swim<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Over the falls and gain the river!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Gerard.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>Ralph!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is not to-morrow my inspecting day<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For you and for your hawks?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span>
+<span class="hang1st line1"><i>4th Retainer.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Let Gerard be!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He's coarse-grained, like his carved black cross-bow stock.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Ha, look now, while we squabble with him, look!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Well done, now&mdash;is not this beginning, now,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To purpose?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>1st Retainer.</i> Our retainers look as fine&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That's comfort. Lord, how Richard holds himself<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With his white staff! Will not a knave behind<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Prick him upright?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>4th Retainer.</i> He's only bowing, fool!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Earl's man bent us lower by this much.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>1st Retainer.</i> That's comfort. Here's a very cavalcade!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>3rd Retainer.</i> I don't see wherefore Richard, and his troop<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of silk and silver varlets there, should find<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Their perfumed selves so indispensable<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">On high days, holidays! Would it so disgrace<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Our family, if I, for instance, stood&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In my right hand a cast of Swedish hawks,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A leash of greyhounds in my left?&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Gerard.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>&mdash;With Hugh<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The logman for supporter, in his right<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The bill-hook, in his left the brushwood-shears!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>3rd Retainer.</i> Out on you, crab! What next, what next?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Earl!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>1st Retainer.</i> Oh Walter, groom, our horses, do they match<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Earl's? Alas, that first pair of the six&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">They paw the ground&mdash;Ah Walter! and that brute<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Just on his haunches by the wheel!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>6th Retainer.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Ay&mdash;ay!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You, Philip, are a special hand, I hear,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">At soups and sauces: what's a horse to you?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">D'ye mark that beast they've slid into the midst<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">So cunningly?&mdash;then, Philip, mark this further;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">No leg has he to stand on!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span>
+<span class="hang1st line1"><i>1st Retainer.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>No? That's comfort.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>2nd Retainer.</i> Peace, Cook! The Earl descends. Well, Gerard, see<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Earl at least! Come, there's a proper man,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I hope! Why, Ralph, no falcon, Pole or Swede,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Has got a starrier eye.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>3rd Retainer.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>His eyes are blue:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But leave my hawks alone!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>4th Retainer.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>So young, and yet<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">So tall and shapely!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>5th Retainer.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>Here's Lord Tresham's self!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">There now&mdash;there's what a nobleman should be!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He's older, graver, loftier, he's more like<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A House's head.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>2nd Retainer.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>But you'd not have a boy<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;And what's the Earl beside?&mdash;possess too soon<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That stateliness?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>1st Retainer.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>Our master takes his hand&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Richard and his white staff are on the move&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Back fall our people&mdash;(tsh!&mdash;there's Timothy<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Sure to get tangled in his ribbon-ties,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And Peter's cursed rosette's a-coming off!)<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;At last I see our lord's back and his friend's;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And the whole beautiful bright company<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Close round them&mdash;in they go!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Jumping down from the
+window-bench, and making for the table and its jugs.</i>]</p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st"><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>Good health, long life<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Great joy to our Lord Tresham and his House!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>6th Retainer.</i> My father drove his father first to court,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">After his marriage-day&mdash;ay, did he!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>2nd Retainer.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>God bless<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Lord Tresham, Lady Mildred, and the Earl!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Here, Gerard, reach your beaker!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Gerard.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>Drink, my boys!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Don't mind me&mdash;all's not right about me&mdash;drink!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>2nd Retainer</i> [<i>aside</i>]. He's vexed, now, that he let the show escape!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">[<i>To <span class="smcap">Gerard</span>.</i>] Remember that the Earl returns this way.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Gerard.</i> That way?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>2nd Retainer.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>Just so.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Gerard.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>Then my way's here.</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Goes.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>2nd Retainer.</i><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>Old Gerard<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Will die soon&mdash;mind, I said it! He was used<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To care about the pitifullest thing<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That touched the House's honor, not an eye<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But his could see wherein: and on a cause<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of scarce a quarter this importance, Gerard<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Fairly had fretted flesh and bone away<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In cares that this was right, nor that was wrong,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Such point decorous, and such square by rule&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He knew such niceties, no herald more:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And now&mdash;you see his humor: die he will!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>2nd Retainer.</i> God help him! Who's for the great servant's hall<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To hear what's going on inside? They'd follow<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Lord Tresham into the saloon.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>3rd Retainer.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>I!&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>4th Retainer.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>I!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Leave Frank alone for catching, at the door,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Some hint of how the parley goes inside!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Prosperity to the great House once more!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Here's the last drop!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>1st Retainer.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>Have at you! Boys, hurrah!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span></p>
+<h4><span class="smcap">Scene II.</span>&mdash;<i>A Saloon in the Mansion.</i></h4>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Enter <span class="smcap">Lord Thesham, Lord Mertoun, Austin</span>, and <span class="smcap">Guendolen</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> I welcome you, Lord Mertoun, yet once more,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To this ancestral roof of mine. Your name<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;Noble among the noblest in itself,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Yet taking in your person, fame avers,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">New price and lustre,&mdash;(as that gem you wear,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Transmitted from a hundred knightly breasts,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Fresh chased and set and fixed by its last lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Seems to re-kindle at the core)&mdash;your name<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Would win you welcome!&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Thanks!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>&mdash;But add to that,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The worthiness and grace and dignity<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of your proposal for uniting both<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Our Houses even closer than respect<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Unites them now&mdash;add these, and you must grant<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">One favor more, nor that the least,&mdash;to think<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The welcome I should give;&mdash;'tis given! My lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My only brother, Austin: he's the king's.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Our cousin, Lady Guendolen&mdash;betrothed<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To Austin: all are yours.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>I thank you&mdash;less<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For the expressed commendings which your seal,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And only that, authenticates&mdash;forbids<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My putting from me ... to my heart I take<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your praise ... but praise less claims my gratitude,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Than the indulgent insight it implies<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of what must needs be uppermost with one<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Who comes, like me, with the bare leave to ask,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In weighed and measured unimpassioned words,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span>A gift, which, if as calmly 'tis denied,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He must withdraw, content upon his cheek,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Despair within his soul. That I dare ask<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Firmly, near boldly, near with confidence<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That gift, I have to thank you. Yes, Lord Tresham,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I love your sister&mdash;as you'd have one love<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That lady ... oh more, more I love her! Wealth,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Rank, all the world thinks me, they're yours, you know,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To hold or part with, at your choice&mdash;but grant<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My true self, me without a rood of land,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A piece of gold, a name of yesterday,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Grant me that lady, and you ... Death or life?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen</i> [<i>apart to <span class="smcap">Austin</span></i>]. Why, this is loving, Austin!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Austin.</i><span class="i30">&nbsp;</span>He's so young!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i> Young? Old enough, I think, to half surmise<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He never had obtained an entrance here,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Were all this fear and trembling needed.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Austin.</i><span class="i26">&nbsp;</span>Hush!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He reddens.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i> Mark him, Austin; that's true love!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Ours must begin again.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>We'll sit, my lord.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Ever with best desert goes diffidence.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I may speak plainly nor be misconceived.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That I am wholly satisfied with you<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">On this occasion, when a falcon's eye<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Were dull compared with mine to search out faults,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is somewhat. Mildred's hand is hers to give<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Or to refuse.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>But you, you grant my suit?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I have your word if hers?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>My best of words<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">If hers encourage you. I trust it will.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Have you seen Lady Mildred, by the way?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i> I ... I ... our two demesnes, remember, touch;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I have been used to wander carelessly<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">After my stricken game: the heron roused<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Deep in my woods, has trailed its broken wing<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Thro' thicks and glades a mile in yours,&mdash;or else<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Some eyass ill-reclaimed has taken flight<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And lured me after her from tree to tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I marked not whither. I have come upon<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The lady's wondrous beauty unaware,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And&mdash;and then ... I have seen her.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen</i> [<i>aside to <span class="smcap">Austin</span></i>].<span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>Note that mode<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of faltering out that, when a lady passed,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He, having eyes, did see her! You had said&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">"On such a day I scanned her, head to foot;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Observed a red, where red should not have been,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Outside her elbow; but was pleased enough<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Upon the whole." Let such irreverent talk<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Be lessoned for the future!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>What's to say<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">May be said briefly. She has never known<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A mother's care; I stand for father too.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Her beauty is not strange to you, it seems&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You cannot know the good and tender heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Its girl's trust and its woman's constancy,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How pure yet passionate, how calm yet kind,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How grave yet joyous, how reserved yet free<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As light where friends are&mdash;how imbued with lore<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The world most prizes, yet the simplest, yet<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The ... one might know I talked of Mildred&mdash;thus<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We brothers talk!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>I thank you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>In a word,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Control's not for this lady; but her wish<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span><span class="hang1st">To please me outstrips in its subtlety<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My power of being pleased: herself creates<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The want she means to satisfy. My heart<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Prefers your suit to her as 'twere its own.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Can I say more?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>No more&mdash;thanks, thanks&mdash;no more!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> This matter then discussed....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>&mdash;We'll waste no breath<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">On aught less precious. I'm beneath the roof<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Which holds her: while I thought of that, my speech<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To you would wander&mdash;as it must not do,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Since as you favor me I stand or fall.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I pray you suffer that I take my leave!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> With less regret 't is suffered, that again<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We meet, I hope, so shortly.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>We? again?&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Ah yes, forgive me&mdash;when shall ... you will crown<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your goodness by forthwith apprising me<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When ... if ... the lady will appoint a day<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For me to wait on you&mdash;and her.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>So soon<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As I am made acquainted with her thoughts<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">On your proposal&mdash;howsoe'er they lean&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A messenger shall bring you the result.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i> You cannot bind me more to you, my lord.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Farewell till we renew ... I trust, renew<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A converse ne'er to disunite again.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> So may it prove!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>You, lady, you, sir, take<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My humble salutation!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen and Austin.</i> Thanks!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Within there!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i><em>Servants</em> enter. <span class="smcap">Tresham</span> conducts <span class="smcap">Mertoun</span> to the
+door. Meantime <span class="smcap">Austin</span> remarks</i>,</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Here I have an advantage of the Earl,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Confess now! I'd not think that all was safe<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Because my lady's brother stood my friend!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Why, he makes sure of her&mdash;"do you say, <a name='TC_26'></a><ins title="Added end quote">yes"</ins>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">"She'll not say, no,"&mdash;what comes it to beside?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I should have prayed the brother, "speak this speech,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For Heaven's sake urge this on her&mdash;put in this&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Forget not, as you'd save me, t'other thing,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Then set down what she says, and how she looks,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And if she smiles, and" (in an under breath)<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">"Only let her accept me, and do you<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And all the world refuse me, if you dare!"</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i> That way you'd take, friend Austin? What a shame<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I was your cousin, tamely from the first<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your bride, and all this fervor's run to waste!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Do you know you speak sensibly to-day?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The Earl's a fool.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Austin.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Here's Thorold. Tell him so!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham</i> [<i>returning</i>]. Now, voices, voices! 'St! the lady's first!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How seems he?&mdash;seems he not ... come, faith give fraud<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The mercy-stroke whenever they engage!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Down with fraud, up with faith! How seems the Earl?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A name! a blazon! if you knew their worth,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As you will never! come&mdash;the Earl?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>He's young.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> What's she? an infant save in heart and brain.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Young! Mildred is fourteen, remark! And you ...<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Austin, how old is she?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>There's tact for you!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I meant that being young was good excuse<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">If one should tax him....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>Well?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>&mdash;With lacking wit.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> He lacked wit? Where might he lack wit, so please you?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i> In standing straighter than the steward's rod<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And making you the tiresomest harangue,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Instead of slipping over to my side<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And softly whispering in my ear, "Sweet lady,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your cousin there will do me detriment<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He little dreams of: he's absorbed, I see,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In my old name and fame&mdash;be sure he'll leave<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My Mildred, when his best account of me<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is ended, in full confidence I wear<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My grandsire's periwig down either cheek.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I'm lost unless your gentleness vouchsafes"....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> ... "To give a best of best accounts, yourself,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of me and my demerits." You are right!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He should have said what now I say for him.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Yon golden creature, will you help us all?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Here's Austin means to vouch for much, but you<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;You are ... what Austin only knows! Come up,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">All three of us: she's in the library<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">No doubt, for the day's wearing fast. Precede!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i> Austin, how we must&mdash;!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>Must what? Must speak truth,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Malignant tongue! Detect one fault in him!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I challenge you!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>Witchcraft's a fault in him,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For you're bewitched.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>What's urgent we obtain<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is, that she soon receive him&mdash;say, to-morrow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Next day at furthest.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Ne'er instruct me!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>Come!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span><span class="hang1st">&mdash;He's out of your good graces, since forsooth,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He stood not as he'd carry us by storm<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With his perfections! You're for the composed<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Manly assured becoming confidence!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;Get her to say, "to-morrow," and I'll give you ...<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I'll give you black Urganda, to be spoiled<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With petting and snail-paces. Will you? Come!</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The story of the love of Mildred and Mertoun
+is the universally human one, and belongs
+to no one country or no one period of
+civilization more than another, but the attitude
+of all the actors in the tragedy belongs
+distinctively to the phase of moral culture
+which we saw illustrated in the youth of Sir
+Philip Sidney, and is characteristic of English
+ways of thinking whenever their moral force
+comes uppermost, as for example in the Puritan
+thought of the Cromwellian era.</p>
+
+<p>The play is in a sense a problem play,
+though to most modern readers the tragedy
+of its ending is all too horrible a consequence
+of the sin. Dramatically and psychically,
+however, the tragedy is much more inevitable
+than that of Romeo and Juliet, whose love
+one naturally thinks of in the same connection.
+The catastrophe in the Shakespeare play is
+almost mechanically pushed to its conclusion
+through mere external blundering, easily to
+have been prevented. Juliet saw clearly where<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">239</a></span>
+Mildred does not, that loyalty to a deep and
+true love should triumph over all minor considerations,
+so that in her case the tragedy is,
+in no sense, due to her blindness of vision.
+In the "Blot," lack of perception of the true
+values in life makes it impossible for Mildred
+or Tresham to act otherwise than they did.
+But having worked out their problem according
+to their lights, a new light of a more glorious
+day dawns upon them.</p>
+
+<p>The ideal by which Tresham lives and moves
+and has his being is that of pride of birth, with
+honor and chastity as its watchwords. At
+the same time the idol of his life is his sister
+Mildred, over whom he has watched with a
+father's and mother's care. When the blow
+to his ideal comes at the hands of this much
+cherished sister, it is not to be wondered at
+that his reason almost deserts him. The
+greatest agony possible to the human soul is
+to have its ideals, the very food which has been
+the sustenance of its being, utterly ruined. The
+ideal may be a wrong one, or an impartial one,
+and through the wrack and ruin may dawn
+larger vision, but, unless the nature be a marvelously
+developed one the storm that breaks
+when an ideal is shattered is overwhelming.</p>
+
+<p>It would be equally true of Mildred that,
+nurtured as she had been and as young Eng<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span>lish
+girls usually are, in great purity, even
+ignorance of all things pertaining to life, the
+sense of her sin would be so overwhelming as
+to blind her to any possible means of expiation
+except the most extreme. And indeed
+may it not be said that only those who can see
+as Mertoun and Guendolen did that genuine
+and loyal love is no less love because, in a
+conventional sense, it has sinned,&mdash;only those
+would acknowledge, as Tresham, indeed, does
+after he has murdered Mertoun, how perfect
+the love of Mildred and Mertoun was. Sin
+flourishes only when insincerity tricks itself
+out in the garb of love, and on the whole it is
+well that human beings should have an abiding
+sense of their own and others insincerity,
+and test themselves by their willingness to
+acknowledge their love before God and man.
+There are many Mildreds but few Mertouns.
+It is little wonder that Dickens wrote with such
+enthusiasm of this play that he knew no love
+like that of Mildred and Mertoun, no passion
+like it.</p>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_16" id="linki_16"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus016.jpg" width="500" height="369" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">An English Park</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>One does not need to discuss whether murders
+were possible in English social life. They
+are possible in all life at all times as long as
+men and women allow their passions to overthrow
+their reason. The last act, however,
+illustrates the English poise already referred<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span>
+to; Tresham regains his equilibrium with enlarged
+vision, his salvation is accomplished,
+his soul awakened.</p>
+
+<div class="drama">
+<h3>ACT III</h3>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Scene I.</span>&mdash;<i>The end of the Yew-tree Avenue under <span class="smcap">Mildred's</span>
+window. A light seen through a central red pane.</i></h4>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Enter <span class="smcap">Tresham</span> through the trees.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st">Again here! But I cannot lose myself.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The heath&mdash;the orchard&mdash;I have traversed glades<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And dells and bosky paths which used to lead<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Into green wild-wood depths, bewildering<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My boy's adventurous step. And now they tend<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Hither or soon or late; the blackest shade<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Breaks up, the thronged trunks of the trees ope wide,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And the dim turret I have fled from, fronts<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Again my step: the very river put<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Its arm about me and conducted me<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To this detested spot. Why then, I'll shun<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Their will no longer: do your will with me!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Oh, bitter! To have reared a towering scheme<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of happiness, and to behold it razed,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Were nothing: all men hope, and see their hopes<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Frustrate, and grieve awhile, and hope anew.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But I ... to hope that from a line like ours<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">No horrid prodigy like this would spring,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Were just as though I hoped that from these old<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Confederates against the sovereign day,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Children of older and yet older sires,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Whose living coral berries dropped, as now<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">On me, on many a baron's surcoat once,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">On many a beauty's wimple&mdash;would proceed<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span><span class="hang1st">No poison-tree, to thrust, from hell its root,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Hither and thither its strange snaky arms.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Why came I here? What must I do? [<i>A bell strikes.</i>] A bell?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Midnight! and 'tis at midnight.... Ah, I catch<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;Woods, river, plains, I catch your meaning now,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And I obey you! Hist! This tree will serve.</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>He retires behind one of the trees. After a pause, enter
+<span class="smcap">Mertoun</span> cloaked as before.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i> Not time! Beat out thy last voluptuous beat<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of hope and fear, my heart! I thought the clock<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I' the chapel struck as I was pushing through<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The ferns. And so I shall no more see rise<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My love-star! Oh, no matter for the past!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">So much the more delicious task to watch<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Mildred revive: to pluck out, thorn by thorn,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">All traces of the rough forbidden path<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My rash love lured her to! Each day must see<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Some fear of hers effaced, some hope renewed:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Then there will be surprises, unforeseen<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Delights in store. I'll not regret the past.</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>The light is placed above in the
+purple pane.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st">And see, my signal rises, Mildred's star!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I never saw it lovelier than now<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">It rises for the last time. If it sets,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">'Tis that the re-assuring sun may dawn.</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>As he prepares to ascend the last tree of the avenue,
+<span class="smcap">Tresham</span> arrests his arm.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st">Unhand me&mdash;peasant, by your grasp! Here's gold.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">'Twas a mad freak of mine. I said I'd pluck<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A branch from the white-blossomed shrub beneath<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The casement there. Take this, and hold your peace.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> Into the moonlight yonder, come with me!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span><span class="hang1st">Out of the shadow!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>I am armed, fool!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>Yes,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Or no? You'll come into the light, or no?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My hand is on your throat&mdash;refuse!&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>That voice!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Where have I heard ... no&mdash;that was mild and slow.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I'll come with you.</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>They advance.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>You're armed: that's well. Declare<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your name: who are you?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>(Tresham!&mdash;she is lost!)</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> Oh, silent? Do you know, you bear yourself<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Exactly as, in curious dreams I've had<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How felons, this wild earth is full of, look<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When they're detected, still your kind has looked!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The bravo holds an assured countenance,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The thief is voluble and plausible,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But silently the slave of lust has crouched<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When I have fancied it before a man.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your name!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>I do conjure Lord Tresham&mdash;ay,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Kissing his foot, if so I might prevail&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That he for his own sake forbear to ask<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My name! As heaven's above, his future weal<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Or woe depends upon my silence! Vain!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I read your white inexorable face.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Know me, Lord Tresham!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>He throws off his disguises.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Mertoun!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>[<i>After a pause.</i>] Draw now!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i26">&nbsp;</span>Hear me<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But speak first!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>Not one least word on your life!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Be sure that I will strangle in your throat<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span><span class="hang1st">The least word that informs me how you live<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And yet seem what you seem! No doubt 'twas you<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Taught Mildred still to keep that face and sin.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We should join hands in frantic sympathy<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">If you once taught me the unteachable,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Explained how you can live so, and so lie.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With God's help I retain, despite my sense,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The old belief&mdash;a life like yours is still<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Impossible. Now draw!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Not for my sake,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Do I entreat a hearing&mdash;for your sake,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And most, for her sake!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Ha ha, what should I<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Know of your ways? A miscreant like yourself,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How must one rouse his ire? A blow?&mdash;that's pride<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">No doubt, to him! One spurns him, does one not?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Or sets the foot upon his mouth, or spits<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Into his face! Come! Which, or all of these?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i> 'Twixt him and me and Mildred, Heaven be judge!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Can I avoid this? Have your will, my lord!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>He draws and, after a few passes, falls.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> You are not hurt?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>You'll hear me now!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i30">&nbsp;</span>But rise!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i> Ah, Tresham, say I not "you'll hear me now!"<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And what procures a man the right to speak<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In his defense before his fellow man,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But&mdash;I suppose&mdash;the thought that presently<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He may have leave to speak before his God<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">His whole defense?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>Not hurt? It cannot be!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You made no effort to resist me. Where<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Did my sword reach you? Why not have returned<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span><span class="hang1st">My thrusts? Hurt where?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>My lord&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>How young he is!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i> Lord Tresham, I am very young, and yet<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I have entangled other lives with mine.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Do let me speak, and do believe my speech!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That when I die before you presently,&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> Can you stay here till I return with help?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i> Oh, stay by me! When I was less than boy<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I did you grievous wrong and knew it not&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Upon my honor, knew it not! Once known,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I could not find what seemed a better way<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To right you than I took: my life&mdash;you feel<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How less than nothing were the giving you<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The life you've taken! But I thought my way<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The better&mdash;only for your sake and hers:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And as you have decided otherwise,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Would I had an infinity of lives<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To offer you! Now say&mdash;instruct me&mdash;think!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Can you, from the brief minutes I have left,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Eke out my reparation? Oh think&mdash;think!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For I must wring a partial&mdash;dare I say,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Forgiveness from you, ere I die?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>I do<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Forgive you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>Wait and ponder that great word!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Because, if you forgive me, I shall hope<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To speak to you of&mdash;Mildred!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Mertoun, haste<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And anger have undone us. 'Tis not you<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Should tell me for a novelty you're young,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Thoughtless, unable to recall the past.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Be but your pardon ample as my own!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span>
+<span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i> Ah, Tresham, that a sword-stroke and a drop<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of blood or two, should bring all this about!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Why, 'twas my very fear of you, my love<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of you&mdash;(what passion like a boy's for one<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Like you?)&mdash;that ruined me! I dreamed of you&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You, all accomplished, courted everywhere,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The scholar and the gentleman. I burned<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To knit myself to you: but I was young,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And your surpassing reputation kept me<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">So far aloof! Oh, wherefore all that love?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With less of love, my glorious yesterday<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of praise and gentlest words and kindest looks,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Had taken place perchance six months ago.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Even now, how happy we had been! And yet<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I know the thought of this escaped you, Tresham!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Let me look up into your face; I feel<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">'Tis changed above me: yet my eyes are glazed.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Where? where?</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>As he endeavors to raise himself, his eye catches the lamp.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st"><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Ah, Mildred! What will Mildred do?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Tresham, her life is bound up in the life<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That's bleeding fast away! I'll live&mdash;must live,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">There, if you'll only turn me I shall live<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And save her! Tresham&mdash;oh, had you but heard!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Had you but heard! What right was yours to set<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The thoughtless foot upon her life and mine,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And then say, as we perish, "Had I thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">All had gone otherwise?" We've sinned and die:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Never you sin, Lord Tresham! for you'll die,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And God will judge you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Yes, be satisfied!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That process is begun.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>And she sits there<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Waiting for me! Now, say you this to her&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span><span class="hang1st">You, not another&mdash;say, I saw him die<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As he breathed this, "I love her"&mdash;you don't know<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What those three small words mean! Say, loving her<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Lowers me down the bloody slope to death<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With memories ... I speak to her, not you,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Who had no pity, will have no remorse,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Perchance intend her.... Die along with me,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Dear Mildred! 'tis so easy, and you'll 'scape<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">So much unkindness! Can I lie at rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With rude speech spoken to you, ruder deeds<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Done to you?&mdash;heartless men shall have my heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And I tied down with grave-clothes and the worm,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Aware, perhaps, of every blow&mdash;oh God!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Upon those lips&mdash;yet of no power to tear<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The felon stripe by stripe! Die, Mildred! Leave<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Their honorable world to them! For God<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We're good enough, though the world casts us out.</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>A whistle is heard.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> Ho, Gerard!</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Enter <span class="smcap">Gerard, Austin</span> and <span class="smcap">Guendolen</span>, with lights.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>No one speak! You see what's done.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I cannot bear another voice.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>There's light&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Light all about me, and I move to it.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Tresham, did I not tell you&mdash;did you not<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Just promise to deliver words of mine<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To Mildred?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>I will bear these words to her.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i> Now?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>Now. Lift you the body, and leave me<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The head.</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>As they half raise <span class="smcap">Mertoun</span>, he turns suddenly.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mertoun.</i> I knew they turned me: turn me not from her!<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span><span class="hang1st">There! stay you! there!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Dies.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen</i> [<i>after a pause</i>]. Austin, remain you here<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With Thorold until Gerard comes with help:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Then lead him to his chamber. I must go<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To Mildred.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>Guendolen, I hear each word<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You utter. Did you hear him bid me give<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">His message? Did you hear my promise? I,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And only I, see Mildred.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>She will die.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> Oh no, she will not die! I dare not hope<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">She'll die. What ground have you to think she'll die?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Why, Austin's with you!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Austin.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Had we but arrived<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Before you fought!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>There was no fight at all.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">He let me slaughter him&mdash;the boy! I'll trust<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The body there to you and Gerard&mdash;thus!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Now bear him on before me.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Austin.</i><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Whither bear him?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> Oh, to my chamber! When we meet there next,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">We shall be friends.</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>They bear out the body of <span class="smcap">Mertoun</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st"><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Will she die, Guendolen?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i> Where are you taking me?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>He fell just here.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Now answer me. Shall you in your whole life<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;You who have nought to do with Mertoun's fate,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Now you have seen his breast upon the turf,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Shall you e'er walk this way if you can help?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When you and Austin wander arm-in-arm<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Through our ancestral grounds, will not a shade<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Be ever on the meadow and the waste&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span><span class="hang1st">Another kind of shade than when the night<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Shuts the woodside with all its whispers up?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But will you ever so forget his breast<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As carelessly to cross this bloody turf<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Under the black yew avenue? That's well!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You turn your head: and I then?&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>What is done<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Is done. My care is for the living. Thorold,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Bear up against this burden: more remains<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To set the neck to!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Dear and ancient trees<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My fathers planted, and I loved so well!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What have I done that, like some fabled crime<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of yore, lets loose a Fury leading thus<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Her miserable dance amidst you all?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Oh, never more for me shall winds intone<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">With all your tops a vast antiphony,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Demanding and responding in God's praise!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Hers ye are now, not mine! Farewell&mdash;farewell!</span></p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Scene II.&mdash;Mildred's</span> <i>chamber.</i></h4>
+<p class="center"><i><span class="smcap">Mildred</span> alone.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st">He comes not! I have heard of those who seemed<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Resourceless in prosperity,&mdash;you thought<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Sorrow might slay them when she listed; yet<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Did they so gather up their diffused strength<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">At her first menace, that they bade her strike,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And stood and laughed her subtlest skill to scorn.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Oh, 'tis not so with me! The first woe fell,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And the rest fall upon it, not on me:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Else should I bear that Henry comes not?&mdash;fails<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Just this first night out of so many nights?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Loving is done with. Were he sitting now,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As so few hours since, on that seat, we'd love<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st"><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span>No more&mdash;contrive no thousand happy ways<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To hide love from the loveless, any more.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I think I might have urged some little point<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In my defense, to Thorold; he was breathless<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For the least hint of a defense: but no,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The first shame over, all that would might fall.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">No Henry! Yet I merely sit and think<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The morn's deed o'er and o'er. I must have crept<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Out of myself. A Mildred that has lost<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Her lover&mdash;oh, I dare not look upon<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Such woe! I crouch away from it! 'Tis she,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Mildred, will break her heart, not I! The world<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Forsakes me: only Henry's left me&mdash;left?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">When I have lost him, for he does not come,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And I sit stupidly.... Oh Heaven, break up<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This worse than anguish, this mad apathy,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">By any means or any messenger!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham</i> [<i>without</i>]. Mildred!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mildred.</i><span class="i14">&nbsp;</span>Come in! Heaven hears me!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">[<i>Enter <span class="smcap">Tresham</span>.</i>] You? alone?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Oh, no more cursing!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Mildred, I must sit.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">There&mdash;you sit!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mildred.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>Say it, Thorold&mdash;do not look<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The curse! deliver all you come to say!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What must become of me? Oh, speak that thought<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Which makes your brow and cheeks so pale!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i26">&nbsp;</span>My thought?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mildred.</i> All of it!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i8">&nbsp;</span>How we waded&mdash;years ago&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">After those water-lilies, till the plash,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I know not how, surprised us; and you dared<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Neither advance nor turn back: so, we stood<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Laughing and crying until Gerard came&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span><span class="hang1st">Once safe upon the turf, the loudest too,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">For once more reaching the relinquished prize!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">How idle thoughts are, some men's, dying men's!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Mildred,&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mildred.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>You call me kindlier by my name<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Than even yesterday: what is in that?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> It weighs so much upon my mind that I<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">This morning took an office not my own!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I might ... of course, I must be glad or grieved,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Content or not, at every little thing<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That touches you. I may with a wrung heart<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Even reprove you, Mildred; I did more:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Will you forgive me?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mildred.</i><span class="i10">&nbsp;</span>Thorold? do you mock?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Or no ... and yet you bid me ... say that word!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> Forgive me, Mildred!&mdash;are you silent, Sweet?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mildred</i> [<i>starting up</i>]. Why does not Henry Mertoun come to-night?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Are you, too, silent?</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Dashing his mantle aside, and pointing to his scabbard,
+which is empty.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st"><span class="i16">&nbsp;</span>Ah, this speaks for you!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You've murdered Henry Mertoun! Now proceed!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">What is it I must pardon? This and all?<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Well, I do pardon you&mdash;I think I do.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Thorold, how very wretched you must be!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> He bade me tell you....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mildred.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>What I do forbid<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Your utterance of! So much that you may tell<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And will not&mdash;how you murdered him ... but, no!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You'll tell me that he loved me, never more<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Than bleeding out his life there: must I say<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">"Indeed," to that? Enough! I pardon you.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> You cannot, Mildred! for the harsh words, yes:<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span><span class="hang1st">Of this last deed Another's judge: whose doom<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I wait in doubt, despondency and fear.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mildred.</i> Oh, true! There's nought for me to pardon! True!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You loose my soul of all its cares at once.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Death makes me sure of him for ever! You<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Tell me his last words? He shall tell me them,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And take my answer&mdash;not in words, but reading<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Himself the heart I had to read him late,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Which death....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i6">&nbsp;</span>Death? You are dying too? Well said<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of Guendolen! I dared not hope you'd die:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But she was sure of it.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mildred.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Tell Guendolen<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I loved her, and tell Austin....</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i20">&nbsp;</span>Him you loved:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And me?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mildred.</i> Ah, Thorold! Was't not rashly done<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">To quench that blood, on fire with youth and hope<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And love of me&mdash;whom you loved too, and yet<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Suffered to sit here waiting his approach<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">While you were slaying him? Oh, doubtlessly<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You let him speak his poor boy's speech<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">&mdash;Do his poor utmost to disarm your wrath<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And respite me!&mdash;you let him try to give<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The story of our love and ignorance,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And the brief madness and the long despair&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You let him plead all this, because your code<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Of honor bids you hear before you strike:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But at the end, as he looked up for life<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Into your eyes&mdash;you struck him down!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>No! No!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Had I but heard him&mdash;had I let him speak<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Half the truth&mdash;less&mdash;had I looked long on him<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span><span class="hang1st">I had desisted! Why, as he lay there,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The moon on his flushed cheek, I gathered all<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The story ere he told it: I saw through<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The troubled surface of his crime and yours<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">A depth of purity immovable,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Had I but glanced, where all seemed turbidest<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Had gleamed some inlet to the calm beneath;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I would not glance: my punishment's at hand.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">There, Mildred, is the truth! and you&mdash;say on&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You curse me?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Mildred.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>As I dare approach that Heaven<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Which has not bade a living thing despair,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Which needs no code to keep its grace from stain,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But bids the vilest worm that turns on it<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Desist and be forgiven,&mdash;I&mdash;forgive not,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But bless you, Thorold, from my soul of souls!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Falls on his neck.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st">There! Do not think too much upon the past!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The cloud that's broke was all the same a cloud<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">While it stood up between my friend and you;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You hurt him 'neath its shadow: but is that<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">So past retrieve? I have his heart, you know;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I may dispose of it: I give it you!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">It loves you as mine loves! Confirm me, Henry!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Dies.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> I wish thee joy, Beloved! I am glad<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">In thy full gladness!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen</i> [<i>without</i>]. Mildred! Tresham! [<i>Entering with <span class="smcap">Austin</span>.</i>] Thorold,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I could desist no longer. Ah, she swoons!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">That's well.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i4">&nbsp;</span>Oh, better far than that!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i><span class="i22">&nbsp;</span>She's dead!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Let me unlock her arms!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>She threw them thus<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span><span class="hang1st">About my neck, and blessed me, and then died:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You'll let them stay now, Guendolen!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Austin.</i><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>Leave her<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And look to him! What ails you, Thorold?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i><span class="i24">&nbsp;</span>White<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">As she, and whiter! Austin! quick&mdash;this side!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Austin.</i> A froth is oozing through his clenched teeth;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Both lips, where they're not bitten through, are black:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Speak, dearest Thorold!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i><span class="i12">&nbsp;</span>Something does weigh down<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">My neck beside her weight: thanks: I should fall<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">But for you, Austin, I believe!&mdash;there, there,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">'Twill pass away soon!&mdash;ah,&mdash;I had forgotten:<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I am dying.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i> Thorold&mdash;Thorold&mdash;why was this?</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> I said, just as I drank the poison off,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The earth would be no longer earth to me,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">The life out of all life was gone from me.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">There are blind ways provided, the foredone<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Heart-weary player in this pageant-world<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Drops out by, letting the main masque defile<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">By the conspicuous portal: I am through&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Just through!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen.</i><span class="i2">&nbsp;</span>Don't leave him, Austin! Death is close.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> Already Mildred's face is peacefuller.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">I see you, Austin&mdash;feel you: here's my hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Put yours in it&mdash;you, Guendolen, yours too!<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">You're lord and lady now&mdash;you're Treshams; name<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And fame are yours: you hold our 'scutcheon up.<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Austin, no blot on it! You see how blood<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Must wash one blot away: the first blot came<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">And the first blood came. To the vain world's eye<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">All's gules again: no care to the vain world,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">From whence the red was drawn!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Austin.</i><span class="i18">&nbsp;</span>No blot shall come!</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Tresham.</i> I said that: yet it did come. Should it come,<br /></span>
+<span class="hang1st">Vengeance is God's, not man's. Remember me!</span></p>
+
+<p class="ralign">[<i>Dies.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="hang1st line1"><i>Guendolen</i> [<i>letting fall the pulseless arm</i>]. Ah, Thorold, we can but&mdash;remember you!</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>In "Ned Bratts," Browning has given a
+striking picture of the influence exerted by
+Bunyan upon some of his wicked contemporaries.
+The poet took his hints for the
+story from Bunyan himself, who tells it as
+follows in the "Life and Death of Mr. Badman."</p>
+
+<p>"At a summer assizes holden at Hertford,
+while the judge was sitting upon the bench,
+comes this old Tod into the Court, clothed in a
+green suit, with his leathern girdle in his hand,
+his bosom open, and all on a dung sweat, as
+if he had run for his life; and being come in,
+he spake aloud, as follows: 'My lord,' said
+he, 'here is the veriest rogue that breathes upon
+the face of the earth. I have been a thief
+from a child: when I was but a little one, I
+gave myself to rob orchards and to do other
+such like wicked things, and I have continued
+a thief ever since. My lord, there has not
+been a robbery committed these many years,
+within so many miles of this place, but I have
+either been at it, or privy to it.' The judge
+thought the fellow was mad, but after some<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span>
+conference with some of the justices, they
+agreed to indict him; and so they did of
+several felonious actions; to all of which he
+heartily confessed guilty, and so was hanged,
+with his wife at the same time."</p>
+
+<p>Browning had the happy thought of placing
+this episode in Bedford amid the scenes of
+Bunyan's labors and imprisonment. Bunyan,
+himself, was tried at the Bedford Assizes upon
+the charge of preaching things he should not,
+or according to some accounts for preaching
+without having been ordained, and was sentenced
+to twelve years' imprisonment in the
+Bedford Jail. At one time it was thought that
+he wrote "Pilgrim's Progress" during this imprisonment,
+but Dr. Brown, in his biography
+of Bunyan conjectured that this book was not
+begun until a later and shorter imprisonment
+of 1675-76, in the town prison and toll-house
+on Bedford Bridge. Dr. Brown supposes that
+the portion of the book written in prison closes
+where Christian and Hopeful part from the
+shepherds on the Delectable Mountains. "At
+that point a break in the narrative is indicated&mdash;'So
+I awoke from my dream;' it is resumed
+with the words&mdash;'And I slept and dreamed
+again, and saw the same two pilgrims going
+down the mountains along the highway towards
+the city.' Already from the top of an<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">257</a></span>
+high hill called 'Clear,' the Celestial City was
+in view; dangers there were still to be encountered;
+but to have reached that high hill
+and to have seen something like a gate, and
+some of the glory of the place, was an attainment
+and an incentive." There Bunyan could
+pause. Several years later the pilgrimage of
+Christiana was written.</p>
+
+<p>Browning, however, adopts the tradition
+that the book was written during the twelve
+years' imprisonment, and makes use of the
+story of Bunyan's having supported himself
+during this time by making tagged shoe-laces.
+He brings in, also, the little blind daughter to
+whom Bunyan was said to be devoted. The
+Poet was evidently under the impression also
+that the assizes were held in a courthouse, but
+there is good authority for thinking that at
+that time they were held in the chapel of
+Herne. Nothing remains of this building now,
+but it was situated at the southwest corner of
+the churchyard of St. Paul, and was spoken
+of sometimes as the School-house chapel.</p>
+
+<p>Ned Bratts and his wife did not know, of
+course, that they actually lived in the land of
+the "Pilgrim's Progress." This has been
+pointed out only recently in a fascinating little
+book by A.&nbsp;J. Foster of Wootton Vicarage,
+Bedfordshire. He has been a pilgrim from<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">258</a></span>
+Elstow, the village where Bunyan was born
+near Bedford, through all the surrounding
+country, and has fixed upon many spots
+beautiful and otherwise which he believes were
+transmuted in Bunyan's imagination into the
+House Beautiful, The Delectable Mountains,
+Vanity Fair and so on through nearly all the
+scenes of Christian's journey.</p>
+
+<p>The House Beautiful he identifies with
+Houghton House in the manor of Dame
+Ellen's Bury. This is one of the most interesting
+of the country houses of England, because
+of its connection with Sir Philip Sidney's
+sister, Mary Sidney. After the death of her
+husband, Lord Pembroke, James I. presented
+her with the royal manor of Dame Ellen's
+Bury, and under the guidance of Inigo Jones,
+it is generally supposed, Houghton House was
+built. It is in ruins now and covered with
+ivy. Trees have grown within the ruins
+themselves. Still it is one of the most beautiful
+spots in Bedfordshire. "In Bunyan's
+time," Mr. Foster writes, "we may suppose
+the northern slope of Houghton Park was a
+series of terraces rising one above another,
+and laid out in the stiff garden fashion of the
+time. A flight of steps, or maybe a steep
+path, would lead from one terrace to the next,
+and gradually the view over the plain of Bed<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span>ford
+would reveal itself to the traveler as
+he mounted higher and higher."</p>
+
+<p>From Houghton House there is a view of
+the Chiltern Hills. Mr. Foster is of the opinion
+that Bunyan had this view in mind when he
+described Christian as looking from the roof
+of the House Beautiful southwards towards
+the Delectable Mountains. He writes, "One
+of the main roads to London from Bedford,
+and the one, moreover, which passes through
+Elstow, crosses the hills only a little more
+than a mile east of Houghton House, and
+Bunyan, in his frequent journeys to London,
+no doubt often passed along this road. All in
+this direction was, therefore, to him familiar
+ground. Many a pleasant walk or ride came
+back to him through memory, as he took pen
+in hand to describe Hill Difficulty with its
+steep path and its arbor, and the House
+Beautiful with its guest-chamber, its large
+upper room looking eastward, its study and
+its armory.</p>
+
+<p>"Many a time did Bunyan, as he journeyed,
+look southwards to the blue Chilterns, and
+when the time came he placed together all
+that he had seen, as the frame in which he
+should set his way-faring pilgrim."</p>
+
+<p>Pleasant as it would be to follow with Mr.
+Foster his journey through the real scenes of<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span>
+the "Pilgrim's Progress," our main interest
+at present is to observe how Browning's
+facile imagination has presented the conversion,
+through the impression made upon them
+by Bunyan's book, of Ned and his wife.</p>
+
+<h3>NED BRATTS</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'T was Bedford Special Assize, one daft Midsummer's Day:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A broiling blasting June,&mdash;was never its like, men say.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Corn stood sheaf-ripe already, and trees looked yellow as that;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ponds drained dust-dry, the cattle lay foaming around each flat.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Inside town, dogs went mad, and folk kept bibbing beer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the parsons prayed for rain. 'T was horrible, yes&mdash;but queer:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Queer&mdash;for the sun laughed gay, yet nobody moved a hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To work one stroke at his trade: as given to understand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That all was come to a stop, work and such worldly ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the world's old self about to end in a merry blaze.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Midsummer's Day moreover was the first of Bedford Fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With Bedford Town's tag-rag and bobtail a-bowsing there.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But the Court House, Quality crammed: through doors ope, windows wide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">High on the Bench you saw sit Lordships side by side.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There frowned Chief Justice Jukes, fumed learned Brother Small,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fretted their fellow Judge: like threshers, one and all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of a reek with laying down the law in a furnace. Why?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because their lungs breathed flame&mdash;the regular crowd forbye<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">261</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From gentry pouring in&mdash;quite a nosegay, to be sure!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How else could they pass the time, six mortal hours endure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till night should extinguish day, when matters might haply mend?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meanwhile no bad resource was&mdash;watching begin and end<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some trial for life and death, in a brisk five minutes' space,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And betting which knave would 'scape, which hang, from his sort of face.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So, their Lordships toiled and moiled, and a deal of work was done<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(I warrant) to justify the mirth of the crazy sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As this and t'other lout, struck dumb at the sudden show<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of red robes and white wigs, boggled nor answered "Boh!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When asked why he, Tom Styles, should not&mdash;because Jack Nokes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had stolen the horse&mdash;be hanged: for Judges must have their jokes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And louts must make allowance&mdash;let's say, for some blue fly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which punctured a dewy scalp where the frizzles stuck awry&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Else Tom had fleered scot-free, so nearly over and done<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was the main of the job. Full-measure, the gentles enjoyed their fun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a twenty-five were tried, rank puritans caught at prayer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a cow-house and laid by the heels,&mdash;have at 'em, devil may care!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ten were prescribed the whip, and ten a brand on the cheek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And five a slit of the nose&mdash;just leaving enough to tweak.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Well, things at jolly high-tide, amusement steeped in fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While noon smote fierce the roof's red tiles to heart's desire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Court a-simmer with smoke, one ferment of oozy flesh,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a></span>
+<span class="i0">One spirituous humming musk mount-mounting until its mesh<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Entoiled all heads in a fluster, and Serjeant Postlethwayte<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Dashing the wig oblique as he mopped his oily pate&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cried "Silence, or I grow grease! No loophole lets in air?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Jurymen,&mdash;Guilty, Death! Gainsay me if you dare!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Things at this pitch, I say,&mdash;what hubbub without the doors?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What laughs, shrieks, hoots and yells, what rudest of uproars?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bounce through the barrier throng a bulk comes rolling vast!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thumps, kicks,&mdash;no manner of use!&mdash;spite of them rolls at last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the midst a ball which, bursting, brings to view<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Publican Black Ned Bratts and Tabby his big wife too:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both in a muck-sweat, both ... were never such eyes uplift<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the sight of yawning hell, such nostrils&mdash;snouts that sniffed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sulphur, such mouths a-gape ready to swallow flame!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Horrified, hideous, frank fiend-faces! yet, all the same,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mixed with a certain ... eh? how shall I dare style&mdash;mirth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The desperate grin of the guest that, could they break from earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heaven was above, and hell might rage in impotence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Below the saved, the saved!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="i18" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>"Confound you! (no offence!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of our way,&mdash;push, wife! Yonder their Worships be!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ned Bratts has reached the bar, and "Hey, my Lords," roars he,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"A Jury of life and death, Judges the prime of the land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Constables, javelineers,&mdash;all met, if I understand,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">263</a></span>
+<span class="i0">To decide so knotty a point as whether 't was Jack or Joan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Robbed the henroost, pinched the pig, hit the King's Arms with a stone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dropped the baby down the well, left the tithesman in the lurch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, three whole Sundays running, not once attended church!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What a pother&mdash;do these deserve the parish-stocks or whip,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More or less brow to brand, much or little nose to snip,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, in our Public, plain stand we&mdash;that's we stand here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I and my Tab, brass-bold, brick-built of beef and beer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Do not we, slut? Step forth and show your beauty, jade!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wife of my bosom&mdash;that's the word now! What a trade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We drove! None said us nay: nobody loved his life<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So little as wag a tongue against us,&mdash;did they, wife?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet they knew us all the while, in their hearts, for what we are<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Worst couple, rogue and quean, unhanged&mdash;search near and far!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eh, Tab? The pedler, now&mdash;o'er his noggin&mdash;who warned a mate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To cut and run, nor risk his pack where its loss of weight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was the least to dread,&mdash;aha, how we two laughed a-good<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As, stealing round the midden, he came on where I stood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With billet poised and raised,&mdash;you, ready with the rope,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, but that's past, that's sin repented of, we hope!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Men knew us for that same, yet safe and sound stood we!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lily-livered knaves knew too (I've balked a d&mdash;&mdash;)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our keeping the 'Pied Bull' was just a mere pretence:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too slow the pounds make food, drink, lodging, from out the pence!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's not a stoppage to travel has chanced, this ten long year,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No break into hall or grange, no lifting of nag or steer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a single roguery, from the clipping of a purse<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span>
+<span class="i0">To the cutting of a throat, but paid us toll. Od's curse!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Gipsy Smouch made bold to cheat us of our due,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Eh, Tab? the Squire's strong-box we helped the rascal to&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I think he pulled a face, next Sessions' swinging-time!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He danced the jig that needs no floor,&mdash;and, here's the prime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'T was Scroggs that houghed the mare! Ay, those were busy days!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Well, there we flourished brave, like scripture-trees called bays,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Faring high, drinking hard, in money up to head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Not to say, boots and shoes, when ... Zounds, I nearly said&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lord, to unlearn one's language! How shall we labor, wife?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have you, fast hold, the Book? Grasp, grip it, for your life!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See, sirs, here's life, salvation! Here's&mdash;hold but out my breath&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When did I speak so long without once swearing? 'Sdeath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No, nor unhelped by ale since man and boy! And yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All yesterday I had to keep my whistle wet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While reading Tab this Book: book? don't say 'book'&mdash;they're plays,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Songs, ballads and the like: here's no such strawy blaze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But sky wide ope, sun, moon, and seven stars out full-flare!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tab, help and tell! I'm hoarse. A mug! or&mdash;no, a prayer!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dip for one out of the Book! Who wrote it in the Jail<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;He plied his pen unhelped by beer, sirs, I'll be bail!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I've got my second wind. In trundles she&mdash;that's Tab.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Why, Gammer, what's come now, that&mdash;bobbing like a crab<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On Yule-tide bowl&mdash;your head's a-work and both your eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Break loose? Afeard, you fool? As if the dead can rise!<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Say&mdash;Bagman Dick was found last May with fuddling-cap<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stuffed in his mouth: to choke's a natural mishap!'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Gaffer, be&mdash;blessed,' cries she, 'and Bagman Dick as well!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I, you, and he are damned: this Public is our hell:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We live in fire: live coals don't feel!&mdash;once quenched, they learn&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cinders do, to what dust they moulder while they burn!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'If you don't speak straight out,' says I&mdash;belike I swore&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'A knobstick, well you know the taste of, shall, once more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Teach you to talk, my maid!' She ups with such a face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heart sunk inside me. 'Well, pad on, my prate-apace!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'<a name='TC_27'></a><ins title="Added stanza">I've</ins> been about those laces we need for ... never mind!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If henceforth they tie hands, 't is mine they'll have to bind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You know who makes them best&mdash;the Tinker in our cage,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pulled-up for gospelling, twelve years ago: no age<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To try another trade,&mdash;yet, so he scorned to take<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Money he did not earn, he taught himself the make<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of laces, tagged and tough&mdash;Dick Bagman found them so!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Good customers were we! Well, last week, you must know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His girl,&mdash;the blind young chit, who hawks about his wares,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She takes it in her head to come no more&mdash;such airs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These hussies have! Yet, since we need a stoutish lace,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"I'll to the jail-bird father, abuse her to his face!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, first I filled a jug to give me heart, and then,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Primed to the proper pitch, I posted to their den&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Patmore</i>&mdash;they style their prison! I tip the turnkey, catch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart up, fix my face, and fearless lift the latch&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both arms a-kimbo, in bounce with a good round oath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ready for rapping out: no "Lawks" nor "By my troth!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'There sat my man, the father. He looked up: what one feels<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span>
+<span class="i0">When heart that leapt to mouth drops down again to heels!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He raised his hand.... Hast seen, when drinking out the night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in the day, earth grow another something quite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under the sun's first stare? I stood a very stone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'"Woman!" (a fiery tear he put in every tone),<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"How should my child frequent your house where lust is sport,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Violence&mdash;trade? Too true! I trust no vague report.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her angel's hand, which stops the sight of sin, leaves clear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The other gate of sense, lets outrage through the ear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What has she heard!&mdash;which, heard shall never be again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Better lack food than feast, a Dives in the&mdash;wain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or reign or train&mdash;of Charles!" (His language was not ours:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'T is my belief, God spoke: no tinker has such powers.)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Bread, only bread they bring&mdash;my laces: if we broke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your lump of leavened sin, the loaf's first crumb would choke!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Down on my marrow-bones! Then all at once rose he:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His brown hair burst a-spread, his eyes were suns to see:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Up went his hands: "Through flesh, I reach, I read thy soul!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So may some stricken tree look blasted, bough and bole,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Champed by the fire-tooth, charred without, and yet, thrice-bound<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With <a name='TC_28'></a><ins title="Keeping original spelling">dreriment</ins> about, within may life be found,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A prisoned power to branch and blossom as before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could but the gardener cleave the cloister, reach the core,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Loosen the vital sap: yet where shall help be found?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who says 'How save it?'&mdash;nor 'Why cumbers it the ground?'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Woman, that tree art thou! All sloughed about with scurf,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy stag-horns fright the sky, thy snake-roots sting the turf!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drunkenness, wantonness, theft, murder gnash and gnarl<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Thine outward, case thy soul with coating like the marle<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Satan stamps flat upon each head beneath his hoof!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And how deliver such? The strong men keep aloof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lover and friend stand far, the mocking ones pass by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tophet gapes wide for prey: lost soul, despair and die!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What then? 'Look unto me and be ye saved!' saith God:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'I strike the rock, outstreats the life-stream at my rod!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be your sins scarlet, wool shall they seem like,&mdash;although<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As crimson red, yet turn white as the driven snow!'"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'There, there, there! All I seem to somehow understand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is&mdash;that, if I reached home, 't was through the guiding hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of his blind girl which led and led me through the streets<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And out of town and up to door again. What greets<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">First thing my eye, as limbs recover from their swoon?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A book&mdash;this Book she gave at parting. "Father's boon&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Book he wrote: it reads as if he spoke himself:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He cannot preach in bonds, so,&mdash;take it down from shelf<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When you want counsel,&mdash;think you hear his very voice!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'<a name='TC_29'></a><ins title="Added stanza">Wicked</ins> dear Husband, first despair and then rejoice!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dear wicked Husband, waste no tick of moment more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be saved like me, bald trunk! There's greenness yet at core,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sap under slough! Read, read!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="i20" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>"Let me take breath, my lords!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'd like to know, are these&mdash;hers, mine, or Bunyan's words?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'm 'wildered&mdash;scarce with drink,&mdash;nowise with drink alone!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You'll say, with heat: but heat's no stuff to split a stone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like this black boulder&mdash;this flint heart of mine: the Book&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That dealt the crashing blow! Sirs, here's the fist that shook<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His beard till Wrestler Jem howled like a just-lugged bear!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You had brained me with a feather: at once I grew aware<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Christmas was meant for me. A burden at your back,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Good Master Christmas? Nay,&mdash;yours was that Joseph's sack,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Or whose it was,&mdash;which held the cup,&mdash;compared with mine!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Robbery loads my loins, perjury cracks my chine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Adultery ... nay, Tab, you pitched me as I flung!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One word, I'll up with fist.... No, sweet spouse, hold your tongue!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I'm hasting to the end. The Book, sirs&mdash;take and read!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You have my history in a nutshell,&mdash;ay, indeed!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It must off, my burden! See,&mdash;slack straps and into pit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Roll, reach, the bottom, rest, rot there&mdash;a plague on it!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For a mountain's sure to fall and bury Bedford Town,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Destruction'&mdash;that's the name, and fire shall burn it down!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O 'scape the wrath in time! Time's now, if not too late.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How can I pilgrimage up to the wicket-gate?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Next comes Despond the slough: not that I fear to pull<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through mud, and dry my clothes at brave House Beautiful&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But it's late in the day, I reckon: had I left years ago<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Town, wife, and children dear.... Well, Christmas did, you know!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soon I had met in the valley and tried my cudgel's strength<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the enemy horned and winged, a-straddle across its length!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have at his horns, thwick&mdash;thwack: they snap, see! Hoof and hoof&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bang, break the fetlock-bones! For love's sake, keep aloof<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Angels! I'm man and match,&mdash;this cudgel for my flail,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To thresh him, hoofs and horns, bat's wing and serpent's tail!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A chance gone by! But then, what else does Hopeful ding<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the deafest ear except&mdash;hope, hope's the thing?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too late i' the day for me to thrid the windings: but<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's still a way to win the race by death's short cut!<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Did Master Faithful need climb the Delightful Mounts?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No, straight to Vanity Fair,&mdash;a fair, by all accounts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such as is held outside,&mdash;lords, ladies, grand and gay,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Says he in the face of them, just what you hear me say.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the Judges brought him in guilty, and brought him out<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To die in the market-place&mdash;St. Peter's Green's about<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The same thing: there they flogged, flayed, buffeted, lanced with knives,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pricked him with swords,&mdash;I'll swear, he'd full a cat's nine lives,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So to his end at last came Faithful,&mdash;ha, ha, he!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who holds the highest card? for there stands hid, you see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Behind the rabble-rout, a chariot, pair and all:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He's in, he's off, he's up, through clouds, at trumpet-call,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Carried the nearest way to Heaven-gate! Odds my life&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has nobody a sword to spare? not even a knife?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then hang me, draw and quarter! Tab&mdash;do the same by her!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O Master Worldly-Wiseman ... that's Master Interpreter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take the will, not the deed! Our gibbet's handy close:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forestall Last Judgment-Day! Be kindly, not morose!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There wants no earthly judge-and-jurying: here we stand&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sentence our guilty selves: so, hang us out of hand!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make haste for pity's sake! A single moment's loss<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Means&mdash;Satan's lord once more: his whisper shoots across<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All singing in my heart, all praying in my brain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'It comes of heat and beer!'&mdash;hark how he guffaws plain!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'To-morrow you'll wake bright, and, in a safe skin, hug<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your sound selves, Tab and you, over a foaming jug!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You've had such qualms before, time out of mind!' He's right!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did not we kick and cuff and curse away, that night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When home we blindly reeled, and left poor humpback Joe<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span><span class="i0">I' the lurch to pay for what ... somebody did, you know!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both of us maundered then 'Lame humpback,&mdash;never more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will he come limping, drain his tankard at our door!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He'll swing, while&mdash;somebody....' Says Tab, 'No, for I'll peach!'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'I'm for you, Tab,' cries I, 'there's rope enough for each!'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So blubbered we, and bussed, and went to bed upon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The grace of Tab's good thought: by morning, all was gone!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We laughed&mdash;'What's life to him, a cripple of no account?'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, waves increase around&mdash;I feel them mount and mount!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hang us! To-morrow brings Tom Bearward with his bears:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One new black-muzzled brute beats Sackerson, he swears:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Sackerson, for my money!) And, baiting o'er, the Brawl<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They lead on Turner's Patch,&mdash;lads, lasses, up tails all,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'm i' the thick o' the throng! That means the Iron Cage,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Means the Lost Man inside! Where's hope for such as wage<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">War against light? Light's left, light's here, I hold light still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So does Tab&mdash;make but haste to hang us both! You will?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I promise, when he stopped you might have heard a mouse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Squeak, such a death-like hush sealed up the old Mote House.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But when the mass of man sank meek upon his knees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While Tab, alongside, wheezed a hoarse "Do hang us, please!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, then the waters rose, no eye but ran with tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hearts heaved, heads thumped, until, paying all past arrears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of pity and sorrow, at last a regular scream outbroke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of triumph, joy and praise.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="i18" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>My Lord Chief Justice spoke,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">First mopping brow and cheek, where still, for one that budged,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Another bead broke fresh: "What Judge, that ever judged<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since first the world began, judged such a case as this?<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">271</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, Master Bratts, long since, folk smelt you out, I wis!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had my doubts, i' faith, each time you played the fox<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Convicting geese of crime in yonder witness-box&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yea, much did I misdoubt, the thief that stole her eggs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was hardly goosey's self at Reynard's game, i' feggs!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet thus much was to praise&mdash;you spoke to point, direct&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swore you heard, saw the theft: no jury could suspect&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dared to suspect,&mdash;I'll say,&mdash;a spot in white so clear:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Goosey was throttled, true: but thereof godly fear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Came of example set, much as our laws intend;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, though a fox confessed, you proved the Judge's friend.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What if I had my doubts? Suppose I gave them breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brought you to bar: what work to do, ere 'Guilty, Death,'&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had paid our pains! What heaps of witnesses to drag<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From holes and corners, paid from out the County's bag!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trial three dog-days long! <i>Amicus Curi&aelig;</i>&mdash;that's<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your title, no dispute&mdash;truth-telling Master Bratts!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thank you, too, Mistress Tab! Why doubt one word you say?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hanging you both deserve, hanged both shall be this day!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tinker needs must be a proper man. I've heard<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He lies in Jail long since: if Quality's good word<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Warrants me letting loose,&mdash;some householder, I mean&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Freeholder, better still,&mdash;I don't say but&mdash;between<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now and next Sessions.... Well! Consider of his case,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I promise to, at least: we owe him so much grace.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not that&mdash;no, God forbid!&mdash;I lean to think, as you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The grace that such repent is any jail-bird's due:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I rather see the fruit of twelve years' pious reign&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Astr&aelig;a Redux, Charles restored his rights again!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Of which, another time! I somehow feel a peace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stealing across the world. May deeds like this increase!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, Master Sheriff, stay that sentence I pronounced<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On those two dozen odd: deserving to be trounced<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">272</a></span><span class="i0">Soundly, and yet ... well, well, at all events despatch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This pair of&mdash;shall I say, sinner-saints?&mdash;ere we catch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their jail-distemper too. Stop tears, or I'll indite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All weeping Bedfordshire for turning Bunyanite!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So, forms were galloped through. If Justice, on the spur,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Proved somewhat expeditious, would Quality demur?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And happily hanged were they,&mdash;why lengthen out my tale?&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where Bunyan's Statue stands facing where stood his Jail.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The effect which "Pilgrim's Progress" had
+on these two miserable beings, may be taken
+as typical of the enormous influence wielded
+by Bunyan in his own time. The most innocent
+among us had overwhelming qualms in
+regard to our sins, as children when we listened
+to our mothers read the book. I
+remember having confessed some childish peccadillo
+that was weighing on my small mind
+as the first result of my thoroughly aroused
+sense of guilt. In these early years of the
+Twentieth Century, such a feeling seems almost
+as far removed as the days of Bunyan.
+A sense of guilt is not a distinguishing characteristic
+of the child of the present day, and
+it may also be doubted whether such reprobates
+as Ned and his wife would to-day be
+affected much if at all by the "Pilgrim's
+Progress." There was probably great personal
+magnetism in Bunyan himself. We are
+told that after his discharge from prison, his<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">273</a></span>
+popularity as a preacher widened rapidly.
+Such vast crowds of people flocked to hear
+him that his place of worship had to be enlarged.
+He went frequently to London on
+week days to deliver addresses in the large
+chapel in Southwark which was invariably
+thronged with eager worshipers.</p>
+
+<p>Browning's picture of Bunyan shows the
+instant effect of his personality upon Tab.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"There sat the man, the father. He looked up: what one feels<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When heart that leapt to mouth drops down again to heels!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He raised his hand.... Hast seen, when drinking out the night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in the day, earth grow another something quite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under the sun's first stare? I stood a very stone."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And again</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="i20" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>"Then all at once rose he:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His brown hair burst a-spread, his eyes were suns to see:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Up went his hands."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is like a clever bit of stage business to
+make Ned and Tab use the shoe laces to tie
+up the hands of their victims, and to bring
+on by this means the meeting between Tab
+and Bunyan. Of course, the blind daughter's
+part is imaginary, but yet it seems to bring
+very vividly before us this well loved child.
+Another touch, quite in keeping with the time,<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">274</a></span>
+is the decision of the Judge that the remarkable
+change of heart in Ned and Tab was due
+to the piety of King Charles. Like every
+one else, however, he was impressed by what
+he heard of the Tinker, and inclined to see
+what he could do to give him his freedom.
+It seems that Bunyan's life in jail was a good
+deal lightened by the favor he always inspired.
+The story goes that from the first he was in
+favor with the jailor, who nearly lost his
+place for permitting him on one occasion to
+go as far as London. After this he was more
+strictly confined, but at last he was often
+allowed to visit his family, and remain with
+them all night. One night, however, when
+he was allowed this liberty Bunyan felt resistlessly
+impressed with the propriety of
+returning to the prison. He arrived after
+the keeper had shut up for the night, much
+to the official's surprise. But his impatience
+at being untimely disturbed was changed to
+thankfulness, when a little after a messenger
+came from a neighboring clerical magistrate
+to see that the prisoner was safe. "You may
+go now when you will" said the jailer; "for
+you know better than I can tell you when to
+come in again."</p>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_17" id="linki_17"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus017.jpg" width="196" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">John Bunyan</p>
+
+<p class="center">Statue by J.&nbsp;E. Boehm</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Though Bunyan is not primarily the subject
+of this poem, it is an appreciative tribute<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">275</a></span>
+to his genius and to his force of character,
+only to be paralleled by Dowden's sympathetic
+critique in his "Puritan and Anglican
+Studies." What Browning makes Ned and
+Tab see through suddenly aroused feeling&mdash;namely
+that it is no book but</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i30">"plays,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Songs, ballads and the like: here's no such strawy blaze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But sky wide ope, sun, moon, and seven stars out full-flare,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Dowden puts in the colder language of criticism.</p>
+
+<p>"The 'Pilgrim's Progress' is a gallery of
+portraits, admirably discriminated, and as
+convincing in their self-verification as those of
+Holbein. His personages live for us as
+few figures outside the drama of Shakespeare
+live.... All his powers cooperated
+harmoniously in creating this book&mdash;his religious
+ardor, his human tenderness, his
+sense of beauty, nourished by the Scriptures,
+his strong common sense, even his gift of
+humor. Through his deep seriousness play
+the lighter faculties. The whole man presses
+into this small volume."</p>
+
+<p>"Halbert and Hob" belongs here merely
+for its wild North of England setting. We
+may imagine, if we choose, that this wild
+father and son dwelt in the beautiful country
+of Northumberland, in the North of England,<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">276</a></span>
+but descriptions of the scenery could add
+nothing to the atmosphere of the poem,
+for Northumberland is surpassingly lovely.
+Doubtless, human beings of this type have
+existed in all parts of the globe. At any rate,
+these particular human beings were transported
+by Browning from Aristotle's "Ethics"
+to the North of England. The incident is told
+by Aristotle in illustration of the contention
+that anger and asperity are more natural than
+excessive and unnecessary desires. "Thus
+one who was accused of striking his father
+said, as an apology for it, that his own
+father, and even his grandfather, had struck
+his; 'and he also (pointing to his child) will
+strike me, when he becomes a man; for it runs
+in our family.' A certain person, also, being
+dragged by his son, bid him stop at the
+door, for he himself had dragged his father as
+far as that." The dryness of "Aristotle's
+<a name='TC_30'></a><ins title="Was 'checks'">cheeks</ins>" is as usual so enlivened by Browning
+that the fate of Halbert and Hob grows
+pathetic and comes close to our sympathies.</p>
+
+<h3>HALBERT AND HOB</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Here is a thing that happened. Like wild beasts whelped, for den,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a wild part of North England, there lived once two wild men<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">277</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Inhabiting one homestead, neither a hovel nor hut,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time out of mind their birthright: father and son, these&mdash;but&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such a son, such a father! Most wildness by degrees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Softens away: yet, last of their line, the wildest and worst were these.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Criminals, then? Why, no: they did not murder and rob;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, give them a word, they returned a blow&mdash;old Halbert as young Hob:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Harsh and fierce of word, rough and savage of deed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hated or feared the more&mdash;who knows?&mdash;the genuine wild-beast breed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thus were they found by the few sparse folk of the countryside;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But how fared each with other? E'en beasts couch, hide by hide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a growling, grudged agreement: so, father and son aye curled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The closelier up in their den because the last of their kind in the world.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Still, beast irks beast on occasion. One Christmas night of snow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Came father and son to words&mdash;such words! more cruel because the blow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To crown each word was wanting, while taunt matched gibe, and curse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Completed with oath in wager, like pastime in hell,&mdash;nay, worse:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For pastime turned to earnest, as up there sprang at last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The son at the throat of the father, seized him and held him fast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">278</a></span>
+<span class="i0">"Out of this house you go!"&mdash;(there followed a hideous oath)&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"This oven where now we bake, too hot to hold us both!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If there's snow outside, there's coolness: out with you, bide a spell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the drift and save the sexton the charge of a parish shell!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now, the old trunk was tough, was solid as stump of oak<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Untouched at the core by a thousand years: much less had its seventy broke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One whipcord nerve in the muscly mass from neck to shoulder-blade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the mountainous man, whereon his child's rash hand like a feather weighed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nevertheless at once did the mammoth shut his eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drop chin to breast, drop hands to sides, stand stiffened&mdash;arms and thighs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All of a piece&mdash;struck mute, much as a sentry stands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Patient to take the enemy's fire: his captain so commands.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whereat the son's wrath flew to fury at such sheer scorn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of his puny strength by the giant eld thus acting the babe new-born:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And "Neither will this turn serve!" yelled he. "Out with you! Trundle, log!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If you cannot tramp and trudge like a man, try all-fours like a dog!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Still the old man stood mute. So, logwise,&mdash;down to floor<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pulled from his fireside place, dragged on from hearth to door,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was he pushed, a very log, staircase along, until<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A certain turn in the steps was reached, a yard from the house-door-sill.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Then the father opened eyes&mdash;each spark of their rage extinct,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Temples, late black, dead-blanched,&mdash;right-hand with left-hand linked,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He faced his son submissive; when slow the accents came,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They were strangely mild though his son's rash hand on his neck lay all the same.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Hob, on just such a night of a Christmas long ago,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For such a cause, with such a gesture, did I drag&mdash;so&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My father down thus far: but, softening here, I heard<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A voice in my heart, and stopped: you wait for an outer word.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"For your own sake, not mine, soften you too! Untrod<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave this last step we reach, nor brave the finger of God!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I dared not pass its lifting: I did well. I nor blame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor praise you. I stopped here: and, Hob, do you the same!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Straightway the son relaxed his hold of the father's throat.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They mounted, side by side, to the room again: no note<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Took either of each, no sign made each to either: last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As first, in absolute silence, their Christmas-night they passed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At dawn, the father sate on, dead, in the self-same place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With an outburst blackening still the old bad fighting-face:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the son crouched all a-tremble like any lamb new-yeaned.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When he went to the burial, someone's staff he borrowed&mdash;tottered and leaned.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But his lips were loose, not locked,&mdash;kept muttering, mumbling. "There!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At his cursing and swearing!" the youngsters cried: but the elders thought "In prayer."<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">280</a></span>
+<span class="i0">A boy threw stones: he picked them up and stored them in his vest.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So tottered, muttered, mumbled he, till he died, perhaps found rest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Is there a reason in nature for these hard hearts?" O Lear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That a reason out of nature must turn them soft, seems clear!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the "Inn Album," a degenerate type
+of Nineteenth-Century Englishman is dissected
+with the keen knife of a surgeon, which
+Browning knows so well how to wield. The
+villain of this poem was a real personage, a
+Lord de Ros, a friend of the Duke of Wellington.
+The story belongs to the annals of
+crime and is necessarily unpleasant, but in
+order to see how Browning has worked up
+the episode it is interesting to know the bare
+facts as Furnivall gives them in "Notes and
+Queries" March 25, 1876. He says "that the
+gambling lord showed the portrait of the
+lady he had seduced and abandoned and
+offered his dupe an introduction to her, as a
+bribe to induce him to wait for payment of
+the money he had won; that the young gambler
+eagerly accepted the offer; and that the
+lady committed suicide on hearing of the bargain
+between them." Dr. Furnivall heard
+the story from some one who well remembered
+the sensation it had made in London<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">281</a></span>
+years ago. In his management of the story,
+Browning has intensified the villainy of the
+Lord at the same time that he has shown a
+possible streak of goodness in him. The
+young man, on the other hand, he has made
+to be of very good stuff, indeed, notwithstanding
+his year of tutelage from the older man.
+He makes one radical change in the story as
+well as several minor ones. In the poem
+the younger man had been in love with the
+girl whom the older man had dishonorably
+treated, and had never ceased to love her.
+Of course, the two men do not know this.
+By the advice of the elder man, the younger
+one has decided to settle down and marry
+his cousin, a charming young girl, who is
+also brought upon the scene. The other girl
+is represented as having married an old country
+parson, who sought a wife simply as a
+helpmeet in his work. By thus complicating
+the situations, room has been given for subtle
+psychic development. The action is all concentrated
+into one morning in the parlor of
+the old inn, reminding one much of the method
+of Ibsen in his plays of grouping his action
+about a final catastrophe. At the inn one
+is introduced first to the two gamblers in talk,
+the young man having won his ten thousand
+pounds from the older man, who had intended<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">282</a></span>
+to fleece him. The inn album plays an important
+part in the action, innocent as its
+first appearance upon the scene seems to be.
+The description of this and the inn parlor
+opens the poem.</p>
+
+<h3>THE INN ALBUM</h3>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"That oblong book's the Album; hand it here!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Exactly! page on page of gratitude<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For breakfast, dinner, supper, and the view!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I praise these poets: they leave margin-space;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each stanza seems to gather skirts around,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And primly, trimly, keep the foot's confine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Modest and maidlike; lubber prose o'er-sprawls<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And straddling stops the path from left to right.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since I want space to do my cipher-work,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which poem spares a corner? What comes first?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Open the window, we burn daylight, boy!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or see&mdash;succincter beauty, brief and bold&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>If a fellow can dine On rumpsteaks and port wine,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>He needs not despair Of dining well here</i>&mdash;'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>Here!</i>' I myself could find a better rhyme!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That bard's a Browning; he neglects the form:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But ah, the sense, ye gods, the weighty sense!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still, I prefer this classic. Ay, throw wide!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll quench the bits of candle yet unburnt.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A minute's fresh air, then to cipher-work!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Three little columns hold the whole account:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Ecart&eacute;</i>, after which Blind Hookey, then<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">283</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Cutting-the-Pack, five hundred pounds the cut.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis easy reckoning: I have lost, I think."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Two personages occupy this room<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shabby-genteel, that's parlor to the inn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perched on a view-commanding eminence;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Inn which may be a veritable house<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where somebody once lived and pleased good taste<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till tourists found his coign of vantage out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fingered blunt the individual mark<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And vulgarized things comfortably smooth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On a sprig-pattern-papered wall there brays<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Complaint to sky Sir Edwin's dripping stag;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His couchant coast-guard creature corresponds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They face the Huguenot and Light o' the World.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grim o'er the mirror on the mantlepiece,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Varnished and coffined, <i>Salmo ferox</i> glares<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Possibly at the List of Wines which, framed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And glazed, hangs somewhat prominent on peg.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So much describes the stuffy little room&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vulgar flat smooth respectability:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not so the burst of landscape surging in,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sunrise and all, as he who of the pair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is, plain enough, the younger personage<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Draws sharp the shrieking curtain, sends aloft<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sash, spreads wide and fastens back to wall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shutter and shutter, shows you England's best.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He leans into a living glory-bath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of air and light where seems to float and move<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wooded watered country, hill and dale<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And steel-bright thread of stream, a-smoke with mist,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A-sparkle with May morning, diamond drift<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O' the sun-touched dew. Except the red-roofed pa<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">284</a></span>tch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of half a dozen dwellings that, crept close<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For hill-side shelter, make the village-clump<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This inn is perched above to dominate&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Except such sign of human neighborhood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(And this surmised rather than sensible)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's nothing to disturb absolute peace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The reign of English nature&mdash;which mean art<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And civilized existence. Wildness' self<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is just the cultured triumph. Presently<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep solitude, be sure, reveals a Place<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That knows the right way to defend itself:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Silence hems round a burning spot of life.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now, where a Place burns, must a village brood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And where a village broods, an inn should boast&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Close and convenient: here you have them both.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This inn, the Something-arms&mdash;the family's&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Don't trouble Guillim; heralds leave our half!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is dear to lovers of the picturesque,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And epics have been planned here; but who plan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take holy orders and find work to do.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Painters are more productive, stop a week,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Declare the prospect quite a Corot,&mdash;ay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For tender sentiment,&mdash;themselves incline<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rather to handsweep large and liberal;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then go, but not without success achieved<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Haply some pencil-drawing, oak or beech,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ferns at the base and ivies up the bole,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On this a slug, on that a butterfly.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, he who hooked the <i>salmo</i> pendent here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Also exhibited, this same May-month,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>Foxgloves: a study</i>'&mdash;so inspires the scene,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The air, which now the younger personage<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Inflates him with till lungs o'erfraught are fain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sigh forth a satisfaction might bestir<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">285</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Even those tufts of tree-tops to the South<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I' the distance where the green dies off to grey,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, easy of conjecture, front the Place;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He eyes them, elbows wide, each hand to cheek.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His fellow, the much older&mdash;either say<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A youngish-old man or man oldish-young&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sits at the table: wicks are noisome-deep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In wax, to detriment of plated ware;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above&mdash;piled, strewn&mdash;is store of playing-cards,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Counters and all that's proper for a game.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Circumstantial as the description of this
+parlor and the situation of the inn is, it is
+impossible to say which out of the many
+English inns Browning had in mind. Inns
+date back to the days of the Romans, who had
+ale-houses along the roads, the most interesting
+feature of which was the ivy garland or
+wreath of vine-leaves in honor of Bacchus,
+wreathed around a hoop at the end of a long
+pole to point out the way where good drink
+could be had. A curious survival of this in
+early English times was the "ale-stake," a
+tavern so called because it had a long pole
+projecting from the house front wreathed like
+the old Roman poles with furze, a garland
+of flowers or an ivy wreath. This decoration
+was called the "bush," and in time the
+London taverners so vied with each other in
+their attempt to attract attention by very long
+poles and very prominent bushes that in 1375<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">286</a></span>
+a law was passed according to which all taverners
+in the city of London owning ale-stakes
+projecting or extending over the King's highway
+more than seven feet in length, at the
+utmost, should be fined forty pence, and compelled
+to remove the sign. Here is the origin,
+too, of the proverb, "good wine needs no
+bush." In the later development of the inn
+the signs lost their Bacchic character and became
+most elaborate, often being painted by
+artists.</p>
+
+<p>The poet says this inn was the "Something-arms,"
+and had perhaps once been a house.
+Many inns were the "Something (?) arms"
+and certainly many inns had been houses.
+One such is the Pounds Bridge Inn on a secluded
+road between Speldhurst and Penshurst
+in Kent. It was built by the rector of
+Penshurst, William Darkenoll, who lived in it
+only three years, when it became an inn. The
+inn of the poem might have been a combination
+in Browning's memory of this and the
+"White Horse" at Woolstone, which is described
+as a queerly pretty little inn with a
+front distantly resembling a Chippendale bureau-bookcase.
+"It is tucked away under
+the mighty sides of White Horse Hill, Berkshire,
+and additionally overhung with trees
+and encircled with shrubberies and under-<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">287</a></span>woods,
+and is finally situated on a narrow
+road that presently leads, as it would seem,
+to the end of the known world." So writes
+the enthusiastic lover of inns, Charles Harper.
+Or, perhaps, since there is a river to be seen
+from the inn of the poem the "Swan" at
+Sandleford Water, where a foot bridge and a
+water splash on the river Enborne mark the
+boundaries of Hampshire and Berkshire. Here
+"You have the place wholly to yourself, or
+share it only with the squirrels and the birds
+of the overarching trees." The illustration
+given of the Black Bear Inn, Tewksbury, is
+a quite typical example of inn architecture,
+and may have helped the picture in Browning's
+mind, though its situation is not so rural as
+that described in the poem.</p>
+
+<p>Inns have, from time immemorial, been the
+scenes of romances and tragedies and crimes.
+There have been inns like the "Castle" where
+the "quality" loved to congregate. The "inn
+album" of this establishment had inscribed
+in it almost every eighteenth-century name
+of any distinction. There have been inns
+which were noted as the resort of the wits of
+the day. Ben Jonson loved to take "mine
+ease in mine inn," and Dr. Johnson declared
+that a seat in a tavern chair was the height of
+human felicity. "He was thinking," as it has<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">288</a></span>
+been pertinently put, "not only of a comfortable
+sanded parlor, a roaring fire, and
+plenty of good cheer and good company, but
+also of the circle of humbly appreciative
+auditors who gathered round an accepted wit,
+hung upon his words, offered themselves as
+butts for his ironic or satiric humor, and&mdash;stood
+treat." Or there was the inn of
+sinister aspect where highwaymen might congregate,
+or inns with hosts who let their guests
+down through trap-doors in the middle of the
+night to rob and murder them&mdash;or is this
+only a vague remembrance of a fanciful inn
+of Dickens? Then there was the pilgrim's
+inn in the days when Chaucerian folks loved
+to go on pilgrimages, and in the last century
+the cyclists inn, and to-day the inn of the
+automobilist. The particular inn in the poem
+belongs to the class, rural inn, and in spite of
+its pictures by noted masters was "stuffy" as
+to the atmosphere.</p>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_18" id="linki_18"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus018.jpg" width="500" height="373" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">An English Inn</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The "inn album" or visitors' book is a
+feature of inns. In this country we simply
+sign our names in the visitors' book, but the
+"album" feature of the visitors' book of an
+English inn is its glory and too often its
+shame, for as Mr. Harper says, "Bathos,
+ineptitude, and lines that refuse to scan are
+the stigmata of visitors' book verse. There is<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">289</a></span>
+no worse poetry on earth than that which
+lurks between those covers, or in the pages
+of young ladies' albums." He declares that
+"The interesting pages of visitors' books are
+generally those that are not there, as an
+Irishman might say; for the world is populated
+very densely with those appreciative
+people who, whether from a love of literature,
+or with an instinct for collecting autographs
+that may have a realizable value,
+remove the signatures of distinguished men,
+and with them anything original they may
+have written."</p>
+
+<p>Browning pokes fun at the poetry of his
+inn album, but at the same time uses it as an
+important part of the machinery in the action.
+His English "Iago" writes in it the final
+damnation of his own character&mdash;the threat
+by means of which he hopes to ruin his victims,
+but which, instead, causes the lady to
+take poison and the young man to murder
+"Iago."</p>
+
+<p>The presence of the two men at this particular
+inn is explained in the following bit of
+conversation between them.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><a name='TC_31'></a><ins title="Added starting quote">"You</ins> wrong your poor disciple. Oh, no airs!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because you happen to be twice my age<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And twenty times my master, must perforce<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No blink of daylight struggle through the web<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">290</a></span>
+<span class="i0">There's no unwinding? You entoil my legs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And welcome, for I like it: blind me,&mdash;no!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A very pretty piece of shuttle-work<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was that&mdash;your mere chance question at the club&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>Do you go anywhere this Whitsuntide?</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>I'm off for Paris, there's the Opera&mdash;there's</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The Salon, there's a china-sale,&mdash;beside</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Chantilly; and, for good companionship,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>There's Such-and-such and So-and-so. Suppose</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>We start together?</i>' '<i>No such holiday!</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I told you: '<i>Paris and the rest be hanged!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Why plague me who am pledged to home-delights?</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>I'm the engaged now; through whose fault but yours?</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>On duty. As you well know. Don't I drowse</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The week away down with the Aunt and Niece?</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>No help: it's leisure, loneliness and love.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Wish I could take you; but fame travels <a name='TC_32'></a><ins title="Removed end quote">fast</ins>,&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>A man of much newspaper-paragraph,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>You scare domestic circles; and beside</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Would not you like your lot, that second taste</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Of nature and approval of the grounds!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>You might walk early or lie late, so shirk</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Week-day devotions: but stay Sunday o'er,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And morning church is obligatory:</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>No mundane garb permissible, or dread</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The butler's privileged monition! No!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Pack off to Paris, nor wipe tear away!</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whereon how artlessly the happy flash<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Followed, by inspiration! '<i>Tell you what&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Let's turn their flank, try things on t'other side!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Inns for my money! Liberty's the life!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>We'll lie in hiding: there's the crow-nest nook,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The tourist's joy, the Inn they rave about,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Inn that's out&mdash;out of sight and out of mind<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">291</a></span></i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And out of mischief to all four of us&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Aunt <a name='TC_33'></a><ins title="Was 'aud'">and</ins> niece, you and me. At night arrive;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>At morn, find time for just a Pisgah-view</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Of my friend's Land of Promise; then depart.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And while I'm whizzing onward by first train,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Bound for our own place (since my Brother sulks</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And says I shun him like the plague) yourself&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Why, you have stepped thence, start from platform, gay</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Despite the sleepless journey,&mdash;love lends wings,&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Hug aunt and niece who, none the wiser, wait</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The faithful advent! Eh?</i>' '<i>With all my heart</i>,'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Said I to you; said I to mine own self:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>Does he believe I fail to comprehend</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>He wants just one more final friendly snack</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>At friend's exchequer ere friend runs to earth,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Marries, renounces yielding friends such sport?</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And did I spoil sport, pull face grim,&mdash;nay, grave?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your pupil does you better credit! No!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I parleyed with my pass-book,&mdash;rubbed my pair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the big balance in my banker's hands,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Folded a cheque cigar-case-shape,&mdash;just wants<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Filling and signing,&mdash;and took train, resolved<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To execute myself with decency<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And let you win&mdash;if not Ten thousand quite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Something by way of wind-up-farewell burst<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of firework-nosegay! Where's your fortune fled?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or is not fortune constant after all?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You lose ten thousand pounds: had I lost half<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or half that, I should bite my lips, I think.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You man of marble! Strut and stretch my best<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On tiptoe, I shall never reach your height.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How does the loss feel! Just one lesson more!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The more refined man smiles a frown away.<br /></span>
+</div></div><p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">292</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the way to the station where the older
+man is to take the train they have another
+talk, in which each tells the other of his
+experience, but they do not find out yet that
+they have both loved the same woman.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">"Stop, my boy!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Don't think I'm stingy of experience! Life<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;It's like this wood we leave. Should you and I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Go wandering about there, though the gaps<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We went in and came out by were opposed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the two poles, still, somehow, all the same,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By nightfall we should probably have chanced<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On much the same main points of interest&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both of us measured girth of mossy trunk,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stript ivy from its strangled prey, clapped hands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At squirrel, sent a fir-cone after crow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so forth,&mdash;never mind what time betwixt.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So in our lives; allow I entered mine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Another way than you: 't is possible<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I ended just by knocking head against<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That plaguy low-hung branch yourself began<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By getting bump from; as at last you too<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May stumble o'er that stump which first of all<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bade me walk circumspectly. Head and feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are vulnerable both, and I, foot-sure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forgot that ducking down saves brow from bruise.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I, early old, played young man four years since<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And failed confoundedly: so, hate alike<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Failure and who caused failure,&mdash;curse her cant!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Oh, I see! You, though somewhat past the prime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were taken with a rosebud beauty! Ah<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">293</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But how should chits distinguish? She admired<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your marvel of a mind, I'll undertake!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But as to body ... nay, I mean ... that is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When years have told on face and figure...."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">"Thanks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mister <i>Sufficiently-Instructed</i>! Such<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No doubt was bound to be the consequence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To suit your self-complacency: she liked<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My head enough, but loved some heart beneath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some head with plenty of brown hair a-top<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">After my young friend's fashion! What becomes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of that fine speech you made a minute since<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">About the man of middle age you found<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A formidable peer at twenty-one?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So much for your mock-modesty! and yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I back your first against this second sprout<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of observation, insight, what you please.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My middle age, Sir, had too much success!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It's odd: my case occurred four years ago&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I finished just while you commenced that turn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I' the wood of life that takes us to the wealth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of honeysuckle, heaped for who can reach.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now, I don't boast: it's bad style, and beside,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The feat proves easier than it looks: I plucked<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full many a flower unnamed in that bouquet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Mostly of peonies and poppies, though!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Good nature sticks into my button-hole.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore it was with nose in want of snuff<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rather than Ess or Psidium, that I chanced<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On what&mdash;so far from '<i>rosebud beauty</i>'.... Well&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She's dead: at least you never heard her name;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She was no courtly creature, had nor birth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor breeding&mdash;mere fine-lady-breeding; but<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">294</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, such a wonder of a woman! Grand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a Greek statue! Stick fine clothes on that,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Style that a Duchess or a Queen,&mdash;you know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Artists would make an outcry: all the more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That she had just a statue's sleepy grace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which broods o'er its own beauty. Nay, her fault<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Don't laugh!) was just perfection: for suppose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only the little flaw, and I had peeped<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Inside it, learned what soul inside was like.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At Rome some tourist raised the grit beneath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Venus' forehead with his whittling-knife&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I wish,&mdash;now,&mdash;I had played that brute, brought blood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To surface from the depths I fancied chalk!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As it was, her mere face surprised so much<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I stopped short there, struck on heap, as stares<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The cockney stranger at a certain bust<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With drooped eyes,&mdash;she's the thing I have in mind,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down at my Brother's. All sufficient prize&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such <a name='TC_34'></a><ins title="Was 'oustide'">outside</ins>! Now,&mdash;confound me for a prig!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who cares? I'll make a clean breast once for all!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beside, you've heard the gossip. My life long<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I've been a woman-liker,&mdash;liking means<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Loving and so on. There's a lengthy list<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By this time I shall have to answer for&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So say the good folk: and they don't guess half&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the worst is, let once collecting-itch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Possess you, and, with perspicacity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keeps growing such a greediness that theft<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Follows at no long distance,&mdash;there's the fact!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I knew that on my Leporello-list<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might figure this, that, and the other name<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of feminine desirability,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But if I happened to desire inscribe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Along with these, the only Beautiful<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">295</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here was the unique specimen to snatch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or now or never. 'Beautiful' I said&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Beautiful' say in cold blood,&mdash;boiling then<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To tune of '<i>Haste, secure whate'er the cost</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>This rarity, die in the act, be damned,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>So you complete collection, crown your list!</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It seemed as though the whole world, once aroused<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the first notice of such wonder's birth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would break bounds to contest my prize with me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The first discoverer, should she but emerge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From that safe den of darkness where she dozed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till I stole in, that country-parsonage<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where, country-parson's daughter, motherless,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brotherless, sisterless, for eighteen years<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She had been vegetating lily-like.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her father was my brother's tutor, got<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The living that way: him I chanced to see&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her I saw&mdash;her the world would grow one eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To see, I felt no sort of doubt at all!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>Secure her!</i>' cried the devil: '<i>afterward</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Arrange for the disposal of the prize!</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The devil's doing! yet I seem to think&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now, when all's done,&mdash;think with '<i>a head reposed</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In French phrase&mdash;hope I think I meant to do<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All requisite for such a rarity<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I should be at leisure, have due time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To learn requirement. But in evil day&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bless me, at week's end, long as any year,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The father must begin '<i>Young Somebody,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Much recommended&mdash;for I break a rule&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Comes here to read, next Long Vacation</i>.' '<i>Young!</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That did it. Had the epithet been '<i>rich</i>,'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>Noble</i>,' '<i>a genius</i>,' even '<i>handsome</i>,'&mdash;but<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;'<i>Young!</i>'"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">296</a></span>
+<span class="i8">"I say&mdash;just a word! I want to know&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You are not married?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i16">"I?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">"Nor ever were?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Never! Why?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">"Oh, then&mdash;never mind! Go on!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had a reason for the question."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">"Come,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You could not be the young man?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i26">"No, indeed!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Certainly&mdash;if you never married her!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"That I did not: and there's the curse, you'll see!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, all of it's one curse, my life's mistake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, nourished with manure that's warranted<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make the plant bear wisdom, blew out full<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In folly beyond field-flower-foolishness!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lies I used to tell my womankind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knowing they disbelieved me all the time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though they required my lies, their decent due,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This woman&mdash;not so much believed, I'll say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As just anticipated from my mouth:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since being true, devoted, constant&mdash;she<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Found constancy, devotion, truth, the plain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And easy commonplace of character.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No mock-heroics but seemed natural<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To her who underneath the face, I knew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was fairness' self, possessed a heart, I judged<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Must correspond in folly just as far<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beyond the common,&mdash;and a mind to match,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not made to puzzle conjurers like me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who, therein, proved the fool who fronts you, Sir,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">297</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And begs leave to cut short the ugly rest!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>Trust me!</i>' I said: she trusted. '<i>Marry me!</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or rather, '<i>We are married: when, the rite?</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That brought on the collector's next-day qualm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At counting acquisition's cost. There lay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My marvel, there my purse more light by much<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because of its late lie-expenditure:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ill-judged such moment to make fresh demand&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To cage as well as catch my rarity!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, I began explaining. At first word<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Outbroke the horror. '<i>Then, my truths were lies!</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I tell you, such an outbreak, such new strange<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All-unsuspected revelation&mdash;soul<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As supernaturally grand as face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was fair beyond example&mdash;that at once<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Either I lost&mdash;or, if it please you, found<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My senses,&mdash;stammered somehow&mdash;'<i>Jest! and now,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Earnest! Forget all else but&mdash;heart has loved,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Does love, shall love you ever! take the hand!</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not she! no marriage for superb disdain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Contempt incarnate!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">"Yes, it's different,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It's only like in being four years since.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I see now!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"Well, what did disdain do next,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Think you?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"That's past me: did not marry you!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That's the main thing I care for, I suppose.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turned nun, or what?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">"Why, married in a month<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">298</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Some parson, some smug crop-haired smooth-chinned sort<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of curate-creature, I suspect,&mdash;dived down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down, deeper still, and came up somewhere else&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I don't know where&mdash;I've not tried much to know,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In short, she's happy: what the clodpoles call<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Countrified' with a vengeance! leads the life<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Respectable and all that drives you mad:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still&mdash;where, I don't know, and that's best for both."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Well, that she did not like you, I conceive.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But why should you hate her, I want to know?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"My good young friend,&mdash;because or her or else<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Malicious Providence I have to hate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For, what I tell you proved the turning-point<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of my whole life and fortune toward success<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or failure. If I drown, I lay the fault<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Much on myself who caught at reed not rope,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But more on reed which, with a packthread's pith,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had buoyed me till the minute's cramp could thaw<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I strike out afresh and so be saved.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It's easy saying&mdash;I had sunk before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Disqualified myself by idle days<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And busy nights, long since, from holding hard<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On cable, even, had fate cast me such!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You boys don't know how many times men fail<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perforce o' the little to succeed i' the large,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Husband their strength, let slip the petty prey,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Collect the whole power for the final pounce.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My fault was the mistaking man's main prize<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For intermediate boy's diversion; clap<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of boyish hands here frightened game away<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, once gone, goes forever. Oh, at first<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I took the anger easily, nor much<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">299</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Minded the anguish&mdash;having learned that storms<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Subside, and teapot-tempests are akin.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time would arrange things, mend whate'er might be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Somewhat amiss; precipitation, eh?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Reason and rhyme prompt&mdash;reparation! Tiffs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">End properly in marriage and a dance!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I said 'We'll marry, make the past a blank'&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And never was such damnable mistake!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That interview, that laying bare my soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As it was first, so was it last chance&mdash;one<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And only. Did I write? Back letter came<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unopened as it went. Inexorable<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She fled, I don't know where, consoled herself<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the smug curate-creature: chop and change!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sure am I, when she told her shaveling all<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His Magdalen's adventure, tears were shed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forgiveness evangelically shown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Loose hair and lifted eye,'&mdash;as some one says.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And now, he's worshipped for his pains, the sneak!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Well, but your turning-point of life,&mdash;what's here<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hinder you contesting Finsbury<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With Orton, next election? I don't see...."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><a name='TC_35'></a><ins title="Changed singe quote to double">"Not</ins> you! But <i>I</i> see. Slowly, surely, creeps<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Day by day o'er me the conviction&mdash;here<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was life's prize grasped at, gained, and then let go!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;That with her&mdash;may be, for her&mdash;I had felt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ice in me melt, grow steam, drive to effect<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Any or all the fancies sluggish here<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I' the head that needs the hand she would not take<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I shall never lift now. Lo, your wood&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its turnings which I likened life to! Well,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There she stands, ending every avenue,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">300</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Her visionary presence on each goal<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I might have gained had we kept side by side!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still string nerve and strike foot? Her frown forbids:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The steam congeals once more: I'm old again!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore I hate myself&mdash;but how much worse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do not I hate who would not understand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let me repair things&mdash;no, but sent a-slide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My folly falteringly, stumblingly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down, down and deeper down until I drop<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon&mdash;the need of your ten thousand pounds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And consequently loss of mine! I lose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Character, cash, nay, common-sense itself<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Recounting such a lengthy cock-and-bull<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Adventure&mdash;lose my temper in the act...."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And lose beside,&mdash;if I may supplement<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The list of losses,&mdash;train and ten-o'clock!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hark, pant and puff, there travels the swart sign!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So much the better! You're my captive now!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'm glad you trust a fellow: friends grow thick<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This way&mdash;that's twice said; we were thickish, though,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even last night, and, ere night comes again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I prophesy good luck to both of us!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For see now!&mdash;back to '<i>balmy eminence</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or '<i>calm acclivity</i>,' or what's the word!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bestow you there an hour, concoct at ease<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sonnet for the Album, while I put<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bold face on, best foot forward, make for house,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">March in to aunt and niece, and tell the truth&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Even white-lying goes against my taste<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">After your little story). Oh, the niece<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is rationality itself! The aunt&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If she's amenable to reason too&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, you stooped short to pay her due respect,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">301</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And let the Duke wait (I'll work well the Duke).<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If she grows gracious, I return for you;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If thunder's in the air, why&mdash;bear your doom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dine on rump-steaks and port, and shake the dust<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of aunty from your shoes as off you go<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By evening-train, nor give the thing a thought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How you shall pay me&mdash;that's as sure as fate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Old fellow! Off with you, face left about!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yonder's the path I have to pad. You see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'm in good spirits, God knows why! Perhaps<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because the woman did not marry you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Who look so hard at me,&mdash;and have the right,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One must be fair and own."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">The two stand still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under an oak.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"Look here!" resumes the youth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"I never quite knew how I came to like<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You&mdash;so much&mdash;whom I ought not court at all;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor how you had a leaning just to me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who am assuredly not worth your pains.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For there must needs be plenty such as you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Somewhere about,&mdash;although I can't say where,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Able and willing to teach all you know;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While&mdash;how can you have missed a score like me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With money and no wit, precisely each<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A pupil for your purpose, were it&mdash;ease<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fool's poke of tutor's <i>honorarium</i>-fee?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet, howe'er it came about, I felt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At once my master: you as prompt descried<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your man, I warrant, so was bargain struck.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now, these same lines of liking, loving, run<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sometimes so close together they converge<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">302</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Life's great adventures&mdash;you know what I mean&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In people. Do you know, as you advanced,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It got to be uncommonly like fact<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We two had fallen in with&mdash;liked and loved<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just the same woman in our different ways?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I began life&mdash;poor groundling as I prove&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Winged and ambitious to fly high: why not?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's something in 'Don Quixote' to the point,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My shrewd old father used to quote and praise&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>Am I born man?</i>' asks Sancho: '<i>being man,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>By possibility I may be Pope!</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, Pope I meant to make myself, by step<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And step, whereof the first should be to find<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A perfect woman; and I tell you this&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If what I fixed on, in the order due<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of undertakings, as next step, had first<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of all disposed itself to suit my tread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I had been, the day I came of age,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Returned at head of poll for Westminster<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Nay, and moreover summoned by the Queen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At week's end, when my maiden-speech bore fruit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To form and head a Tory ministry&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It would not have seemed stranger, no, nor been<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More strange to me, as now I estimate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than what did happen&mdash;sober truth, no dream.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I saw my wonder of a woman,&mdash;laugh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'm past that!&mdash;in Commemoration-week.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A plenty have I seen since, fair and foul,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With eyes, too, helped by your sagacious wink;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But one to match that marvel&mdash;no least trace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Least touch of kinship and community!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The end was&mdash;I did somehow state the fact,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did, with no matter what imperfect words,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One way or other give to understand<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">303</a></span>
+<span class="i0">That woman, soul and body were her slave<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would she but take, but try them&mdash;any test<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of will, and some poor test of power beside:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So did the strings within my brain grow tense<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And capable of ... hang similitudes!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She answered kindly but beyond appeal.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>No sort of hope for me, who came too late.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>She was another's. Love went&mdash;mine to her,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Hers just as loyally to some one else.</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of course! I might expect it! Nature's law&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Given the peerless woman, certainly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Somewhere shall be the peerless man to match!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I acquiesced at once, submitted me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In something of a stupor, went my way.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I fancy there had been some talk before<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of somebody&mdash;her father or the like&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To coach me in the holidays,&mdash;that's how<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I came to get the sight and speech of her,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I had sense enough to break off sharp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save both of us the pain."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">"Quite right there!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i36">"Eh?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quite wrong, it happens! Now comes worst of all!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yes, I did sulk aloof and let alone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lovers&mdash;<i>I</i> disturb the angel-mates?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Seraph paired off with cherub!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">"Thank you! While<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I never plucked up courage to inquire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who he was, even,&mdash;certain-sure of this,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That nobody I knew of had blue wings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wore a star-crown as he needs must do,<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">304</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some little lady,&mdash;plainish, pock-marked girl,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Finds out my secret in my woful face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comes up to me at the Apollo Ball,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pityingly pours her wine and oil<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This way into the wound: '<i>Dear f-f-friend,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Why waste affection thus on&mdash;must I say,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>A somewhat worthless object? Who's her choice&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Irrevocable as deliberate&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Out of the wide world? I shall name no names&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>But there's a person in society,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Who, blessed with rank and talent, has grown gray</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>In idleness and sin of every sort</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Except hypocrisy: he's thrice her age,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>A by-word for "successes with the sex"</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>As the French say&mdash;and, as we ought to say,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Consummately a liar and a rogue,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Since&mdash;show me where's the woman won without</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The help of this one lie which she believes&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>That&mdash;never mind how things have come to pass,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And let who loves have loved a thousand times&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>All the same he now loves her only, loves</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Her ever! if by "won" you just mean "sold,"</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>That's quite another compact. Well, this scamp,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Continuing descent from bad to worse,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Must leave his fine and fashionable prey</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>(Who&mdash;fathered, brothered, husbanded,&mdash;are hedged</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>About with thorny danger) and apply</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>His arts to this poor country ignorance</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Who sees forthwith in the first rag of man</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Her model hero! Why continue waste</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>On such a woman treasures of a heart</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Would yet find solace,&mdash;yes, my f-f-friend&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>In some congenial</i>&mdash;fiddle-diddle-dee?'"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">305</a></span>
+<span class="i0">"Pray, is the pleasant gentleman described<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Exact the portrait which my '<i>f-f-friends</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Recognize as so like? 'T is evident<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You half surmised the sweet original<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could be no other than myself, just now!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your stop and start were flattering!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i28">"Of course<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Caricature's allowed for in a sketch!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The longish nose becomes a foot in length,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The swarthy cheek gets copper-colored,&mdash;still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Prominent beak and dark-hued skin are facts:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And '<i>parson's daughter</i>'&mdash;'<i>young man coachable</i>'&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>Elderly party</i>'&mdash;'<i>four years since</i>'&mdash;were facts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To fasten on, a moment! Marriage, though&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That made the difference, I hope."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i28">"All right!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I never married; wish I had&mdash;and then<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unwish it: people kill their wives, sometimes!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I hate my mistress, but I'm murder-free.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In your case, where's the grievance? You came last,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The earlier bird picked up the worm. Suppose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You, in the glory of your twenty-one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had happened to precede myself! 't is odds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But this gigantic juvenility,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This offering of a big arm's bony hand&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'd rather shake than feel shake me, I know&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had moved <i>my</i> dainty mistress to admire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An altogether new Ideal&mdash;deem<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Idolatry less due to life's decline<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Productive of experience, powers mature<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By dint of usage, the made man&mdash;no boy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That's all to make! I was the earlier bird<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">306</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And what I found, I let fall: what you missed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who is the fool that blames you for?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>They become so deeply interested in this
+talk that the train is missed, and, in the meantime,
+the lady who now lives in the neighborhood
+as the wife of the hard-working country
+parson meets the young girl at the inn. They
+are great friends and have come there, at the
+girl's invitation, to talk over her prospective
+husband. She desires her friend to come to
+her home and meet her fianc&eacute;, but the lady,
+who is in constant fear of meeting "Iago,"
+never goes anywhere, and proposes a meeting
+with him at the inn. While she waits, "Iago"
+comes in upon her. There is a terrible scene
+of recrimination between these two, the man
+again daring to prefer his love. The lady
+scorns him. Horror is added to horror when
+the young man appears at the door, and recognizes
+the woman he really loves. His faith
+in her and his love are shaken for a moment,
+but return immediately and he stands her
+true friend and lover. The complete despicableness
+of "Iago's" nature finally reveals
+itself in the lines he writes in the album and
+gives to the lady to read. The poem is too
+long to quote in full. The closing scene,
+however, will give the reader a good idea of<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">307</a></span>
+the poet's handling of this nineteenth-century
+tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>The true nobility of soul of the younger
+man links him with Mertoun among Browning's
+heroes and represents the Englishman
+or the man of any country for that matter at
+his highest. Whether redemption for the
+older man would have been possible had the
+lady believed him in the inn parlor is doubtful.
+Such natures are like Ibsen's "Peer
+Gynt." They need to be put into a button
+mould and moulded over again.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="i24" style="display: inline;">&nbsp;</span>"Here's the lady back!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, Madam, you have conned the Album-page<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And come to thank its last contributor?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How kind and condescending! I retire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A moment, lest I spoil the interview,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mar my own endeavor to make friends&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You with him, him with you, and both with me!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If I succeed&mdash;permit me to inquire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Five minutes hence! Friends bid good-by, you know."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And out he goes.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">She, face, form, bearing, one<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Superb composure&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">"He has told you all?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yes, he has told you all, your silence says&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What gives him, as he thinks the mastery<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Over my body and my soul!&mdash;has told<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">308</a></span>
+<span class="i0">That instance, even, of their servitude<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He now exacts of me? A silent blush!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That's well, though better would white ignorance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beseem your brow, undesecrate before&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ay, when I left you! I too learn at last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Hideously learned as I seemed so late&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What sin may swell to. Yes,&mdash;I needed learn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That, when my prophet's rod became the snake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I fled from, it would, one day, swallow up<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Incorporate whatever serpentine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Falsehood and treason and unmanliness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beslime earth's pavement: such the power of Hell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so beginning, ends no otherwise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Adversary! I was ignorant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blameworthy&mdash;if you will; but blame I take<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nowise upon me as I ask myself<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;<i>You</i>&mdash;how can you, whose soul I seemed to read<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The limpid eyes through, have declined so deep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even with him for consort? I revolve<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Much memory, pry into the looks and words<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of that day's walk beneath the College wall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And nowhere can distinguish, in what gleams<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only pure marble through my dusky past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A dubious cranny where such poison-seed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might harbor, nourish what should yield to-day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This dread ingredient for the cup I drink.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do not I recognize and honor truth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In seeming?&mdash;take your truth and for return,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give you my truth, a no less precious gift?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You loved me: I believed you. I replied<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;How could I other? '<i>I was not my own</i>,'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;No longer had the eyes to see, the ears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hear, the mind to judge, since heart and soul<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now were another's. My own right in me,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">309</a></span>
+<span class="i0">For well or ill, consigned away&mdash;my face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fronted the honest path, deflection whence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had shamed me in the furtive backward look<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the late bargain&mdash;fit such chapman's phrase!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As though&mdash;less hasty and more provident&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Waiting had brought advantage. Not for me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The chapman's chance! Yet while thus much was true,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I spared you&mdash;as I knew you then&mdash;one more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Concluding word which, truth no less, seemed best<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Buried away forever. Take it now<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its power to pain is past! Four years&mdash;that day&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those lines that make the College avenue!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would that&mdash;friend and foe&mdash;by miracle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I had, that moment, seen into the heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of either, as I now am taught to see!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I do believe I should have straight assumed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My proper function, and sustained a soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor aimed at being just sustained myself<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By some man's soul&mdash;the weaker woman's-want!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So had I missed the momentary thrill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of finding me in presence of a god,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But gained the god's own feeling when he gives<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such thrill to what turns life from death before.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>Gods many and Lords many</i>,' says the Book:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You would have yielded up your soul to me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Not to the false god who has burned its clay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In his own image. I had shed my love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like Spring dew on the clod all flowery thence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not sent up a wild vapor to the sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">that drinks and then disperses. Both of us<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blameworthy,&mdash;I first meet my punishment&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And not so hard to bear. I breathe again!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forth from those arms' enwinding leprosy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At last I struggle&mdash;uncontaminate:<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">310</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Why must I leave <i>you</i> pressing to the breast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That's all one plague-spot? Did you love me once?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then take love's last and best return! I think,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Womanliness means only motherhood;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All love begins and ends there,&mdash;roams enough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, having run the circle, rests at home.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why is your expiation yet to make?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pull shame with your own hands from your own head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now,&mdash;never wait the slow envelopment<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Submitted to by unelastic age!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One fierce throe frees the sapling: flake on flake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lull till they leave the oak snow-stupefied.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your heart retains its vital warmth&mdash;or why<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That blushing reassurance? Blush, young blood!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Break from beneath this icy premature<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Captivity of wickedness&mdash;I warn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Back, in God's name! No fresh encroachment here!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This May breaks all to bud&mdash;No Winter now!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Friend, we are both forgiven! Sin no more!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am past sin now, so shall you become!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meanwhile I testify that, lying once,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My foe lied ever, most lied last of all.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He, waking, whispered to your sense asleep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wicked counsel,&mdash;and assent might seem;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, roused, your healthy indignation breaks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The idle dream-pact. You would die&mdash;not dare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Confirm your dream-resolve,&mdash;nay, find the word<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That fits the deed to bear the light of day!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Say I have justly judged you! then farewell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To blushing&mdash;nay, it ends in smiles, not tears!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why tears now? I have justly judged, thank God!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He does blush boy-like, but the man speaks out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Makes the due effort to surmount himself.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">311</a></span>
+<span class="i0">"I don't know what he wrote&mdash;how should I? Nor<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How he could read my purpose which, it seems,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He chose to somehow write&mdash;mistakenly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or else for mischief's sake. I scarce believe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My purpose put before you fair and plain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would need annoy so much; but there's my luck&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From first to last I blunder. Still, one more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turn at the target, try to speak my thought!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since he could guess my purpose, won't you read<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Right what he set down wrong? He said&mdash;let's think!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ay, so!&mdash;he did begin by telling heaps<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of tales about you. Now, you see&mdash;suppose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Any one told me&mdash;my own mother died<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before I knew her&mdash;told me&mdash;to his cost!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such tales about my own dead mother: why,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You would not wonder surely if I knew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By nothing but my own heart's help, he lied,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would you? No reason's wanted in the case.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So with you! In they burnt on me, his tales,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Much as when madhouse-inmates crowd around,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make captive any visitor and scream<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All sorts of stories of their keeper&mdash;he's<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both dwarf and giant, vulture, wolf, dog, cat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Serpent and scorpion, yet man all the same;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sane people soon see through the gibberish!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I just made out, you somehow lived somewhere<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A life of shame&mdash;I can't distinguish more&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Married or single&mdash;how, don't matter much:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shame which himself had caused&mdash;that point was clear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That fact confessed&mdash;that thing to hold and keep.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, and he added some absurdity<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;That you were here to make me&mdash;ha, ha, ha!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still love you, still of mind to die for you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ha, ha&mdash;as if that needed mighty pains!<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">312</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Now, foolish as ... but never mind myself<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;What I am, what I am not, in the eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the world, is what I never cared for much.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fool then or no fool, not one single word<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the whole string of lies did I believe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But this&mdash;this only&mdash;if I choke, who cares?&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I believe somehow in your purity<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perfect as ever! Else what use is God?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He is God, and work miracles He can!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then, what shall I do? Quite as clear, my course!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They've got a thing they call their Labyrinth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I' the garden yonder: and my cousin played<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A pretty trick once, led and lost me deep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Inside the briery maze of hedge round hedge;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there might I be staying now, stock-still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But that I laughing bade eyes follow nose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so straight pushed my path through let and stop<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And soon was out in the open, face all scratched,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But well behind my back the prison-bars<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In sorry plight enough, I promise you!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So here: I won my way to truth through lies&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Said, as I saw light,&mdash;if her shame be shame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll rescue and redeem her,&mdash;shame's no shame?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then, I'll avenge, protect&mdash;redeem myself<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The stupidest of sinners! Here I stand!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dear,&mdash;let me once dare call you so,&mdash;you said<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus ought you to have done, four years ago,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such things and such! Ay, dear, and what ought I?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You were revealed to me: where's gratitude,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where's memory even, where the gain of you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Discernible in my low after-life<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of fancied consolation? why, no horse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once fed on corn, will, missing corn, go munch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mere thistles like a donkey! I missed you,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">313</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And in your place found&mdash;him, made him my love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ay, did I,&mdash;by this token, that he taught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So much beast-nature that I meant ... God knows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether I bow me to the dust enough!...<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To marry&mdash;yes, my cousin here! I hope<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That was a master-stroke! Take heart of hers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And give her hand of mine with no more heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than now you see upon this brow I strike!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What atom of a heart do I retain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not all yours? Dear, you know it! Easily<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May she accord me pardon when I place<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My brow beneath her foot, if foot so deign,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since uttermost indignity is spared&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mere marriage and no love! And all this time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not one word to the purpose! Are you free?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only wait! only let me serve&mdash;deserve<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where you appoint and how you see the good!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have the will&mdash;perhaps the power&mdash;at least<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Means that have power against the world. For time&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take my whole life for your experiment!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If you are bound&mdash;in marriage, say&mdash;why, still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still, sure, there's something for a friend to do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Outside? A mere well-wisher, understand!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll sit, my life long, at your gate, you know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swing it wide open to let you and him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pass freely,&mdash;and you need not look, much less<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fling me a '<i>Thank you&mdash;are you there, old friend</i>?'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Don't say that even: I should drop like shot!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So I feel now at least: some day, who knows?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">After no end of weeks and months and years<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You might smile '<i>I believe you did your best</i>!'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that shall make my heart leap&mdash;leap such leap<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As lands the feet in Heaven to wait you there!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, there's just one thing more! How pale you look!<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">314</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Why? Are you angry? If there's, after all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worst come to worst&mdash;if still there somehow be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The shame&mdash;I said was no shame,&mdash;none! I swear!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In that case, if my hand and what it holds,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My name,&mdash;might be your safeguard now&mdash;at once&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, here's the hand&mdash;you have the heart! Of course&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No cheat, no binding you, because I'm bound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To let me off probation by one day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Week, month, year, lifetime! Prove as you propose!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here's the hand with the name to take or leave!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That's all&mdash;and no great piece of news, I hope!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Give me the hand, then!" she cries hastily.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Quick, now! I hear his footstep!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i28">Hand in hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The couple face him as he enters, stops<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Short, stands surprised a moment, laughs away<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Surprise, resumes the much-experienced man.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"So, you accept him?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i16">"Till us death do part!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"No longer? Come, that's right and rational!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I fancied there was power in common sense,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But did not know it worked thus promptly. Well&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At last each understands the other, then?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each drops disguise, then? So, at supper-time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These masquerading people doff their gear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grand Turk his pompous turban, Quakeress<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her stiff-starched bib and tucker,&mdash;make-believe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That only bothers when, ball-business done,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nature demands champagne and <i>mayonnaise</i>.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just so has each of us sage three abjured<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His and her moral pet particular<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">315</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Pretension to superiority,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, cheek by jowl, we henceforth munch and joke!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Go, happy pair, paternally dismissed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To live and die together&mdash;for a month,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><a name='TC_36'></a><ins title="Was 'Descretion'">Discretion</ins> can award no more! Depart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From whatsoe'er the calm sweet solitude<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Selected&mdash;Paris not improbably&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At month's end, when the honeycomb's left wax,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;You, daughter, with a pocketful of gold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enough to find your village boys and girls<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In duffel cloaks and hobnailed shoes from May<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To&mdash;what's the phrase?&mdash;Christmas-come-never-mas!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You, son and heir of mine, shall re-appear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere Spring-time, that's the ring-time, lose one leaf,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And&mdash;not without regretful smack of lip<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The while you wipe it free of honey-smear&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Marry the cousin, play the magistrate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stand for the country, prove perfection's pink&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Master of hounds, gay-coated dine&mdash;nor die<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sooner than needs of gout, obesity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sons at Christ Church! As for me,&mdash;ah me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I abdicate&mdash;retire on my success,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Four years well occupied in teaching youth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;My son and daughter the exemplary!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time for me to retire now, having placed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Proud on their pedestal the pair: in turn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let them do homage to their master! You,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Well, your flushed cheek and flashing eye proclaim<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sufficiently your gratitude: you paid<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The <i>honorarium</i>, the ten thousand pounds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To purpose, did you not? I told you so!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And you, but, bless me, why so pale&mdash;so faint<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At influx of good fortune? Certainly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No matter how or why or whose the fault,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">316</a></span>
+<span class="i0">I save your life&mdash;save it, nor less nor more!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You blindly were resolved to welcome death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In that black boor-and-bumpkin-haunted hole<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of his, the prig with all the preachments! <i>You</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Installed as nurse and matron to the crones<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wenches, while there lay a world outside<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like Paris (which again I recommend)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In company and guidance of&mdash;first, this,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then&mdash;all in good time&mdash;some new friend as fit&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What if I were to say, some fresh myself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As I once figured? Each dog has his day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mine's at sunset: what should old dog do<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But eye young litters' frisky puppyhood?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh I shall watch this beauty and this youth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Frisk it in brilliance! But don't fear! Discreet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall pretend to no more recognize<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My quondam pupils than the doctor nods<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When certain old acquaintances may cross<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His path in Park, or sit down prim beside<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His plate at dinner-table: tip nor wink<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scares patients he has put, for reason good,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under restriction,&mdash;maybe, talked sometimes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of douche or horsewhip to,&mdash;for why? because<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gentleman would crazily declare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His best friend was&mdash;Iago! Ay, and worse&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lady, all at once grown lunatic,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In suicidal monomania vowed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To save her soul, she needs must starve herself!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They're cured now, both, and I tell nobody.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why don't you speak? Nay, speechless, each of you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can spare,&mdash;without unclasping plighted troth,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At least one hand to shake! Left-hands will do&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yours first, my daughter! Ah, it guards&mdash;it gripes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The precious Album fast&mdash;and prudently!<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">317</a></span>
+<span class="i0">As well obliterate the record there<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On page the last: allow me tear the leaf!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pray, now! And afterward, to make amends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What if all three of us contribute each<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A line to that prelusive fragment,&mdash;help<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The embarrassed bard who broke out to break down<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dumbfoundered at such unforeseen success?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You begin&mdash;<i>place aux dames</i>! I'll prompt you then!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>Here do I take the good the gods allot!</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Next you, Sir! What, still sulky? Sing, O Muse!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>Here does my lord in full discharge his shot!</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now for the crowning flourish! mine shall be...."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Nothing to match your first effusion, mar<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What was, is, shall remain your masterpiece!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Authorship has the alteration-itch!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No, I protest against erasure. Read,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My friend!" (she gasps out). "Read and quickly read<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>Before us death do part</i>,' what made you mine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And made me yours&mdash;the marriage-license here!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Decide if he is like to mend the same!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so the lady, white to ghastliness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Manages somehow to display the page<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With left-hand only, while the right retains<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The other hand, the young man's,&mdash;dreaming-drunk<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He, with this drench of stupefying stuff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eyes wide, mouth open,&mdash;half the idiot's stare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And half the prophet's insight,&mdash;holding tight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the same, by his one fact in the world&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lady's right-hand: he but seems to read&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Does not, for certain; yet, how understand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unless he reads?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">318</a></span>
+<span class="i14">So, understand he does,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For certain. Slowly, word by word, <i>she</i> reads<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Aloud that license&mdash;or that warrant, say.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'<i>One against two&mdash;and two that urge their odds</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>To uttermost&mdash;I needs must try resource!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Madam, I laid me prostrate, bade you spurn</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Body and soul: you spurned and safely spurned</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>So you had spared me the superfluous taunt</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>"Prostration means no power to stand erect,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Stand, trampling on who trampled&mdash;prostrate now!"</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>So, with my other fool-foe: I was fain</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Let the boy touch me with the buttoned foil,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And him the infection gains, he too must needs</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Catch up the butcher's cleaver. Be it so!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Since play turns earnest, here's my serious fence.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>He loves you; he demands your love: both know</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>What love means in my language. Love him then!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Pursuant to a pact, love pays my debt:</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Therefore, deliver me from him, thereby</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Likewise delivering from me yourself!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>For, hesitate&mdash;much more, refuse consent&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>I tell the whole truth to your husband. Flat</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Cards lie on table, in our gamester-phrase!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Consent&mdash;you stop my mouth, the only way.</i>'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I did well, trusting instinct: knew your hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had never joined with his in fellowship<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Over this pact of infamy. You known&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he was known through every nerve of me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore I '<i>stopped his mouth the only way</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But <i>my</i> way! none was left for you, my friend&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The loyal&mdash;near, the loved one! No&mdash;no&mdash;no!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Threaten? Chastise? The coward would but quail.<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">319</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Conquer who can, the cunning of the snake!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stamp out his slimy strength from tail to head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And still you leave vibration of the tongue.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His malice had redoubled&mdash;not on me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who, myself, choose my own refining fire&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But on poor unsuspicious innocence;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And,&mdash;victim,&mdash;to turn executioner<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Also&mdash;that feat effected, forky tongue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had done indeed its office! One snake's 'mouth'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus '<i>open</i>'&mdash;how could mortal '<i>stop it</i>'?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i30">"So!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A tiger-flash&mdash;yell, spring, and scream: halloo!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Death's out and on him, has and holds him&mdash;ugh!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But <i>ne trucidet coram populo</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Juvenis senem</i>! Right the Horatian rule!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There, see how soon a quiet comes to pass!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The youth is somehow by the lady's side.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His right-hand grasps her right-hand once again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both gaze on the dead body. Hers the word.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"And that was good but useless. Had I lived<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The danger was to dread: but, dying now&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Himself would hardly become talkative,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since talk no more means torture. Fools&mdash;what fools<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These wicked men are! Had I borne four years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Four years of weeks and months and days and nights,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Inured me to the consciousness of life<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Coiled round by his life, with the tongue to ply,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But that I bore about me, for prompt use<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At urgent need, the thing that '<i>stops the mouth</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stays the venom? Since such need was now<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or never,&mdash;how should use not follow need?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bear witness for me, I withdraw from life<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">320</a></span>
+<span class="i0">By virtue of the license&mdash;warrant, say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That blackens yet this Album&mdash;white again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thanks still to my one friend who tears the page!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now, let me write the line of supplement,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As counselled by my foe there: '<i>each a line</i>!'"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And she does falteringly write to end.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"<i>I die now through the villain who lies dead,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Righteously slain. He would have outraged me,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>So, my defender slew him. God protect</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The right! Where wrong lay, I bear witness now.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Let man believe me, whose last breath is spent</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>In blessing my defender from my soul!</i>"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And so ends the Inn Album.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">As she dies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Begins outside a voice that sounds like song,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And is indeed half song though meant for speech<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Muttered in time to motion&mdash;stir of heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That unsubduably must bubble forth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To match the fawn-step as it mounts the stair.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"All's ended and all's over! Verdict found<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'<i>Not guilty</i>'&mdash;prisoner forthwith set free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mid cheers the Court pretends to disregard!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now Portia, now for Daniel, late severe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At last appeased, benignant! '<i>This young man&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Hem&mdash;has the young man's foibles but no fault.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>He's virgin soil&mdash;a friend must cultivate.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>I think no plant called "love" grows wild&mdash;a friend</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>May introduce, and name the bloom, the fruit!</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here somebody dares wave a handkerchief<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">321</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She'll want to hide her face with presently!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Good-by then! '<i>Cigno fedel, cigno fedel,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Addio!</i>' Now, was ever such mistake&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ever such foolish ugly omen? Pshaw!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wagner, beside! '<i>Amo te solo, te</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Solo amai!</i>' That's worth fifty such!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, mum, the grave face at the opened door!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And so the good gay girl, with eyes and cheeks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Diamond and damask,&mdash;cheeks so white erewhile<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because of a vague fancy, idle fear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Chased on reflection!&mdash;pausing, taps discreet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And then, to give herself a countenance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before she comes upon the pair inside,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Loud&mdash;the oft-quoted, long-laughed-over line&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"'<i>Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!</i>'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Open the door!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">No: let the curtain fall!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">322</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<p class="subtitle">RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH
+CENTURY</p>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="dcap">In</span> "Bishop Blougram's Apology" and
+"Christmas-Eve and Easter Day," Browning
+has covered the main tendencies in religious
+thought of the nineteenth century in
+England; and possibly "Caliban" might be
+included as representative of Calvinistic survivals
+of the century.</p>
+
+<p>The two most strongly marked of these
+tendencies have been shown in the Tractarian
+Movement which took Anglican in
+the direction of High Churchism and Catholicism,
+and in the Scientific Movement which
+led in the direction of Agnosticism.</p>
+
+<p>The battle between the Church of Rome
+and the Church of England was waged the
+latter part of the first half of the century, and
+the greater battle between science and religion
+came on in its full strength the middle
+of the century when the influence of Spencer,
+Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley and other men of
+science began to make itself felt, as well as<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">323</a></span>
+that of such critics of historical Christianity
+as Strauss in Germany and Renan in France.
+The influence of the dissenting bodies,&mdash;the
+Presbyterians and the Methodists&mdash;also became
+a power during the century. Broadly
+speaking, it may be said that the development
+has been in the direction of the utmost freedom
+of conscience in the matter of religion,
+though the struggles of humanity to arrive
+there even during this century are distressing
+to look back upon; and occasionally one is held
+up even in America to-day by the ghost of
+religious persecution.</p>
+
+<p>It is an open secret that in Bishop Blougram,
+Browning meant to portray Cardinal
+Wiseman, whose connection with the Tractarian
+Movement is of great interest in the
+history of this movement. Browning enjoyed
+hugely the joke that Cardinal Wiseman himself
+reviewed the poem. The Cardinal praised
+it as a poem, though he did not consider the
+attitude of a priest of Rome to be properly
+interpreted. A comparison of the poem with
+opinions expressed by the Cardinal as well as
+a glimpse into his activities will show how
+far Browning has done him justice.</p>
+
+<p>It is well to remember at the outset that the
+poet's own view is neither that of Blougram
+nor of the literary man Gigadibs, with whom<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">324</a></span>
+Blougram talks over his wine. Gigadibs is
+an agnostic and cannot understand how a
+man of Blougram's fine intellectual and artistic
+perceptions is able so implicitly to believe
+in Catholic doctrine. Blougram's apology for
+himself amounts to this,&mdash;that he does not
+believe with absolute certainty any more than
+does Gigadibs; but, on the other hand, Gigadibs
+does not disbelieve with absolute certainty,
+so Blougram's state is one of belief
+shaken occasionally by doubt, while Gigadibs
+is one of unbelief shaken by fits of belief.</p>
+
+<h3>BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2 dotwide">. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Now come, let's backward to the starting place.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See my way: we're two college friends, suppose.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Prepare together for our voyage, then;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each note and check the other in his work,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's mine, a bishop's outfit; criticize!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What's wrong? why won't you be a bishop too?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">What first, you don't believe, you don't, and can't,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Not statedly, that is, and fixedly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And absolutely and exclusively)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In any revelation called divine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No dogmas nail your faith; and what remains<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But say so, like the honest man you are?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">First, therefore, overhaul theology!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Must find believing every whit as hard:<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">325</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And if I do not frankly say as much,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ugly consequence is clear enough.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Now wait, my friend: well, I do not believe&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If you'll accept no faith that is not fixed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Absolute and exclusive, as you say.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You're wrong&mdash;I mean to prove it in due time.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So give up hope accordingly to solve&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With both of us, though in unlike degree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Missing full credence&mdash;overboard with them!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I mean to meet you on your own premise:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Good, there go mine in company with yours!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">And now what are we? unbelievers both,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Calm and complete, determinately fixed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To-day, to-morrow and forever, pray?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You'll guarantee me that? Not so, I think!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In no wise! all we've gained is, that belief.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As unbelief before, shakes us by fits,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Confounds us like its predecessor. Where's<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gain? how can we guard our unbelief,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make it bear fruit to us?&mdash;the problem here.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A chorus-ending from Euripides,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As old and new at once as nature's self,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To rap and knock and enter in our soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Round the ancient idol, on his base again,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly.<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">326</a></span>
+<span class="i0">There the old misgivings, crooked questions are&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This good God,&mdash;what he could do, if he would,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would, if he could&mdash;then must have done long since:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If so, when, where and how? some way must be,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once feel about, and soon or late you hit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some sense, in which it might be, after all.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The advantage of making belief instead of
+unbelief the starting point is, Blougram contends,
+that he lives by what he finds the most
+to his taste; giving him as it does, power,
+distinction and beauty in life as well as hope
+in the life to come.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Well, now, there's one great form of Christian faith<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I happened to be born in&mdash;which to teach<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was given me as I grew up, on all hands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As best and readiest means of living by;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The same on examination being proved<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And absolute form of faith in the whole world&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Accordingly, most potent of all forms<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For working on the world. Observe, my friend!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such as you know me, I am free to say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In these hard latter days which hamper one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Myself&mdash;by no immoderate exercise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of intellect and learning, but the tact<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To let external forces work for me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Bid the street's stones be bread and they are bread;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bid Peter's creed, or rather, Hildebrand's,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Exalt me o'er my fellows in the world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And make my life an ease and joy and pride;<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">327</a></span>
+<span class="i0">It does so,&mdash;which for me's a great point gained,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who have a soul and body that exact<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A comfortable care in many ways.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's power in me and will to dominate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which I must exercise, they hurt me else:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In many ways I need mankind's respect,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Obedience, and the love that's born of fear:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While at the same time, there's a taste I have,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A toy of soul, a titillating thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Refuses to digest these dainties crude.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The naked life is gross till clothed upon:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I must take what men offer, with a grace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As though I would not, could I help it, take!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An uniform I wear though over-rich&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Something imposed on me, no choice of mine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And despicable therefore! now folk kneel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And kiss my hand&mdash;of course the Church's hand.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus I am made, thus life is best for me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thus that it should be I have procured;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thus it could not be another way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I venture to imagine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">You'll reply,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So far my choice, no doubt, is a success;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But were I made of better elements,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">with nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I hardly would account the thing success<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though it did all for me I say.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">But, friend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We speak of what is; not of what might be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And how 'twere better if 'twere otherwise.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am the man you see here plain enough:<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">328</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Grant I'm a beast, why, beasts must lead beasts' lives!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Suppose I own at once to tail and claws;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To dock their stump and dress their haunches up.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My business is not to remake myself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But make the absolute best of what God made.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enumerated so complacently,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the mere ground that you forsooth can find<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In this particular life I choose to lead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No fit provision for them. Can you not?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Say you, my fault is I address myself<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To grosser estimators than should judge?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that's no way of holding up the soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knows<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools'&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would like the two, but, forced to choose, takes that.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I pine among my million imbeciles<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(You think) aware some dozen men of sense<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eye me and know me, whether I believe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the last winking Virgin, as I vow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And am a fool, or disbelieve in her<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And am a knave,&mdash;approve in neither case,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Withhold their voices though I look their way:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like Verdi when, at his worst opera's end<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(The thing they gave at Florence,&mdash;what's its name?)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the mad houseful's plaudits near outbang<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He looks through all the roaring and the wreaths<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">329</a></span>
+<span class="i2">Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That even your prime men who appraise their kind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See more in a truth than the truth's simple self,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sixty the minute; what's to note in that?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Him you must watch&mdash;he's sure to fall, yet stands!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The honest thief, the tender murderer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The superstitious atheist, demirep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That loves and saves her soul in new French books&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We watch while these in equilibrium keep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The giddy line midway: one step aside,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before your sages,&mdash;just the men to shrink<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You offer their refinement. Fool or knave?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When there's a thousand diamond weights between?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you'll find,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Profess themselves indignant, scandalized<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At thus being held unable to explain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How a superior man who disbelieves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May not believe as well: that's Schelling's way!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It's through my coming in the tail of time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nicking the minute with a happy tact.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had I been born three hundred years ago<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They'd say, "what's strange? Blougram of course believes;"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><a name='TC_37'></a><ins title="Removed starting quote">How</ins> can he?" All eyes turn with interest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whereas, step off the line on either side&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You, for example, clever to a fault,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">330</a></span>
+<span class="i0">The rough and ready man who write apace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You disbelieve! Who wonders and who cares?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lord So-and-so&mdash;his coat bedropped with wax,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All Peter's chains about his waist, his back<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brave with the needlework of Noodledom&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Believes! Again, who wonders and who cares?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I, the man of sense and learning too,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The able to think yet act, the this, the that,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I, to believe at this late time of day!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2 dotwide">. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"Ay, but since really you lack faith," you cry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"You run the same risk really on all sides,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In cool indifference as bold unbelief.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As well be Strauss as swing 'twixt Paul and him.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It's not worth having, such imperfect faith,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No more available to do faith's work<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than unbelief like mine. Whole faith, or none!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Softly, my friend! I must dispute that point.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once own the use of faith, I'll find you faith.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We're back on Christian ground. You call for faith:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If faith o'ercomes doubt. How I know it does?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By life and man's free will, God gave for that!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To mould life as we choose it, shows our choice:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That's our one act, the previous work's his own.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You criticize the soul? it reared this tree&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This broad life and whatever fruit it bears!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What matter though I doubt at every pore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my finger's ends,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">331</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Doubts in the trivial work of every day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Doubts at the very bases of my soul<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the grand moments when she probes herself&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If finally I have a life to show,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The thing I did, brought out in evidence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against the thing done to me underground<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By hell and all its brood, for aught I know?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I say, whence sprang this? shows it faith or doubt?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All's doubt in me; where's break of faith in this?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is the idea, the feeling and the love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God means mankind should strive for and show forth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whatever be the process to that end,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And not historic knowledge, logic sound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And metaphysical acumen, sure!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"What think ye of Christ," friend? when all's done and said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like you this Christianity or not?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It may be false, but will you wish it true?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has it your vote to be so if it can?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trust you an instinct silenced long ago<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That will break silence and enjoin you love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What mortified philosophy is hoarse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all in vain, with bidding you despise?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If you desire faith&mdash;then you've faith enough:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What else seeks God&mdash;nay, what else seek ourselves?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You form a notion of me, we'll suppose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On hearsay; it's a favourable one:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"But still" (you add), "there was no such good man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because of contradiction in the facts.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One proves, for instance, he was born in Rome,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This Blougram; yet throughout the tales of him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I see he figures as an Englishman."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Well, the two things are reconcilable.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But would I rather you discovered that,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Subjoining&mdash;"Still, what matter though they be?<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">332</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Blougram concerns me nought, born here or there."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Pure faith indeed&mdash;you know not what you ask!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Naked belief in God the Omnipotent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sense of conscious creatures to be borne.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I say it's meant to hide him all it can,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that's what all the blessed evil's for.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its use in Time is to environ us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against that sight till we can bear its stress.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Less certainly would wither up at once<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than mind, confronted with the truth of him.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But time and earth case-harden us to live;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plays on and grows to be a man like us.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With me, faith means perpetual unbelief<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2 dotwide">. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .<br /></span>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">The sum of all is&mdash;yes, my doubt is great,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have read much, thought much, experienced much,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet would die rather than avow my fear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Naples' liquefaction may be false,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When set to happen by the palace-clock<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">According to the clouds or dinner-time.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I hear you recommend, I might at least<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">333</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Eliminate, decrassify my faith<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since I adopt it; keeping what I must<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And leaving what I can&mdash;such points as this.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I won't&mdash;that is, I can't throw one away.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Supposing there's no truth in what I hold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">About the need of trial to man's faith,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still, when you bid me purify the same,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To such a process I discern no end.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clearing off one excrescence to see two,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There's ever a next in size, now grown as big,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That meets the knife: I cut and cut again!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But Fichte's clever cut at God himself?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Experimentalize on sacred things!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The first step, I am master not to take.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">You'd find the cutting-process to your taste<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor see more danger in it,&mdash;you retort.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your taste's worth mine; but my taste proves more wise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When we consider that the steadfast hold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the extreme end of the chain of faith<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gives all the advantage, makes the difference<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We are their lords, or they are free of us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just as we tighten or relax our hold.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, other matters equal, we'll revert<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the first problem&mdash;which, if solved my way<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thrown into the balance, turns the scale&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How we may lead a comfortable life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How suit our luggage to the cabin's size.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">334</a></span>
+<span class="i2">Of course you are remarking all this time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How narrowly and grossly I view life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The masses, and regard complacently<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"The cabin," in our old phrase. Well, I do.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I act for, talk for, live for this world now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As this world prizes action, life and talk:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No prejudice to what next world may prove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose new laws and requirements, my best pledge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To observe then, is that I observe these now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall do hereafter what I do meanwhile.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let us concede (gratuitously though)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Next life relieves the soul of body, yields<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pure spiritual enjoyment: well, my friend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why lose this life i' the meantime, since its use<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May be to make the next life more intense?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Do you know, I have often had a dream<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Work it up in your next month's article)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Losing true life for ever and a day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through ever trying to be and ever being&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the evolution of successive spheres&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Before</i> its actual sphere and place of life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Halfway into the next, which having reached,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It shoots with corresponding foolery<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Halfway into the next still, on and off!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As when a traveller, bound from North to South,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A superfluity at Timbuctoo.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, through his journey, was the fool at ease?<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">335</a></span>
+<span class="i0">I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I take and like its way of life; I think<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My brothers, who administer the means,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Live better for my comfort&mdash;that's good too;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And God, if he pronounce upon such life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Approves my service, which is better still.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If he keep silence,&mdash;why, for you or me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or that brute beast pulled-up in to-day's "Times,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What odds is't, save to ourselves, what life we lead?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Turning to the life of Cardinal Wiseman,
+it is of especial interest in connection with
+Browning's portrayal of him to observe his
+earlier years. He was born in Spain, having
+a Spanish father of English descent and an
+English mother, all Catholics, as Blougram
+says, "There's one great form of Christian
+faith I happened to be born in." His mother
+took him as an infant, and laid him upon the
+altar of the Cathedral of Seville, and consecrated
+him to the service of the Church.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">336</a></span></p>
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_19" id="linki_19"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus019.jpg" width="365" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">Cardinal Wiseman</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>His father having died when he was a tiny
+boy, his mother took him and his brother to
+England where he was trained at the Catholic
+college of Ushaw. From there he went to
+Rome to study at the English Catholic College
+there. Later he became Rector of this College.
+The sketch of Wiseman at this period
+given by his biographer, Wilfred Ward, is
+most attractive. "Scattered through his 'Recollections'
+are interesting impressions left
+by his student life. While mastering the
+regular course of scholastic philosophy and
+theology sufficiently to take his degree with
+credit, his tastes were not primarily in this
+direction. The study of Roman antiquities,
+Christian and Pagan, was congenial to him,
+as was also the study of Italian art&mdash;in which
+he ultimately became proficient&mdash;and of
+music: and he early devoted himself to the
+Syriac and Arabic languages. In all these
+pursuits the enthusiasm and eminence of men
+living in Rome itself at this era of renaissance
+was a potent stimulus to work. The hours
+he set aside for reading were many more than
+the rule demanded. But the daily walk and
+the occasional expedition to places of historic
+interest outside of Rome helped also to store
+his mind and to fire his imagination." Wiseman
+writes, himself, of this period, "The life
+of the student in Rome should be one of
+unblended enjoyment. His very relaxations
+become at once subsidiary to his work and yet
+most delightfully recreative. His daily walks
+may be through the field of art ... his
+wanderings along the stream of time ... a
+thousand memories, a thousand associations
+accompany him." From this letter and from
+accounts of him he would seem to have been<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">337</a></span>
+possessed of a highly imaginative temperament,
+possibly more artistic than religious.
+Scholars, linguists, or historians, artists or
+antiquarians interested him far more than
+thinkers or theologians. In noting the effects
+on Wiseman's character of the thoughts and
+sights of Rome, "it must be observed," writes
+Ward, "that even the action of directly religious
+influences brought out his excessive
+impressionableness. His own inner life was
+as vivid a pageant to him as the history of the
+Church. He was liable at this time to the
+periods of spiritual exaltation&mdash;matched, as we
+shall see later on, by fits of intense despondency&mdash;which
+marked him through life."</p>
+
+<p>This remarkable intellectual activity brought
+with it doubts of religious truth. "The
+imaginative delight in Rome as a living
+witness to the faith entirely left him, and
+at the same time he was attacked by mental
+disturbances and doubts of the truth of
+Christianity. There are contemporary indications,
+and still plainer accounts in the
+letters of his later life, of acute suffering from
+these trials. The study of Biblical criticism,
+even in the early stages it had then reached,
+seems immediately to have occasioned them;
+and the suffering they caused him was aggravated
+into intense and almost alarming de<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">338</a></span>pression
+by the feebleness of his bodily health."
+He says, speaking of this phase in his life,
+"Many and many an hour have I passed, alone,
+in bitter tears, on the <i>loggia</i> of the English
+College, when every one was reposing in the
+afternoon, and I was fighting with subtle
+thoughts and venomous suggestions of a
+fiendlike infidelity which I durst not confide
+to any one, for there was no one that could
+have sympathized with me. This lasted for
+years; but it made me study and think, to
+conquer the plague&mdash;for I can hardly call
+it danger&mdash;both for myself and for others.
+But during the actual struggle the simple
+submission of faith is the only remedy.
+Thoughts against faith must be treated at
+the time like temptations against any other
+virtue&mdash;put away; though in cooler moments
+they may be safely analyzed and unraveled."
+Again he wrote of these years as,
+"Years of solitude, of desolation, years of
+shattered nerves, dread often of instant insanity,
+consumptive weakness, of sleepless
+nights and weary days, and hours of tears
+which no one witnessed."</p>
+
+<p>"Of the effect of these years of desolation
+on his character he speaks as being simply
+invaluable. It completed what Ushaw had
+begun, the training in patience, self-reliance,<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">339</a></span>
+and concentration in spite of mental depression.
+It was amid these trials, he adds, 'that
+I wrote my "Hor&aelig; Syriac&aelig;" and collected
+my notes for the lectures on the "Connection
+between Science and Revealed Religion" and
+the "Eucharist." Without this training I
+should not have thrown myself into the
+Puseyite controversy at a later period.' Any
+usefulness which discovered itself in later
+years he considers the 'result of self-discipline'
+during his inner conflict. The struggle so
+absorbed his energies that his early life was
+passed almost wholly free from the special
+trials to which that period is liable. He speaks
+of his youth as in that respect 'almost temptationless.'"
+This state of mind seemed to
+last about five years and then he writes in
+a letter:</p>
+
+<p>"I have felt myself for some months gradually
+passing into a new state of mind and
+heart which I can hardly describe, but which
+I trust is the last stage of mental progress, in
+which I hope I may much improve, but out
+of which I trust I may never pass. I could
+hardly express the calm mild frame of mind
+in which I have lived; company and society
+I have almost entirely shunned, or have moved
+through it as a stranger; hardly a disturbing
+thought, hardly a grating sensation has crossed<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">340</a></span>
+my being, of which a great feeling of love
+seems to have been the principle. Whither,
+I am inclined to ask myself, does all this
+tend? Whence does it proceed? I think I
+could make an interesting history of my
+mind's religious progress, if I may use a word
+shockingly perverted by modern fanatics, from
+the hard dry struggles I used to have when
+first I commenced to study on my own account,
+to the settling down into a state of stern
+conviction, and so after some years to the
+nobler and more soothing evidences furnished
+by the grand harmonies and beautiful features
+of religion, whether considered in contact
+with lower objects or viewed in her own
+crystal mirror. I find it curious, too, and interesting
+to trace the workings of those varied
+feelings upon my relations to the outward
+world. I remember how for years I lost all
+relish for the glorious ceremonies of the
+Church. I heeded not its venerable monuments
+and sacred records scattered over the
+city; or I studied them all with the dry eye
+of an antiquarian, looking in them for proofs,
+not for sensations, being ever actively alive
+to the collection of evidences and demonstrations
+of religious truth. But now that the
+time of my probation as I hope it was, is past,
+I feel as though the freshness of childhood's<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">341</a></span>
+thoughts had once more returned to me, my
+heart expands with renewed delight and delicious
+feelings every time I see the holy objects
+and practices around me, and I might
+almost say that I am leading a life of spiritual
+epicureanism, opening all my senses to a rich
+draught of religious sensations."</p>
+
+<p>From these glimpses it would appear that
+Wiseman was a much more sincere man in
+his religious feeling than he is given credit for
+by Browning. His belief is with him not a matter
+of cold, hard calculation as to the attitude
+which will be, so to speak, the most politic
+from both a worldly and a spiritual point of
+view. The beautiful passage beginning "Just
+when we are safest, there's a sunset touch"
+etc., comes nearer to the genuine enthusiasm
+of a Wiseman than any other in the poem.
+There is an essential difference between the
+minds of the poet and the man he portrays,
+which perhaps made it impossible for Browning
+fully to interpret Wiseman's attitude.
+Both have religious fervor, but Browning's
+is born of a consciousness of God revealed
+directly to himself, while Wiseman's consciousness
+of God comes to him primarily
+through the authority of the Church, that is
+through generations of authoritative believers
+the first of whom experienced the actuality of<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">342</a></span>
+Revelation. Hundreds and thousands of
+people have minds of this caliber. They
+cannot see a truth direct for themselves, they
+must be told by some person clothed in
+authority that this or that is true or false.
+To Wiseman the beauty of his own form of
+religion with its special dogmas made so
+strong an appeal, that, since he could only
+believe through authority, under any circumstances,
+it was natural to him to adopt the
+particular form that gave him the most satisfaction.
+Proofs detrimental to belief do not
+worry long with doubts such a mind, because
+the authority they depend on is not the authority
+of knowledge, but the authority of belief.
+This comes out clearly enough in one of
+Wiseman's letters in which after enumerating
+a number of proofs brought forward by various
+scholars tending to cast discredit on the
+dogmas of the Church, he triumphantly exclaims,
+"And yet, who that has an understanding
+to judge, is driven for a moment
+from the holdings of faith by such comparisons
+as these!"</p>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_20" id="linki_20"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus020.jpg" width="318" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">Sacred Heart</p>
+<p class="center smaller"><i>F. Utenbach</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Upon looking through his writings there
+will always be found in his expression of belief,
+I think, that ring of true sincerity as well
+as what I should call an intense artistic delight
+in the essential beauty of his religion.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">343</a></span>
+As to Blougram's argument that he believed
+in living in the world while he was in it,
+Wiseman's life was certainly not that of a
+worldling alone, though he is described by
+one person as being "a genuine priest, very
+good looking and able bodied, and with much
+apparent practice in the world." He was far
+too much of a student and worker to be altogether
+so worldly-minded as Browning represents
+him.</p>
+
+<p>His chief interest for Englishmen is his
+connection with the Tractarian Movement.
+The wish of his soul was to aid the Catholic
+Revival in England, and with that end in
+view he visited England in 1835. Two
+years before, the movement at Oxford, known
+as the Tractarian Movement had begun.
+The opinions of the men in this movement
+were, as every one knows, printed in a series
+of ninety tracts of which Newman wrote
+twenty-four. It was an outgrowth of the
+conditions of the time. To sum up in the
+words of Withrow,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> "The Church of England
+had distinctly lost ground as a directing and
+controlling force in the nation. The most
+thoughtful and earnest minds in the Church
+felt the need of a great religious awakening
+and an aggressive movement to regain its<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">344</a></span>
+lost influence." As Dean Church describes
+them, the two characteristic forms of Christianity
+in the Church of England were the
+High Church, and the Evangelicals, or Low
+<a name='TC_38'></a><ins title="Left in ending quote with unknown start">Church."</ins> Of the former he says: "Its better
+members were highly cultivated, benevolent
+men, intolerant of irregularities both of doctrine
+and life, whose lives were governed by
+an unostentatious but solid and unfaltering
+piety, ready to burst forth on occasion into
+fervid devotion. Its worse members were
+jobbers and hunters after preferment, pluralists
+who built fortunes and endowed families
+out of the Church, or country gentlemen in
+orders, who rode to hounds and shot and
+danced and farmed, and often did worse
+things."</p>
+
+<p>But at Oxford was a group of men of intense
+moral earnestness including Newman,
+Pusey, Keble, Arnold, Maurice, Kingsley, and
+others, who began an active propaganda of
+the new or revised doctrines of the Oxford
+Movement.</p>
+
+<p>"The success of the Tracts," says Molesworth,
+"was much greater, and the outcry
+against them far louder and fiercer, than their
+authors had expected. The Tracts were at
+first small and simple, but became large and
+learned theological treatises. Changes, too,<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">345</a></span>
+came over the views of some of the writers.
+Doctrines which probably would have shocked
+them at first were put forward with a recklessness
+which success had increased. Alarm
+was excited, remonstrances stronger and
+stronger were addressed to them. They were
+attacked as Romanizing in their tendency."</p>
+
+<p>"The effect of such writing was two-fold<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a>&mdash;the
+public were dismayed and certain members
+of the Tractarian party avowed their
+intention of becoming Romanists. So decided
+was the setting of the tide towards Rome
+that Newman made a vigorous effort to turn
+it by his famous Tract No. 90. In this he
+endeavored to show that it was possible to
+interpret the Thirty-nine Articles in the interest
+of Roman Catholicism. This tract
+aroused a storm of indignation. The violent
+controversy which it occasioned led to
+the discontinuance of the series."</p>
+
+<p>Such in little was this remarkable movement.
+When Tract No. 90 appeared Wiseman
+had been in England for some time, and
+had been a strong influence in taking many
+thinking men in the direction of Rome. His
+lectures and discourses upon his first visit to
+England had attracted remarkable attention.
+The account runs by one who attended his<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">346</a></span>
+lectures to Catholics and Protestants: "Society
+in this country was impressed, and listened
+almost against its will, and listened not
+displeased. Here was a young Roman priest,
+fresh from the center of Catholicism, who
+showed himself master, not only of the intricacies
+of polemical discussion but of the
+amenities of civilized life. The spacious
+church of Moorfields was thronged on every
+evening of Dr. Wiseman's appearance. Many
+persons of position and education were converted,
+and all departed with abated prejudice,
+and with very different notions about
+Catholicism from those with which they had
+been prepossessed by their education." Wiseman,
+himself, wrote, "I had the consolation
+of witnessing the patient and edifying attention
+of a crowded audience, many of whom
+stood for two hours without any symptom of
+impatience."</p>
+
+<p>The great triumph for Wiseman, however,
+was when, shortly after Tract 90, Newman,
+"a man," described "in many ways, the most
+remarkable that England has seen during the
+century, perhaps the most remarkable whom
+the English Church has produced in any century,"
+went over to the Church of Rome and
+was confirmed by Wiseman. Others followed
+his example and by 1853 as many as four<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">347</a></span>
+hundred clergymen and laity had become
+Roman Catholics.</p>
+
+<p>The controversies and discussions of that
+time, it must be remembered, were more upon
+the dogmas of the church than upon what we
+should call to-day the essential truths of religion.
+Yet, to a certain order of mind dogmas
+seem important truths. There are those
+whose religious attitude cannot be preserved
+without belief in dogmas, and the advantage
+of the Catholic Church is that it holds firmly
+to its dogmas, come what may. It was expected,
+however, that this Romeward Movement
+would arouse intense antipathy. "The
+arguments by which it was justified were considered,
+in many cases, disingenuous, if not
+Jesuitical."</p>
+
+<p>In opposition of this sort we come nearer
+to Browning's attitude of mind. Because
+such arguments as Wiseman and the Tractarians
+used could not convince him, he takes
+the ordinary ground of the opposition, that in
+using such arguments they must be insincere,
+and they must be perfectly conscious of their
+insincerity. Still, in spite of the fact that
+Browning's mind could not get inside of
+Blougram's, he shows that he has some sympathy
+for the Bishop in the close of the poem
+where he says, "He said true things but called<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">348</a></span>
+them by wrong names." Raise Blougram's
+philosophy to the plane of the mysticism of
+a Browning, and the arguments for belief
+would be much the same but the <i>counters</i> in
+the arguments would become symbols instead
+of dogmas.</p>
+
+<p>In "Christmas-Eve and Easter Day,"
+Browning becomes the true critic of the
+nineteenth-century religious movements. He
+passes in review in a series of dramatic pictures
+the three most diverse modes of religious
+thought of the century. The dissenter's
+view is symbolized by a scene in a very humble
+chapel in England, the Catholic view by a
+vision of high mass at St. Peter's and the
+Agnostic view by a vision of a lecture by a
+learned German professor,&mdash;while the view
+of the modern mystic who remains religious
+in the face of all destructive criticism is shown
+in the speaker of the poem. The intuitional,
+aspiring side of his nature is symbolized by
+the vision of Christ that appears to him, while
+the intensity of its power fluctuates as he
+either holds fast or lets go the garment of
+Christ. Opposed to his intuitional side is his
+reasoning side.</p>
+
+<p>Possibly the picture of the dissenting chapel
+is exaggeratedly humble, though if we suppose
+it to be a Methodist Chapel, it may be<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">349</a></span>
+true to life, as Methodism was the form of
+religion which made its appeal to the lowest
+classes. Indeed, at the time of its first successes,
+it was the saving grace of England.
+"But for the moral antiseptic," writes Withrow,
+"furnished by Methodism, and the revival of
+religion in all the churches which it produced,
+the history of England would have
+been far other than it was. It would probably
+have been swept into the maelstrom of revolution
+and shared the political and religious
+convulsions of the neighboring nation," that
+is the French Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>"But Methodism had greatly changed the
+condition of the people. It had rescued vast
+multitudes from ignorance and barbarism,
+and raised them from almost the degradation
+of beasts to the condition of men and the
+fellowship of saints. The habits of thrift and
+industry which it fostered led to the accumulation,
+if not of wealth, at least to that of a
+substantial competence; and built up that
+safeguard of the Commonwealth, a great, intelligent,
+industrious, religious Middle-Class in
+the community."</p>
+
+<p>After the death of Wesley came various
+divisions in the Methodist Church; it has so
+flexible a system that it may be adapted to
+very varied needs of humanity, and in that<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">350</a></span>
+has consisted its great power. The mission
+of the church was originally to the poor and
+lowly, but "It has won for itself in spite of
+scorn and persecution," says Dr. Sch&ouml;ll, "a
+place of power in the State and church of
+Great Britain."</p>
+
+<p>A scornful attitude is vividly brought
+before us in the opening of this poem, to be
+succeeded later by a more charitable point of
+view.</p>
+
+<h3>CHRISTMAS-EVE</h3>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">I</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Out of the little chapel I burst<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Into the fresh night-air again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Five minutes full, I waited first<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the doorway, to escape the rain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That drove in gusts down the common's centre<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At the edge of which the chapel stands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before I plucked up heart to enter.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Heaven knows how many sorts of hands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Reached past me, groping for the latch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the inner door that hung on catch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More obstinate the more they fumbled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till, giving way at last with a scold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">One sheep more to the rest in fold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And left me irresolute, standing sentry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Six feet long by three feet wide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Partitioned off from the vast inside<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">351</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I blocked up half of it at least.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No remedy; the rain kept driving.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They eyed me much as some wild beast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That congregation, still arriving,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some of them by the main road, white<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A long way past me into the night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Skirting the common, then diverging;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not a few suddenly emerging<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the common's self thro' the paling-gaps,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the road stops short with its safeguard border<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the most turned in yet more abruptly<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From a certain squalid knot of alleys,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which now the little chapel rallies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And leads into day again,&mdash;its priestliness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lending itself to hide their beastliness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those neophytes too much in lack of it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That, where you cross the common as I did,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And meet the party thus presided,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Mount Zion" with Love-lane at the back of it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They front you as little disconcerted<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As, bound for the hills, her fate averted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And her wicked people made to mind him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_21" id="linki_21"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus021.jpg" width="489" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">The Nativity</p>
+<p class="center smaller"><i>Fra Lippo Lippi</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">II</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Well, from the road, the lanes or the common<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In came the flock: the fat weary woman,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Panting and bewildered, down-clapping<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her umbrella with a mighty report,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">352</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Grounded it by me, wry and flapping,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A wreck of whalebones; then, with a snort,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a startled horse, at the interloper<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Who humbly knew himself improper,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But could not shrink up small enough)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Round to the door, and in,&mdash;the gruff<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hinge's invariable scold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Making my very blood run cold.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On broken clogs, the many-tattered<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the sickly babe she tried to smother<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Somehow up, with its spotted face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Already from my own clothes' dropping,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Then, stooping down to take off her pattens,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She bore them defiantly, in each hand one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Planted together before her breast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And its babe, as good as a lance in rest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Close on her heels, the dingy satins<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of a female something, past me flitted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With lips as much too white, as a streak<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lay far too red on each hollow cheek;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All that was left of a woman once,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Holding at least its tongue for the nonce.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then a tall yellow man, like the <i>Penitent Thief</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And eyelids screwed together tight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Led himself in by some inner light.<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">353</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And, except from him, from each that entered,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I got the same interrogation&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"What, you the alien, you have ventured<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To take with us, the elect, your station?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A carer for none of it, a <i>Gallio</i>!"&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thus, plain as print, I read the glance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At a common prey, in each countenance<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The draught, it always sent in shutting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made the flame of the single tallow candle<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the cracked square lantern I stood under,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As it were, the luckless cause of scandal:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I verily fancied the zealous light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(In the chapel's secret, too!) for spite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would shudder itself clean off the wick,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the airs of a Saint John's Candlestick.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was no standing it much longer.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew stronger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the weather sends you a chance visitor?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But still, despite the pretty perfection<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To which you carry your trick of exclusiveness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, taking God's word under wise protection,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Correct its tendency to diffusiveness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bid one reach it over hot plough-shares,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still, as I say, though you've found salvation,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If should choose to cry, as now, 'Shares!'&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">See if the best of you bars me my ration!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I prefer, if you please, for my expounder<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder;<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">354</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Supposing I don the marriage vestiment:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So, shut your mouth and open your Testament,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And carve me my portion at your quickliest!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With wizened face in want of soap,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(After stopping outside, for his cough was bad,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To get the fit over, poor gentle creature,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so avoid disturbing the preacher)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the shutting door, and entered likewise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Received the hinge's accustomed greeting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And found myself in full conventicle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which, calling its flock to their special clover,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Found all assembled and one sheep over,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">III</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I very soon had enough of it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The hot smell and the human noises,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my neighbor's coat, the greasy cuff of it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the preaching man's immense stupidity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To meet his audience's avidity.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You needed not the wit of the Sibyl<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No sooner our friend had got an inkling<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">355</a></span>
+<span class="i0">(Whene'er 'twas the thought first struck him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How death, at unawares, might duck him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deeper than the grave, and quench<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As to hug the book of books to pieces:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nay, had but a single face of my neighbors<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Appeared to suspect that the preacher's labors<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were help which the world could be saved without,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis odds but I might have borne in quiet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A qualm or two at my spiritual diet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or (who can tell?) perchance even mustered<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the flock sat on, divinely flustered,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With such content in every snuffle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the devil inside us loves to ruffle.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My old fat woman purred with pleasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And thumb round thumb went twirling faster,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While she, to his periods keeping measure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Maternally devoured the pastor.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The man with the handkerchief untied it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Showed us a horrible wen inside it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gave his eyelids yet another screwing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And rocked himself as the woman was doing.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kept down his cough. 'Twas too provoking!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">356</a></span>
+<span class="i2">"I wanted a taste, and now there's enough of it,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I flung out of the little chapel.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There was a lull in the rain, a lull<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the wind too; the moon was risen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And would have shone out pure and full,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But for the ramparted cloud-prison,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Block on block built up in the West,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For what purpose the wind knows best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who changes his mind continually.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the empty other half of the sky<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seemed in its silence as if it knew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What, any moment, might look through<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A chance gap in that fortress massy:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Through its fissures you got hints<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now, a dull lion-color, now, brassy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like furnace-smoke just ere flames bellow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All a-simmer with intense strain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To let her through,&mdash;then blank again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the hope of her appearance failing.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just by the chapel, a break in the railing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shows a narrow path directly across;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Besides, you go gently all the way uphill.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I stooped under and soon felt better;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My mind was full of the scene I had left,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That placid flock, that pastor vociferant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">&mdash;How this outside was pure and different!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sermon, now&mdash;what a mingled weft<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">357</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Of good and ill! Were either less,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Its fellow had colored the whole distinctly;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But alas for the excellent earnestness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But as surely false, in their quaint presentment,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">However to pastor and flock's contentment!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With his provings and parallels twisted and twined,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till how could you know them, grown double their size<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the natural fog of the good man's mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Haloed about with the common's damps?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The zeal was good, and the aspiration;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pharaoh received no demonstration,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By his Baker's dream of Baskets Three,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the doctrine of the Trinity,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Although, as our preacher thus embellished it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Apparently his hearers relished it<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With so unfeigned a gust&mdash;who knows if<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They did not prefer our friend to Joseph?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">These people have really felt, no doubt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A something, the motion they style the <i>Call</i> of them;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And this is their method of bringing about,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By a mechanism of words and tones,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(So many texts in so many groans)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sort of reviving and reproducing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">More or less perfectly, (who can tell?)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The mood itself, which strengthens by using;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And how that happens, I understand well.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A tune was born in my head last week,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">358</a></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when, next week, I take it back again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My head will sing to the engine's clack again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While it only makes my neighbor's haunches stir,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Finding no dormant musical sprout<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In him, as in me, to be jolted out.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He gets no more from the railway's preaching<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still, why paint over their door "Mount Zion,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The reasoning which follows upon this is
+characteristic of Browning. Perceiving everywhere
+in the world transcendent power, and
+knowing love in little, from that transcendent
+love may be deduced. His reasoning finally
+brings him to a state of vision. His subjective
+intuitions become palpable objective symbols,
+a not infrequent occurrence in highly wrought
+and sensitive minds.</p>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">V</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But wherefore be harsh on a single case?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Does the self-same weary thing take place?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The same endeavor to make you believe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with much the same effect, no more:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Each method abundantly convincing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As I say, to those convinced before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But scarce to be swallowed without wincing<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">359</a></span>
+<span class="i0">By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have my own church equally:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in this church my faith sprang first!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(I said, as I reached the rising ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the wind began again, with a burst<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I entered his church-door, nature leading me)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;In youth I looked to these very skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And probing their immensities,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I found God there, his visible power;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the power, an equal evidence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That his love, there too, was the nobler dower.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the loving worm within its clod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were diviner than a loveless god<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You know what I mean: God's all, man's nought:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But also, God, whose pleasure brought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man into being, stands away<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As it were a handbreadth off, to give<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Room for the newly-made to live,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And look at him from a place apart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And use his gifts of brain and heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Given, indeed, but to keep for ever.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who speaks of man, then, must not sever<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man's very elements from man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saying, "But all is God's"&mdash;whose plan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was to create man and then leave him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Able, his own word saith, to grieve him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But able to glorify him too,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a mere machine could never do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That prayed or praised, all unaware<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">360</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Made perfect as a thing of course.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man, therefore, stands on his own stock<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of love and power as a pin-point rock:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, looking to God who ordained divorce<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the rock from his boundless continent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sees, in his power made evident,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only excess by a million-fold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O'er the power God gave man in the mould.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For, note: man's hand, first formed to carry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">&mdash;Advancing in power by one degree;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And why count steps through eternity?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But love is the ever-springing fountain:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man may enlarge or narrow his bed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the water's play, but the water-head&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How can he multiply or reduce it?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As easy create it, as cause it to cease;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He may profit by it, or abuse it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But 'tis not a thing to bear increase<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As power does: be love less or more<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the heart of man, he keeps it shut<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or opes it wide, as he pleases, but<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love's sum remains what it was before.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, gazing up, in my youth, at love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As seen through power, ever above<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All modes which make it manifest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My soul brought all to a single test&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That he, the Eternal First and Last,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who, in his power, had so surpassed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All man conceives of what is might,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Would prove as infinitely good;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would never, (my soul understood,)<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">361</a></span>
+<span class="i0">With power to work all love desires,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bestow e'en less than man requires;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That he who endlessly was teaching,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above my spirit's utmost reaching,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What love can do in the leaf or stone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(So that to master this alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This done in the stone or leaf for me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I must go on learning endlessly)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would never need that I, in turn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Should point him out defect unheeded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And show that God had yet to learn<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What the meanest human creature needed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Not life, to wit, for a few short years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tracking his way through doubts and fears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the stupid earth on which I stay<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Suffers no change, but passive adds<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Its myriad years to myriads,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though I, he gave it to, decay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seeing death come and choose about me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my dearest ones depart without me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I shall behold thee, face to face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O God, and in thy light retrace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How in all I loved here, still wast thou!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I shall find as able to satiate<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The love, thy gift, as my spirit's wonder<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art able to quicken and sublimate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With this sky of thine, that I now walk under,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And glory in thee for, as I gaze<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus, thus! Oh, let men keep their ways<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">362</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be this my way! And this is mine!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For lo, what think you? suddenly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Received at once the full fruition<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the moon's consummate apparition.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The black cloud-barricade was riven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ruined beneath her feet, and driven<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">North and South and East lay ready<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sprang across them and stood steady.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From heaven to heaven extending, perfect<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the mother-moon's self, full in face.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It rose, distinctly at the base<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With its seven proper colors chorded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which still, in the rising, were compressed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Until at last they coalesced,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And supreme the spectral creature lorded<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a triumph of whitest white,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above which intervened the night.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But above night too, like only the next,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The second of a wondrous sequence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Reaching in rare and rarer frequence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Another rainbow rose, a mightier,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fainter, flushier and flightier,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rapture dying along its verge.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose, from the straining topmost dark,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On to the keystone of that arc?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">363</a></span></p>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This sight was shown me, there and then,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Me, one out of a world of men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Singled forth, as the chance might hap<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To another if, in a thunderclap<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where I heard noise and you saw flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some one man knew God called his name.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For me, I think I said, "Appear!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Good were it to be ever here.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If thou wilt, let me build to thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Service-tabernacles three,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where, forever in thy presence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In ecstatic acquiescence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far alike from thriftless learning<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ignorance's undiscerning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I may worship and remain!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thus at the show above me, gazing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With upturned eyes, I felt my brain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Glutted with the glory, blazing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Throughout its whole mass, over and under<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Until at length it burst asunder<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And out of it bodily there streamed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The too-much glory, as it seemed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Passing from out me to the ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then palely serpentining round<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the dark with mazy error.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All at once I looked up with terror.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He was there.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He himself with his human air.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the narrow pathway, just before.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I saw the back of him, no more&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He had left the chapel, then, as I.<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">364</a></span>
+<span class="i0">I forgot all about the sky.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No face: only the sight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of a sweepy garment, vast and white,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a hem that I could recognize.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I felt terror, no surprise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My mind filled with the cataract,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At one bound of the mighty fact.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"I remember, he did say<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Doubtless that, to this world's end,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where two or three should meet and pray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He would be in the midst, their friend;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Certainly he was there with them!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And my pulses leaped for joy<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the golden thought without alloy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I saw his very vesture's hem.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I hastened, cried out while I pressed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the salvation of the vest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"But not so, Lord! It cannot be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That thou, indeed, art leaving me&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Me, that have despised thy friends!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did my heart make no amends?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art the love <i>of God</i>&mdash;above<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His power, didst hear me place his love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that was leaving the world for thee.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore thou must not turn from me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As I had chosen the other part!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Folly and pride o'ercame my heart.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our best is bad, nor bears thy test;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still, it should be our very best.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I thought it best that thou, the spirit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Be worshipped in spirit and in truth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in beauty, as even we require it<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">365</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I left but now, as scarcely fitted<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For thee: I knew not what I pitied.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, all I felt there, right or wrong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What is it to thee, who curest sinning?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Am I not weak as thou art strong?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I have looked to thee from the beginning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Straight up to thee through all the world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To nothingness on either side:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And since the time thou wast descried,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spite of the weak heart, so have I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lived ever, and so fain would die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Living and dying, thee before!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But if thou leavest me&mdash;&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">IX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">Less or more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I suppose that I spoke thus.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When,&mdash;have mercy, Lord, on us!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The whole face turned upon me full.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And I spread myself beneath it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the cleansing sun, his wool,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Some defiled, discolored web&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So lay I, saturate with brightness.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And when the flood appeared to ebb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo, I was walking, light and swift,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With my senses settling fast and steadying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But my body caught up in the whirl and drift<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On, just before me, still to be followed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As it carried me after with its motion:<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">366</a></span>
+<span class="i0">What shall I say?&mdash;as a path were hollowed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And a man went weltering through the ocean,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sucked along in the flying wake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the luminous water-snake.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Darkness and cold were cloven, as through<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I passed, upborne yet walking too.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I turned to myself at intervals,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"So he said, so it befalls.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God who registers the cup<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of mere cold water, for his sake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To a disciple rendered up,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Disdains not his own thirst to slake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the poorest love was ever offered:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And because my heart I proffered,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With true love trembling at the brim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He suffers me to follow him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For ever, my own way,&mdash;dispensed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From seeking to be influenced<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By all the less immediate ways<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That earth, in worships manifold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The vision of high mass at St. Peters in
+Rome is the antipode of the little Methodist
+Chapel. The Catholic Church is the
+church of all others which has gathered about
+itself the marvels of art in sculpture, painting
+and music. As the chapel depressed with its
+ugliness, the great cathedral entrances with its
+beauty.</p>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_22" id="linki_22"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus022.jpg" width="399" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">The Transfiguration</p>
+<p class="center smaller"><i>Fra Angelico</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">367</a></span></p>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">X</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And so we crossed the world and stopped.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For where am I, in city or plain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Since I am 'ware of the world again?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And what is this that rises propped<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With pillars of prodigious girth?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is it really on the earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This miraculous Dome of God?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has the angel's measuring-rod<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which numbered cubits, gem from gem,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meted it out,&mdash;and what he meted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have the sons of men completed?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Binding, ever as he bade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Columns in the colonnade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With arms wide open to embrace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The entry of the human race<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the breast of ... what is it, yon building,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With marble for brick, and stones of price<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For garniture of the edifice?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now I see; it is no dream;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It stands there and it does not seem;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For ever, in pictures, thus it looks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thus I have read of it in books<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Often in England, leagues away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wondered how these fountains play,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Growing up eternally<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each to a musical water-tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before my eyes, in the light of the moon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the granite lavers underneath.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Liar and dreamer in your teeth!<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">368</a></span>
+<span class="i0">I, the sinner that speak to you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both this and more. For see, for see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dark is rent, mine eye is free<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To pierce the crust of the outer wall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I view inside, and all there, all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the swarming hollow of a hive,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The whole Basilica alive!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Men in the chancel, body and nave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Men on the pillars' architrave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Men on the statues, men on the tombs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All famishing in expectation<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the main-altar's consummation.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For see, for see, the rapturous moment<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Approaches, and earth's best endowment<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blends with heaven's; the taper-fires<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pant up, the winding brazen spires<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heave loftier yet the baldachin;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The incense-gaspings, long kept in,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Holds his breath and grovels latent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if God's hushing finger grazed him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Like Behemoth when he praised him)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the silver bell's shrill tinkling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the sudden pavement strewed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With faces of the multitude.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth breaks up, time drops away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In flows heaven, with its new day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of endless life, when He who trod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Very man and very God,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This earth in weakness, shame and pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dying the death whose signs remain<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">369</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Up yonder on the accursed tree,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall come again, no more to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of captivity the thrall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the one God, All in all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">King of kings, Lord of lords,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As His servant John received the words,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"I died, and live for evermore!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet I was left outside the door.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Why sit I here on the threshold-stone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Left till He return, alone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save for the garment's extreme fold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Abandoned still to bless my hold?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My reason, to my doubt, replied,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if a book were opened wide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And at a certain page I traced<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Every record undefaced,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Added by successive years,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The harvestings of truth's stray ears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Singly gleaned, and in one sheaf<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bound together for belief.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yes, I said&mdash;that he will go<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sit with these in turn, I know.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their faith's heart beats, though her head swims<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too giddily to guide her limbs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Disabled by their palsy-stroke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From propping mine. Though Rome's gross yoke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drops off, no more to be endured,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her teaching is not so obscured<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By errors and perversities,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That no truth shines athwart the lies:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he, whose eye detects a spark<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even where, to man's the whole seems dark,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">370</a></span>
+<span class="i0">May well see flame where each beholder<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Acknowledges the embers smoulder.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I, a mere man, fear to quit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The clue God gave me as most fit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To guide my footsteps through life's maze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because himself discerns all ways<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Open to reach him: I, a man<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Able to mark where faith began<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To swerve aside, till from its summit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Judgment drops her damning <a name='TC_39'></a><ins title="Changed period to comma">plummet,</ins><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pronouncing such a fatal space<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Departed from the founder's base:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He will not bid me enter too,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But rather sit, as now I do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Awaiting his return outside.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;'Twas thus my reason straight replied<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And joyously I turned, and pressed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The garment's skirt upon my breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Until, afresh its light suffusing me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart cried&mdash;What has been abusing me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I should wait here lonely and coldly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Instead of rising, entering boldly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Baring truth's face, and letting drift<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her veils of lies as they choose to shift?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do these men praise him? I will raise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My voice up to their point of praise!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I see the error; but above<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The scope of error, see the love.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, love of those first Christian days!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Fanned so soon into a blaze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the spark preserved by the trampled sect,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That the antique sovereign Intellect<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which then sat ruling in the world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a change in dreams, was hurled<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">371</a></span>
+<span class="i0">From the throne he reigned upon:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You looked up and he was gone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gone, his glory of the pen!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Love, with Greece and Rome in ken,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bade her scribes abhor the trick<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of poetry and rhetoric,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And exult with hearts set free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In blessed imbecility<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leaving Sallust incomplete.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Love, while able to acquaint her<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the thousand statues yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fresh from chisel, pictures wet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From brush, she saw on every side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Chose rather with an infant's pride<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To frame those portents which impart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such unction to true Christian Art.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gone, music too! The air was stirred<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By happy wings: Terpander's bird<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(That, when the cold came, fled away)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would tarry not the wintry day,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As more-enduring sculpture must,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till filthy saints rebuked the gust<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With which they chanced to get a sight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of some dear naked Aphrodite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They glanced a thought above the toes of,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By breaking zealously her nose off.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love, surely, from that music's lingering,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might have filched her organ-fingering,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor chosen rather to set prayings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love was the startling thing, the new:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love was the all-sufficient too;<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">372</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And seeing that, you see the rest:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a babe can find its mother's breast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As well in darkness as in light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">True, the world's eyes are open now:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Less need for me to disallow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some few that keep Love's zone unbuckled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Peevish as ever to be suckled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lulled by the same old baby-prattle<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With intermixture of the rattle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When she would have them creep, stand steady<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon their feet, or walk already,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not to speak of trying to climb.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will be wise another time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And not desire a wall between us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When next I see a church-roof cover<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So many species of one genus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All with foreheads bearing <i>lover</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Written above the earnest eyes of them;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All with breasts that beat for beauty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In noble daring, steadfast duty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heroic in passion, or in action,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, lowered for sense's satisfaction,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the mere outside of human creatures,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mere perfect form and faultless features.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What? with all Rome here, whence to levy<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Such contributions to their appetite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With women and men in a gorgeous bevy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On their southern eyes, restrained from feeding<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the glories of their ancient reading,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the beauties of their modern singing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the wonders of the builder's bringing,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">373</a></span>
+<span class="i0">On the majesties of Art around them,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And, all these loves, late struggling incessant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When faith has at last united and bound them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They offer up to God for a present?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, I will, on the whole, be rather proud of it,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And, only taking the act in reference<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the other recipients who might have allowed it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I will rejoice that God had the preference.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So I summed up my new resolves:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Too much love there can never be.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And where the intellect devolves<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Its function on love exclusively,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I, a man who possesses both,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will accept the provision, nothing loth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That my intellect may find its share.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In his next experience the speaker learns
+what the effect of scientific criticism has been
+upon historical Christianity.</p>
+
+<p>The warfare between science and religion
+forms one of the most fascinating and terrible
+chapters in the annals of the development of
+the human mind. About the middle of the
+nineteenth century the war became general.
+It was no longer a question of a skirmish over
+this or that particular discovery in science
+which would cause some long-cherished dogma
+to totter; it was a full battle all along the line,
+and now that the smoke has cleared away, it<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">374</a></span>
+is safe to say that science sees, on the one
+hand, it cannot conquer religion, and religion
+sees, on the other, it cannot conquer science.
+What each has done is to strip the other of
+its untruths, leaving its truths to grow by
+the light each holds up for the other. Together
+they advance toward the knowledge of the
+Most High.</p>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">XIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No sooner said than out in the night!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart beat lighter and more light:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And still, as before, I was walking swift,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With my senses settling fast and steadying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But my body caught up in the whirl and drift<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On just before me, still to be followed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As it carried me after with its motion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;What shall I say?&mdash;as a path were hollowed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And a man went weltering through the ocean,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sucked along in the flying wake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the luminous water-snake.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XIV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alone! I am left alone once more&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(Save for the garment's extreme fold<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Abandoned still to bless my hold)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alone, beside the entrance-door<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of a sort of temple,&mdash;perhaps a college,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Like nothing I ever saw before<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At home in England, to my knowledge.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tall old quaint irregular town!<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">375</a></span>
+<span class="i2">It may be ... though which, I can't affirm ... any<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And this flight of stairs where I sit down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or G&ouml;ttingen, I have to thank for 't?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It may be G&ouml;ttingen,&mdash;most likely.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the open door I catch obliquely<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Glimpses of a lecture-hall;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And not a bad assembly neither,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ranged decent and symmetrical<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On benches, waiting what's to see there;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, holding still by the vesture's hem,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I also resolve to see with them,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cautious this time how I suffer to slip<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The chance of joining in fellowship<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With any that call themselves his friends;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As these folk do, I have a notion.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But hist&mdash;a buzzing and emotion!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All settle themselves, the while ascends<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Step by step, deliberate<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Because of his cranium's over-freight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Three parts sublime to one grotesque,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If I have proved an accurate guesser,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hawk-nosed high-cheek-boned Professor.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I felt at once as if there ran<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A shoot of love from my heart to the man&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That sallow virgin-minded studious<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Martyr to mild enthusiasm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That woke my sympathetic spasm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Beside some spitting that made me sorry)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stood, surveying his auditory<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a wan pure look, well nigh celestial,<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">376</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Those blue eyes had survived so much!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While, under the foot they could not smutch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lay all the fleshly and the bestial.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Over he bowed, and arranged his notes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the auditory's clearing of throats<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was done with, died into a silence;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And, when each glance was upward sent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Each bearded mouth composed intent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He pushed back higher his spectacles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And giving his head of hair&mdash;a hake<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of undressed tow, for color and quantity&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One rapid and impatient shake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(As our own Young England adjusts a jaunty tie<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When about to impart, on mature digestion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some thrilling view of the surplice-question)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And he began it by observing<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How reason dictated that men<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should rectify the natural swerving,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By a reversion, now and then,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the well-heads of knowledge, few<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And far away, whence rolling grew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The life-stream wide whereat we drink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Commingled, as we needs must think,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With waters alien to the source;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To do which, aimed this eve's discourse;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since, where could be a fitter time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For tracing backward to its prime<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This Christianity, this lake,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">377</a></span>
+<span class="i0">This reservoir, whereat we slake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From one or other bank, our thirst?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, he proposed inquiring first<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the various sources whence<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This Myth of Christ is derivable;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Demanding from the evidence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(Since plainly no such life was liveable)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How these phenomena should class?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether 'twere best opine Christ was,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or never was at all, or whether<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He was and was not, both together&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It matters little for the name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So the idea be left the same.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only, for practical purpose's sake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twas obviously as well to take<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The popular story,&mdash;understanding<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How the ineptitude of the time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the penman's prejudice, expanding<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fact into fable fit for the clime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Into this myth, this Individuum,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, when reason had strained and abated it<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of foreign matter, left, for residuum,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A man!&mdash;a right true man, however,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose work was worthy a man's endeavor:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To his disciples, for rather believing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He was just omnipotent and omniscient,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His word, their tradition,&mdash;which, though it meant<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Something entirely different<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From all that those who only heard it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In their simplicity thought and averred it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had yet a meaning quite as respectable:<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">378</a></span>
+<span class="i0">For, among other doctrines delectable,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was he not surely the first to insist on<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The natural sovereignty of our race?&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And while his cough, like a drouthy piston,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The vesture still within my hand.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XVI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I could interpret its command.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This time he would not bid me enter<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The exhausted air-bell of the Critic.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Truth's atmosphere may grow mephitic<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Papist struggles with Dissenter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Impregnating its pristine clarity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;One, by his daily fare's vulgarity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Its gust of broken meat and garlic;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;One, by his soul's too-much presuming<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To turn the frankincense's fuming<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And vapors of the candle starlike<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the cloud her wings she buoys on.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Each, that thus sets the pure air seething,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">May poison it for healthy breathing&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the Critic leaves no air to poison;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Atom by atom, and leaves you&mdash;vacuity.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus much of Christ does he reject?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And what retain? His intellect?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What is it I must reverence duly?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Poor intellect for worship, truly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which tells me simply what was told<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(If mere morality, bereft<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the God in Christ, be all that's left)<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">379</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Elsewhere by voices manifold;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With this advantage, that the stater<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Made nowise the important stumble<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of adding, he, the sage and humble,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was also one with the Creator.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You urge Christ's followers' simplicity:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But how does shifting blame, evade it?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have wisdom's words no more felicity?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The stumbling-block, his speech&mdash;who laid it?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How comes it that for one found able<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To sift the truth of it from fable,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Millions believe it to the letter?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Christ's goodness, then&mdash;does that fare better?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strange goodness, which upon the score<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of being goodness, the mere due<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of man to fellow-man, much more<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To God,&mdash;should take another view<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of its possessor's privilege,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bid him rule his race! You pledge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your fealty to such rule? What, all&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From heavenly John and Attic Paul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that brave weather-battered Peter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose stout faith only stood completer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For buffets, sinning to be pardoned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All, down to you, the man of men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Professing here at G&ouml;ttingen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Compose Christ's flock! They, you and I,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are sheep of a good man! And why?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The goodness,&mdash;how did he acquire it?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was it self-gained, did God inspire it?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Choose which; then tell me, on what ground<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should its possessor dare propound<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His claim to rise o'er us an inch?<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">380</a></span>
+<span class="i2">Were goodness all some man's invention,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who arbitrarily made mention<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What we should follow, and whence flinch,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What qualities might take the style<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of right and wrong,&mdash;and had such guessing<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Met with as general acquiescing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As graced the alphabet erewhile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When A got leave an Ox to be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For thus inventing thing and title<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worship were that man's fit requital.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But if the common conscience must<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be ultimately judge, adjust<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its apt name to each quality<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Already known,&mdash;I would decree<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worship for such mere demonstration<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And simple work of nomenclature,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Only the day I praised, not nature,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But Harvey, for the circulation.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would praise such a Christ, with pride<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And joy, that he, as none beside,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had taught us how to keep the mind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God gave him, as God gave his kind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Freer than they from fleshly taint:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would call such a Christ our Saint,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As I declare our Poet, him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose insight makes all others dim:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A thousand poets pried at life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And only one amid the strife<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rose to be Shakespeare: each shall take<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His crown, I'd say, for the world's sake&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though some objected&mdash;"Had we seen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heart and head of each, what screen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was broken there to give them light,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">381</a></span>
+<span class="i0">While in ourselves it shuts the sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We should no more admire, perchance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That these found truth out at a glance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than marvel how the bat discerns<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Led by a finer tact, a gift<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He boasts, which other birds must shift<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without, and grope as best they can."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No, freely I would praise the man,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor one whit more, if he contended<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That gift of his, from God descended.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah friend, what gift of man's does not?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No nearer something, by a jot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rise an infinity of nothings<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than one: take Euclid for your teacher:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Distinguish kinds: do crownings, clothings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Make that creator which was creature?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Multiply gifts upon man's head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And what, when all's done, shall be said<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But&mdash;the more gifted he, I ween!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That one's made Christ, this other, Pilate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And this might be all that has been,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So what is there to frown or smile at?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What is left for us, save, in growth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of soul, to rise up, far past both,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the gift looking to the giver,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And from the cistern to the river,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And from the finite to infinity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And from man's dust to God's divinity?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XVII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though he is so bright and we so dim,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">382</a></span>
+<span class="i0">We are made in his image to witness him:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And were no eye in us to tell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Instructed by no inner sense,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The light of heaven from the dark of hell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That light would want its evidence,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though justice, good and truth were still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Divine, if, by some demon's will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Law through the worlds, and right misnamed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No mere exposition of morality<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made or in part or in totality,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should win you to give it worship, therefore:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, if no better proof you will care for,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Whom do you count the worst man upon earth?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of what right is, than arrives at birth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the best man's acts that we bow before:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This last knows better&mdash;true, but my fact is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thence conclude that the real God-function<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is to furnish a motive and injunction<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For practising what we know already.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And such an injunction and such a motive<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As the God in Christ, do you waive, and "heady,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">High-minded," hang your tablet-votive<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Outside the fane on a finger-post?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Morality to the uttermost,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Supreme in Christ as we all confess,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Why need we prove would avail no jot<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To make him God, if God he were not?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What is the point where himself lays stress?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Does the precept run "Believe in good,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In justice, truth, now understand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the first time?"&mdash;or, "Believe in me,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">383</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Who lived and died, yet essentially<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Am Lord of Life?" Whoever can take<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The same to his heart and for mere love's sake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Conceive of the love,&mdash;that man obtains<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A new truth; no conviction gains<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of an old one only, made intense<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By a fresh appeal to his faded sense.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XVIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Can it be that he stays inside?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is the vesture left me to commune with?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Could my soul find aught to sing in tune with<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even at this lecture, if she tried?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, let me at lowest sympathize<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the lurking drop of blood that lies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the desiccated brain's white roots<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without throb for Christ's attributes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the lecturer makes his special boast!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If love's dead there, it has left a ghost.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Admire we, how from heart to brain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(Though to say so strike the doctors dumb)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One instinct rises and falls again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Restoring the equilibrium.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And how when the Critic had done his best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the pearl of price, at reason's test,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lay dust and ashes levigable<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the Professor's lecture-table,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When we looked for the inference and monition<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That our faith, reduced to such condition,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He bids us, when we least expect it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take back our faith,&mdash;if it be not just whole,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which fact pays damage done rewardingly,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">384</a></span>
+<span class="i0">So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Go home and venerate the myth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I thus have experimented with&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This man, continue to adore him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rather than all who went before him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all who ever followed after!"&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Surely for this I may praise you, my brother!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will you take the praise in tears or laughter?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That's one point gained: can I compass another?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unlearned love was safe from spurning&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can't we respect your loveless learning?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let us at least give learning honor!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What laurels had we showered upon her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Girding her loins up to perturb<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our theory of the Middle Verb;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or Turk-like brandishing a scimitar<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O'er anap&aelig;sts in comic-trimeter;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or curing the halt and maimed 'Iketides,'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While we lounged on at our indebted ease:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Instead of which, a tricksy demon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sets her at Titus or Philemon!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When ignorance wags his ears of leather<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hates God's word, 'tis altogether;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor leaves he his congenial thistles<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To go and browse on Paul's Epistles.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;And you, the audience, who might ravage<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The world wide, enviably savage,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor heed the cry of the retriever,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More than Herr Heine (before his fever),&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I do not tell a lie so arrant<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As say my passion's wings are furled up,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, without plainest heavenly warrant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I were ready and glad to give the world up&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But still, when you rub brow meticulous,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">385</a></span>
+<span class="i2">And ponder the profit of turning holy<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">If not for God's, for your own sake solely,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;God forbid I should find you ridiculous!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deduce from this lecture all that eases you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Christians,"&mdash;abhor the deist's pravity,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Go on, you shall no more move my gravity<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I find it in my heart to embarrass them<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By hinting that their stick's a mock horse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they really carry what they say carries them.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XIX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So sat I talking with my mind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I did not long to leave the door<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And find a new church, as before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But rather was quiet and inclined<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To prolong and enjoy the gentle resting<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From further tracking and trying and testing.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"This tolerance is a genial mood!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Said I, and a little pause ensued).<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And sees, each side, the good effects of it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A value for religion's self,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A carelessness about the sects of it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let me enjoy my own conviction,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not watch my neighbor's faith with fretfulness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still spying there some dereliction<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Better a mild indifferentism,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Teaching that both our faiths (though duller<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His shine through a dull spirit's prism)<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Originally had one color!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Better pursue a pilgrimage<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">386</a></span>
+<span class="i2">Through ancient and through modern times<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To many peoples, various climes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where I may see saint, savage, sage<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fuse their respective creeds in one<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before the general Father's throne!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;'Twas the horrible storm began afresh!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The black night caught me in his mesh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whirled me up, and flung me prone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I was left on the college-step alone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I looked, and far there, ever fleeting<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far, far away, the receding gesture,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And looming of the lessening vesture!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swept forward from my stupid hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While I watched my foolish heart expand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the lazy glow of benevolence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O'er the various modes of man's belief.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I sprang up with fear's vehemence.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Needs must there be one way, our chief<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Best way of worship: let me strive<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To find it, and when found, contrive<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My fellows also take their share!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This constitutes my earthly care:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God's is above it and distinct.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For I, a man, with men am linked<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And not a brute with brutes; no gain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I experience, must remain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unshared: but should my best endeavor<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To share it, fail&mdash;subsisteth ever<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God's care above, and I exult<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That God, by God's own ways occult,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May&mdash;doth, I will believe&mdash;bring back<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All wanderers to a single track.<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">387</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Meantime, I can but testify<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God's care for me&mdash;no more, can I&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is but for myself I know;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The world rolls witnessing around me<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Only to leave me as it found me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Men cry there, but my ear is slow:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their races flourish or decay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;What boots it, while yon lucid way<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Loaded with stars divides the vault?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But soon my soul repairs its fault<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, sharpening sense's hebetude,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She turns on my own life! So viewed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No mere mote's-breadth but teems immense<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With witnessings of providence:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And woe to me if when I look<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon that record, the sole book<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unsealed to me, I take no heed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of any warning that I read!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have I been sure, this Christmas-Eve,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God's own hand did the rainbow weave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whereby the truth from heaven slid<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into my soul? I cannot bid<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The world admit he stooped to heal<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My soul, as if in a thunder-peal<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where one heard noise, and one saw flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I only knew he named my name:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But what is the world to me, for sorrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or joy in its censure, when to-morrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It drops the remark, with just-turned head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then, on again, "That man is dead"?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yes, but for me&mdash;my name called,&mdash;drawn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He has dipt into on a battle-dawn:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bid out of life by a nod, a glance,<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">388</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stumbling, mute-mazed, at nature's chance,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a rapid finger circled round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fixed to the first poor inch of ground<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To fight from, where his foot was found;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose ear but a minute since lay free<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the wide camp's buzz and gossipry&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Summoned, a solitary man<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To end his life where his life began,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the safe glad rear, to the dreadful van!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By the hem of the vesture!&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24">And I caught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the flying robe, and unrepelled<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With warmth and wonder and delight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God's mercy being infinite.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For scarce had the words escaped my tongue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, at a passionate bound, I sprung,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of the wandering world of rain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the little chapel again.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He finds himself back in the chapel,
+all that has occurred having been a vision.
+His conclusions have that broadness of view
+which belongs only to those most advanced
+in thought. He has learned that not only
+must there be the essential truth behind every
+sincere effort to reach it, but that even his
+own vision of the truth is not necessarily the
+final way of truth but is merely the way which
+is true for him. The jump from the attitude<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">389</a></span>
+of mind that persecutes those who do not
+believe according to one established rule to
+such absolute toleration of all forms because
+of their symbolizing an eternal truth gives
+the measure of growth in religious thought
+from the days of Wesley to Browning. The
+Wesleys and their fellow-helpers were stoned
+and mobbed, and some died of their wounds
+in the latter part of the eighteenth century,
+while in 1850, when "Christmas-Eve" was
+written, an Englishman could express a height
+of toleration and sympathy for religions not
+his own, as well as taking a religious stand
+for himself so exalted that it is difficult to
+imagine a further step in these directions.
+Perhaps we are suffering to-day from over-toleration,
+that is, we tolerate not only those
+whose aspiration takes a different form, but
+those whose ideals lead to degeneracy. It
+seems as though all virtues must finally develop
+their shadows. What, however, is a
+shadow but the darkness occasioned by the
+approach of some greater light.</p>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How else was I found there, bolt upright<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On my bench, as if I had never left it?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Never flung out on the common at night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">390</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Or the laboratory of the Professor!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the Vision, that was true, I wist,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">True as that heaven and earth exist.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There sat my friend, the yellow and tall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet my nearest neighbor's cheek showed gall.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She had slid away a contemptuous space:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the old fat woman, late so placable,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eyed me with symptoms, hardly mistakable,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of her milk of kindness turning rancid.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In short, a spectator might have fancied<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yet kept my seat, a warning ghastly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And woke up now at the tenth and lastly.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But again, could such disgrace have happened?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Unless I heard it, could I have judged it?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could I report as I do at the close,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">First, the preacher speaks through his nose:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Second, his gesture is too emphatic:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thirdly, to waive what's pedagogic,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The subject-matter itself lacks logic:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of making square to a finite eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The circle of infinity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And find so all-but-just-succeeding!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Great news! the sermon proves no reading<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where bee-like in the flowers I bury me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like Taylor's the immortal Jeremy!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And now that I know the very worst of him,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">391</a></span>
+<span class="i0">What was it I thought to obtain at first of him?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ha! Is God mocked, as he asks?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall I take on me to change his tasks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And dare, despatched to a river-head<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For a simple draught of the element,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Neglect the thing for which he sent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And return with another thing instead?&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saying, "Because the water found<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Welling up from underground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is mingled with the taints of earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And couldst, at wink or word, convulse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The world with the leap of a river-pulse,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And bring thee a chalice I found, instead:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">One would suppose that the marble bled.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What matters the water? A hope I have nursed:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The waterless cup will quench my thirst."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Better have knelt at the poorest stream<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That trickles in pain from the straitest rift!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the less or the more is all God's gift,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And here, is there water or not, to drink?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I then, in ignorance and weakness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Taking God's help, have attained to think<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My heart does best to receive in meekness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That mode of worship, as most to his mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where earthly aids being cast behind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His All in All appears serene<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the thinnest human veil between,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Letting the mystic lamps, the seven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The many motions of his spirit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven.<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">392</a></span>
+<span class="i2">For the preacher's merit or demerit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It were to be wished the flaws were fewer<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the earthen vessel, holding treasure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which lies as safe in a golden ewer;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But the main thing is, does it hold good measure?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heaven soon sets right all other matters!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ask, else, these ruins of humanity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This flesh worn out to rags and tatters,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This soul at struggle with insanity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who thence take comfort&mdash;can I doubt?&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which an empire gained, were a loss without.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May it be mine! And let us hope<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That no worse blessing befall the Pope,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turned sick at last of to-day's buffoonery,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of posturings and petticoatings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Beside his Bourbon bully's gloatings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor may the Professor forego its peace<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At G&ouml;ttingen presently, when, in the dusk<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Prophesied of by that horrible husk&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When thicker and thicker the darkness fills<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The world through his misty spectacles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he gropes for something more substantial<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than a fable, myth or personification,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May Christ do for him what no mere man shall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And stand confessed as the God of salvation!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meantime, in the still recurring fear<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lest myself, at unawares, be found,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While attacking the choice of my neighbors round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With none of my own made&mdash;I choose here!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The giving out of the hymn reclaims me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have done: and if any blames me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thinking that merely to touch in brevity<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">393</a></span>
+<span class="i2">The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On the bounds of the holy and the awful,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I praise the heart, and pity the head of him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And refer myself to <span class="smcap">Thee</span>, instead of him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who head and heart alike discernest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Looking below light speech we utter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When frothy spume and frequent sputter<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May truth shine out, stand ever before us!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I put up pencil and join chorus<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The last five verses of the third section<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's Collection,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To conclude with the doxology.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In "Easter-Day" the interest is purely personal.
+It is a long and somewhat intricate
+discussion between two friends upon the basis
+of belief and gives no glimpses of the historical
+progress of belief. In brief, the poem
+discusses the relation of the finite life to the
+infinite life. The first speaker is not satisfied
+with the different points of view suggested by
+the second speaker. First, that one would
+be willing to suffer martyrdom in this life if
+only one could truly believe it would bring
+eternal joy. Or perhaps doubt is God's way
+of telling who are his friends, who are his
+foes. Or perhaps God is revealed in the law
+of the universe, or in the shows of nature, or<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">394</a></span>
+in the emotions of the human heart. The
+first speaker takes the ground that the only
+possibility satisfying modern demands is an
+assurance that this world's gain is in its imperfectness
+surety for true gain in another
+world. An imaginatively pictured experience
+of his own soul is next presented, wherein
+he represents himself at the Judgment Day
+as choosing the finite life instead of the infinite
+life. As a result, he learns there is
+nothing in finite life except as related to infinite
+life. The way opened out toward the infinite
+through love is that which gives the light of
+life to all the good things of earth which he
+desired&mdash;all beauties, that of nature and
+art, and the joy of intellectual activity.</p>
+
+<h3>EASTER-DAY</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2 dotwide">. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">XV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">And as I said<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This nonsense, throwing back my head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With light complacent laugh, I found<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Suddenly all the midnight round<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One fire. The dome of heaven had stood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As made up of a multitude<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of ripples infinite and black,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From sky to sky. Sudden there went,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like horror and astonishment,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">395</a></span>
+<span class="i0">A fierce vindictive scribble of red<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quick flame across, as if one said<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(The angry scribe of Judgment) "There&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Burn it!" And straight I was aware<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That the whole ribwork round, minute<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cloud touching cloud beyond compute,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was tinted, each with its own spot<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of burning at the core, till clot<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Over all heaven, which 'gan suspire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As fanned to measure equable,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just so great conflagrations kill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Night overhead, and rise and sink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Reflected. Now the fire would shrink<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wither off the blasted face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of heaven, and I distinct might trace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sharp black ridgy outlines left<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unburned like network&mdash;then, each cleft<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fire had been sucked back into,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Regorged, and out it surging flew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Furiously, and night writhed inflamed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till, tolerating to be tamed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No longer, certain rays world-wide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shot downwardly. On every side<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Caught past escape, the earth was lit;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if a dragon's nostril split<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all his famished ire o'erflowed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then, as he winced at his lord's goad,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Back he inhaled: whereat I found<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The clouds into vast pillars bound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Based on the corners of the earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Propping the skies at top: a dearth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of fire i' the violet intervals,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leaving exposed the utmost walls<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">396</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Of time, about to tumble in<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And end the world.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XVI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">I felt begin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Judgment-Day: to retrocede<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was too late now. "In very deed,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(I uttered to myself) "that Day!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The intuition burned away<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All darkness from my spirit too:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There, stood I, found and fixed, I knew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Choosing the world. The choice was made;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And naked and disguiseless stayed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And unevadable, the fact.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My brain held all the same compact<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its senses, nor my heart declined<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its office; rather, both combined<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To help me in this juncture. I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lost not a second,&mdash;agony<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gave boldness: since my life had end<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my choice with it&mdash;best defend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Applaud both! I resolved to say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"So was I framed by thee, such way<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I put to use thy senses here!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It was so beautiful, so near,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy world,&mdash;what could I then but choose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My part there? Nor did I refuse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To look above the transient boon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of time; but it was hard so soon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As in a short life, to give up<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such beauty: I could put the cup<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Undrained of half its fulness, by;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, to renounce it utterly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;That was too hard! Nor did the cry<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">397</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Which bade renounce it, touch my brain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Authentically deep and plain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enough to make my lips let go.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But Thou, who knowest all, dost know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether I was not, life's brief while,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Endeavoring to reconcile<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those lips (too tardily, alas!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To letting the dear remnant pass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One day,&mdash;some drops of earthly good<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Untasted! Is it for this mood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Thou, whose earth delights so well,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hast made its complement a hell?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XVII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A final belch of fire like blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Overbroke all heaven in one flood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of doom. Then fire was sky, and sky<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fire, and both, one brief ecstasy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then ashes. But I heard no noise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Whatever was) because a voice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beside me spoke thus, "Life is done,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time ends, Eternity's begun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thou art judged for evermore."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XVIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I looked up; all seemed as before;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of that cloud-Tophet overhead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No trace was left: I saw instead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The common round me, and the sky<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above, stretched drear and emptily<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of life. 'Twas the last watch of night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Except what brings the morning quite;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the armed angel, conscience-clear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His task nigh done, leans o'er his spear<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">398</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And gazes on the earth he guards,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Safe one night more through all its wards,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till God relieve him at his post.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"A dream&mdash;a waking dream at most!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(I spoke out quick, that I might shake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The horrid nightmare off, and wake.)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"The world gone, yet the world is here?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are not all things as they appear?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is Judgment past for me alone?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;And where had place the great white throne?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rising of the quick and dead?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where stood they, small and great? Who read<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sentence from the opened book?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, by degrees, the blood forsook<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart, and let it beat afresh;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I knew I should break through the mesh<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of horror, and breathe presently:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, lo, again, the voice by me!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XIX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I saw.... Oh brother, 'mid far sands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The palm-tree-cinctured city stands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bright-white beneath, as heaven, bright-blue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leans o'er it, while the years pursue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their course, unable to abate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its paradisal laugh at fate!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One morn,&mdash;the Arab staggers blind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O'er a new tract of death, calcined<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To ashes, silence, nothingness,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And strives, with dizzy wits, to guess<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whence fell the blow. What if, 'twixt skies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And prostrate earth, he should surprise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The imaged vapor, head to foot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Surveying, motionless and mute,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">399</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Its work, ere, in a whirlwind rapt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It vanished up again?&mdash;So hapt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My chance. <span class="smcap">He</span> stood there. Like the smoke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I saw Him. One magnific pall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mantled in massive fold and fall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His head, and coiled in snaky swathes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">About His feet: night's black, that bathes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All else, broke, grizzled with despair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against the soul of blackness there.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A gesture told the mood within&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That wrapped right hand which based the chin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That intense meditation fixed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On His procedure,&mdash;pity mixed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the fulfilment of decree.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Motionless, thus, He spoke to me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who fell before His feet, a mass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No man now.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">"All is come to pass.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such shows are over for each soul<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They had respect to. In the roll<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of judgment which convinced mankind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of sin, stood many, bold and blind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Terror must burn the truth into:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their fate for them!&mdash;thou hadst to do<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With absolute omnipotence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Able its judgments to dispense<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the whole race, as every one<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were its sole object. Judgment done,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God is, thou art,&mdash;the rest is hurled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To nothingness for thee. This world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This finite life, thou hast preferred,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In disbelief of God's plain word,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">400</a></span>
+<span class="i0">To heaven and to infinity.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here the probation was for thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To show thy soul the earthly mixed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With heavenly, it must choose betwixt.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The earthly joys lay palpable,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A taint, in each, distinct as well;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heavenly flitted, faint and rare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above them, but as truly were<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Taintless, so, in their nature, best.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy choice was earth: thou didst attest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twas fitter spirit should subserve<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The flesh, than flesh refine to nerve<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath the spirit's play. Advance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No claim to their inheritance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who chose the spirit's fugitive<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brief gleams, and yearned, 'This were to live<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Indeed, if rays, completely pure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From flesh that dulls them, could endure,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not shoot in meteor-light athwart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our earth, to show how cold and swart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It lies beneath their fire, but stand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As stars do, destined to expand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Prove veritable worlds, our home!'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou saidst,&mdash;'Let spirit star the dome<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of sky, that flesh may miss no peak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No nook of earth,&mdash;I shall not seek<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its service further!' Thou art shut<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of the heaven of spirit; glut<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy sense upon the world: 'tis thine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For ever&mdash;take it!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">"How? Is mine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The world?" (I cried, while my soul broke<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">401</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Out in a transport.) "Hast Thou spoke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plainly in that? Earth's exquisite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Treasures of wonder and delight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For me?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">The austere voice returned,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"So soon made happy? Hadst thou learned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What God accounteth happiness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou wouldst not find it hard to guess<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What hell may be his punishment<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For those who doubt if God invent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Better than they. Let such men rest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Content with what they judged the best.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let the unjust usurp at will:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The filthy shall be filthy still:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Miser, there waits the gold for thee!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hater, indulge thine enmity!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thou, whose heaven self-ordained<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was, to enjoy earth unrestrained,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do it! Take all the ancient show!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The woods shall wave, the rivers flow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And men apparently pursue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their works, as they were wont to do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While living in probation yet.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I promise not thou shalt forget<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The past, now gone to its account;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But leave thee with the old amount<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of faculties, nor less nor more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unvisited, as heretofore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By God's free spirit, that makes an end.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, once more, take thy world! Expend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eternity upon its shows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flung thee as freely as one rose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of a summer's opulence,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">402</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Over the Eden-barrier whence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art excluded. Knock in vain!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I sat up. All was still again.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I breathed free: to my heart, back fled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The warmth. "But, all the world!"&mdash;I said.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I stooped and picked a leaf of fern,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And recollected I might learn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From books, how many myriad sorts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of fern exist, to trust reports,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each as distinct and beautiful<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As this, the very first I cull.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Think, from the first leaf to the last!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Conceive, then, earth's resources! Vast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Exhaustless beauty, endless change<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of wonder! And this foot shall range<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alps, Andes,&mdash;and this eye devour<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bee-bird and the aloe-flower?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXIV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then the voice, "Welcome so to rate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The arras-folds that variegate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The earth, God's antechamber, well!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wise, who waited there, could tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By these, what royalties in store<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lay one step past the entrance-door.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For whom, was reckoned, not so much,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This life's munificence? For such<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As thou,&mdash;a race, whereof scarce one<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was able, in a million,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To feel that any marvel lay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In objects round his feet all day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scarce one, in many millions more,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">403</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Willing, if able, to explore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The secreter, minuter charm!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Brave souls, a fern-leaf could disarm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of power to cope with God's intent,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or scared if the south firmament<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With north-fire did its wings refledge!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All partial beauty was a pledge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of beauty in its plenitude:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But since the pledge sufficed thy mood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Retain it! plenitude be theirs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who looked above!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">Though sharp despairs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shot through me, I held up, bore on.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"What matter though my trust were gone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From natural things? Henceforth my part<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be less with nature than with art!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For art supplants, gives mainly worth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To nature; 'tis man stamps the earth&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I will seek his impress, seek<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The statuary of the Greek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Italy's painting&mdash;there my choice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall fix!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXVI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"Obtain it!" said the voice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"&mdash;The one form with its single act,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which sculptors labored to abstract,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The one face, painters tried to draw,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With its one look, from throngs they saw.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that perfection in their soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These only hinted at? The whole,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They were but parts of? What each laid<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His claim to glory on?&mdash;afraid<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">404</a></span>
+<span class="i0">His fellow-men should give him rank<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By mere tentatives which he shrank<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smitten at heart from, all the more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That gazers pressed in to adore!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Shall I be judged by only these?'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If such his soul's capacities,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even while he trod the earth,&mdash;think, now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What pomp in Buonarroti's brow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With its new palace-brain where dwells<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Superb the soul, unvexed by cells<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That crumbled with the transient clay!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What visions will his right hand's sway<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still turn to forms, as still they burst<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon him? How will he quench thirst,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Titanically infantine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laid at the breast of the Divine?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Does it confound thee,&mdash;this first page<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Emblazoning man's heritage?&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can this alone absorb thy sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As pages were not infinite,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the omnipotence which tasks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Itself to furnish all that asks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The soul it means to satiate?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What was the world, the starry state<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the broad skies,&mdash;what, all displays<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of power and beauty intermixed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which now thy soul is chained betwixt,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What else than needful furniture<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For life's first stage? God's work, be sure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No more spreads wasted, than falls scant!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He filled, did not exceed, man's want<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of beauty in this life. But through<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Life pierce,&mdash;and what has earth to do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its utmost beauty's appanage,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">405</a></span>
+<span class="i0">With the requirement of next stage?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did God pronounce earth 'very good'?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Needs must it be, while understood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For man's preparatory state;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nought here to heighten nor abate;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Transfer the same completeness here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To serve a new state's use,&mdash;and drear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deficiency gapes every side!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The good, tried once, were bad, retried.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See the enwrapping rocky niche,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sufficient for the sleep in which<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lizard breathes for ages safe:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Split the mould&mdash;and as light would chafe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The creature's new world-widened sense,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dazzled to death at evidence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of all the sounds and sights that broke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Innumerous at the chisel's stroke,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So, in God's eye, the earth's first stuff<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was, neither more nor less, enough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To house man's soul, man's need fulfil.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man reckoned it immeasurable?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So thinks the lizard of his vault!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could God be taken in default,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Short of contrivances, by you,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or reached, ere ready to pursue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His progress through eternity?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That chambered rock, the lizard's world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your easy mallet's blow has hurled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To nothingness for ever; so,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has God abolished at a blow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This world, wherein his saints were pent,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who, though found grateful and content,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the provision there, as thou,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet knew he would not disallow<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">406</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Their spirit's hunger, felt as well,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unsated,&mdash;not unsatable,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As paradise gives proof. Deride<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their choice now, thou who sit'st outside!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXVII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I cried in anguish, "Mind, the mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So miserably cast behind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To gain what had been wisely lost!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, let me strive to make the most<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the poor stinted soul, I nipped<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of budding wings, else now equipped<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For voyage from summer isle to isle!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though she needs must reconcile<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ambition to the life on ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still, I can profit by late found<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But precious knowledge. Mind is best&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I will seize mind, forego the rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And try how far my tethered strength<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May crawl in this poor breadth and length.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let me, since I can fly no more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At least spin dervish-like about<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Till giddy rapture almost doubt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I fly) through circling sciences,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Philosophies and histories<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should the whirl slacken there, then verse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fining to music, shall asperse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fresh and fresh fire-dew, till I strain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Intoxicate, half-break my chain!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not joyless, though more favored feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stand calm, where I want wings to beat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The floor. At least earth's bond is broke!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">407</a></span></p>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXVIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then, (sickening even while I spoke)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Let me alone! No answer, pray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To this! I know what Thou wilt say!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All still is earth's,&mdash;to know, as much<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As feel its truths, which if we touch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With sense, or apprehend in soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What matter? I have reached the goal&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Whereto does knowledge serve!' will burn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My eyes, too sure, at every turn!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I cannot look back now, nor stake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bliss on the race, for running's sake.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The goal's a ruin like the rest!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so much worse thy latter quest,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Added the voice) "that even on earth&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whenever, in man's soul, had birth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those intuitions, grasps of guess,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which pull the more into the less,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Making the finite comprehend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Infinity,&mdash;the bard would spend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such praise alone, upon his craft,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As, when wind-lyres obey the waft,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Goes to the craftsman who arranged<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The seven strings, changed them and rechanged&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knowing it was the South that harped.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He felt his song, in singing, warped;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Distinguished his and God's part: whence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A world of spirit as of sense<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was plain to him, yet not too plain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which he could traverse, not remain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A guest in:&mdash;else were permanent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heaven on the earth its gleams were meant<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To sting with hunger for full light,<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">408</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made visible in verse, despite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The veiling weakness,&mdash;truth by means<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of fable, showing while it screens,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since highest truth, man e'er supplied,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was ever fable on outside.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such gleams made bright the earth an age;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now the whole sun's his heritage!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take up thy world, it is allowed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou who hast entered in the cloud!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXIX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then I&mdash;"Behold, my spirit bleeds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Catches no more at broken reeds,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But lilies flower those reeds above:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I let the world go, and take love!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love survives in me, albeit those<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I love be henceforth masks and shows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not living men and women: still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I mind how love repaired all ill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cured wrong, soothed grief, made earth amends<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With parents, brothers, children, friends!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some semblance of a woman yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With eyes to help me to forget,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall look on me; and I will match<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Departed love with love, attach<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Old memories to new dreams, nor scorn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The poorest of the grains of corn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I save from shipwreck on this isle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trusting its barrenness may smile<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With happy foodful green one day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More precious for the pains. I pray,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave to love, only!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">409</a></span></p>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">At the word,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The form, I looked to have been stirred<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With pity and approval, rose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O'er me, as when the headsman throws<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Axe over shoulder to make end&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I fell prone, letting Him expend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His wrath, while thus the inflicting voice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smote me. "Is this thy final choice?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love is the best? 'Tis somewhat late!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all thou dost enumerate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of power and beauty in the world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The mightiness of love was curled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Inextricably round about.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love lay within it and without,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To clasp thee,&mdash;but in vain! Thy soul<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still shrunk from Him who made the whole,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still set deliberate aside<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His love!&mdash;Now take love! Well betide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy tardy conscience! Haste to take<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The show of love for the name's sake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Remembering every moment Who,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beside creating thee unto<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These ends, and these for thee, was said<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To undergo death in thy stead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In flesh like thine: so ran the tale.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What doubt in thee could countervail<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Belief in it? Upon the ground<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'That in the story had been found<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too much love! How could God love so?'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He who in all his works below<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Adapted to the needs of man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made love the basis of the plan,<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">410</a></span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did love, as was demonstrated:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While man, who was so fit instead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hate, as every day gave proof,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man thought man, for his kind's behoof,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both could and did invent that scheme<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of perfect love: 'twould well beseem<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cain's nature thou wast wont to praise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not tally with God's usual ways!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXXI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And I cowered deprecatingly&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Thou Love of God! Or let me die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or grant what shall seem heaven almost!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let me not know that all is lost,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though lost it be&mdash;leave me not tied<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To this despair, this corpse-like bride!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let that old life seem mine&mdash;no more&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With limitation as before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With darkness, hunger, toil, distress:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be all the earth a wilderness!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only let me go on, go on,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still hoping ever and anon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To reach one eve the Better Land!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXXII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then did the form expand, expand&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I knew Him through the dread disguise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the whole God within His eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Embraced me.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XXXIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">When I lived again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The day was breaking,&mdash;the grey plain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I rose from, silvered thick with dew.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was this a vision? False or true?<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">411</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Since then, three varied years are spent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And commonly my mind is bent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To think it was a dream&mdash;be sure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A mere dream and distemperature&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The last day's watching: then the night,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The shock of that strange Northern Light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Set my head swimming, bred in me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A dream. And so I live, you see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Go through the world, try, prove, reject,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Prefer, still struggling to effect<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My warfare; happy that I can<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be crossed and thwarted as a man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not left in God's contempt apart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tame in earth's paddock as her prize.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thank God, she still each method tries<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To catch me, who may yet escape,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She knows,&mdash;the fiend in angel's shape!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thank God, no paradise stands barred<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To entry, and I find it hard<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be a Christian, as I said!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still every now and then my head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Raised glad, sinks mournful&mdash;all grows drear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spite of the sunshine, while I fear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And think, "How dreadful to be grudged<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No ease henceforth, as one that's judged.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Condemned to earth for ever, shut<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From heaven!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">But Easter-Day breaks! But<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Christ rises! Mercy every way<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is infinite,&mdash;and who can say?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This poem has often been cited as a proof
+of Browning's own belief in historical Chris<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">412</a></span>tianity.
+It can hardly be said to be more
+than a doubtful proof, for it depends upon a
+subjective vision of which the speaker, himself,
+doubts the truth. The speaker in this
+poem belongs in the same category with
+Bishop Blougram. A belief in infinite Love
+can come to him only through the dogma of
+the incarnation, he therefore holds to that,
+no matter how tossed about by doubts. The
+failure of all human effort to attain the Absolute
+and, as a consequence, the belief in an
+Absolute beyond this life is a dominant note
+in Browning's own philosophy. The nature
+of that Absolute he further evolves from the
+intellectual observation of power that transcends
+human comprehension, and the even
+more deep-rooted sense of love in the human
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>Much of his thought resembles that of the
+English scientist, Herbert Spencer. The relativity
+of knowledge and the relativity of good
+and evil are cardinal doctrines with both of
+them. Herbert Spencer's mystery behind all
+phenomena and Browning's failure of human
+knowledge are identical&mdash;the negative proof
+of the absolute,&mdash;but where Spencer contents
+himself with the statement that though
+we cannot know the Absolute, yet it must
+transcend all that the human mind has con<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">413</a></span>ceived
+of perfection, Browning, as we have
+already seen, declares that we <i>can</i> know something
+of the nature of that Absolute through
+the love which we know in the human heart
+as well as the power we see displayed in
+Nature.</p>
+
+<p>In connection with this subject, which for
+lack of space can merely be touched on in
+the present volume, it will be instructive to
+round out Browning's presentations of his own
+contributions to nineteenth-century thought
+with two quotations, one from "The Parleyings:"
+"With Bernard de Mandeville,"
+and one from a poem in his last volume
+"Reverie." In the first, human love is symbolized
+as the image made by a lens of the
+sun, which latter symbolizes Divine Love.</p>
+
+<h3>BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2 dotwide">. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">IX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Boundingly up through Night's wall dense and dark,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Embattled crags and clouds, outbroke the Sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above the conscious earth, and one by one<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her heights and depths absorbed to the last spark<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His fluid glory, from the far fine ridge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of mountain-granite which, transformed to gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laughed first the thanks back, to the vale's dusk fold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On fold of vapor-swathing, like a bridge<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">414</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Shattered beneath some giant's stamp. Night wist<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her work done and betook herself in mist<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To marsh and hollow there to bide her time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blindly in acquiescence. Everywhere<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did earth acknowledge Sun's embrace sublime<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thrilling her to the heart of things: since there<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Glad through the inrush&mdash;glad nor more nor less<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than, 'neath his gaze, forest and wilderness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The universal world of creatures bred<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All creatures but one only: gaze for gaze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Joyless and thankless, who&mdash;all scowling can&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Protests against the innumerous praises? Man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sullen and silent.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">Stand thou forth then, state<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy wrong, thou sole aggrieved&mdash;disconsolate&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While every beast, bird, reptile, insect, gay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And glad acknowledges the bounteous day!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">X</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Man speaks now:&mdash;"What avails Sun's earth-felt thrill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To me? Sun penetrates the ore, the plant&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They feel and grow: perchance with subtler skill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He interfuses fly, worm, brute, until<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each favored object pays life's ministrant<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By pressing, in obedience to his will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Up to completion of the task prescribed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So stands and stays a type. Myself imbibed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such influence also, stood and stand complete&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The perfect Man,&mdash;head, body, hands and feet,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">415</a></span>
+<span class="i0">True to the pattern: but does that suffice?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How of my superadded mind which needs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Not to be, simply, but to do, and pleads<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For&mdash;more than knowledge that by some device<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sun quickens matter: mind is nobly fain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To realize the marvel, make&mdash;for sense<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As mind&mdash;the unseen visible, condense<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Myself&mdash;Sun's all-pervading influence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So as to serve the needs of mind, explain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What now perplexes. Let the oak increase<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His corrugated strength on strength, the palm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lift joint by joint her fan-fruit, ball and balm,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let the coiled serpent bask in bloated peace,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The eagle, like some skyey derelict,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drift in the blue, suspended glorying,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lion lord it by the desert-spring,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What know or care they of the power which pricked<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nothingness to perfection? I, instead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When all-developed still am found a thing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All-incomplete: for what though flesh had force<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Transcending theirs&mdash;hands able to unring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The tightened snake's coil, eyes that could outcourse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The eagle's soaring, voice whereat the king<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of carnage couched discrowned? Mind seeks to see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Touch, understand, by mind inside of me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The outside mind&mdash;whose quickening I attain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To recognize&mdash;I only. All in vain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would mind address itself to render plain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The nature of the essence. Drag what lurks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Behind the operation&mdash;that which works<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Latently everywhere by outward proof&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drag that mind forth to face mine? No! aloof<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I solely crave that one of all the beams<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which do Sun's work in darkness, at my will<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">416</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Should operate&mdash;myself for once have skill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To realize the energy which streams<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flooding the universe. Above, around,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath&mdash;why mocks that mind my own thus found<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Simply of service, when the world grows dark,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To half-surmise&mdash;were Sun's use understood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I might demonstrate him supplying food,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Warmth, life, no less the while? To grant one spark<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Myself may deal with&mdash;make it thaw my blood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And prompt my steps, were truer to the mark<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of mind's requirement than a half-surmise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That somehow secretly is operant<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A power all matter feels, mind only tries<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To comprehend! Once more&mdash;no idle vaunt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Man comprehends the Sun's self!' Mysteries<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At source why probe into? Enough: display,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make demonstrable, how, by night as day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth's centre and sky's outspan, all's informed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Equally by Sun's efflux!&mdash;source from whence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If just one spark I drew, full evidence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were mine of fire ineffably enthroned&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sun's self made palpable to Man!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">Thus moaned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man till Prometheus helped him,&mdash;as we learn,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Offered an artifice whereby he drew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sun's rays into a focus,&mdash;plain and true,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The very Sun in little: made fire burn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And henceforth do Man service&mdash;glass-conglobed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though to a pin-point circle&mdash;all the same<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comprising the Sun's self, but Sun disrobed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of that else-unconceived essential flame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Borne by no naked sight. Shall mind's eye strive<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">417</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Achingly to companion as it may<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The supersubtle effluence, and contrive<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To follow beam and beam upon their way<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hand-breadth by hand-breadth, till sense faint&mdash;confessed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Frustrate, eluded by unknown unguessed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Infinitude of action? Idle quest!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rather ask aid from optics. Sense, descry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The spectrum&mdash;mind, infer immensity!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Little? In little, light, warmth, life are blessed&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, in the large, who sees to bless? Not I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More than yourself: so, good my friend, keep still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trustful with&mdash;me? with thee, sage Mandeville!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The second "Reverie" has the effect of a
+triumphant swan song, especially the closing
+stanzas, the poem having been written very
+near the end of the poet's life.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"In a beginning God<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Made heaven and earth." Forth flashed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knowledge: from star to clod<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Man knew things: doubt abashed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Closed its long period.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Knowledge obtained Power praise.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Had Good been manifest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Broke out in cloudless blaze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Unchequered as unrepressed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In all things Good at best&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then praise&mdash;all praise, no blame&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Had hailed the perfection. No!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As Power's display, the same<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Be Good's&mdash;praise forth shall flow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unisonous in acclaim!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">418</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Even as the world its life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So have I lived my own&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Power seen with Love at strife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That sure, this dimly shown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Good rare and evil rife.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whereof the effect be&mdash;faith<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That, some far day, were found<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ripeness in things now rathe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wrong righted, each chain unbound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Renewal born out of scathe.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Why faith&mdash;but to lift the load,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To leaven the lump, where lies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mind prostrate through knowledge owed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To the loveless Power it tries<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To withstand, how vain! In flowed<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ever resistless fact:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No more than the passive clay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Disputes the potter's act,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Could the whelmed mind disobey<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knowledge the cataract.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But, perfect in every part,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Has the potter's moulded shape,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leap of man's quickened heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Throe of his thought's escape,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stings of his soul which dart<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Through the barrier of flesh, till keen<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She climbs from the calm and clear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through turbidity all between,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From the known to the unknown here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heaven's "Shall be," from Earth's "Has been"?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">419</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Then life is&mdash;to wake not sleep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rise and not rest, but press<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From earth's level where blindly creep<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Things perfected, more or less,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the heaven's height, far and steep,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where, amid what strifes and storms<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">May wait the adventurous quest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Power is Love&mdash;transports, transforms<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who aspired from worst to best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms'.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have faith such end shall be:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From the first, Power was&mdash;I knew.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Life has made clear to me<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That, strive but for closer view,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love were as plain to see.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When see? When there dawns a day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">If not on the homely earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then yonder, worlds away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where the strange and new have birth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Power comes full in play.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">420</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<p class="subtitle">ART CRITICISM INSPIRED BY THE ENGLISH
+MUSICIAN, AVISON</p>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="dcap">In</span> the "Parleying" "With Charles Avison,"
+Browning plunges into a discussion of the
+problem of the ephemeralness of musical expression.
+He hits upon Avison to have his colloquy
+with because a march by this musician
+came into his head, and the march came into his
+head for no better reason than that it was the
+month of March. Some interest would attach
+to Avison if it were only for the reason that he
+was organist of the Church of St. Nicholas in
+Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In the earliest accounts
+St. Nicholas was styled simply, "The
+Church of Newcastle-upon-Tyne," but in 1785
+it became a Cathedral. This was after Avison's
+death in 1770. All we know about the
+organ upon which Avison performed is found
+in a curious old history of Newcastle by
+Brand. "I have found," he writes, "no account
+of any organ in this church during the
+times of popery though it is very probable
+there has been one. <a name='TC_40'></a><ins title="Removed starting quote">About</ins> the year 1676,<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">421</a></span>
+the corporation of Newcastle contributed &pound;300
+towards the erection of the present organ.
+They added a trumpet stop to it June 22d,
+1699."</p>
+
+<p>The year that Avison was born, 1710, it is
+recorded further that "the back front of this
+organ was finished which cost the said corporation
+&pound;200 together with the expense of
+cleaning and repairing the whole instrument."</p>
+
+<p>June 26, 1749, the common council of Newcastle
+ordered a sweet stop to be added to the
+organ. This was after Avison became organist,
+his appointment to that post having been in
+1736. So we know that he at least had a
+"trumpet stop" and a "sweet stop," with
+which to embellish his organ playing.</p>
+
+<p>The church is especially distinguished for
+the number and beauty of its chantries, and
+any who have a taste for examining armorial
+bearings will find two good-sized volumes devoted
+to a description of those in this church,
+by Richardson. Equal distinction attaches to
+the church owing to the beauty of its steeple,
+which has been called the pride and glory of
+the Northern Hemisphere. According to the
+enthusiastic Richardson it is justly esteemed
+on account of its peculiar excellency of design
+and delicacy of execution one of the finest
+specimens of architectural beauty in Europe.<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">422</a></span>
+This steeple is as conspicuous a feature of
+Newcastle as the State House Dome is of
+Boston, situated, as it is, almost in the center
+of the town. Richardson gives the following
+minute description of this marvel. "It consists
+of a square tower forty feet in width,
+having great and small turrets with pinnacles
+at the angles and center of each front tower.
+From the four turrets at the angles spring
+two arches, which meet in an intersecting direction,
+and bear on their center an efficient
+perforated lanthorne, surmounted by a tall and
+beautiful spire: the angles of the lanthorne
+have pinnacles similar to those on the turrets,
+and the whole of the pinnacles, being twelve
+in number, and the spire, are ornamented with
+crockets and vanes."</p>
+
+<p>There is a stirring tradition in regard to
+this structure related by Bourne to the effect
+that in the time of the Civil Wars, when the
+Scots had besieged the town for several weeks,
+and were still as far as at first from taking it,
+the general sent a messenger to the mayor of
+the town, and demanded the keys, and the
+delivering up of the town, or he would immediately
+demolish the steeple of St. Nicholas.
+The mayor and aldermen upon hearing this,
+immediately ordered a certain number of the
+chiefest of the Scottish prisoners to be carried<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">423</a></span>
+up to the top of the tower, the place below
+the lanthorne and there confined. After this,
+they returned the general an answer to this
+purpose,&mdash;that they would upon no terms deliver
+up the town, but would to the last moment
+defend it: that the steeple of St. Nicholas
+was indeed a beautiful and magnificent piece
+of architecture, and one of the great ornaments
+of the town; but yet should be blown into
+atoms before ransomed at such a rate: that,
+however, if it was to fall, it should not fall
+alone, that the same moment he destroyed the
+beautiful structure he should bathe his hands
+in the blood of his countrymen who were
+placed there on purpose either to preserve it
+from ruin or to die along with it. This message
+had the desired effect. The men were
+there kept prisoners during the whole time
+of the siege and not so much as one gun fired
+against it.</p>
+
+<p>Avison, however, had other claims to distinction,
+besides being organist of this ancient
+church. He was a composer, and was remembered
+by one of his airs, at least, into the
+nineteenth century, namely "Sound the Loud
+Timbrel." He appears not to be remembered,
+however, by his concertos, of which
+he published no less than five sets for a full
+band of stringed instruments, nor by his<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">424</a></span>
+quartets and trios, and two sets of sonatas for
+the harpsichord and two violins. All we have
+to depend on now as to the quality of his
+music are the strictures of a certain Dr. Hayes,
+an Oxford Professor, who points out many
+errors against the rules of composition in the
+works of Avison, whence he infers that his
+skill in music is not very profound, and the
+somewhat more appreciative remarks of Hawkins
+who says "The music of Avison is light
+and elegant, but it wants originality, a necessary
+consequence of his too close attachment
+to the style of Geminiani which in a few particulars
+only he was able to imitate."</p>
+
+<p>Geminiani was a celebrated violin player
+and composer of the day, who had come to
+England from Italy. He is said to have held
+his pupil, Avison, in high esteem and to have
+paid him a visit at Newcastle in 1760. Avison's
+early education was gained in Italy; and
+in addition to his musical attainments he was a
+scholar and a man of some literary acquirements.
+It is not surprising, considering all
+these educational advantages that he really
+made something of a stir upon the publication
+of his "small book," as Browning calls it,
+with, we may add, its "large title."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">425</a></span></p>
+<div class="center">
+
+<p>AN<br />
+<span class="larger">ESSAY</span><br />
+ON<br />
+MUSICAL EXPRESSION<br />
+BY CHARLES AVISON<br />
+<i>Organist</i> in <span class="smcap">Newcastle</span><br />
+With <span class="smcap">Alterations</span> and Large <span class="smcap">Additions</span></p>
+
+<p>To which is added,<br />
+A LETTER to the AUTHOR<br />
+concerning the Music of the <span class="smcap">Ancients</span><br />
+and some Passages in <span class="smcap">Classic Writers</span><br />
+relating to the Subject.</p>
+
+<p class="smaller"><span class="smcap">likewise</span><br />
+Mr. AVISON'S REPLY to the Author of<br />
+<i>Remarks on the Essay on <span class="smcap">Musical Expression</span></i><br />
+In a Letter from Mr. <i>Avison</i> to his Friend in <i>London</i></p>
+
+<p class="larger">THE THIRD EDITION<br />
+LONDON<br />
+Printed for LOCKYER DAVIS, in <i>Holborn</i>.<br />
+Printer to the <span class="smcap">Royal Society</span>.<br />
+MDCCLXXV.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The author of the "Remarks on the Essay
+on Musical Expression" was the aforementioned
+Dr. W. Hayes, and although the
+learned doctor's pamphlet seems to have
+died a natural death, some idea of its strictures
+may be gained from Avison's reply.
+The criticisms are rather too technical to be<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">426</a></span>
+of interest to the general reader, but one is
+given here to show how gentlemanly a temper
+Mr. Avison possessed when he was under
+fire. His reply runs "His first critique, and,
+I think, his masterpiece, contains many circumstantial,
+but false and virulent remarks
+on the first allegro of these concertos, to
+which he supposes I would give the name of
+<i>fugue</i>. Be it just what he pleases to call it
+I shall not defend what the public is already
+in possession of, the public being the most
+proper judge. I shall only here observe, that
+our critic has wilfully, or ignorantly, confounded
+the terms <i>fugue</i> and <i>imitation</i>, which
+latter is by no means subject to the same laws
+with the former.</p>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_23" id="linki_23"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus023.jpg" width="354" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">Handel</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Had I observed the method of answering
+the <i>accidental subjects</i> in this <i>allegro</i>, as laid
+down by our critic in his remarks, they must
+have produced most shocking effects; which,
+though this mechanic in music, would, perhaps,
+have approved, yet better judges might,
+in reality, have imagined I had known no
+other art than that of the spruzzarino." There
+is a nice independence about this that would
+indicate Mr. Avison to be at least an aspirant
+in the right direction in musical composition.
+His criticism of Handel, too, at a time when
+the world was divided between enthusiasm for<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">427</a></span>
+Handel and enthusiasm for Buononcini, shows
+a remarkably just and penetrating estimate
+of this great genius.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Handel is, in music, what his own
+Dryden was in poetry; nervous, exalted, and
+harmonious; but voluminous, and, consequently,
+not always correct. Their abilities
+equal to every thing; their execution frequently
+inferior. Born with genius capable of <i>soaring
+the boldest flights</i>; they have sometimes, to
+suit the vitiated taste of the age they lived in,
+<i>descended to the lowest</i>. Yet, as both their
+excellencies are infinitely more numerous than
+their deficiencies, so both their characters will
+devolve to latest posterity, not as models of
+perfection, yet glorious examples of those
+amazing powers that actuate the human
+soul."</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, Mr. Avison's "little book"
+on Musical Expression is eminently sensible
+as to the matter and very agreeable in style.
+He hits off well, for example, the difference
+between "musical expression" and imitation.</p>
+
+<p>"As dissonances and shocking sounds cannot
+be called Musical Expression, so neither
+do I think, can mere imitation of several other
+things be entitled to this name, which, however,
+among the generality of mankind hath
+often obtained it. Thus, the gradual rising<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">428</a></span>
+or falling of the notes in a long succession is
+often used to denote ascent or descent; broken
+intervals, to denote an interrupted motion;
+a number of quick divisions, to describe
+swiftness or flying; sounds resembling laughter,
+to describe laughter; with a number of other
+contrivances of a parallel kind, which it is
+needless here to mention. Now all these I
+should chuse to style imitation, rather than
+expression; because it seems to me, that their
+tendency is rather to fix the hearer's attention
+on the similitude between the sounds and
+the things which they describe, and thereby
+to excite a reflex act of the understanding, than
+to affect the heart and raise the passions of
+the soul.</p>
+
+<p>"This distinction seems more worthy our
+notice at present, because some very eminent
+composers have attached themselves chiefly to
+the method here mentioned; and seem to
+think they have exhausted all the depths of
+expression, by a dextrous imitation of the
+meaning of a few particular words, that occur
+in the hymns or songs which they set to music.
+Thus, were one of these gentlemen to express
+the following words of <i>Milton</i>,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">&mdash;Their songs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to heav'n:<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">429</a></span>it is highly probable, that upon the word <i>divide</i>,
+he would run a <i>division</i> of half a dozen bars;
+and on the subsequent part of the sentence,
+he would not think he had done the poet justice,
+or <i>risen</i> to that <i>height</i> of sublimity which
+he ought to express, till he had climbed up to
+the very top of his instrument, or at least as
+far as the human voice could follow him. And
+this would pass with a great part of mankind
+for musical expression; instead of that noble
+mixture of solemn airs and various harmony,
+which indeed elevates our thoughts, and gives
+that exquisite pleasure, which none but true
+lovers of harmony can feel." What Avison
+calls "musical expression," we call to-day
+"content." And thus Avison "tenders evidence
+that music in his day as much absorbed
+heart and soul then as Wagner's music now."
+It is not unlikely that this very passage may
+have started Browning off on his argumentative
+way concerning the question: how lasting
+and how fundamental are the powers of
+musical expression.</p>
+
+<p>The poet's memory goes back a hundred
+years only to reach "The bands-man Avison
+whose little book and large tune had led him
+the long way from <a name='TC_41'></a><ins title="Added period">to-day.</ins>"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">430</a></span></p>
+<h3>CHARLES AVISON</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2 dotwide">. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And to-day's music-manufacture,&mdash;Brahms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wagner, Dvorak, Liszt,&mdash;to where&mdash;trumpets, shawms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Show yourselves joyful!&mdash;Handel reigns&mdash;supreme?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By no means! Buononcini's work is theme<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For fit laudation of the impartial few:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(We stand in England, mind you!) Fashion too<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Favors Geminiani&mdash;of those choice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Concertos: nor there wants a certain voice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Raised in thy favor likewise, famed Pepusch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dear to our great-grandfathers! In a bush<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Doctor's wig, they prized thee timing beats<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While Greenway trilled "Alexis." Such were feats<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of music in thy day&mdash;dispute who list&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Avison, of Newcastle organist!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">V</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And here's your music all alive once more&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As once it was alive, at least: just so<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The figured worthies of a waxwork-show<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Attest&mdash;such people, years and years ago,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Looked thus when outside death had life below,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Could say "We are now," not "We were of yore,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;"Feel how our pulses leap!" and not "Explore&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Explain why quietude has settled o'er<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Surface once all-awork!" Ay, such a "Suite"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Roused heart to rapture, such a "Fugue" would catch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soul heavenwards up, when time was: why attach<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blame to exhausted faultlessness, no match<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For fresh achievement? Feat once&mdash;ever feat!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How can completion grow still more complete?<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">431</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Hear Avison! He tenders evidence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That music in his day as much absorbed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heart and soul then as Wagner's music now.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perfect from center to circumference&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Orbed to the full can be but fully orbed:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;whence comes it that "O Thou"&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sighed by the soul at eve to Hesperus&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will not again take wing and fly away<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Since fatal Wagner fixed it fast for us)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In some unmodulated minor? Nay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even by Handel's help!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Having stated the problem that confronts
+him, namely, the change of fashion in music,
+the poet boldly goes on to declare that there
+is no truer truth obtainable by man than comes
+of music, because it does give direct expression
+to the moods of the soul, yet there is a
+hitch that balks her of full triumph, namely
+the musical form in which these moods are
+expressed does not stay fixed. This statement
+is enriched by a digression upon the
+meaning of the soul.</p>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">VI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">I state it thus:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no truer truth obtainable<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By Man than comes of music. "Soul"&mdash;(accept<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A word which vaguely names what no adept<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In word-use fits and fixes so that still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thing shall not slip word's fetter and remain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Innominate as first, yet, free again,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">432</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Is no less recognized the absolute<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fact underlying that same other fact<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Concerning which no cavil can dispute<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our nomenclature when we call it "Mind"&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Something not Matter)&mdash;"Soul," who seeks shall find<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Distinct beneath that something. You exact<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An illustrative image? This may suit.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">VII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We see a work: the worker works behind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Invisible himself. Suppose his act<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be to o'erarch a gulf: he digs, transports,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shapes and, through enginery&mdash;all sizes, sorts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lays stone by stone until a floor compact<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Proves our bridged causeway. So works Mind&mdash;by stress<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of faculty, with loose facts, more or less,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Builds up our solid knowledge: all the same,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Underneath rolls what Mind may hide not tame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An element which works beyond our guess,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soul, the unsounded sea&mdash;whose lift of surge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spite of all superstructure, lets emerge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In flower and foam, Feeling from out the deeps<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mind arrogates no mastery upon&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Distinct indisputably. Has there gone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To dig up, drag forth, render smooth from rough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mind's flooring,&mdash;operosity enough?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still the successive labor of each inch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who lists may learn: from the last turn of winch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That let the polished slab-stone find its place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the first prod of pick-axe at the base<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the unquarried mountain,&mdash;what was all<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mind's varied process except natural,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, easy, even, to descry, describe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">After our fashion? "So worked Mind: its tribe<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">433</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Of senses ministrant above, below,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far, near, or now or haply long ago<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brought to pass knowledge." But Soul's sea,&mdash;drawn whence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fed how, forced whither,&mdash;by what evidence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of ebb and flow, that's felt beneath the tread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soul has its course 'neath Mind's work over-head,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who tells of, tracks to source the founts of Soul?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet wherefore heaving sway and restless roll<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This side and that, except to emulate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stability above? To match and mate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feeling with knowledge,&mdash;make as manifest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soul's work as Mind's work, turbulence as rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hates, loves, joys, woes, hopes, fears, that rise and sink<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ceaselessly, passion's transient flit and wink,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A ripple's tinting or a spume-sheet's spread<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whitening the wave,&mdash;to strike all this life dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Run mercury into a mould like lead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And henceforth have the plain result to show&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How we Feel, hard and fast as what we Know&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This were the prize and is the puzzle!&mdash;which<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Music essays to solve: and here's the hitch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That balks her of full triumph else to boast.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Then follows his explanation of the "hitch,"
+which necessitates a comparison with the
+other arts. His contention is that art adds
+nothing to the <i>knowledge</i> of the mind. It
+simply moulds into a fixed form elements already
+known which before lay loose and dissociated,
+it therefore does not really create.
+But there is one realm, that of feeling, to
+which the arts never succeed in giving per<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">434</a></span>manent
+form though all try to do it. What is
+it they succeed in getting? The poet does
+not make the point very clear, but he seems
+to be groping after the idea that the arts present
+only the <i>phenomena</i> of feeling or the
+image of feeling instead of the <i>reality</i>. Like
+all people who are appreciative of music, he
+realizes that music comes nearer to expressing
+the spiritual reality of feeling than the other
+arts, and yet music of all the arts is the least
+permanent in its appeal.</p>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">VIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All Arts endeavor this, and she the most<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Attains thereto, yet fails of touching: why?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Does Mind get Knowledge from Art's ministry?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What's known once is known ever: Arts arrange,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dissociate, re-distribute, interchange<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Part with part, lengthen, broaden, high or deep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Construct their bravest,&mdash;still such pains produce<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Change, not creation: simply what lay loose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At first lies firmly after, what design<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was faintly traced in hesitating line<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once on a time, grows firmly resolute<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Henceforth and evermore. Now, could we shoot<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Liquidity into a mould,&mdash;some way<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Arrest Soul's evanescent moods, and keep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unalterably still the forms that leap<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To life for once by help of Art!&mdash;which yearns<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To save its capture: Poetry discerns,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Painting is 'ware of passion's rise and fall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bursting, subsidence, intermixture&mdash;all<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">435</a></span>
+<span class="i0">A-seethe within the gulf. Each Art a-strain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would stay the apparition,&mdash;nor in vain:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Poet's word-mesh, Painter's sure and swift<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Color-and-line-throw&mdash;proud the prize they lift!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus felt Man and thus looked Man,&mdash;passions caught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I' the midway swim of sea,&mdash;not much, if aught,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of nether-brooding loves, hates, hopes and fears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enwombed past Art's disclosure. Fleet the years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And still the Poet's page holds Helena<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At gaze from topmost Troy&mdash;"But where are they,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My brothers, in the armament I name<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hero by hero? Can it be that shame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For their lost sister holds them from the war?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Knowing not they already slept afar<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each of them in his own dear native land.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still on the Painter's fresco, from the hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of God takes Eve the life-spark whereunto<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She trembles up from nothingness. Outdo<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both of them, Music! Dredging deeper yet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drag into day,&mdash;by sound, thy master-net,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The abysmal bottom-growth, ambiguous thing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unbroken of a branch, palpitating<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With limbs' play and life's semblance! There it lies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Marvel and mystery, of mysteries<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And marvels, most to love and laud thee for!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save it from chance and change we most abhor!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give momentary feeling permanence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So that thy capture hold, a century hence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Truth's very heart of truth as, safe to-day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Painter's Eve, the Poet's Helena,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still rapturously bend, afar still throw<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wistful gaze! Thanks, Homer, Angelo!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could Music rescue thus from Soul's profound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give feeling immortality by sound,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">436</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Then were she queenliest of Arts! Alas&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As well expect the rainbow not to pass!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Praise 'Radaminta'&mdash;love attains therein<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To perfect utterance! Pity&mdash;what shall win<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy secret like 'Rinaldo'?"&mdash;so men said:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once all was perfume&mdash;now, the flower is dead&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They spied tints, sparks have left the spar! Love, hate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Joy, fear, survive,&mdash;alike importunate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As ever to go walk the world again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor ghost-like pant for outlet all in vain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till Music loose them, fit each filmily<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With form enough to know and name it by<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For any recognizer sure of ken<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sharp of ear, no grosser denizen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of earth than needs be. Nor to such appeal<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is Music long obdurate: off they steal&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How gently, dawn-doomed phantoms! back come they<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full-blooded with new crimson of broad day&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Passion made palpable once more. Ye look<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your last on Handel? Gaze your first on Gluck!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why wistful search, O waning ones, the chart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of stars for you while Haydn, while Mozart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Occupies heaven? These also, fanned to fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flamboyant wholly,&mdash;so perfections tire,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whiten to wanness, till ... let others note<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ever-new invasion!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The poet makes no attempt to give any
+reason why music should be so ephemeral in
+its appeal. He merely refers to the development
+of harmony and modulation, nor does
+it seem to enter his head that there can be
+any question about the appeal being eph<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">437</a></span>emeral.
+He imagines the possibility of resuscitating
+dead and gone music with modern
+harmonies and novel modulations, but gives
+that up as an <a name='TC_42'></a><ins title="Was 'irreverant'">irreverent</ins> innovation. His
+next mood is a historical one; dead and gone
+music may have something for us in a historical
+sense, that is, if we bring our life to
+kindle theirs, we may sympathetically enter
+into the life of the time.</p>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">IX</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">I devote<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rather my modicum of parts to use<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What power may yet avail to re-infuse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(In fancy, please you!) sleep that looks like death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With momentary liveliness, lend breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make the torpor half inhale. O Relfe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An all-unworthy pupil, from the shelf<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of thy laboratory, dares unstop<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bottle, ope box, extract thence pinch and drop<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of dusts and dews a many thou didst shrine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each in its right receptacle, assign<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To each its proper office, letter large<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Label and label, then with solemn charge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Reviewing learnedly the list complete<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of chemical reactives, from thy feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Push down the same to me, attent below,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Power in abundance: armed wherewith I go<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To play the enlivener. Bring good antique stuff!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was it alight once? Still lives spark enough<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For breath to quicken, run the smouldering ash<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Red right-through. What, "stone-dead" were fools so rash<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">438</a></span>
+<span class="i0">As style my Avison, because he lacked<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Modern appliance, spread out phrase unracked<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By modulations fit to make each hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stiffen upon his wig? See there&mdash;and there!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I sprinkle my reactives, pitch broadcast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Discords and resolutions, turn aghast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Melody's easy-going, jostle law<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With license, modulate (no Bach in awe),<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Change enharmonically (Hudl to thank),<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lo, up-start the flamelets,&mdash;what was blank<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turns scarlet, purple, crimson! Straightway scanned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By eyes that like new lustre&mdash;Love once more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yearns through the Largo, Hatred as before<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rages in the Rubato: e'en thy March,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My Avison, which, sooth to say&mdash;(ne'er arch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eyebrows in anger!)&mdash;timed, in Georgian years<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The step precise of British Grenadiers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To such a nicety,&mdash;if score I crowd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If rhythm I break, if beats I vary,&mdash;tap<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At bar's off-starting turns true thunder-clap,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ever the pace augmented till&mdash;what's here?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Titanic striding toward Olympus!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">X</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i26">Fear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No such irreverent innovation! Still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Glide on, go rolling, water-like, at will&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, were thy melody in monotone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The due three-parts dispensed with!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i28">This alone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comes of my tiresome talking: Music's throne<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seats somebody whom somebody unseats,<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">439</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And whom in turn&mdash;by who knows what new feats<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of strength,&mdash;shall somebody as sure push down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Consign him dispossessed of sceptre, crown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And orb imperial&mdash;whereto?&mdash;Never dream<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That what once lived shall ever die! They seem<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dead&mdash;do they? lapsed things lost in limbo? Bring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our life to kindle theirs, and straight each king<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Starts, you shall see, stands up, from head to foot<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No inch that is not Purcell! Wherefore? (Suit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Measure to subject, first&mdash;no marching on<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet in thy bold C Major, Avison,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As suited step a minute since: no: wait&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the minor key first modulate&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gently with A, now&mdash;in the Lesser Third!)<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The really serious conclusion of the poem
+amounts to a doctrine of relativity in art and
+not only in art but in ethics and religion. It is
+a statement in poetry of the prevalent thought
+of the nineteenth century, of which the most
+widely known exponent was Herbert Spencer.
+The form in which every truth manifests
+itself is partial and therefore will pass, but the
+underlying truth, the absolute which unfolds
+itself in form after form is eternal. Every
+manifestation in form, according to Browning,
+however, has also its infinite value in relation
+to the truth which is preserved through it.</p>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">XII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Of all the lamentable debts incurred<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By Man through buying knowledge, this were worst:<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">440</a></span>
+<span class="i0">That he should find his last gain prove his first<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was futile&mdash;merely nescience absolute,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not knowledge in the bud which holds a fruit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Haply undreamed of in the soul's Spring-tide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pursed in the petals Summer opens wide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Autumn, withering, rounds to perfect ripe,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not this,&mdash;but ignorance, a blur to wipe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From human records, late it graced so much.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Truth&mdash;this attainment? Ah, but such and such<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beliefs of yore seemed inexpugnable.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><a name='TC_43'></a><ins title="Added beginning quote">"When</ins> we attained them! E'en as they, so will<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This their successor have the due morn, noon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Evening and night&mdash;just as an old-world tune<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wears out and drops away, until who hears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smilingly questions&mdash;'This it was brought tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once to all eyes,&mdash;this roused heart's rapture once?'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So will it be with truth that, for the nonce,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Styles itself truth perennial: 'ware its wile!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knowledge turns nescience,&mdash;foremost on the file,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Simply proves first of our delusions."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XIII</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i30">Now&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blare it forth, bold C Major! Lift thy brow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man, the immortal, that wast never fooled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With gifts no gifts at all, nor ridiculed&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man knowing&mdash;he who nothing knew! As Hope,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fear, Joy, and Grief,&mdash;though ampler stretch and scope<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They seek and find in novel rhythm, fresh phrase,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were equally existent in far days<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Music's dim beginning&mdash;even so,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Truth was at full within thee long ago,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alive as now it takes what latest shape<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">441</a></span>
+<span class="i0">May startle thee by strangeness. Truths escape<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time's insufficient garniture; they fade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They fall&mdash;those sheathings now grown sere, whose aid<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And free through March frost: May dews crystalline<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nourish truth merely,&mdash;does June boast the fruit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As&mdash;not new vesture merely but, to boot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Novel creation? Soon shall fade and fall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Myth after myth&mdash;the husk-like lies I call<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">New truth's corolla-safeguard: Autumn comes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So much the better!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As to the questions why music does not give
+feeling immortality through sound, and why
+it should be so ephemeral in its appeal, there
+are various things to be said. It is just possible
+that it may soon come to be recognized
+that the psychic growth of humanity is more
+perfectly reflected in music than any where
+else. Ephemeralness may be predicated of
+culture-music more certainly than of folk-music,
+why? Because culture-music often has
+occupied itself more with the technique than
+with the content, while folk-music, being the
+spontaneous expression of feeling must have
+content. Folk-music, it is true, is simple, but
+if it be genuine in its feeling I doubt whether
+it ever loses its power to move. Therefore,
+in folk-music is possibly made permanent
+simple states of feeling. Now in culture-music,
+the development has constantly been<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">442</a></span>
+in the direction of the expression of the ultimate
+spiritual reality of emotions. Music is
+now actually trying to accomplish what Browning
+demands of it:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">"Dredging deeper yet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drag into day,&mdash;by sound, thy master-net,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The abysmal bottom-growth, ambiguous thing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unbroken of a branch, palpitating<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With limbs' play and life's semblance! There it lies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Marvel and mystery, of mysteries<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And marvels, most to love and laud thee for!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save it from chance and change we most abhor."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is true no matter what the emotion
+may be. Hate may have its "eidolon" as
+well as love. Above all arts, music has the
+power of raising evil into a region of the artistically
+beautiful. Doubt, despair, passion, become
+blossoms plucked by the hand of God
+when transmuted in the alembic of the brain
+of genius&mdash;which is not saying that he need
+experience any of these passions himself. In
+fact, it is his power of perceiving the eidolon
+of beauty in modes of passion or emotion not
+his own that makes him the great genius.</p>
+
+<p>It is doubtless true that whenever in culture-music
+there has really been content aroused
+by feeling, no matter what the stage of technique
+reached, <i>that</i> music retains its power to
+move. It is also highly probably that in the<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">443</a></span>
+earlier objective phases of music, even the
+contemporary audiences were not moved in
+the sense that we should be moved to-day.
+The audiences were objective also and their
+enthusiasm may have been aroused by merely
+the imitative aspects of music as Avison called
+them. It is certainly a fact that content and
+form are more closely linked in music than in
+any other art. Suppose, however, we imagine
+the development of melody, counterpoint, harmony,
+modulation, etc., to be symbolized by
+a series of concrete materials like clay bricks,
+silver bricks, gold bricks, diamond bricks;
+a beautiful thought might take as exquisite
+a form in bricks of clay as it would in diamond
+bricks, or diamond bricks might be flung together
+without any informing thought so that
+they would attract only the thoughtless by
+their glitter. But it also follows that, with
+the increase in the kinds of bricks, there is an
+increase in the possibilities for subtleties in
+psychic expression, therefore music to-day is
+coming nearer and nearer to the spiritual
+reality of feeling. It requires the awakened
+soul that Maeterlinck talks about, that is, the
+soul alive to the spiritual essences of things to
+recognize this new realm which composers
+are bringing to us in music.</p>
+
+<p>There are always, at least three kinds of<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">444</a></span>
+appreciators of music, those who can see
+beauty only in the masters of the past, those
+who can see beauty only in the last new composer,
+and those who ecstatically welcome
+beauty past, present and to come. These
+last are not only psychically developed themselves,
+but they are able to retain delight in
+simpler modes of feeling. They may be
+raised to a seventh heaven of delight by a Bach
+fugue played on a clavichord by Mr. Dolmetsch,
+feeling as if angels were ministering
+unto them, or to a still higher heaven of delight
+by a Tschaikowsky symphony or a string
+quartet of Grieg, feeling that here the seraphim
+continually do cry, or they may enter
+into the very presence of the most High through
+some subtly exquisite and psychic song of an
+American composer, for some of the younger
+American composers are indeed approaching
+"Truth's very heart of truth," in their music.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, one gets rather the impression
+that the poet has here tackled a problem
+upon which he did not have great insight. He
+passes from one mood to another, none of
+which seem especially satisfactory to himself,
+and concludes with one of the half-truths of
+nineteenth-century thought. It is true as far
+as it goes that forms evolve, and it is a good
+truth to oppose to the martinets of settled<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">445</a></span>
+standards in poetry, music and painting; it is
+also true that the form is a partial expression
+of a whole truth, but there is the further truth
+that, let a work of art be really a work of
+genius, and the form as well as the content
+touches the infinite; that is, we have as Browning
+says in a poem already <a name='TC_44'></a><ins title="Added comma">quoted,</ins> "Bernard
+de Mandeville," the very sun in little, or as he
+makes Abt Vogler say of his music, the broken
+arc which goes to the formation of the perfect
+round, or to quote still another poem of Browning's,
+"Cleon," the perfect rhomb or trapezoid
+that has its own place in a mosaic pavement.</p>
+
+<p>The poem closes in a rolicking frame of
+mind, which is not remarkably consistent
+with the preceding thought, except that the
+poet seems determined to get all he can out of
+the music of the past by enlivening it with his
+own jolly mood. To this end he sets a patriotic
+poem to the tune of Avison's march, in
+honor of our old friend, Pym. It is a clever
+<i>tour de force</i> for the words are made to match
+exactly in rhythm and quantity the notes of
+the march. Truth to say, the essential goodness
+of the tune comes out by means of these
+enlivening words.</p>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">XIV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">Therefore&mdash;bang the drums,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blow the trumpets, Avison! March-motive? that's<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">446</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Truth which endures resetting. Sharps and flats,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lavish at need, shall dance athwart thy score<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When ophicleide and bombardon's uproar<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mate the approaching trample, even now<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Big in the distance&mdash;or my ears deceive&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of federated England, fitly weave<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">March-music for the Future!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<h4 class="sidenote">XV</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">Or suppose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Back, and not forward, transformation goes?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once more some sable-stoled procession&mdash;say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From Little-ease to Tyburn&mdash;wends its way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of the dungeon to the gallows-tree<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where heading, hacking, hanging is to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of half-a-dozen recusants&mdash;this day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Three hundred years ago! How duly drones<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Elizabethan plain-song&mdash;dim antique<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grown clarion-clear the while I humbly wreak<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A classic vengeance on thy March! It moans&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Larges and Longs and Breves displacing quite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crotchet-and-quaver pertness&mdash;brushing bars<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Aside and filling vacant sky with stars<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hidden till now that day returns to night.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="figtag">
+<a name="linki_24" id="linki_24"></a>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img class="plain" src="images/illus024.jpg" width="413" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<p class="caption">Avison's March</p>
+
+<p class="center"> <a href="music/avison.mid">Listen</a> </p>
+</div>
+
+<h4 class="sidenote">XVI</h4>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Nor night nor day: one purpose move us both,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be thy mood mine! As thou wast minded, Man's<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The cause our music champions: I were loth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To think we cheered our troop to Preston Pans<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ignobly: back to times of England's best!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Parliament stands for privilege&mdash;life and limb<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Guards Hollis, Haselrig, Strode, Hampden, Pym,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The famous Five. There's rumor of arrest.<br /></span><span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">447</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Bring up the Train Bands, Southwark! They protest:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall we not all join chorus? Hark the hymn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Rough, rude, robustious&mdash;homely heart a-throb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Harsh voises a-hallo, as beseems the mob!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How good is noise! what's silence but despair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of making sound match gladness never there?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give me some great glad "subject," glorious Bach,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where cannon-roar not organ-peal we lack!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Join in, give voice robustious rude and rough,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Avison helps&mdash;so heart lend noise enough!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fife, trump, drum, sound! and singers then,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Marching, say "Pym, the man of men!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Up, head's, your proudest&mdash;out, throats, your loudest&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Somerset's Pym!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Strafford from the block, Eliot from the den,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Foes, friends, shout "Pym, our citizen!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wail, the foes he quelled,&mdash;hail, the friends he held,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Tavistock's Pym!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hearts prompt heads, hands that ply the pen<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Teach babes unborn the where and when<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Tyrants, he braved them,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Patriots, he saved them&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Westminster's Pym."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Another English musician, Arthur Chappell,
+was the inspiration of a graceful little sonnet
+written by the poet in an album which was
+presented to Mr. Chappell in recognition of
+his popular concerts in London. Browning
+was a constant attendant at these. It gives a<span class="pagenum pncolor"><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">448</a></span>
+true glimpse of the poet in a highly appreciative
+mood:</p>
+
+<h3>THE FOUNDER OF THE FEAST</h3>
+
+<p class="poemctr">1884</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Enter my palace," if a prince should say&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Feast with the Painters! See, in bounteous row,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They range from Titian up to Angelo!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could we be silent at the rich survey?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A host so kindly, in as great a way<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Invites to banquet, substitutes for show<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sound that's diviner still, and bids us know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bach like Beethoven; are we thankless, pray?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thanks, then, to Arthur Chappell,&mdash;thanks to him<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose every guest henceforth not idly vaunts<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Sense has received the utmost Nature grants,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My cup was filled with rapture to the brim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When, night by night,&mdash;ah, memory, how it haunts!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Music was poured by perfect ministrants,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By Halle, Schumann, Piatti, Joachim."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1">
+<span class="label">[1]</span></a> See the Tempest volume in First Folio Shakespeare.
+(Crowell &amp; Co.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2">
+<span class="label">[2]</span></a> Estes and Lauriat, Boston, Mass.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3">
+<span class="label">[3]</span></a> Religious Progress of the Century.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4">
+<span class="label">[4]</span></a> See Withrow.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="trnote">
+<p><b>Transcriber Notes</b></p>
+<p>Typographical inconsistencies have been changed and are
+<ins title="Was 'hgihligthed'">highlighted</ins> and
+listed below.</p>
+<p>Archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation are preserved.</p>
+<p>Author's punctuation style is preserved, except where noted.</p>
+<p class='padtop'><b>Transcriber Changes</b></p>
+<p>The following changes were made to the original text:</p>
+
+<p><a href='#TC_1'>Page 10</a>: Removed extra quote after Keats (What porridge had John <b>Keats?</b>)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_2'>Page 21</a>: Was 'blurrs' (Stray-leaves, fragments, <b>blurs</b> and blottings)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_3'>Page 49</a>: Paragraph continued, no quote needed (<b>Tibullus</b> gives Virgil equal credit for having in his writings touched with telling truth)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_4'>Page 53</a>: Was 'Shakesspeare' (Jonson wrote for the First Folio edition of <b>Shakespeare</b> printed in 1623)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_5'>Page 53</a>: Was 'B. I.' (<b>B. J.</b>)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_6'>Page 53</a>: Added single quotes (Shakespeare's talk in "At the <b>'Mermaid'</b>" grows out of the supposition)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_7'>Page 69</a>: Was 'Shakepeare's' (He thinks the opening Sonnets are to the Earl of Southampton, known to be <b>Shakespeare's</b> patron)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_8'>Page 81</a>: Added comma after Strafford (not Pym, the leader of the people, but <b>Strafford,</b> the supporter of the King.)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_9'>Page 85</a>: Added end quote (some half-dozen years of immunity to the 'fretted tenement' of Strafford's 'fiery <b>soul'</b>)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_10'>Page 91</a>: Capitalized King (The <b>King</b>, upon his visit to Scotland, had been shocked)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_11'>Page 100</a>: Was 'Finnees' (Hampden, Hollis, the <em>younger</em> Vane, Rudyard, <b>Fiennes</b> and many of the Presbyterian Party)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_12'>Page 136</a>: Removed extra start quote ("Be my friend <b>Of</b> friends!"&mdash;My King! I would have....)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_13'>Page 137</a>: Was 'brillance' (The else imperial <b>brilliance</b> of your mind)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_14'>Page 137</a>: Was 'you way' (If Pym is busy,&mdash;<b>you may</b> write of Pym.)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_15'>Page 140</a>: Capitalized King (the <b>King</b>, therefore, summoned it to meet on the third of November.)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_16'>Page 142</a>: Matching the original: leaving it hyphenated (the greatest in England would have stood <b>dis-covered</b>.')</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_17'>Page 172</a>: Was 'Partiot' (The <b>Patriot</b> Pym, or the Apostate Strafford!)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_18'>Page 174</a>: Was 'perfers' (The King <b>prefers</b> to leave the door ajar)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_19'>Page 178</a>: Was 'her's' (I am <b>hers</b> now, and I will die.)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_20'>Page 193</a>: Was 'Bethrothal' (Till death us do join past parting&mdash;that sounds like <b>Betrothal</b> indeed!)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_21'>Page 200</a>: Was 'canonade' (Such a castle seldom crumbles by sheer stress of <b>cannonade</b>: 'Tis when foes are foiled and fighting's finished that vile rains invade)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_22'>Page 203</a>: Inserted stanza (<b>Down</b> I sat to cards, one evening)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_23'>Page 203</a>: Added starting quote (<b>"When</b> he found his voice, he stammered 'That expression once again!')</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_24'>Page 204</a>: Added starting quote (<b>'End</b> it! no time like the present!)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_25'>Page 224</a>: Changed comma to period (the morning's lessons conned with the <b>tutor.</b> There, too, it was that he impressed on the lad those maxims)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_26'>Page 236</a>: Added end quote (Why, he makes sure of her&mdash;"do you say, <b>yes"</b>&mdash; "She'll not say, no,"&mdash;what comes it to beside?)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_27'>Page 265</a>: Added stanza ("'<b>I've</b> been about those laces we need for ... never mind!)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_28'>Page 266</a>: Keeping original spelling (With <b>dreriment</b> about, within may life be found)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_29'>Page 267</a>: Added stanza ("'<b>Wicked</b> dear Husband, first despair and then rejoice!)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_30'>Page 276</a>: Was 'checks' (The dryness of "Aristotle's <b>cheeks</b>" is as usual so enlivened by Browning that the fate of Halbert and Hob grows)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_31'>Page 289</a>: Added starting quote (<b>"You</b> wrong your poor disciple.)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_32'>Page 290</a>: Removed end quote (Wish I could take you; but fame travels <b>fast</b>)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_33'>Page 291</a>: Was 'aud' (Aunt <b>and</b> niece, you and me.)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_34'>Page 294</a>: Was 'oustide' (Such <b>outside</b>! Now,&mdash;confound me for a prig!)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_35'>Page 299</a>: Changed singe quote to double (<b>"Not</b> you! But I see.)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_36'>Page 315</a>: Was 'Descretion' (To live and die together&mdash;for a month, <b>Discretion</b> can award no more!)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_37'>Page 329</a>: Removed starting quote ("He may believe; and yet, and yet <b>How</b> can he?" All eyes turn with interest.)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_38'>Page 344</a>: Left in ending quote with unknown start (High Church, and the Evangelicals, or Low <b>Church."</b>)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_39'>Page 370</a>: Changed period to comma (Judgment drops her damning <b>plummet,</b> Pronouncing such a fatal space)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_40'>Page 421</a>: Removed starting quote (<b>About</b> the year 1676, the corporation of Newcastle contributed)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_41'>Page 429</a>: Added period (whose little book and large tune had led him the long way from <b>to-day.</b>")</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_42'>Page 437</a>: Was 'irreverant' (gives that up as an <b>irreverent</b> innovation.)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_43'>Page 440</a>: Added beginning quote (<b>"When</b> we attained them!)</p>
+<p><a href='#TC_44'>Page 445</a>: Added comma (we have as Browning says in a poem already <b>quoted,</b> "Bernard de Mandeville,")</p>
+
+</div>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #29365 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29365)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Browning's England, by Helen Archibald Clarke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Browning's England
+       A Study in English Influences in Browning
+
+Author: Helen Archibald Clarke
+
+Release Date: July 10, 2009 [EBook #29365]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING'S ENGLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Linda Cantoni (music), Katherine
+Ward and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Browning's England
+
+  A STUDY OF
+  ENGLISH INFLUENCES IN BROWNING
+
+
+  BY
+  HELEN ARCHIBALD CLARKE
+  Author of "_Browning's Italy_"
+
+  NEW YORK
+  THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
+
+  MCMVIII
+
+  _Copyright, 1908, by_
+  The Baker & Taylor Company
+
+  Published, October, 1908
+
+  _The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A._
+
+
+  To
+  MY COLLEAGUE IN PLEASANT LITERARY PATHS
+  AND
+  MANY YEARS FRIEND
+  CHARLOTTE PORTER
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+  CHAPTER I
+                                                          PAGE
+  English Poets, Friends, and Enthusiasms                    1
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  Shakespeare's Portrait                                    42
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  A Crucial Period in English History                       79
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  Social Aspects of English Life                           211
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  Religious Thought in the Nineteenth Century              322
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  Art Criticism Inspired by the English Musician, Avison   420
+
+
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  Browning at 23                                _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                          PAGE
+  Percy Bysshe Shelley                                       4
+  John Keats                                                10
+  William Wordsworth                                        16
+  Rydal Mount, the Home of Wordsworth                       22
+  An English Lane                                           33
+  First Folio Portrait of Shakespeare                       60
+  Charles I in Scene of Impeachment                         80
+  Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford                       88
+  Charles I                                                114
+  Whitehall                                                120
+  Westminster Hall                                         157
+  The Tower, London                                        170
+  The Tower, Traitors' Gate                                183
+  An English Manor House                                   222
+  An English Park                                          240
+  John Bunyan                                              274
+  An English Inn                                           288
+  Cardinal Wiseman                                         336
+  Sacred Heart                                             342
+  The Nativity                                             351
+  The Transfiguration                                      366
+  Handel                                                   426
+  Avison's March                                           446
+
+
+
+
+BROWNING'S ENGLAND
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ENGLISH POETS, FRIENDS AND ENTHUSIASMS
+
+
+To any one casually trying to recall what England has given Robert
+Browning by way of direct poetical inspiration, it is more than likely
+that the little poem about Shelley, "Memorabilia" would at once occur:
+
+    I
+
+    "Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
+      And did he stop and speak to you
+    And did you speak to him again?
+      How strange it seems and new!
+
+    II
+
+    "But you were living before that,
+      And also you are living after;
+    And the memory I started at--
+      My starting moves your laughter!
+
+    III
+
+    "I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
+      And a certain use in the world, no doubt,
+    Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
+      'Mid the blank miles round about:
+
+    IV
+
+    "For there I picked up on the heather
+      And there I put inside my breast
+    A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!
+      Well, I forget the rest."
+
+It puts into a mood and a symbol the almost worshipful admiration felt
+by Browning for the poet in his youth, which he had, many years before
+this little lyric was written, recorded in a finely appreciative passage
+in "Pauline."
+
+    "Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever!
+    Thou are gone from us; years go by and spring
+    Gladdens and the young earth is beautiful,
+    Yet thy songs come not, other bards arise,
+    But none like thee: they stand, thy majesties,
+    Like mighty works which tell some spirit there
+    Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn,
+    Till, its long task completed, it hath risen
+    And left us, never to return, and all
+    Rush in to peer and praise when all in vain.
+    The air seems bright with thy past presence yet,
+    But thou art still for me as thou hast been
+    When I have stood with thee as on a throne
+    With all thy dim creations gathered round
+    Like mountains, and I felt of mould like them,
+    And with them creatures of my own were mixed,
+    Like things, half-lived, catching and giving life.
+    But thou art still for me who have adored
+    Tho' single, panting but to hear thy name
+    Which I believed a spell to me alone,
+    Scarce deeming thou wast as a star to men!
+    As one should worship long a sacred spring
+    Scarce worth a moth's flitting, which long grasses cross,
+    And one small tree embowers droopingly--
+    Joying to see some wandering insect won
+    To live in its few rushes, or some locust
+    To pasture on its boughs, or some wild bird
+    Stoop for its freshness from the trackless air:
+    And then should find it but the fountain-head,
+    Long lost, of some great river washing towns
+    And towers, and seeing old woods which will live
+    But by its banks untrod of human foot,
+    Which, when the great sun sinks, lie quivering
+    In light as some thing lieth half of life
+    Before God's foot, waiting a wondrous change;
+    Then girt with rocks which seek to turn or stay
+    Its course in vain, for it does ever spread
+    Like a sea's arm as it goes rolling on,
+    Being the pulse of some great country--so
+    Wast thou to me, and art thou to the world!
+    And I, perchance, half feel a strange regret
+    That I am not what I have been to thee:
+    Like a girl one has silently loved long
+    In her first loneliness in some retreat,
+    When, late emerged, all gaze and glow to view
+    Her fresh eyes and soft hair and lips which bloom
+    Like a mountain berry: doubtless it is sweet
+    To see her thus adored, but there have been
+    Moments when all the world was in our praise,
+    Sweeter than any pride of after hours.
+    Yet, sun-treader, all hail! From my heart's heart
+    I bid thee hail! E'en in my wildest dreams,
+    I proudly feel I would have thrown to dust
+    The wreaths of fame which seemed o'erhanging me,
+    To see thee for a moment as thou art."
+
+Browning was only fourteen when Shelley first came into his literary
+life. The story has often been told of how the young Robert, passing a
+bookstall one day spied in a box of second-hand volumes, a shabby little
+edition of Shelley advertised "Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poems: very
+scarce." It seems almost incredible to us now that the name was an
+absolutely new one to him, and that only by questioning the bookseller
+did he learn that Shelley had written a number of volumes of poetry and
+that he was now dead. This accident was sufficient to inspire the
+incipient poet's curiosity, and he never rested until he was the owner
+of Shelley's works. They were hard to get hold of in those early days
+but the persistent searching of his mother finally unearthed them at
+Olliers' in Vere Street, London. She brought him also three volumes of
+Keats, who became a treasure second only to Shelley.
+
+[Illustration: Percy Bysshe Shelley
+
+"Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever."]
+
+The question of Shelley's influence on Browning's art has been one often
+discussed. There are many traces of Shelleyan music and idea in his
+early poems "Pauline," "Paracelsus," and "Sordello," but no marked nor
+lasting impression was made upon Browning's development as a poet by
+Shelley. Upon Browning's personal development Shelley exerted a
+short-lived though somewhat intense influence. We see the young
+enthusiast professing the atheism of his idol as the liberal views of
+Shelley were then interpreted, and even becoming a vegetarian. As time
+went on the discipleship vanished, and in its place came the recognition
+on Browning's part of a poetic spirit akin yet different from his own.
+The last trace of the disciple appears in "Sordello" when the poet
+addresses Shelley among the audience of dead great ones he has mustered
+to listen to the story of Sordello:
+
+    --"Stay--thou, spirit, come not near
+    Now--not this time desert thy cloudy place
+    To scare me, thus employed, with that pure face!
+    I need not fear this audience, I make free
+    With them, but then this is no place for thee!
+    The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown
+    Up out of memories of Marathon,
+    Would echo like his own sword's grinding screech
+    Braying a Persian shield,--the silver speech
+    Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin,
+    Turn intense as a trumpet sounding in
+    The Knights to tilt,--wert thou to hear!"
+
+Shelley appears in the work of Browning once more in the prose essay on
+Shelley which was written to a volume of spurious letters of that poet
+published in 1851. In this is summed up in a masterful paragraph
+reflecting Browning's unusual penetration into the secret paths of the
+poetic mind, the characteristics of a poet of Shelley's order. The
+paragraph is as follows:
+
+"We turn with stronger needs to the genius of an opposite tendency--the
+subjective poet of modern classification. He, gifted like the objective
+poet, with the fuller perception of nature and man, is impelled to
+embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to the many
+below as to the One above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends
+all things in their absolute truth,--an ultimate view ever aspired to,
+if but partially attained, by the poet's own soul. Not what man sees,
+but what God sees,--the _Ideas_ of Plato, seeds of creation lying
+burningly on the Divine Hand,--it is toward these that he struggles. Not
+with the combination of humanity in action, but with the primal elements
+of humanity, he has to do; and he digs where he stands,--preferring to
+seek them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of that absolute Mind,
+according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak.
+Such a poet does not deal habitually with the picturesque groupings and
+tempestuous tossings of the forest-trees, but with their roots and
+fibers naked to the chalk and stone. He does not paint pictures and
+hang them on the walls, but rather carries them on the retina of his own
+eyes: we must look deep into his human eyes, to see those pictures on
+them. He is rather a seer, accordingly, than a fashioner, and what he
+produces will be less a work than an effluence. That effluence cannot be
+easily considered in abstraction from his personality,--being indeed the
+very radiance and aroma of his personality, projected from it but not
+separated. Therefore, in our approach to the poetry, we necessarily
+approach the personality of the poet; in apprehending it, we apprehend
+him, and certainly we cannot love it without loving him. Both for love's
+and for understanding's sake we desire to know him, and, as readers of
+his poetry, must be readers of his biography too."
+
+Finally, the little "Memorabilia" lyric gives a mood of cherished memory
+of the Sun-Treader, who beaconed him upon the heights in his youth, and
+has now become a molted eagle-feather held close to his heart.
+
+Keats' lesser but assured place in the poet's affections comes out in
+the pugnacious lyric, "Popularity," one of the old-time bits of
+ammunition shot from the guns of those who found Browning "obscure." The
+poem is an "apology" for any unappreciated poet with the true stuff in
+him, but the allusion to Keats shows him to have been the fuse that
+fired this mild explosion against the dullards who pass by unknowing and
+uncaring of a genius, though he pluck with one hand thoughts from the
+stars, and with the other fight off want.
+
+
+    POPULARITY
+
+    I
+
+    Stand still, true poet that you are!
+      I know you; let me try and draw you.
+    Some night you'll fail us: when afar
+      You rise, remember one man saw you,
+    Knew you, and named a star!
+
+    II
+
+    My star, God's glow-worm! Why extend
+      That loving hand of his which leads you,
+    Yet locks you safe from end to end
+      Of this dark world, unless he needs you,
+    Just saves your light to spend?
+
+    III
+
+    His clenched hand shall unclose at last,
+      I know, and let out all the beauty:
+    My poet holds the future fast,
+      Accepts the coming ages' duty,
+    Their present for this past.
+
+    IV
+
+    That day, the earth's feast-master's brow
+      Shall clear, to God the chalice raising;
+    "Others give best at first, but thou
+      Forever set'st our table praising,
+    Keep'st the good wine till now!"
+
+    V
+
+    Meantime, I'll draw you as you stand,
+      With few or none to watch and wonder:
+    I'll say--a fisher, on the sand
+      By Tyre the old, with ocean-plunder,
+    A netful, brought to land.
+
+    VI
+
+    Who has not heard how Tyrian shells
+      Enclosed the blue, that dye of dyes
+    Whereof one drop worked miracles,
+      And colored like Astarte's eyes
+    Raw silk the merchant sells?
+
+    VII
+
+    And each bystander of them all
+      Could criticise, and quote tradition
+    How depths of blue sublimed some pall
+      --To get which, pricked a king's ambition;
+    Worth sceptre, crown and ball.
+
+    VIII
+
+    Yet there's the dye, in that rough mesh,
+      The sea has only just o'er-whispered!
+    Live whelks, each lip's beard dripping fresh
+      As if they still the water's lisp heard
+    Thro' foam the rock-weeds thresh.
+
+    IX
+
+    Enough to furnish Solomon
+      Such hangings for his cedar-house,
+    That, when gold-robed he took the throne
+      In that abyss of blue, the Spouse
+    Might swear his presence shone
+
+    X
+
+    Most like the centre-spike of gold
+      Which burns deep in the blue-bell's womb,
+    What time, with ardors manifold,
+      The bee goes singing to her groom,
+    Drunken and overbold.
+
+    XI
+
+    Mere conchs! not fit for warp or woof!
+      Till cunning come to pound and squeeze
+    And clarify,--refine to proof
+      The liquor filtered by degrees,
+    While the world stands aloof.
+
+    XII
+
+    And there's the extract, flasked and fine,
+      And priced and salable at last!
+    And Hobbs, Nobbs, Stokes and Nokes combine
+      To paint the future from the past,
+    Put blue into their line.
+
+    XIII
+
+    Hobbs hints blue,--straight he turtle eats:
+      Nobbs prints blue,--claret crowns his cup:
+    Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats,--
+      Both gorge. Who fished the murex up?
+    What porridge had John Keats?
+
+[Illustration: John Keats
+
+    "Who fished the murex up?
+    What porridge had John Keats?"]
+
+Wordsworth, it appears, was, so to speak, the inverse inspiration of the
+stirring lines "The Lost Leader." Browning's strong sympathies with the
+Liberal cause are here portrayed with an ardor which is fairly
+intoxicating poetically, but one feels it is scarcely just to the
+mild-eyed, exemplary Wordsworth, and perhaps exaggeratedly sure of
+Shakespeare's attitude on this point. It is only fair to Browning, to
+point out how he himself felt later that his artistic mood had here run
+away with him, whereupon he made amends honorable in a letter in reply
+to the question whether he had Wordsworth in mind: "I can only answer,
+with something of shame and contrition, that I undoubtedly had
+Wordsworth in my mind--but simply as a model; you know an artist takes
+one or two striking traits in the features of his 'model,' and uses them
+to start his fancy on a flight which may end far enough from the good
+man or woman who happens to be sitting for nose and eye. I thought of
+the great Poet's abandonment of liberalism at an unlucky juncture, and
+no repaying consequence that I could ever see. But, once call my
+fancy-portrait _Wordsworth_--and how much more ought one to say!"
+
+The defection of Wordsworth from liberal sympathies is one of the
+commonplaces of literary history. There was a time when he figured in
+his poetry as a patriotic leader of the people, when in clarion tones he
+exhorted his countrymen to "arm and combine in defense of their common
+birthright." But this was in the enthusiasm of his youth when he and
+Southey and Coleridge were metaphorically waving their red caps for the
+principles of the French Revolution. The unbridled actions of the French
+Revolutionists, quickly cooled off their ardor, and as Taine cleverly
+puts it, "at the end of a few years, the three, brought back into the
+pale of State and Church, were, Coleridge, a Pittite journalist,
+Wordsworth, a distributor of stamps, and Southey, poet-laureate; all
+converted zealots, decided Anglicans, and intolerant conservatives." The
+"handful of silver" for which the patriot in the poem is supposed to
+have left the cause included besides the post of "distributor of
+stamps," given to him by Lord Lonsdale in 1813, a pension of three
+hundred pounds a year in 1842, and the poet-laureateship in 1843.
+
+The first of these offices was received so long after the cooling of
+Wordsworth's "Revolution" ardors which the events of 1793 had brought
+about that it can scarcely be said to have influenced his change of
+mind.
+
+It was during Wordsworth's residence in France, from November 1791 to
+December 1792, that his enthusiasm for the French Revolution reached
+white heat. How the change was wrought in his feelings is shown with
+much penetration and sympathy by Edward Dowden in his "French Revolution
+and English Literature." "When war between France and England was
+declared Wordsworth's nature underwent the most violent strain it had
+ever experienced. He loved his native land yet he could wish for nothing
+but disaster to her arms. As the days passed he found it more and more
+difficult to sustain his faith in the Revolution. First, he abandoned
+belief in the leaders but he still trusted to the people, then the
+people seemed to have grown insane with the intoxication of blood. He
+was driven back from his defense of the Revolution, in its historical
+development, to a bare faith in the abstract idea. He clung to theories,
+the free and joyous movement of his sympathies ceased; opinions stifled
+the spontaneous life of the spirit, these opinions were tested and
+retested by the intellect, till, in the end, exhausted by inward
+debate, he yielded up moral questions in despair ... by process of
+the understanding alone Wordsworth could attain no vital body of
+truth. Rather he felt that things of far more worth than political
+opinions--natural instincts, sympathies, passions, intuitions--were
+being disintegrated or denaturalized. Wordsworth began to suspect the
+analytic intellect as a source of moral wisdom. In place of humanitarian
+dreams came a deep interest in the joys and sorrows of individual men
+and women; through his interest in this he was led back to a study of
+the mind of man and those laws which connect the work of the creative
+imagination with the play of the passions. He had begun again to think
+nobly of the world and human life." He was, in fact, a more thorough
+Democrat socially than any but Burns of the band of poets mentioned in
+Browning's gallant company, not even excepting Browning himself.
+
+
+    THE LOST LEADER
+
+    I
+
+    Just for a handful of silver he left us,
+      Just for a riband to stick in his coat--
+    Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
+      Lost all the others, she lets us devote;
+    They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
+      So much was theirs who so little allowed:
+    How all our copper had gone for his service!
+      Rags--were they purple, his heart had been proud!
+    We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him,
+      Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
+    Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
+      Made him our pattern to live and to die!
+    Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
+      Burns, Shelley, were with us,--they watch from their graves!
+    He alone breaks from the van and the freeman,
+      --He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
+
+    II
+
+    We shall march prospering,--not thro' his presence
+      Songs may inspirit us,--not from his lyre;
+    Deeds will be done,--while he boasts his quiescence,
+      Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:
+    Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
+      One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
+    One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels,
+      One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!
+    Life's night begins: let him never come back to us!
+      There would be doubt, hesitation and pain,
+    Forced praise on our part--the glimmer of twilight,
+      Never glad confident morning again!
+    Best fight on well, for we taught him--strike gallantly,
+      Menace our hearts ere we master his own;
+    Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,
+      Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!
+
+Whether an artist is justified in taking the most doubtful feature of
+his model's physiognomy and building up from it a repellent portrait is
+question for debate, especially when he admits its incompleteness. But
+we may balance against this incompleteness, the fine fire of enthusiasm
+for the "cause" in the poem, and the fact that Wordsworth has not been
+at all harmed by it. The worst that has happened is the raising in our
+minds of a question touching Browning's good taste.
+
+Just here it will be interesting to speak of a bit of purely personal
+expression on the subject of Browning's known liberal standpoint,
+written by him in answer to the question propounded to a number of
+English men of letters and printed together with other replies in a
+volume edited by Andrew Reid in 1885.
+
+
+    "Why I am a Liberal."
+
+    "'Why?' Because all I haply can and do,
+      All that I am now, all I hope to be,--
+      Whence comes it save from fortune setting free
+    Body and soul the purpose to pursue,
+    God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,
+      Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,
+      These shall I bid men--each in his degree
+    Also God-guided--bear, and gayly too?
+
+      "But little do or can the best of us:
+    That little is achieved thro' Liberty.
+      Who then dares hold, emancipated thus,
+    His fellow shall continue bound? Not I,
+      Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss
+    A brother's right to freedom. That is 'Why.'"
+
+[Illustration: William Wordsworth
+
+    "How all our copper had gone for his service.
+    Rags--were they purple, his heart had been proved."]
+
+Enthusiasm for liberal views comes out again and again in the poetry of
+Browning.
+
+His fullest treatment of the cause of political liberty is in
+"Strafford," to be considered in the third chapter, but many are the
+hints strewn about his verse that bring home with no uncertain touch the
+fact that Browning lived man's "lover" and never man's "hater." Take as
+an example "The Englishman in Italy," where the sarcastic turn he gives
+to the last stanza shows clearly where his sympathies lie:
+
+    --"Such trifles!" you say?
+    Fortù, in my England at home,
+      Men meet gravely to-day
+    And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws
+      Be righteous and wise!
+    --If 't were proper, Scirocco should vanish
+      In black from the skies!
+
+More the ordinary note of patriotism is struck in "Home-thoughts, from
+the Sea," wherein the scenes of England's victories as they come before
+the poet arouse pride in her military achievements.
+
+
+    HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA
+
+    Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away;
+    Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
+    Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
+    In the dimmest North-east distance dawned Gibraltar grand and gray;
+    "Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?"--say,
+    Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,
+    While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.
+
+In two instances Browning celebrates English friends in his poetry. The
+poems are "Waring" and "May and Death."
+
+Waring, who stands for Alfred Domett, is an interesting figure in
+Colonial history as well as a minor light among poets. But it is highly
+probable that he would not have been put into verse by Browning any more
+than many other of the poet's warm friends if it had not been for the
+incident described in the poem which actually took place, and made a
+strong enough impression to inspire a creative if not exactly an exalted
+mood on Browning's part. The incident is recorded in Thomas Powell's
+"Living Authors of England," who writes of Domett, "We have a vivid
+recollection of the last time we saw him. It was at an evening party a
+few days before he sailed from England; his intimate friend, Mr.
+Browning, was also present. It happened that the latter was introduced
+that evening for the first time to a young author who had just then
+appeared in the literary world [Powell, himself]. This, consequently,
+prevented the two friends from conversation, and they parted from each
+other without the slightest idea on Mr. Browning's part that he was
+seeing his old friend Domett for the last time. Some days after when he
+found that Domett had sailed, he expressed in strong terms to the writer
+of this sketch the self-reproach he felt at having preferred the
+conversation of a stranger to that of his old associate."
+
+This happened in 1842, when with no good-bys, Domett sailed for New
+Zealand where he lived for thirty years, and held during that time many
+important official posts. Upon his return to England, Browning and he
+met again, and in his poem "Ranolf and Amohia," published the year
+after, he wrote the often quoted line so aptly appreciative of
+Browning's genius,--"Subtlest assertor of the soul in song."
+
+The poem belongs to the _vers de société_ order, albeit the lightness is
+of a somewhat ponderous variety. It, however, has much interest as a
+character sketch from the life, and is said by those who had the
+opportunity of knowing to be a capital portrait.
+
+
+    WARING
+
+    I
+
+    I
+
+    What's become of Waring
+    Since he gave us all the slip,
+    Chose land-travel or seafaring,
+    Boots and chest or staff and scrip,
+    Rather than pace up and down
+    Any longer London town?
+
+    II
+
+    Who'd have guessed it from his lip
+    Or his brow's accustomed bearing,
+    On the night he thus took ship
+    Or started landward?--little caring
+    For us, it seems, who supped together
+    (Friends of his too, I remember)
+    And walked home thro' the merry weather,
+    The snowiest in all December.
+    I left his arm that night myself
+    For what's-his-name's, the new prose-poet
+    Who wrote the book there, on the shelf--
+    How, forsooth, was I to know it
+    If Waring meant to glide away
+    Like a ghost at break of day?
+    Never looked he half so gay!
+
+    III
+
+    He was prouder than the devil:
+    How he must have cursed our revel!
+    Ay and many other meetings,
+    Indoor visits, outdoor greetings,
+    As up and down he paced this London,
+    With no work done, but great works undone,
+    Where scarce twenty knew his name.
+    Why not, then, have earlier spoken,
+    Written, bustled? Who's to blame
+    If your silence kept unbroken?
+    "True, but there were sundry jottings,
+    Stray-leaves, fragments, blurs and blottings,
+    Certain first steps were achieved
+    Already which"--(is that your meaning?)
+    "Had well borne out whoe'er believed
+    In more to come!" But who goes gleaning
+    Hedgeside chance-glades, while full-sheaved
+    Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o'erweening
+    Pride alone, puts forth such claims
+    O'er the day's distinguished names.
+
+    IV
+
+    Meantime, how much I loved him,
+    I find out now I've lost him.
+    I who cared not if I moved him,
+    Who could so carelessly accost him,
+    Henceforth never shall get free
+    Of his ghostly company,
+    His eyes that just a little wink
+    As deep I go into the merit
+    Of this and that distinguished spirit--
+    His cheeks' raised color, soon to sink,
+    As long I dwell on some stupendous
+    And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)
+    Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous
+    Demoniaco-seraphic
+    Penman's latest piece of graphic.
+    Nay, my very wrist grows warm
+    With his dragging weight of arm.
+    E'en so, swimmingly appears,
+    Through one's after-supper musings,
+    Some lost lady of old years
+    With her beauteous vain endeavor
+    And goodness unrepaid as ever;
+    The face, accustomed to refusings,
+    We, puppies that we were.... Oh never
+    Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled
+    Being aught like false, forsooth, to?
+    Telling aught but honest truth to?
+    What a sin, had we centupled
+    Its possessor's grace and sweetness!
+    No! she heard in its completeness
+    Truth, for truth's a weighty matter,
+    And truth, at issue, we can't flatter!
+    Well, 'tis done with; she's exempt
+    From damning us thro' such a sally;
+    And so she glides, as down a valley,
+    Taking up with her contempt,
+    Past our reach; and in, the flowers
+    Shut her unregarded hours.
+
+[Illustration: Rydal Mount, the Home of Wordsworth]
+
+    V
+
+    Oh, could I have him back once more,
+    This Waring, but one half-day more!
+    Back, with the quiet face of yore,
+    So hungry for acknowledgment
+    Like mine! I'd fool him to his bent.
+    Feed, should not he, to heart's content?
+    I'd say, "to only have conceived,
+    Planned your great works, apart from progress,
+    Surpasses little works achieved!"
+    I'd lie so, I should be believed.
+    I'd make such havoc of the claims
+    Of the day's distinguished names
+    To feast him with, as feasts an ogress
+    Her feverish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child!
+    Or as one feasts a creature rarely
+    Captured here, unreconciled
+    To capture; and completely gives
+    Its pettish humors license, barely
+    Requiring that it lives.
+
+    VI
+
+    Ichabod, Ichabod,
+    The glory is departed!
+    Travels Waring East away?
+    Who, of knowledge, by hearsay,
+    Reports a man upstarted
+    Somewhere as a god,
+    Hordes grown European-hearted,
+    Millions of the wild made tame
+    On a sudden at his fame?
+    In Vishnu-land what Avatar?
+    Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar,
+    With the demurest of footfalls
+    Over the Kremlin's pavement bright
+    With serpentine and syenite,
+    Steps, with five other Generals
+    That simultaneously take snuff,
+    For each to have pretext enough
+    And kerchiefwise unfold his sash
+    Which, softness' self, is yet the stuff
+    To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,
+    And leave the grand white neck no gash?
+    Waring in Moscow, to those rough
+    Cold northern natures born perhaps,
+    Like the lambwhite maiden dear
+    From the circle of mute kings
+    Unable to repress the tear,
+    Each as his sceptre down he flings,
+    To Dian's fane at Taurica,
+    Where now a captive priestess, she alway
+    Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech
+    With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach
+    As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands
+    Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands
+    Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry
+    Amid their barbarous twitter!
+    In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!
+    Ay, most likely 'tis in Spain
+    That we and Waring meet again
+    Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane
+    Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid
+    All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid
+    Its stiff gold blazing pall
+    From some black coffin-lid.
+    Or, best of all,
+    I love to think
+    The leaving us was just a feint;
+    Back here to London did he slink,
+    And now works on without a wink
+    Of sleep, and we are on the brink
+    Of something great in fresco-paint:
+    Some garret's ceiling, walls and floor,
+    Up and down and o'er and o'er
+    He splashes, as none splashed before
+    Since great Caldara Polidore.
+    Or Music means this land of ours
+    Some favor yet, to pity won
+    By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers,--
+    "Give me my so-long promised son,
+    Let Waring end what I begun!"
+    Then down he creeps and out he steals
+    Only when the night conceals
+    His face; in Kent 'tis cherry-time,
+    Or hops are picking: or at prime
+    Of March he wanders as, too happy,
+    Years ago when he was young,
+    Some mild eve when woods grew sappy
+    And the early moths had sprung
+    To life from many a trembling sheath
+    Woven the warm boughs beneath;
+    While small birds said to themselves
+    What should soon be actual song,
+    And young gnats, by tens and twelves,
+    Made as if they were the throng
+    That crowd around and carry aloft
+    The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure,
+    Out of a myriad noises soft,
+    Into a tone that can endure
+    Amid the noise of a July noon
+    When all God's creatures crave their boon,
+    All at once and all in tune,
+    And get it, happy as Waring then,
+    Having first within his ken
+    What a man might do with men:
+    And far too glad, in the even-glow,
+    To mix with the world he meant to take
+    Into his hand, he told you, so--
+    And out of it his world to make,
+    To contract and to expand
+    As he shut or oped his hand.
+    Oh Waring, what's to really be?
+    A clear stage and a crowd to see!
+    Some Garrick, say, out shall not he
+    The heart of Hamlet's mystery pluck?
+    Or, where most unclean beasts are rife,
+    Some Junius--am I right?--shall tuck
+    His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife!
+    Some Chatterton shall have the luck
+    Of calling Rowley into life!
+    Some one shall somehow run a muck
+    With this old world for want of strife
+    Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive
+    To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive?
+    Our men scarce seem in earnest now.
+    Distinguished names!--but 'tis, somehow,
+    As if they played at being names
+    Still more distinguished, like the games
+    Of children. Turn our sport to earnest
+    With a visage of the sternest!
+    Bring the real times back, confessed
+    Still better than our very best!
+
+
+    II
+
+    I
+
+    "When I last saw Waring...."
+    (How all turned to him who spoke!
+    You saw Waring? Truth or joke?
+    In land-travel or sea-faring?)
+
+    II
+
+    "We were sailing by Triest
+    Where a day or two we harbored:
+    A sunset was in the West,
+    When, looking over the vessel's side,
+    One of our company espied
+    A sudden speck to larboard.
+    And as a sea-duck flies and swims
+    At once, so came the light craft up,
+    With its sole lateen sail that trims
+    And turns (the water round its rims
+    Dancing, as round a sinking cup)
+    And by us like a fish it curled,
+    And drew itself up close beside,
+    Its great sail on the instant furled,
+    And o'er its thwarts a shrill voice cried,
+    (A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's)
+    'Buy wine of us, you English Brig?
+    Or fruit, tobacco and cigars?
+    A pilot for you to Triest?
+    Without one, look you ne'er so big,
+    They'll never let you up the bay!
+    We natives should know best.'
+    I turned, and 'just those fellows' way,'
+    Our captain said, 'The 'long-shore thieves
+    Are laughing at us in their sleeves.'
+
+    III
+
+    "In truth, the boy leaned laughing back;
+    And one, half-hidden by his side
+    Under the furled sail, soon I spied,
+    With great grass hat and kerchief black,
+    Who looked up with his kingly throat,
+    Said somewhat, while the other shook
+    His hair back from his eyes to look
+    Their longest at us; then the boat,
+    I know not how, turned sharply round,
+    Laying her whole side on the sea
+    As a leaping fish does; from the lee
+    Into the weather, cut somehow
+    Her sparkling path beneath our bow,
+    And so went off, as with a bound,
+    Into the rosy and golden half
+    O' the sky, to overtake the sun
+    And reach the shore, like the sea-calf
+    Its singing cave; yet I caught one
+    Glance ere away the boat quite passed,
+    And neither time nor toil could mar
+    Those features: so I saw the last
+    Of Waring!"--You? Oh, never star
+    Was lost here but it rose afar!
+    Look East, where whole new thousands are!
+    In Vishnu-land what Avatar?
+
+"May and Death" is perhaps more interesting for the glimpse it gives of
+Browning's appreciation of English Nature than for its expression of
+grief for the death of a friend.
+
+
+    MAY AND DEATH
+
+    I
+
+    I wish that when you died last May,
+      Charles, there had died along with you
+    Three parts of spring's delightful things;
+      Ay, and, for me, the fourth part too.
+
+    II
+
+    A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps!
+      There must be many a pair of friends
+    Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm
+      Moon-births and the long evening-ends.
+
+    III
+
+    So, for their sake, be May still May!
+      Let their new time, as mine of old,
+    Do all it did for me: I bid
+      Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold.
+
+    IV
+
+    Only, one little sight, one plant,
+      Woods have in May, that starts up green
+    Save a sole streak which, so to speak,
+      Is spring's blood, spilt its leaves between,--
+
+    V
+
+    That, they might spare; a certain wood
+      Might miss the plant; their loss were small:
+    But I,--whene'er the leaf grows there,
+      Its drop comes from my heart, that's all.
+
+The poet's one truly enthusiastic outburst in connection with English
+Nature he sings out in his longing for an English spring in the
+incomparable little lyric "Home-thoughts, from Abroad."
+
+
+    HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD
+
+    I
+
+    Oh, to be in England
+    Now that April's there,
+    And whoever wakes in England
+    Sees, some morning, unaware,
+    That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
+    Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
+    While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
+    In England--now!
+
+    II
+
+    And after April, when May follows,
+    And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
+    Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
+    Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
+    Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge--
+    That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over
+    Lest you should think he never could recapture
+    The first fine careless rapture!
+    And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
+    All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
+    The buttercups, the little children's dower
+    --Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
+
+After this it seems hardly possible that Browning, himself speaks in "De
+Gustibus," yet long and happy living away from England doubtless dimmed
+his sense of the beauty of English landscape. "De Gustibus" was
+published ten years later than "Home-Thoughts from Abroad," when Italy
+and he had indeed become "lovers old." A deeper reason than mere delight
+in its scenery is also reflected in the poem; the sympathy shared with
+Mrs. Browning, for the cause of Italian independence.
+
+
+    "DE GUSTIBUS----"
+
+    I
+
+    Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,
+          (If our loves remain)
+          In an English lane,
+    By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
+    Hark, those two in the hazel coppice--
+    A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,
+          Making love, say,--
+          The happier they!
+    Draw yourself up from the light of the moon,
+    And let them pass, as they will too soon,
+          With the bean-flower's boon,
+          And the blackbird's tune,
+          And May, and June!
+
+    II
+
+    What I love best in all the world
+    Is a castle, precipice-encurled,
+    In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine.
+    Or look for me, old fellow of mine,
+    (If I get my head from out the mouth
+    O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,
+    And come again to the land of lands)--
+    In a sea-side house to the farther South,
+    Where the baked cicala dies of drouth,
+    And one sharp tree--'tis a cypress--stands,
+    By the many hundred years red-rusted,
+    Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted,
+    My sentinel to guard the sands
+    To the water's edge. For, what expands
+    Before the house, but the great opaque
+    Blue breadth of sea without a break?
+    While, in the house, for ever crumbles
+    Some fragment of the frescoed walls,
+    From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.
+    A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles
+    Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons,
+    And says there's news to-day--the king
+    Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing,
+    Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling:
+    --She hopes they have not caught the felons.
+    Italy, my Italy!
+    Queen Mary's saying serves for me--
+          (When fortune's malice
+          Lost her--Calais)--
+    Open my heart and you will see
+    Graved inside of it, "Italy."
+    Such lovers old are I and she:
+    So it always was, so shall ever be!
+
+Two or three English artists called forth appreciation in verse from
+Browning. There is the exquisite bit called "Deaf and Dumb," after a
+group of statuary by Woolner, of Constance and Arthur--the deaf and dumb
+children of Sir Thomas Fairbairn.
+
+
+    DEAF AND DUMB
+
+    A GROUP BY WOOLNER.
+
+    Only the prism's obstruction shows aright
+    The secret of a sunbeam, breaks its light
+    Into the jewelled bow from blankest white;
+      So may a glory from defect arise:
+    Only by Deafness may the vexed Love wreak
+    Its insuppressive sense on brow and cheek,
+    Only by Dumbness adequately speak
+      As favored mouth could never, through the eyes.
+
+[Illustration: An English Lane]
+
+There is also the beautiful description in "Balaustion's Adventure" of
+the Alkestis by Sir Frederick Leighton.
+
+The flagrant anachronism of making a Greek girl at the time of the Fall
+of Athens describe an English picture cannot but be forgiven, since the
+artistic effect gained is so fine. The poet quite convinces the reader
+that Sir Frederick Leighton ought to have been a Kaunian painter, if he
+was not, and that Balaustion or no one was qualified to appreciate his
+picture at its full worth.
+
+    "I know, too, a great Kaunian painter, strong
+    As Herakles, though rosy with a robe
+    Of grace that softens down the sinewy strength:
+    And he has made a picture of it all.
+    There lies Alkestis dead, beneath the sun,
+    She longed to look her last upon, beside
+    The sea, which somehow tempts the life in us
+    To come trip over its white waste of waves,
+    And try escape from earth, and fleet as free.
+    Behind the body, I suppose there bends
+    Old Pheres in his hoary impotence;
+    And women-wailers, in a corner crouch
+    --Four, beautiful as you four--yes, indeed!--
+    Close, each to other, agonizing all,
+    As fastened, in fear's rhythmic sympathy,
+    To two contending opposite. There strains
+    The might o' the hero 'gainst his more than match,
+    --Death, dreadful not in thew and bone, but like
+    The envenomed substance that exudes some dew
+    Whereby the merely honest flesh and blood
+    Will fester up and run to ruin straight,
+    Ere they can close with, clasp and overcome
+    The poisonous impalpability
+    That simulates a form beneath the flow
+    Of those grey garments; I pronounce that piece
+    Worthy to set up in our Poikilé!
+
+    "And all came,--glory of the golden verse,
+    And passion of the picture, and that fine
+    Frank outgush of the human gratitude
+    Which saved our ship and me, in Syracuse,--
+    Ay, and the tear or two which slipt perhaps
+    Away from you, friends, while I told my tale,
+    --It all came of this play that gained no prize!
+    Why crown whom Zeus has crowned in soul before?"
+
+Once before had Sir Frederick Leighton inspired the poet in the
+exquisite lines on Eurydice.
+
+
+    EURYDICE TO ORPHEUS
+
+    A PICTURE BY LEIGHTON
+
+    But give them me, the mouth, the eyes, the brow!
+    Let them once more absorb me! One look now
+      Will lap me round for ever, not to pass
+    Out of its light, though darkness lie beyond:
+    Hold me but safe again within the bond
+      Of one immortal look! All woe that was,
+    Forgotten, and all terror that may be,
+    Defied,--no past is mine, no future: look at me!
+
+Beautiful as these lines are, they do not impress me as fully
+interpreting Leighton's picture. The expression of Eurydice is rather
+one of unthinking confiding affection--as if she were really unconscious
+or ignorant of the danger; while that of Orpheus is one of passionate
+agony as he tries to hold her off.
+
+Though English art could not fascinate the poet as Italian art did, for
+the fully sufficient reason that it does not stand for a great epoch of
+intellectual awakening, yet with what fair alchemy he has touched those
+few artists he has chosen to honor. Notwithstanding his avowed devotion
+to Italy, expressed in "De Gustibus," one cannot help feeling that in
+the poems mentioned in this chapter, there is that ecstasy of sympathy
+which goes only to the most potent influences in the formation of
+character. Something of what I mean is expressed in one of his latest
+poems, "Development." In this we certainly get a real peep at young
+Robert Browning, led by his wise father into the delights of Homer, by
+slow degrees, where all is truth at first, to end up with the
+devastating criticism of Wolf. In spite of it all the dream stays and is
+the reality. Nothing can obliterate the magic of a strong early
+enthusiasm, as "fact still held" "Spite of new Knowledge," in his "heart
+of hearts."
+
+
+    DEVELOPMENT
+
+    My Father was a scholar and knew Greek.
+    When I was five years old, I asked him once
+    "What do you read about?"
+                              "The siege of Troy."
+    "What is a siege and what is Troy?"
+                                            Whereat
+    He piled up chairs and tables for a town,
+    Set me a-top for Priam, called our cat
+    --Helen, enticed away from home (he said)
+    By wicked Paris, who couched somewhere close
+    Under the footstool, being cowardly,
+    But whom--since she was worth the pains, poor puss--
+    Towzer and Tray,--our dogs, the Atreidai,--sought
+    By taking Troy to get possession of
+    --Always when great Achilles ceased to sulk,
+    (My pony in the stable)--forth would prance
+    And put to flight Hector--our page-boy's self.
+    This taught me who was who and what was what:
+    So far I rightly understood the case
+    At five years old: a huge delight it proved
+    And still proves--thanks to that instructor sage
+    My Father, who knew better than turn straight
+    Learning's full flare on weak-eyed ignorance,
+    Or, worse yet, leave weak eyes to grow sand-blind,
+    Content with darkness and vacuity.
+
+    It happened, two or three years afterward,
+    That--I and playmates playing at Troy's Siege--
+    My Father came upon our make-believe.
+    "How would you like to read yourself the tale
+    Properly told, of which I gave you first
+    Merely such notion as a boy could bear?
+    Pope, now, would give you the precise account
+    Of what, some day, by dint of scholarship,
+    You'll hear--who knows?--from Homer's very mouth.
+    Learn Greek by all means, read the 'Blind Old Man,
+    Sweetest of Singers'--_tuphlos_ which means 'blind,'
+    _Hedistos_ which means 'sweetest.' Time enough!
+    Try, anyhow, to master him some day;
+    Until when, take what serves for substitute,
+    Read Pope, by all means!"
+                                      So I ran through Pope,
+    Enjoyed the tale--what history so true?
+    Also attacked my Primer, duly drudged,
+    Grew fitter thus for what was promised next--
+    The very thing itself, the actual words,
+    When I could turn--say, Buttmann to account.
+
+    Time passed, I ripened somewhat: one fine day,
+    "Quite ready for the Iliad, nothing less?
+    There's Heine, where the big books block the shelf:
+    Don't skip a word, thumb well the Lexicon!"
+
+    I thumbed well and skipped nowise till I learned
+    Who was who, what was what, from Homer's tongue,
+    And there an end of learning. Had you asked
+    The all-accomplished scholar, twelve years old,
+    "Who was it wrote the Iliad?"--what a laugh!
+    "Why, Homer, all the world knows: of his life
+    Doubtless some facts exist: it's everywhere:
+    We have not settled, though, his place of birth:
+    He begged, for certain, and was blind beside:
+    Seven cites claimed him--Scio, with best right,
+    Thinks Byron. What he wrote? Those Hymns we have.
+    Then there's the 'Battle of the Frogs and Mice,'
+    That's all--unless they dig 'Margites' up
+    (I'd like that) nothing more remains to know."
+
+    Thus did youth spend a comfortable time;
+    Until--"What's this the Germans say is fact
+    That Wolf found out first? It's unpleasant work
+    Their chop and change, unsettling one's belief:
+    All the same, while we live, we learn, that's sure."
+    So, I bent brow o'er _Prolegomena_.
+    And, after Wolf, a dozen of his like
+    Proved there was never any Troy at all,
+    Neither Besiegers nor Besieged,--nay, worse,--
+    No actual Homer, no authentic text,
+    No warrant for the fiction I, as fact,
+    Had treasured in my heart and soul so long--
+    Ay, mark you! and as fact held still, still hold,
+    Spite of new knowledge, in my heart of hearts
+    And soul of souls, fact's essence freed and fixed
+    From accidental fancy's guardian sheath.
+    Assuredly thenceforward--thank my stars!--
+    However it got there, deprive who could--
+    Wring from the shrine my precious tenantry,
+    Helen, Ulysses, Hector and his Spouse,
+    Achilles and his Friend?--though Wolf--ah, Wolf!
+    Why must he needs come doubting, spoil a dream?
+
+    But then "No dream's worth waking"--Browning says:
+    And here's the reason why I tell thus much
+    I, now mature man, you anticipate,
+    May blame my Father justifiably
+    For letting me dream out my nonage thus,
+    And only by such slow and sure degrees
+    Permitting me to sift the grain from chaff,
+    Get truth and falsehood known and named as such.
+    Why did he ever let me dream at all,
+    Not bid me taste the story in its strength?
+    Suppose my childhood was scarce qualified
+    To rightly understand mythology,
+    Silence at least was in his power to keep:
+    I might have--somehow--correspondingly--
+    Well, who knows by what method, gained my gains,
+    Been taught, by forthrights not meanderings,
+    My aim should be to loathe, like Peleus's son,
+    A lie as Hell's Gate, love my wedded wife,
+    Like Hector, and so on with all the rest.
+    Could not I have excogitated this
+    Without believing such men really were?
+    That is--he might have put into my hand
+    The "Ethics"? In translation, if you please,
+    Exact, no pretty lying that improves,
+    To suit the modern taste: no more, no less--
+    The "Ethics": 'tis a treatise I find hard
+    To read aright now that my hair is grey,
+    And I can manage the original.
+    At five years old--how ill had fared its leaves!
+    Now, growing double o'er the Stagirite,
+    At least I soil no page with bread and milk,
+    Nor crumple, dogsear and deface--boys' way.
+
+This chapter would not be complete without Browning's tribute to dog
+Tray, whose traits may not be peculiar to English dogs but whose name
+is proverbially English. Besides it touches a subject upon which the
+poet had strong feelings. Vivisection he abhorred, and in the
+controversies which were tearing the scientific and philanthropic world
+asunder in the last years of his life, no one was a more determined
+opponent of vivisection than he.
+
+
+    TRAY
+
+    Sing me a hero! Quench my thirst
+    Of soul, ye bards!
+                       Quoth Bard the first:
+    "Sir Olaf, the good knight, did don
+    His helm and eke his habergeon...."
+    Sir Olaf and his bard----!
+
+    "That sin-scathed brow" (quoth Bard the second),
+    "That eye wide ope as though Fate beckoned
+    My hero to some steep, beneath
+    Which precipice smiled tempting death...."
+    You too without your host have reckoned!
+
+    "A beggar-child" (let's hear this third!)
+    "Sat on a quay's edge: like a bird
+    Sang to herself at careless play,
+    'And fell into the stream. Dismay!
+    Help, you the standers-by!' None stirred.
+
+    "Bystanders reason, think of wives
+    And children ere they risk their lives.
+    Over the balustrade has bounced
+    A mere instinctive dog, and pounced
+    Plumb on the prize. 'How well he dives!
+
+    "'Up he comes with the child, see, tight
+    In mouth, alive too, clutched from quite
+    A depth of ten feet--twelve, I bet!
+    Good dog! What, off again? There's yet
+    Another child to save? All right!
+
+    "'How strange we saw no other fall!
+    It's instinct in the animal.
+    Good dog! But he's a long while under:
+    If he got drowned I should not wonder--
+    Strong current, that against the wall!
+
+    "'Here he comes, holds in mouth this time
+    --What may the thing be? Well, that's prime!
+    Now, did you ever? Reason reigns
+    In man alone, since all Tray's pains
+    Have fished--the child's doll from the slime!'
+
+    "And so, amid the laughter gay,
+    Trotted my hero off,--old Tray,--
+    Till somebody, prerogatived
+    With reason, reasoned: 'Why he dived,
+    His brain would show us, I should say.
+
+    "'John, go and catch--or, if needs be,
+    Purchase--that animal for me!
+    By vivisection, at expense
+    Of half-an-hour and eighteenpence,
+    How brain secretes dog's soul, we'll see!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SHAKESPEARE'S PORTRAIT
+
+
+Once and once only did Browning depart from his custom of choosing
+people of minor note to figure in his dramatic monologues. In "At the
+'Mermaid'" he ventures upon the consecrated ground of a heart-to-heart
+talk between Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and the wits who gathered at the
+classic "Mermaid" Tavern in Cheapside, following this up with further
+glimpses into the inner recesses of Shakespeare's mind in the monologues
+"House" and "Shop." It is a particularly daring feat in the case of
+Shakespeare, for as all the world knows any attempt at getting in touch
+with the real man, Shakespeare, must, per force, be woven out of such
+"stuff as dreams are made on."
+
+In interpreting this portraiture of one great poet by another it will be
+of interest to glance at the actual facts as far as they are known in
+regard to the relations which existed between Shakespeare and Jonson.
+Praise and blame both are recorded on Jonson's part when writing of
+Shakespeare, yet the praise shows such undisguised admiration that the
+blame sinks into insignificance. Jonson's "learned socks" to which
+Milton refers probably tripped the critic up occasionally by reason of
+their weight.
+
+There is a charming story told of the friendship between the two men
+recorded by Sir Nicholas L'Estrange, within a very few years of
+Shakespeare's death, who attributed it to Dr. Donne. The story goes that
+"Shakespeare was godfather to one of Ben Jonson's children, and after
+the christening, being in a deep study, Jonson came to cheer him up and
+asked him why he was so melancholy. 'No, faith, Ben,' says he, 'not I,
+but I have been considering a great while what should be the fittest
+gift for me to bestow upon my godchild, and I have resolved at last.' 'I
+prythee what?' says he. 'I'faith, Ben, I'll e'en give him a dozen good
+Lattin spoons, and thou shalt translate them.'" If this must be taken
+with a grain of salt, there is another even more to the honor of
+Shakespeare reported by Rowe and considered credible by such
+Shakespearian scholars as Halliwell Phillipps and Sidney Lee. "His
+acquaintance with Ben Jonson" writes Rowe, "began with a remarkable
+piece of humanity and good nature; Mr. Jonson, who was at that time
+altogether unknown to the world, had offered one of his plays to the
+players in order to have it acted, and the persons into whose hands it
+was put, after having turned it carelessly and superciliously over, were
+just upon returning it to him with an ill-natured answer that it would
+be of no service to their company, when Shakespeare luckily cast his eye
+upon it, and found something so well in it as to engage him first to
+read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings
+to the public." The play in question was the famous comedy of "Every Man
+in His Humour," which was brought out in September, 1598, by the Lord
+Chamberlain's company, Shakespeare himself being one of the leading
+actors upon the occasion.
+
+Authentic history records a theater war in which Jonson and Shakespeare
+figured, on opposite sides, but if allusions in Jonson's play the
+"Poetaster" have been properly interpreted, their friendly relations
+were not deeply disturbed. The trouble began in the first place by the
+London of 1600 suddenly rushing into a fad for the company of boy
+players, recruited chiefly from the choristers of the Chapel Royal, and
+known as the "Children of the Chapel." They had been acting at the new
+theater in Blackfriars since 1597, and their vogue became so great as
+actually to threaten Shakespeare's company and other companies of adult
+actors. Just at this time Ben Jonson was having a personal quarrel with
+his fellow dramatists, Marston and Dekker, and as he received little
+sympathy from the actors, he took his revenge by joining his forces with
+those of the Children of the Chapel. They brought out for him in 1600
+his satire of "Cynthia's Revels," in which he held up to ridicule
+Marston, Dekker and their friends the actors. Marston and Dekker, with
+the actors of Shakespeare's company, prepared to retaliate, but Jonson
+hearing of it forestalled them with his play the "Poetaster" in which he
+spared neither dramatists nor actors. Shakespeare's company continued
+the fray by bringing out at the Globe Theatre, in the following year,
+Dekker and Marston's "Satiro-Mastix, or The Untrussing of the Humorous
+Poet," and as Ward remarks, "the quarrel had now become too hot to
+last." The excitement, however, continued for sometime, theater-goers
+took sides and watched with interest "the actors and dramatists'
+boisterous war of personalities," to quote Mr. Lee, who goes on to
+point out that on May 10, 1601, the Privy Council called the attention
+of the Middlesex magistrates to the abuse covertly leveled by the actors
+of the "Curtain" at gentlemen "of good desert and quality," and directed
+the magistrates to examine all plays before they were produced.
+
+Jonson, himself, finally made apologies in verses appended to printed
+copies of the "Poetaster."
+
+    "Now for the players 'tis true I tax'd them
+    And yet but some, and those so sparingly
+    As all the rest might have sat still unquestioned,
+    Had they but had the wit or conscience
+    To think well of themselves. But impotent they
+    Thought each man's vice belonged to their whole tribe;
+    And much good do it them. What they have done against me
+    I am not moved with, if it gave them meat
+    Or got them clothes, 'tis well: that was their end,
+    Only amongst them I was sorry for
+    Some better natures by the rest so drawn
+    To run in that vile line."
+
+Sidney Lee cleverly deduces Shakespeare's attitude in the quarrel in
+allusions to it in "Hamlet," wherein he "protested against the abusive
+comments on the men-actors of 'the common' stages or public theaters
+which were put into the children's mouths. Rosencrantz declared that the
+children 'so berattle [_i.e._ assail] the common stages--so they call
+them--that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and dare
+scarce come thither [_i.e._ to the public theaters].' Hamlet in pursuit
+of the theme pointed out that the writers who encouraged the vogue of
+the 'child actors' did them a poor service, because when the boys should
+reach men's estate they would run the risk, if they continued on the
+stage, of the same insults and neglect which now threatened their
+seniors.
+
+"'_Hamlet._ What are they children? Who maintains 'em? How are they
+escorted [_i.e._ paid]? Will they pursue the quality [_i.e._ the actor's
+profession] no longer than they can sing? Will they not say afterwards,
+if they should grow themselves to common players--as it is most like, if
+their means are no better--their writers do them wrong to make them
+exclaim against their own succession?
+
+"'_Rosencrantz._ Faith, there has been much to do on both sides, and the
+nation holds it no sin to tarre [_i.e._ incite] them to controversy;
+there was for a while no money bid for argument, unless the poet and the
+player went to cuffs in the question.'"
+
+This certainly does not reflect a very belligerent attitude since it
+merely puts in a word for the grown-up actors rather than casting any
+slurs upon the children. Further indications of Shakespeare's mildness
+in regard to the whole matter are given in the Prologue to "Troylus and
+Cressida," where, as Mr. Lee says, he made specific reference to the
+strife between Ben Jonson and the players in the lines
+
+          "And hither am I come
+    A Prologue arm'd, but not in confidence,
+    Of Authors' pen, or Actors' voyce."
+
+The most interesting bit of evidence to show that Shakespeare and Jonson
+remained friends, even in the heat of the conflict, may be gained from
+the "Poetaster" itself if we admit that the Virgil of the play, who is
+chosen peacemaker stands for Shakespeare; and who so fit to be
+peacemaker as Shakespeare for his amiable qualities seem to have
+impressed themselves upon all who knew him.
+
+Following Mr. Lee's lead, "Jonson figures personally in the 'Poetaster'
+under the name of Horace. Episodically Horace and his friends, Tibullus
+and Gallus, eulogize the work and genius of another character, Virgil,
+in terms so closely resembling those which Jonson is known to have
+applied to Shakespeare that they may be regarded as intended to apply to
+him (Act V, Scene I). Jonson points out that Virgil, by his penetrating
+intuition, achieved the great effects which others laboriously sought to
+reach through rules of art.
+
+    'His learning labors not the school-like gloss
+    That most consists of echoing words and terms ...
+    Nor any long or far-fetched circumstance--
+    Wrapt in the curious generalities of arts--
+    But a direct and analytic sum
+    Of all the worth and first effects of art.
+    And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life
+    That it shall gather strength of life with being,
+    And live hereafter, more admired than now.'
+
+Tibullus gives Virgil equal credit for having in his writings touched
+with telling truth upon every vicissitude of human existence:
+
+    'That which he hath writ
+    Is with such judgment labored and distilled
+    Through all the needful uses of our lives
+    That, could a man remember but his lines,
+    He should not touch at any serious point
+    But he might breathe his spirit out of him.'
+
+"Finally, Virgil in the play is nominated by Cæsar to act as judge
+between Horace and his libellers, and he advises the administration of
+purging pills to the offenders."
+
+This neat little chain of evidence would have no weak link, if it were
+not for a passage in the play, "The Return from Parnassus," acted by
+the students in St. John's College the same year, 1601. In this there is
+a dialogue between Shakespeare's fellow-actors, Burbage and Kempe.
+Speaking of the University dramatists, Kempe says:
+
+"Why here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down; aye, and Ben
+Jonson, too. O! that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow. He brought up
+Horace, giving the poets a pill; but our fellow Shakespeare hath given
+him a purge that made him bewray his credit." Burbage continues, "He is
+a shrewd fellow indeed." This has, of course, been taken to mean that
+Shakespeare was actively against Jonson in the Dramatists' and Actors'
+war. But as everything else points, as we have seen, to the contrary,
+one accepts gladly the loophole of escape offered by Mr. Lee. "The words
+quoted from 'The Return from Parnassus' hardly admit of a literal
+interpretation. Probably the 'purge' that Shakespeare was alleged by the
+author of 'The Return from Parnassus' to have given Jonson meant no more
+than that Shakespeare had signally outstripped Jonson in popular
+esteem." That this was an actual fact is proved by the lines of Leonard
+Digges, an admiring contemporary of Shakespeare's, printed in the 1640
+edition of Shakespeare's poems, comparing "Julius Cæsar" and Jonson's
+play "Cataline:"
+
+    "So have I seen when Cæsar would appear,
+    And on the stage at half-sword parley were
+    Brutus and Cassius--oh, how the audience
+    Were ravish'd, with what wonder they went thence;
+    When some new day they would not brook a line
+    Of tedious, though well-labored, Cataline."
+
+This reminds one of the famous witticism attributed to Eudymion Porter
+that "Shakespeare was sent from Heaven and Ben from College."
+
+If Jonson's criticisms of Shakespeare's work were sometime not wholly
+appreciative, the fact may be set down to the distinction between the
+two here so humorously indicated. "A Winter's Tale" and the "Tempest"
+both called forth some sarcasms from Jonson, the first for its error
+about the Coast of Bohemia which Shakespeare borrowed from Greene.
+Jonson wrote in the Induction to "Bartholemew Fair;" "If there be never
+a servant-monster in the Fair, who can help it he says? Nor a nest of
+Antics. He is loth to make nature afraid in his plays like those that
+beget Tales, Tempests, and such like Drolleries." The allusions here
+are very evidently to Caliban and the satyrs who figure in the
+sheep-shearing feast in "A Winter's Tale." The worst blast of all,
+however, occurs in Jonson's "Timber," but the blows are evidently given
+with a loving hand. He writes "I remember, the players have often
+mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare that, in his writing, whatsoever
+he penn'd, hee never blotted out line. My answer hath beene, would he
+had blotted a thousand;--which they thought a malevolent speech. I had
+not told posterity this, but for their ignorance who choose that
+circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to
+justifie mine owne candor,--for I lov'd the man, and doe honor his
+memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. Hee was, indeed, honest,
+and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasie; brave
+notions and gentle expressions; wherein hee flow'd with that facility
+that sometime it was necessary he should be stop'd;--_sufflaminandus
+erat_, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his owne
+power;--would the rule of it had beene so too! Many times he fell into
+those things, could not escape laughter; as when he said in the person
+of Cæsar, one speaking to him,--Cæsar thou dost me wrong; hee
+replyed,--Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause; and such like;
+which were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices with his virtues.
+There was ever more in him to be praysed then to be pardoned."
+
+And even this criticism is altogether controverted by the wholly
+eulogistic lines Jonson wrote for the First Folio edition of Shakespeare
+printed in 1623, "To the memory of my beloved, The Author Mr. William
+Shakespeare and what he hath left us."[1]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] See the Tempest volume in First Folio Shakespeare. (Crowell & Co.)
+
+For the same edition he also wrote the following lines for the portrait
+reproduced in this volume, which it is safe to regard as the Shakespeare
+Ben Jonson remembered:
+
+
+    "TO THE READER
+
+    This Figure, that thou here seest put,
+      It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
+    Wherein the Graver had a strife
+      With Nature, to out-doo the life:
+    O, could he but have drawne his wit
+      As well in brasse, as he hath hit
+    His face; the Print would then surpasse
+      All, that was ever writ in brasse.
+    But, since he cannot, Reader, looke
+      Not on his Picture, but his Booke.
+
+    B. J."
+
+Shakespeare's talk in "At the 'Mermaid'" grows out of the supposition,
+not touched upon until the very last line that Ben Jonson had been
+calling him "Next Poet," a supposition quite justifiable in the light of
+Ben's praises of him. The poem also reflects the love and admiration in
+which Shakespeare the man was held by all who have left any record of
+their impressions of him. As for the portraiture of the poet's attitude
+of mind, it is deduced indirectly from his work. That he did not desire
+to become "Next Poet" may be argued from the fact that after his first
+outburst of poem and sonnet writing in the manner of the poets of the
+age, he gave up the career of gentleman-poet to devote himself wholly to
+the more independent if not so socially distinguished one of
+actor-playwright. "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece" were the only poems
+of his published under his supervision and the only works with the
+dedication to a patron such as it was customary to write at that time.
+
+I have before me as I write the recent Clarendon Press fac-similes of
+"Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece," published respectively in 1593 and
+1594,--beautiful little quartos with exquisitely artistic designs in the
+title-pages, headpieces and initials; altogether worthy of a poet who
+might have designs upon Fame. The dedication to the first reads:--
+
+  "TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE
+  Henry Wriothesley, Earle of Southampton
+  and Baron of Litchfield
+
+    _Right Honourable, I know not how I shall offend in dedicating
+    my unpolisht lines to your Lordship, nor how the worlde will
+    censure mee for choosing so strong a proppe to support so weake
+    a burthen, onelye if your Honour seeme but pleased, I account my
+    selfe highly praised, and vowe to take advantage of all idle
+    houres, till I have honoured you with some great labour. But if
+    the first heire of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorie
+    it had so noble a god-father: and never after eare so barren a
+    land, for feare it yield me still so bad a harvest, I leave it
+    to your Honourable Survey, and your Honor to your hearts
+    content, which I wish may alwaies answere your owne wish, and
+    the worlds hopeful expectation._
+
+  Your Honors in all dutie
+    WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE."
+
+The second reads:--
+
+  "TO THE RIGHT
+  HONORABLE, HENRY
+  Wriothesley, Earle of Southampton
+  and Baron of Litchfield
+
+    The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end: wherof this
+    Pamphlet without beginning is a superfluous Moiety. The warrant
+    I have of your Honourable disposition, nor the worth of my
+    untutored Lines makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done
+    is yours, what I have to doe is yours, being part in all I have,
+    devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duety would shew
+    greater, meane time, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship; To
+    whom I wish long life still lengthened with all happinesse.
+
+  Your Lordships in all duety.
+    WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE."
+
+No more after this does Shakespeare appear in the light of a poet with a
+patron. Even the sonnets, some of which evidently celebrate Southampton,
+were issued by a piratical publisher without Shakespeare's consent,
+while his plays found their way into print at the hands of other pirates
+who cribbed them from stage copies.
+
+Such hints as these have been worked up by Browning into a consistent
+characterization of a man who regards himself as having foregone his
+chances of laureateship or "Next Poet" by devoting himself to a form of
+literary art which would not appeal to the powers that be as fitting him
+for any such position. Such honors he claims do not go to the dramatic
+poet, who has never allowed the world to slip inside his breast, but has
+simply portrayed the joy and the sorrow of life as he saw it around him,
+and with an art which turns even sorrow into beauty.--"Do I stoop? I
+pluck a posy, do I stand and stare? all's blue;"--but to the subjective,
+introspective poet, out of tune with himself and with the universe. The
+allusions Shakespeare makes to the last "King" are not very definite,
+but, on the whole, they fit Edmund Spenser, whose poems from first to
+last are dedicated to people of distinction in court circles. His work,
+moreover, is full of wailing and woe in various keys, and also full of
+self-revelation. He allowed the world to slip inside his breast upon
+almost every occasion, and perhaps he may be said to have bought "his
+laurel," for it was no doubt extremely gratifying to Queen Elizabeth to
+see herself in the guise of the Faerie Queene, and even his dedication
+of the "Faerie Queene" to her, used as she was to flattery, must have
+been as music in her ears. "To the most high, mightie, and magnificent
+Empresse, renouned for piety, vertue, and all gratious government,
+Elizabeth, by the Grace of God, Queene of England, Frahnce, and Ireland
+and of Virginia. Defender of the Faith, &c. Her most humble servant
+Edmund Spenser doth in all humilitie, Dedicate, present, and consecrate
+These his labours, To live with the eternity of her Fame." The next year
+Spenser received a pension from the crown of fifty pounds per annum.
+
+It is a careful touch on Browning's part to use the phrase "Next Poet,"
+for the "laureateship" at that time was not a recognized official
+position. The term, "laureate," seems to have been used to designate
+poets who had attained fame and Royal favor, since Nash speaks of
+Spenser in his "Supplication of Piers Pennilesse" the same year the
+"Faerie Queene" was published as next laureate.
+
+The first really officially appointed Poet Laureate was Ben Jonson,
+himself, who in either 1616 or 1619 received the post from James I.,
+later ratified by Charles I., who increased the annuity to one hundred
+pounds a year and a butt of wine from the King's cellars.
+
+Probably the allusion "Your Pilgrim" in the twelfth stanza of "At the
+Mermaid" is to "The Return from Parnassus" in which the pilgrims to
+Parnassus who figure in an earlier play "The Pilgrimage to Parnassus"
+discover the world to be about as dismal a place as it is described in
+this stanza.
+
+At first sight it might seem that the position taken by Shakespeare in
+the poem is almost too modest, yet upon second thoughts it will be
+remembered that though Shakespeare had a tremendous following among the
+people, attested by the frequency with which his plays were acted; that
+though there are instances of his being highly appreciated by
+contemporaries of importance; that though his plays were given before
+the Queen, he did not have the universal acceptance among learned and
+court circles which was accorded to Spenser.
+
+It is quite fitting that the scene should be set in the "Mermaid." No
+record exists to show that Shakespeare was ever there, it is true, but
+the "Mermaid" was a favorite haunt of Ben Jonson and his circle of wits,
+whose meetings there were immortalized by Beaumont in his poetical
+letter to Jonson:--
+
+              "What things have we seen
+    Done at the Mermaid? heard words that have been
+    So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
+    As if that every one from whence they came
+    Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
+    And had resolved to live a fool the rest
+    Of his dull life."
+
+Add to this what Fuller wrote in his "Worthies," 1662, "Many were the
+wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a
+Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war; Master Jonson (like the
+former) was built far higher in learning, solid but slow in his
+performances. Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk,
+but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take
+advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention," and
+there is sufficient poetic warrant for the "Mermaid" setting.
+
+[Illustration: First Folio Portrait of Shakespeare
+
+    "Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.
+    Do I stand and stare? All's blue."]
+
+The final touch is given in the hint that all the time Shakespeare is
+aware of his own greatness, perhaps to be recognized by a future age.
+
+Let Browning, himself, now show what he has done with the material.
+
+
+    AT THE "MERMAID"
+
+        The figure that thou here seest.... Tut!
+        Was it for gentle Shakespeare put?
+
+    B. JONSON. (_Adapted._)
+
+    I
+
+    I--"Next Poet?" No, my hearties,
+      I nor am nor fain would be!
+    Choose your chiefs and pick your parties,
+      Not one soul revolt to me!
+    I, forsooth, sow song-sedition?
+      I, a schism in verse provoke?
+    I, blown up by bard's ambition,
+      Burst--your bubble-king? You joke.
+
+    II
+
+    Come, be grave! The sherris mantling
+      Still about each mouth, mayhap,
+    Breeds you insight--just a scantling--
+      Brings me truth out--just a scrap.
+    Look and tell me! Written, spoken,
+      Here's my life-long work: and where
+    --Where's your warrant or my token
+      I'm the dead king's son and heir?
+
+    III
+
+    Here's my work: does work discover--
+      What was rest from work--my life?
+    Did I live man's hater, lover?
+      Leave the world at peace, at strife?
+    Call earth ugliness or beauty?
+      See things there in large or small?
+    Use to pay its Lord my duty?
+      Use to own a lord at all?
+
+    IV
+
+    Blank of such a record, truly
+      Here's the work I hand, this scroll,
+    Yours to take or leave; as duly,
+      Mine remains the unproffered soul.
+    So much, no whit more, my debtors--
+      How should one like me lay claim
+    To that largess elders, betters
+      Sell you cheap their souls for--fame?
+
+    V
+
+    Which of you did I enable
+      Once to slip inside my breast,
+    There to catalogue and label
+      What I like least, what love best,
+    Hope and fear, believe and doubt of,
+      Seek and shun, respect--deride?
+    Who has right to make a rout of
+      Rarities he found inside?
+
+    VI
+
+    Rarities or, as he'd rather,
+      Rubbish such as stocks his own:
+    Need and greed (O strange) the Father
+      Fashioned not for him alone!
+    Whence--the comfort set a-strutting,
+      Whence--the outcry "Haste, behold!
+    Bard's breast open wide, past shutting,
+      Shows what brass we took for gold!"
+
+    VII
+
+    Friends, I doubt not he'd display you
+      Brass--myself call orichalc,--
+    Furnish much amusement; pray you
+      Therefore, be content I balk
+    Him and you, and bar my portal!
+      Here's my work outside: opine
+    What's inside me mean and mortal!
+      Take your pleasure, leave me mine!
+
+    VIII
+
+    Which is--not to buy your laurel
+      As last king did, nothing loth.
+    Tale adorned and pointed moral
+      Gained him praise and pity both.
+    Out rushed sighs and groans by dozens,
+      Forth by scores oaths, curses flew:
+    Proving you were cater-cousins,
+      Kith and kindred, king and you!
+
+    IX
+
+    Whereas do I ne'er so little
+      (Thanks to sherris) leave ajar
+    Bosom's gate--no jot nor tittle
+      Grow we nearer than we are.
+    Sinning, sorrowing, despairing,
+      Body-ruined, spirit-wrecked,--
+    Should I give my woes an airing,--
+      Where's one plague that claims respect?
+
+    X
+
+    Have you found your life distasteful?
+      My life did, and does, smack sweet.
+    Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
+      Mine I saved and hold complete.
+    Do your joys with age diminish?
+      When mine fail me, I'll complain.
+    Must in death your daylight finish?
+      My sun sets to rise again.
+
+    XI
+
+    What, like you, he proved--your Pilgrim--
+      This our world a wilderness,
+    Earth still grey and heaven still grim,
+      Not a hand there his might press,
+    Not a heart his own might throb to,
+      Men all rogues and women--say,
+    Dolls which boys' heads duck and bob to,
+      Grown folk drop or throw away?
+
+    XII
+
+    My experience being other,
+      How should I contribute verse
+    Worthy of your king and brother?
+      Balaam-like I bless, not curse.
+    I find earth not grey but rosy,
+      Heaven not grim but fair of hue.
+    Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.
+      Do I stand and stare? All's blue.
+
+    XIII
+
+    Doubtless I am pushed and shoved by
+      Rogues and fools enough: the more
+    Good luck mine, I love, am loved by
+      Some few honest to the core.
+    Scan the near high, scout the far low!
+      "But the low come close:" what then?
+    Simpletons? My match is Marlowe;
+      Sciolists? My mate is Ben.
+
+    XIV
+
+    Womankind--"the cat-like nature,
+      False and fickle, vain and weak"--
+    What of this sad nomenclature
+      Suits my tongue, if I must speak?
+    Does the sex invite, repulse so,
+      Tempt, betray, by fits and starts?
+    So becalm but to convulse so,
+      Decking heads and breaking hearts?
+
+    XV
+
+    Well may you blaspheme at fortune!
+      I "threw Venus" (Ben, expound!)
+    Never did I need importune
+      Her, of all the Olympian round.
+    Blessings on my benefactress!
+      Cursings suit--for aught I know--
+    Those who twitched her by the back tress,
+      Tugged and thought to turn her--so!
+
+    XVI
+
+    Therefore, since no leg to stand on
+      Thus I'm left with,--joy or grief
+    Be the issue,--I abandon
+      Hope or care you name me Chief!
+    Chief and king and Lord's anointed,
+      I?--who never once have wished
+    Death before the day appointed:
+      Lived and liked, not poohed and pished!
+
+    XVII
+
+    "Ah, but so I shall not enter,
+      Scroll in hand, the common heart--
+    Stopped at surface: since at centre
+      Song should reach _Welt-schmerz_, world-smart!"
+    "Enter in the heart?" Its shelly
+      Cuirass guard mine, fore and aft!
+    Such song "enters in the belly
+      And is cast out in the draught."
+
+    XVIII
+
+    Back then to our sherris-brewage!
+      "Kingship" quotha? I shall wait--
+    Waive the present time: some new age ...
+      But let fools anticipate!
+    Meanwhile greet me--"friend, good fellow,
+      Gentle Will," my merry men!
+    As for making Envy yellow
+      With "Next Poet"--(Manners, Ben!)
+
+The first stanza of "House"--
+
+    "Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself?
+      Do I live in a house you would like to see?
+    Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf?
+      'Unlock my heart with a sonnet-key?'"--
+
+brings one face to face with the interminable controversies upon the
+autobiographical significance of Shakespeare's Sonnets. As volumes upon
+the subject have been written, it is not possible even adequately to
+review the various theories here. The controversialists may be broadly
+divided into those who read complicated autobiographical details into
+the sonnets, those who scout the idea of their being autobiographical at
+all, and those who take a middle ground. Of the first there are two
+factions: one of these believes that the opening sonnets were addressed
+to Lord William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and the other that they were
+addressed to Shakespeare's patron, the Earl of Southampton. The first
+theory dates back as far as 1832 when it was started by James Boaden, a
+journalist and the biographer of Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. This theory
+has had many supporters and is associated to-day with the name of Thomas
+Tyler, who, in his edition of the Sonnets published in 1890, claimed to
+have identified the dark lady of the Sonnets with a lady of the Court,
+Mary Fitton and the mistress of the Earl of Pembroke. The theory, like
+most things of the sort, has its fascinations, and few people can read
+the Sonnets without being more or less impressed by it. It is based,
+however, upon a supposition so unlikely that it may be said to be proved
+incorrect, namely, that the dedication of the Sonnets to their "Onlie
+Begettor, Mr. W. H." is intended for "Mr. William Herbert." There was a
+Mr. William Hall, later a master printer, and the friend of Thomas
+Thorpe, the publisher of the Sonnets, who is much more likely to be the
+person meant. Lord Herbert was far too important a person to be
+addressed as Mr. W. H. As Mr. Lee points out, when Thorpe did dedicate
+books to Herbert he was careful to give full prominence to the titles
+and distinction of his patron. The Sonnets as we have already seen were
+not published with Shakespeare's sanction. In those days the author had
+no protection, and if a manuscript fell into the hands of a printer he
+could print it if he felt so disposed. Mr. William Hall was in the
+habit of looking out for manuscripts and before he became a printer, in
+1606, had one published by Southwell of which he himself wrote the
+dedication, to the "Vertuous Gentleman, Mathew Saunders, Esquire W. H.
+wisheth, with long life, a prosperous achievement of his good desires."
+"There is little doubt," writes Mr. Lee, "that the W. H. of the
+Southwell volume was Mr. William Hall, who, when he procured that
+manuscript for publication, was an humble auxiliary in the publishing
+army." To sum up in Mr. Lee's words his interesting and convincing
+chapter on "Thomas Thorpe and Mr. 'W. H.'" "'Mr. W. H.,' whom Thorpe
+described as the 'only begetter of these ensuing sonnets,' was in all
+probability the acquirer or procurer of the manuscript, who,
+figuratively speaking, brought the book into being either by first
+placing the manuscript in Thorpe's hands or by pointing out the means by
+which a copy might be acquired. To assign such significance to the word
+'begetter' was entirely in Thorpe's vein. Thorpe described his rôle in
+the piratical enterprise of the 'Sonnets' as that of 'the well-wishing
+adventurer in setting forth,' _i.e._, the hopeful speculator in the
+scheme. 'Mr. W. H.' doubtless played the almost equally important
+part--one as well known then as now in commercial operations--of the
+'vender' of the property to be exploited."
+
+The Southampton theory is reared into a fine air-castle by Gerald Massey
+in his lengthy book on the Sonnets--truly entertaining reading but too
+ingenious to be convincing.
+
+Finally Mr. Lee in his book looks at the subject in an unbiased and
+perfectly sane way. He thinks the opening Sonnets are to the Earl of
+Southampton, known to be Shakespeare's patron, but he warns us that
+exaggerated devotion was the hall-mark of the Sonnets of the age, and
+therefore what Shakespeare says of his young patron in these Sonnets
+need not be taken too literally as expressing the poet's sentiments,
+though he admits there may be a note of genuine feeling in them. Also he
+thinks that some of the sonnets reflecting moods of melancholy or a
+sense of sin may reveal the writer's inner consciousness. Possibly, too,
+the story of the "dark lady" may have some basis in fact, though he
+insists, "There is no clue to the lady's identity, and speculation on
+the topic is useless." Furthermore, he thinks it doubtful whether all
+the words in these Sonnets are to be taken with the seriousness implied,
+the affair probably belonging only to the annals of gallantry.
+
+It will be seen from the poem that Browning took the uncompromisingly
+non-autobiographical view of the Sonnets. In this stand present
+authoritative opinion would not justify him, but it speaks well for his
+insight and sympathy that he was not fascinated by the William Herbert
+theory which, at the time he wrote the poem, was very much in the air.
+
+In "Shop" is given, in a way, the obverse side of the idea. If it is
+proved that the dramatic poet does not allow himself to appear in his
+work, the step toward regarding him as having no individuality aside
+from his work is an easy one. The allusions in the poem to the
+mercenariness of the "Shop-Keeper" seem to hit at the criticisms of
+Shakespeare's thrift, which enabled him to buy a home in his native
+place and retire there to live some years before the end of his life. In
+some quarters it has been customary to regard Shakespeare as devoting
+himself to dramatic literature in order to make money, as if this were a
+terrible slur on his character. The superiority of such an independent
+spirit over that of those who constantly sought patrons was quite
+manifest to Browning's mind or he would not have written this sarcastic
+bit of symbolism, between the lines of which can be read that Browning
+was on Shakespeare's side.
+
+
+    HOUSE
+
+    I
+
+    Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself?
+      Do I live in a house you would like to see?
+    Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf?
+      "Unlock my heart with a sonnet key?"
+
+    II
+
+    Invite the world, as my betters have done?
+      "Take notice: this building remains on view,
+    Its suites of reception every one,
+      Its private apartment and bedroom too;
+
+    III
+
+    "For a ticket, apply to the Publisher."
+      No: thanking the public, I must decline.
+    A peep through my window, if folk prefer;
+      But, please you, no foot over threshold of mine!
+
+    IV
+
+    I have mixed with a crowd and heard free talk
+      In a foreign land where an earthquake chanced:
+    And a house stood gaping, nought to balk
+      Man's eye wherever he gazed or glanced.
+
+    V
+
+    The whole of the frontage shaven sheer,
+      The inside gaped: exposed to day,
+    Right and wrong and common and queer,
+      Bare, as the palm of your hand, it lay.
+
+    VI
+
+    The owner? Oh, he had been crushed, no doubt!
+      "Odd tables and chairs for a man of wealth!
+    What a parcel of musty old books about!
+      He smoked,--no wonder he lost his health!
+
+    VII
+
+    "I doubt if he bathed before he dressed.
+      A brasier?--the pagan, he burned perfumes!
+    You see it is proved, what the neighbors guessed:
+      His wife and himself had separate rooms."
+
+    VIII
+
+    Friends, the goodman of the house at least
+      Kept house to himself till an earthquake came:
+    'Tis the fall of its frontage permits you feast
+      On the inside arrangement you praise or blame.
+
+    IX
+
+    Outside should suffice for evidence:
+      And whoso desires to penetrate
+    Deeper, must dive by the spirit-sense--
+      No optics like yours, at any rate!
+
+    X
+
+    "Hoity toity! A street to explore,
+      Your house the exception! '_With this same key
+    Shakespeare unlocked his heart_,' once more!"
+      Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!
+
+
+    SHOP
+
+    I
+
+    So, friend, your shop was all your house!
+      Its front, astonishing the street,
+    Invited view from man and mouse
+      To what diversity of treat
+      Behind its glass--the single sheet!
+
+    II
+
+    What gimcracks, genuine Japanese:
+      Gape-jaw and goggle-eye, the frog;
+    Dragons, owls, monkeys, beetles, geese;
+      Some crush-nosed, human-hearted dog:
+      Queer names, too, such a catalogue!
+
+    III
+
+    I thought "And he who owns the wealth
+      Which blocks the window's vastitude,
+    --Ah, could I peep at him by stealth
+      Behind his ware, pass shop, intrude
+      On house itself, what scenes were viewed!
+
+    IV
+
+    "If wide and showy thus the shop,
+      What must the habitation prove?
+    The true house with no name a-top--
+      The mansion, distant one remove,
+      Once get him off his traffic-groove!
+
+    V
+
+    "Pictures he likes, or books perhaps;
+      And as for buying most and best,
+    Commend me to these City chaps!
+      Or else he's social, takes his rest
+      On Sundays, with a Lord for guest.
+
+    VI
+
+    "Some suburb-palace, parked about
+      And gated grandly, built last year:
+    The four-mile walk to keep off gout;
+      Or big seat sold by bankrupt peer:
+      But then he takes the rail, that's clear.
+
+    VII
+
+    "Or, stop! I wager, taste selects
+      Some out o' the way, some all-unknown
+    Retreat: the neighborhood suspects
+      Little that he who rambles lone
+      Makes Rothschild tremble on his throne!"
+
+    VIII
+
+    Nowise! Nor Mayfair residence
+      Fit to receive and entertain,--
+    Nor Hampstead villa's kind defence
+      From noise and crowd, from dust and drain,--
+      Nor country-box was soul's domain!
+
+    IX
+
+    Nowise! At back of all that spread
+      Of merchandize, woe's me, I find
+    A hole i' the wall where, heels by head,
+      The owner couched, his ware behind,
+      --In cupboard suited to his mind.
+
+    X
+
+    For why? He saw no use of life
+      But, while he drove a roaring trade,
+    To chuckle "Customers are rife!"
+      To chafe "So much hard cash outlaid
+      Yet zero in my profits made!
+
+    XI
+
+    "This novelty costs pains, but--takes?
+      Cumbers my counter! Stock no more!
+    This article, no such great shakes,
+      Fizzes like wildfire? Underscore
+      The cheap thing--thousands to the fore!"
+
+    XII
+
+    'Twas lodging best to live most nigh
+      (Cramp, coffinlike as crib might be)
+    Receipt of Custom; ear and eye
+      Wanted no outworld: "Hear and see
+      The bustle in the shop!" quoth he.
+
+    XIII
+
+    My fancy of a merchant-prince
+      Was different. Through his wares we groped
+    Our darkling way to--not to mince
+      The matter--no black den where moped
+      The master if we interloped!
+
+    XIV
+
+    Shop was shop only: household-stuff?
+      What did he want with comforts there?
+    "Walls, ceiling, floor, stay blank and rough,
+      So goods on sale show rich and rare!
+      '_Sell and scud home_' be shop's affair!"
+
+    XV
+
+    What might he deal in? Gems, suppose!
+      Since somehow business must be done
+    At cost of trouble,--see, he throws
+      You choice of jewels, everyone,
+      Good, better, best, star, moon and sun!
+
+    XVI
+
+    Which lies within your power of purse?
+      This ruby that would tip aright
+    Solomon's sceptre? Oh, your nurse
+      Wants simply coral, the delight
+      Of teething baby,--stuff to bite!
+
+    XVII
+
+    Howe'er your choice fell, straight you took
+      Your purchase, prompt your money rang
+    On counter,--scarce the man forsook
+      His study of the "Times," just swang
+      Till-ward his hand that stopped the clang,--
+
+    XVIII
+
+    Then off made buyer with a prize,
+      Then seller to his "Times" returned;
+    And so did day wear, wear, till eyes
+      Brightened apace, for rest was earned:
+      He locked door long ere candle burned.
+
+    XIX
+
+    And whither went he? Ask himself,
+      Not me! To change of scene, I think.
+    Once sold the ware and pursed the pelf,
+      Chaffer was scarce his meat and drink,
+      Nor all his music--money-chink.
+
+    XX
+
+    Because a man has shop to mind
+      In time and place, since flesh must live,
+    Needs spirit lack all life behind,
+      All stray thoughts, fancies fugitive,
+      All loves except what trade can give?
+
+    XXI
+
+    I want to know a butcher paints,
+      A baker rhymes for his pursuit,
+    Candlestick-maker much acquaints
+      His soul with song, or, haply mute,
+      Blows out his brains upon the flute!
+
+    XXII
+
+    But--shop each day and all day long!
+      Friend, your good angel slept, your star
+    Suffered eclipse, fate did you wrong!
+      From where these sorts of treasures are,
+      There should our hearts be--Christ, how far!
+
+These poems are valuable not only for furnishing an interesting
+interpretation of Shakespeare's character as a man and artist, but for
+the glimpses they give into Browning's stand toward his own art. He
+wished to be regarded primarily as a dramatic artist, presenting and
+interpreting the souls of his characters, and he must have felt keenly
+the stupid attitude which insisted always in reading "Browning's
+Philosophy" into all his poems. The fact that his objective material was
+of the soul rather than of the external actions of life has no doubt
+lent force to the supposition that Browning himself can be seen in
+everything he writes. It is true, nevertheless, that while much of his
+work is Shakespearian in its dramatic intensity, he had too forceful a
+philosophy of life to keep it from sometimes coming to the front.
+Besides he has written many things avowedly personal as this chapter
+amply illustrates.
+
+To what intensity of feeling Browning could rise when contemplating the
+genius of Shakespeare is revealed in his direct and outspoken tribute.
+Here there breathes an almost reverential attitude toward the one
+supremely great man he has ventured to portray.
+
+
+    THE NAMES
+
+    Shakespeare!--to such name's sounding, what succeeds
+      Fitly as silence? Falter forth the spell,--
+      Act follows word, the speaker knows full well;
+    Nor tampers with its magic more than needs.
+    Two names there are: That which the Hebrew reads
+      With his soul only: if from lips it fell,
+      Echo, back thundered by earth, heaven and hell,
+    Would own, "Thou didst create us!" Naught impedes
+    We voice the other name, man's most of might,
+      Awesomely, lovingly: let awe and love
+    Mutely await their working, leave to sight
+      All of the issue as--below--above--
+      Shakespeare's creation rises: one remove,
+    Though dread--this finite from that infinite.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A CRUCIAL PERIOD IN ENGLISH HISTORY
+
+
+"Whom the gods destroy they first make mad." Of no one in English
+history is this truer than of King Charles I. Just at a time when the
+nation was feeling the strength of its wings both in Church and State,
+when individuals were claiming the right to freedom of conscience in
+their form of worship and the people were growing more insistent for the
+recognition of their ancient rights and liberties, secured to them, in
+the first place, by the Magna Charta,--just at this time looms up the
+obstruction of a King so imbued with the defunct ideal of the divine
+right of Kings that he is blind to the tendencies of the age. What
+wonder, then, if the swirling waters of discontent should rise higher
+and higher until he became engulfed in their fury.
+
+The history of the reign of Charles I. is one full of involved details,
+yet the broader aspects of it, the great events which chiseled into
+shape the future of England stand out in bold relief in front of a
+background of interminable bickerings. There was constant quarreling
+between the factions within the English church, and between the
+Protestants and the Catholics, complicated by the discontent of the
+people and at times the nobles because of the autocratic, vacillating
+policy of the King.
+
+Among these epoch-bringing events were the emergence of the Puritans
+from the chaos of internecine church squabbles, the determined raising
+of the voice of the people in the Long Parliament, where King and people
+finally came to an open clash in the impeachment of the King's most
+devoted minister, Wentworth, Earl Strafford, by Pym, the great leader in
+the House of Commons, ending in Strafford's execution; the Grand
+Remonstrance, which sounded in no uncertain tones the tocsin of the
+coming revolution; and finally the King's impeachment of Pym, Hampden,
+Holles, Hazelrigg and Strode, one of the many ill-advised moves of this
+Monarch which at once precipitated the Revolution.
+
+These cataclysms at home were further intensified by the Scottish
+Invasion and the Irish Rebellion.
+
+[Illustration: Charles I in Scene of Impeachment]
+
+It is not surprising that Browning should have been attracted to this
+period of English history, when he contemplated the writing of a play on
+an English subject. His liberty-loving mind would naturally find
+congenial occupation in depicting this great English struggle for
+liberty. Yet the hero of the play is not Pym, the leader of the people,
+but Strafford, the supporter of the King. The dramatic reasons are
+sufficient to account for this. Strafford's career was picturesque and
+tragic and his personality so striking that more than one interpretation
+of his remarkable life is possible.
+
+The interpretation will differ according to whether one is partisan in
+hatred or admiration of his character and policy, or possesses the
+larger quality of sympathetic appreciation of the man and the problems
+with which he had to deal. Any one coming to judge him in this latter
+spirit would undoubtedly perceive all the fine points in Strafford's
+nature and would balance these against his theories of government to the
+better understanding of this extraordinary man.
+
+It is almost needless to say that Browning's perception of Strafford's
+character was penetrating and sympathetic. Strafford's devotion to his
+King had in it not only the element of loyalty to the liege, but an
+element of personal love which would make an especial appeal to
+Browning. He, in consequence, seizes upon this trait as the key-note of
+his portrayal of Strafford.
+
+The play is, on the whole, accurate in its historical details, though
+the poet's imagination has added many a flying buttress to the
+structure.
+
+Forster's lives of the English Statesmen in Lardner's Cyclopædia
+furnished plenty of material, and he was besides familiar with some if
+not all of Forster's materials for the lives. One of the interesting
+surprises in connection with Browning's literary career was the fact
+divulged some years ago that he had actually helped Forster in the
+preparation of the Life of Strafford. Indeed it is thought that he wrote
+it almost entirely from the notes of Forster. Dr. Furnivall first called
+attention to this, and later the life of Strafford was reprinted as
+"Robert Browning's Prose Life of Strafford."[2] In his Forewords to this
+volume, Dr. Furnivall, who, among many other claims to distinction, was
+the president of the "London Browning Society," writes, "Three times
+during his life did Browning speak to me about his prose 'Life of
+Strafford.' The first time he said only--in the course of chat--that
+very few people had any idea of how much he had helped John Forster in
+it. The second time he told me at length that one day he went to see
+Forster and found him very ill, and anxious about the 'Life of
+Strafford,' which he had promised to write at once, to complete a volume
+of 'Lives of Eminent British Statesmen' for Lardner's 'Cabinet
+Cyclopædia.' Forster had finished the 'Life of Eliot'--the first in the
+volume--and had just begun that of Strafford, for which he had made full
+collections and extracts; but illness had come on, he couldn't work, the
+book ought to be completed forthwith, as it was due in the serial issue
+of volumes; what _was_ he to do? 'Oh,' said Browning, 'don't trouble
+about it. I'll take your papers and do it for you.' Forster thanked his
+young friend heartily, Browning put the Strafford papers under his arm,
+walked off, worked hard, finished the Life, and it came out to time in
+1836, to Forster's great relief, and passed under his name." Professor
+Gardiner, the historian, was of the opinion from internal evidence that
+the Life was more Browning's than Forster's. He said to Furnivall, "It
+is not a historian's conception of the character but a poet's. I am
+certain that it's not Forster's. Yes, it makes mistakes in facts and
+dates, but, it has got the man--in the main." In this opinion Furnivall
+concurs. Of the last paragraph in the history he exclaims, "I could
+swear it was Browning's":--The paragraph in question sums up the
+character of Strafford and is interesting in this connection, as giving
+hints, though not the complete picture of the Strafford of the Drama.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] Estes and Lauriat, Boston, Mass.
+
+"A great lesson is written in the life of this truly extraordinary
+person. In the career of Strafford is to be sought the justification of
+the world's 'appeal from tyranny to God.' In him Despotism had at length
+obtained an instrument with mind to comprehend, and resolution to act
+upon, her principles in their length and breadth,--and enough of her
+purposes were effected by him, to enable mankind to 'see as from a tower
+the end of all.' I cannot discern one false step in Strafford's public
+conduct, one glimpse of a recognition of an alien principle, one
+instance of a dereliction of the law of his being, which can come in to
+dispute the decisive result of the experiment, or explain away its
+failure. The least vivid fancy will have no difficulty in taking up the
+interrupted design, and by wholly enfeebling, or materially emboldening,
+the insignificant nature of Charles; and by according some half-dozen
+years of immunity to the 'fretted tenement' of Strafford's 'fiery
+soul',--contemplate then, for itself, the perfect realization of the
+scheme of 'making the prince the most absolute lord in Christendom.'
+That done,--let it pursue the same course with respect to Eliot's noble
+imaginings, or to young Vane's dreamy aspirings, and apply in like
+manner a fit machinery to the working out the projects which made the
+dungeon of the one a holy place, and sustained the other in his
+self-imposed exile.--The result is great and decisive! It establishes,
+in renewed force, those principles of political conduct which have
+endured, and must continue to endure, 'like truth from age to age.'" The
+history, on the whole, lacks the grasp in the portrayal of Wentworth to
+be found in the drama. C. H. Firth, commenting upon this says truly,
+"One might almost say that in the first, Strafford was represented as he
+appeared to his opponents, and in the second as he appeared to himself;
+or that, having painted Strafford as he was, Browning painted him again
+as he wished to be. In the biography Strafford is exhibited as a man of
+rare gifts and noble qualities; yet in his political capacity, merely
+the conscious, the devoted tool of a tyrant. In the tragedy, on the
+other hand, Strafford is the champion of the King's will against the
+people's, but yet looks forward to the ultimate reconciliation of
+Charles and his subjects, and strives for it after his own fashion. He
+loves the master he serves, and dies for him, but when the end comes he
+can proudly answer his accusers, 'I have loved England too.'"
+
+The play opens at the important moment of Wentworth's return to London
+from Ireland, where for some time he had been governor. The occasion of
+his return, according to Gardiner, was a personal quarrel with the
+Chancellor Loftus, of Ireland. Both men were allowed to come to England
+to plead their cause, which resulted in the victory of Wentworth. In the
+play Pym says, "Ay, the Court gives out His own concerns have brought
+him back: I know 'tis the King calls him." The authority for this remark
+is found in the Forster-Browning Life. "In the danger threatened by the
+Scots' Covenant, Wentworth was Charles's only hope; the King sent for
+him, saying he desired his personal counsel and attendance. He wrote:
+'The Scots' Covenant begins to spread too far, yet, for all this, I will
+not have you take notice that I have sent for you, but pretend some
+other occasion of business.'" Certain it is that from this time
+Wentworth became the most trusted counsellor of Charles, that is, as
+far as Charles was capable of trusting any one. The condition of affairs
+to which Wentworth returned is brought out in the play in a thoroughly
+alive and human manner. We are introduced to the principal actors in the
+struggle for their rights and privileges against the government of
+Charles meeting in a house near Whitehall. Among the "great-hearted" men
+are Hampden, Hollis, the younger Vane, Rudyard, Fiennes--all leaders in
+the "Faction,"--Presbyterians, Loudon and other members of the Scots'
+commissioners. A bit of history has been drawn upon for this opening
+scene, for according to the Forster-Browning Life, "There is no doubt
+that a close correspondence with the Scotch commissioners, headed by
+Lords Loudon and Dumferling, was entered into under the management of
+Pym and Hampden. Whenever necessity obliged the meetings to be held in
+London, they took place at Pym's house in Gray's Inn Lane." In the talk
+between these men the political situation in England at the time from
+the point of view of the liberal party is brought vividly before the
+reader.
+
+There has been no Parliament in England for ten years, hence the people
+have had no say in the direction of the government. The growing
+dissatisfaction of the people at being thus deprived of their rights
+focussed itself upon the question of "ship-money." The taxes levied by
+the King for the maintainance of a fleet were loudly objected to upon
+all sides. That a fleet was a necessary means of protection in those
+threatening times is not to be doubted, but the objections of the people
+were grounded upon the fact that the King levied these taxes upon his
+own authority. "Ship-money, it was loudly declared," says Gardiner, "was
+undeniably a tax, and the ancient customs of the realm, recently
+embodied in the Petition of Right, had announced with no doubtful voice
+that no tax could be levied without consent of Parliament. Even this
+objection was not the full measure of the evil. If Charles could take
+this money without the consent of Parliament, he need not, unless some
+unforeseen emergency arose, ever summon a Parliament again. The true
+question at issue was whether Parliament formed an integral part of the
+Constitution or not." Other taxes were objected to on the same grounds,
+and the more determined the King was not to summon a Parliament, the
+greater became the political ferment.
+
+[Illustration: Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford]
+
+At the same time the religious ferment was centering itself upon
+hatred of Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury. His policy was to silence
+opposition to the methods of worship then followed by the Church of
+England, by the terrors of the Star Chamber. The Puritans were smarting
+under the sentence which had been passed upon the three pamphleteers,
+William Prynne, Henry Burton, and John Bastwick, who had expressed their
+opinions of the practises of the church with great outspokenness. Prynne
+called upon pious King Charles "to do justice on the whole Episcopal
+order by which he had been robbed of the love of God and of his people,
+and which aimed at plucking the crown from his head, that they might set
+it on their own ambitious pates." Burton hinted that "the sooner the
+office of the Bishops was abolished the better it would be for the
+nation." Bastwick, who had been brought up in the straitest principles
+of Puritanism, had ended his pamphlet "_Flagellum Pontificis_," with
+this outburst, "Take notice, so far am I from flying or fearing, as I
+resolve to make war against the Beast, and every hint of Antichrist, all
+the days of my life. If I die in that battle, so much the sooner I shall
+be sent in a chariot of triumph to heaven; and when I come there, I
+will, with those that are under the altar cry, 'How long, Lord, holy
+and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood upon them that dwell
+upon the earth?'"
+
+These men were called before the Star Chamber upon a charge of libel.
+The sentence was a foregone conclusion, and was so outrageous that its
+result could only be the strengthening of opposition. The "muckworm"
+Cottington, as Browning calls him, suggested the sentence which was
+carried out. The men were condemned to lose their ears, to pay a fine of
+£5000 each, and to be imprisoned for the remainder of their lives in the
+castles of Carnarvon, Launceston, and Lancaster. Finch, not satisfied
+with this, added the savage wish that Prynne should be branded on the
+cheek with the letters S. L., to stand for "seditious libeller," and
+this was also done.
+
+The account of the execution of this sentence is almost too horrible to
+read. Some one who recorded the scene wrote, "The humours of the people
+were various; some wept, some laughed, and some were very reserved."
+Prynne, whose sufferings had been greatest for he had been burned as
+well as having his ears taken off, was yet able to indulge in a grim
+piece of humor touching the letters S. L. branded on his cheeks. He
+called them "Stigmata Laudis," the "Scars of Laud," on his way back to
+prison. Popular demonstrations in favor of the prisoners were made all
+along the road when they were taken to their respective prisons, where
+they were allowed neither pen, ink nor books. Fearful lest they might
+somehow still disseminate their heretical doctrines to the outer world,
+the council removed them to still more distant prisons, in the Scilly
+Isles, in Guernsey and in Jersey. Retaliation against this treatment
+found open expression. "A copy of the Star Chamber decree was nailed to
+a board. Its corners were cut off as the ears of Laud's victims had been
+cut off at Westminster. A broad ink mark was drawn round Laud's name. An
+inscription declared that 'The man that puts the saints of God into a
+pillory of wood stands here in a pillory of ink!'"
+
+Things were brought to a crisis in Scotland also, through hatred of Laud
+and the new prayer-book. The King, upon his visit to Scotland, had been
+shocked at the slovenly appearance and the slovenly ritual of
+the Scottish Church, which reflected strongly survivals of the
+Presbyterianism of an earlier time. The King wrote to the Scottish
+Bishops soon after his return to England: "We, tendering the good and
+peace of that Church by having good and decent order and discipline
+observed therein, whereby religion and God's worship may increase, and
+considering that there is nothing more defective in that Church than the
+want of a Book of Common Prayer and uniform service to be kept in all
+the churches thereof, and the want of canons for the uniformity of the
+same, we are hereby pleased to authorise you as the representative body
+of that Church, and do herewith will and require you to condescend upon
+a form of Church service to be used therein, and to set down the canons
+for the uniformity of the discipline thereof." Laud, who as Archbishop
+of Canterbury had no jurisdiction over Scottish Bishops, put his finger
+into the pie as secretary of the King. As Gardiner says, "He conveyed
+instructions to the Bishops, remonstrated with proceedings which shocked
+his sense of order, and held out prospects of advancement to the
+zealous. Scotchmen naturally took offense. They did not trouble
+themselves to distinguish between the secretary and the archbishop. They
+simply said that the Pope of Canterbury was as bad as the Pope of Rome."
+
+The upshot of it all was that in May, 1637, the "new Prayer-book" was
+sent to Scotland, and every minister was ordered to buy two copies on
+pain of outlawry. Riots followed. It was finally decided that it must be
+settled once for all whether a King had any right to change the forms of
+worship without the sanction of a legislative assembly. Then came the
+Scottish Covenant which declared the intention of the signers to uphold
+religious liberty. The account of the signing of this covenant is one of
+the most impressive episodes in all history. The Covenant was carried on
+the 28th of February, 1638, to the Grey Friars' Church to which all the
+gentlemen present in Edinburgh had been summoned. The scene has been
+most sympathetically described by Gardiner.
+
+"At four o'clock in the grey winter evening, the noblemen, the Earl of
+Sutherland leading the way began to sign. Then came the gentlemen, one
+after the other until nearly eight. The next day the ministers were
+called on to testify their approval, and nearly three hundred signatures
+were obtained before night. The Commissioners of the boroughs signed at
+the same time.
+
+"On the third day the people of Edinburgh were called on to attest their
+devotion to the cause which was represented by the Covenant. Tradition
+long loved to tell how the honored parchment, carried back to the Grey
+Friars, was laid out on a tombstone in the churchyard, whilst weeping
+multitudes pressed round in numbers too great to be contained in any
+building. There are moments when the stern Scottish nature breaks out
+into an enthusiasm less passionate, but more enduring, than the frenzy
+of a Southern race. As each man and woman stepped forward in turn, with
+the right hand raised to heaven before the pen was grasped, every one
+there present knew that there would be no flinching amongst that band of
+brothers till their religion was safe from intrusive violence.
+
+"Modern narrators may well turn their attention to the picturesqueness
+of the scene, to the dark rocks of the Castle crag over against the
+churchyard, and to the earnest faces around. The men of the seventeenth
+century had no thought to spare for the earth beneath or for the sky
+above. What they saw was their country's faith trodden under foot, what
+they felt was the joy of those who had been long led astray, and had now
+returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls."
+
+Such were the conditions that brought on the Scotch war, neither Charles
+nor Wentworth being wise enough to make concessions to the Covenanters.
+
+The grievances against the King's Minister Wentworth are in this opening
+scene shown as being aggravated by the fact that the men of the
+"Faction" regard him as a deserter from their cause, Pym, himself being
+one of the number who is loth to think Wentworth stands for the King's
+policy.
+
+The historical ground for the assumption lies in the fact that Wentworth
+was one of the leaders of the opposition in the Parliament of 1628.
+
+The reason for this was largely personal, because of Buckingham's
+treatment of him. Wentworth had refused to take part in the collection
+of the forced loan of 1626, and was dismissed from his official posts in
+consequence. When he further refused to subscribe to that loan himself
+he was imprisoned in the Marshalsea and at Depford. Regarding himself as
+personally attacked by Buckingham, he joined the opposition. Yet, as
+Firth points out, "fiercely as he attacked the King's ministers, he was
+careful to exonerate the King." He concludes his list of grievances by
+saying, "This hath not been done by the King, but by projectors." Again,
+"Whether we shall look upon the King or his people, it did never more
+behove this great physician the parliament, to effect a true consent
+amongst the parties than now. Both are injured, both to be cured. By one
+and the same thing hath the King and people been hurt. I speak truly
+both for the interest of the King and the people."
+
+His intention was to find some means of cooperation which would leave
+the people their liberty and yet give the crown its prerogative, "Let us
+make what laws we can, there must--nay, there will be a trust left in
+the crown."
+
+It will be seen by any unbiased critic that Wentworth was only half for
+the people even at this time. On the other hand, it is not astonishing
+that men, heart and soul for the people, should consider Wentworth's
+subsequent complete devotion to the cause of the King sufficient to
+brand him as an apostate. The fact that he received so many official
+dignities from the King also leant color to the supposition that
+personal ambition was a leading motive with him. With true dramatic
+instinct Browning has centered this feeling and made the most of it in
+the attitude of Pym's party, while he offsets it later in the play by
+showing us the reality of the man Strafford.
+
+There is no very authentic source for the idea also brought out in this
+first scene that Strafford and Pym had been warm personal friends. The
+story is told by Dr. James Welwood, one of the physicians of William
+III., who, in the year 1700, published a volume entitled "Memoirs, of
+the most material transactions in England for the last hundred years
+preceding the Revolution of 1688." Without mentioning any source he
+tells the following story; "There had been a long and intimate
+friendship between Mr. Pym and him [Wentworth], and they had gone hand
+in hand in everything in the House of Commons. But when Sir Thomas
+Wentworth was upon making his peace with the Court, he sent to Pym to
+meet him alone at Greenwich; where he began in a set speech to sound Mr.
+Pym about the dangers they were like to run by the courses they were in;
+and what advantages they might have if they would but listen to some
+offers which would probably be made them from the Court. Pym
+understanding his speech stopped him short with this expression: 'You
+need not use all this art to tell me you have a mind to leave us; but
+remember what I tell you, you are going to be undone. But remember, that
+though you leave us now I will never leave you while your head is upon
+your shoulders.'"
+
+Though only a tradition this was entirely too useful a suggestion not to
+be used. The intensity of the situation between the leaders on opposite
+sides is enhanced tenfold by bringing into the field a personal
+sentiment.
+
+The attitude of Pym's followers is reflected again in their opinion of
+Wentworth's Irish rule. Although Wentworth's policy seemed to be
+successful in Ireland, the very fact of its success would condemn it in
+the eyes of the popular party; besides later developments revealed its
+weaknesses. How it appeared to the eyes of a non-fanatical observer at
+this time may be gathered from the following letter of Sir Thomas Roe to
+the Queen of Bohemia, written in 1634.
+
+"The Lord Deputy of Ireland doth great wonders, and governs like a King,
+and hath taught that Kingdom to show us an example of envy, by having
+parliaments, and knowing wisely how to use them; for they have given the
+King six subsidies, which will arise to £240,000, and they are like to
+have the liberty we contended for, and grace from his Majesty worth
+their gift double; and which is worth much more, the honor of good
+intelligence and love between the King and people, which I would to God
+our great wits had had eyes to see. This is a great service, and to
+give your Majesty a character of the man,--he is severe abroad and in
+business, and sweet in private conversation; retired in his friendships,
+but very firm; a terrible judge and a strong enemy; a servant violently
+zealous in his Master's ends, and not negligent of his own; one that
+will have what he will, and though of great reason, he can make his will
+greater when it may serve him; affecting glory by a seeming contempt;
+one that cannot stay long in the middle region of fortune, being
+entreprenant; but will either be the greatest man in England, or much
+less than he is; lastly, one that may (and his nature lies fit for it,
+for he is ambitious to do what others will not), do your Majesty very
+great service, if you can make him."
+
+In order to be in sympathy with the play throughout and especially with
+the first scene all this historical background must be kept in mind, for
+the talk gives no direct information, it merely in an absolutely
+dramatic fashion reveals the feelings and opinions of the men upon the
+situation, just as friends at a dinner party might discuss one of our
+own less strenuous political situations--all present being perfectly
+familiar with the issues at stake.
+
+
+STRAFFORD
+
+ACT I
+
+SCENE I.--_A House near Whitehall._
+
+_HAMPDEN, HOLLIS, the +younger+ VANE, RUDYARD, FIENNES and many of the
+Presbyterian Party: LOUDON and other Scots' Commissioners._
+
+  _Vane._ I say, if he be here--
+
+  _Rudyard._                     (And he is here!)--
+
+  _Hollis._ For England's sake let every man be still
+  Nor speak of him, so much as say his name,
+  Till Pym rejoin us! Rudyard! Henry Vane!
+  One rash conclusion may decide our course
+  And with it England's fate--think--England's fate!
+  Hampden, for England's sake they should be still!
+
+  _Vane._ You say so, Hollis? Well, I must be still.
+  It is indeed too bitter that one man,
+  Any one man's mere presence, should suspend
+  England's combined endeavor: little need
+  To name him!
+
+  _Rudyard._ For you are his brother, Hollis!
+
+  _Hampden._ Shame on you, Rudyard! time to tell him that,
+  When he forgets the Mother of us all.
+
+  _Rudyard._ Do I forget her?
+
+  _Hampden._                  You talk idle hate
+  Against her foe: is that so strange a thing?
+  Is hating Wentworth all the help she needs?
+
+  _A Puritan._ The Philistine strode, cursing as he went:
+  But David--five smooth pebbles from the brook
+  Within his scrip....
+
+  _Rudyard._           Be you as still as David!
+
+  _Fiennes._ Here's Rudyard not ashamed to wag a tongue
+  Stiff with ten years' disuse of Parliaments;
+  Why, when the last sat, Wentworth sat with us!
+
+  _Rudyard._ Let's hope for news of them now he returns--
+  He that was safe in Ireland, as we thought!
+  --But I'll abide Pym's coming.
+
+  _Vane._                        Now, by Heaven,
+  They may be cool who can, silent who will--
+  Some have a gift that way! Wentworth is here,
+  Here, and the King's safe closeted with him
+  Ere this. And when I think on all that's past
+  Since that man left us, how his single arm
+  Rolled the advancing good of England back
+  And set the woeful past up in its place,
+  Exalting Dagon where the Ark should be,--
+  How that man has made firm the fickle King
+  (Hampden, I will speak out!)--in aught he feared
+  To venture on before; taught tyranny
+  Her dismal trade, the use of all her tools,
+  To ply the scourge yet screw the gag so close
+  That strangled agony bleeds mute to death;
+  How he turns Ireland to a private stage
+  For training infant villanies, new ways
+  Of wringing treasure out of tears and blood,
+  Unheard oppressions nourished in the dark
+  To try how much man's nature can endure
+  --If he dies under it, what harm? if not,
+  Why, one more trick is added to the rest
+  Worth a king's knowing, and what Ireland bears
+  England may learn to bear:--how all this while
+  That man has set himself to one dear task,
+  The bringing Charles to relish more and more
+  Power, power without law, power and blood too
+  --Can I be still?
+
+  _Hampden._       For that you should be still.
+
+  _Vane._ Oh Hampden, then and now! The year he left us,
+  The People in full Parliament could wrest
+  The Bill of Rights from the reluctant King;
+  And now, he'll find in an obscure small room
+  A stealthy gathering of great-hearted men
+  That take up England's cause: England is here!
+
+  _Hampden._ And who despairs of England?
+
+  _Rudyard._                              That do I,
+  If Wentworth comes to rule her. I am sick
+  To think her wretched masters, Hamilton,
+  The muckworm Cottington, the maniac Laud,
+  May yet be longed-for back again. I say,
+  I do despair.
+
+  _Vane._       And, Rudyard, I'll say this--
+  Which all true men say after me, not loud
+  But solemnly and as you'd say a prayer!
+  This King, who treads our England underfoot,
+  Has just so much ... it may be fear or craft,
+  As bids him pause at each fresh outrage; friends,
+  He needs some sterner hand to grasp his own,
+  Some voice to ask, "Why shrink? Am I not by?"
+  Now, one whom England loved for serving her,
+  Found in his heart to say, "I know where best
+  The iron heel shall bruise her, for she leans
+  Upon me when you trample." Witness, you!
+  So Wentworth heartened Charles, so England fell.
+  But inasmuch as life is hard to take
+  From England....
+
+  _Many Voices._  Go on, Vane! 'Tis well said, Vane!
+
+  _Vane._ --Who has not so forgotten Runnymead!--
+
+  _Voices._ 'Tis well and bravely spoken, Vane! Go on!
+
+  _Vane._ --There are some little signs of late she knows
+  The ground no place for her. She glances round,
+  Wentworth has dropped the hand, is gone his way
+  On other service: what if she arise?
+  No! the King beckons, and beside him stands
+  The same bad man once more, with the same smile
+  And the same gesture. Now shall England crouch,
+  Or catch at us and rise?
+
+  _Voices._                The Renegade!
+  Haman! Ahithophel!
+
+  _Hampden._         Gentlemen of the North,
+  It was not thus the night your claims were urged,
+  And we pronounced the League and Covenant,
+  The cause of Scotland, England's cause as well:
+  Vane there, sat motionless the whole night through.
+
+  _Vane._ Hampden!
+
+  _Fiennes._       Stay, Vane!
+
+  _Loudon._                    Be just and patient, Vane!
+
+  _Vane._ Mind how you counsel patience, Loudon! you
+  Have still a Parliament, and this your League
+  To back it; you are free in Scotland still:
+  While we are brothers, hope's for England yet.
+  But know you wherefore Wentworth comes? to quench
+  This last of hopes? that he brings war with him?
+  Know you the man's self? what he dares?
+
+  _Loudon._                               We know,
+  All know--'tis nothing new.
+
+  _Vane._                     And what's new, then,
+  In calling for his life? Why, Pym himself--
+  You must have heard--ere Wentworth dropped our cause
+  He would see Pym first; there were many more
+  Strong on the people's side and friends of his,
+  Eliot that's dead, Rudyard and Hampden here,
+  But for these Wentworth cared not; only, Pym
+  He would see--Pym and he were sworn, 'tis said,
+  To live and die together; so, they met
+  At Greenwich. Wentworth, you are sure, was long,
+  Specious enough, the devil's argument
+  Lost nothing on his lips; he'd have Pym own
+  A patriot could not play a purer part
+  Than follow in his track; they two combined
+  Might put down England. Well, Pym heard him out;
+  One glance--you know Pym's eye--one word was all:
+  "You leave us, Wentworth! while your head is on,
+  I'll not leave you."
+
+  _Hampden._           Has he left Wentworth, then?
+  Has England lost him? Will you let him speak,
+  Or put your crude surmises in his mouth?
+  Away with this! Will you have Pym or Vane?
+
+  _Voices._ Wait Pym's arrival! Pym shall speak.
+
+  _Hampden._                                     Meanwhile
+  Let Loudon read the Parliament's report
+  From Edinburgh: our last hope, as Vane says,
+  Is in the stand it makes. Loudon!
+
+  _Vane._                           No, no!
+  Silent I can be: not indifferent!
+
+  _Hampden._ Then each keep silence, praying God to spare
+  His anger, cast not England quite away
+  In this her visitation!
+
+  _A Puritan._            Seven years long
+  The Midianite drove Israel into dens
+  And caves. Till God sent forth a mighty man,
+
+_PYM enters_
+
+  Even Gideon!
+
+  _Pym._       Wentworth's come: nor sickness, care,
+  The ravaged body nor the ruined soul,
+  More than the winds and waves that beat his ship,
+  Could keep him from the King. He has not reached
+  Whitehall: they've hurried up a Council there
+  To lose no time and find him work enough.
+  Where's Loudon? your Scots' Parliament....
+
+  _Loudon._                                  Holds firm:
+  We were about to read reports.
+
+  _Pym._                         The King
+  Has just dissolved your Parliament.
+
+  _Loudon and other Scots._           Great God!
+  An oath-breaker! Stand by us, England, then!
+
+  _Pym._ The King's too sanguine; doubtless Wentworth's here;
+  But still some little form might be kept up.
+
+  _Hampden._ Now speak, Vane! Rudyard, you had much to say!
+
+  _Hollis._ The rumor's false, then....
+
+  _Pym._                                Ay, the Court gives out
+  His own concerns have brought him back: I know
+  'Tis the King calls him. Wentworth supersedes
+  The tribe of Cottingtons and Hamiltons
+  Whose part is played; there's talk enough, by this,--
+  Merciful talk, the King thinks: time is now
+  To turn the record's last and bloody leaf
+  Which, chronicling a nation's great despair,
+  Tells they were long rebellious, and their lord
+  Indulgent, till, all kind expedients tried,
+  He drew the sword on them and reigned in peace.
+  Laud's laying his religion on the Scots
+  Was the last gentle entry: the new page
+  Shall run, the King thinks, "Wentworth thrust it down
+  At the sword's point."
+
+  _A Puritan._           I'll do your bidding, Pym,
+  England's and God's--one blow!
+
+  _Pym._                         A goodly thing--
+  We all say, friends, it is a goodly thing
+  To right that England. Heaven grows dark above:
+  Let's snatch one moment ere the thunder fall,
+  To say how well the English spirit comes out
+  Beneath it! All have done their best, indeed,
+  From lion Eliot, that grand Englishman,
+  To the least here: and who, the least one here,
+  When she is saved (for her redemption dawns
+  Dimly, most dimly, but it dawns--it dawns)
+  Who'd give at any price his hope away
+  Of being named along with the Great Men?
+  We would not--no, we would not give that up!
+
+  _Hampden._ And one name shall be dearer than all names.
+  When children, yet unborn, are taught that name
+  After their fathers',--taught what matchless man....
+
+  _Pym._ ... Saved England? What if Wentworth's should be still
+  That name?
+
+  _Rudyard and others._ We have just said it, Pym! His death
+  Saves her! We said it--there's no way beside!
+  I'll do God's bidding, Pym! They struck down Joab
+  And purged the land.
+
+  _Vane._             No villanous striking-down!
+
+  _Rudyard._ No, a calm vengeance: let the whole land rise
+  And shout for it. No Feltons!
+
+  _Pym._                        Rudyard, no!
+  England rejects all Feltons; most of all
+  Since Wentworth ... Hampden, say the trust again
+  Of England in her servants--but I'll think
+  You know me, all of you. Then, I believe,
+  Spite of the past, Wentworth rejoins you, friends!
+
+  _Vane and others._ Wentworth? Apostate! Judas! Double-dyed
+  A traitor! Is it Pym, indeed....
+
+  _Pym._                           ... Who says
+  Vane never knew that Wentworth, loved that man,
+  Was used to stroll with him, arm locked in arm,
+  Along the streets to see the people pass,
+  And read in every island-countenance
+  Fresh argument for God against the King,--
+  Never sat down, say, in the very house
+  Where Eliot's brow grew broad with noble thoughts,
+  (You've joined us, Hampden--Hollis, you as well,)
+  And then left talking over Gracchus' death....
+
+  _Vane._ To frame, we know it well, the choicest clause
+  In the Petition of Right: he framed such clause
+  One month before he took at the King's hand
+  His Northern Presidency, which that Bill
+  Denounced.
+
+  _Pym._     Too true! Never more, never more
+  Walked we together! Most alone I went.
+  I have had friends--all here are fast my friends--
+  But I shall never quite forget that friend.
+  And yet it could not but be real in him!
+  You, Vane,--you, Rudyard, have no right to trust
+  To Wentworth: but can no one hope with me?
+  Hampden, will Wentworth dare shed English blood
+  Like water?
+
+  _Hampden._ Ireland is Aceldama.
+
+  _Pym._ Will he turn Scotland to a hunting-ground
+  To please the King, now that he knows the King?
+  The People or the King? and that King, Charles!
+
+  _Hampden._ Pym, all here know you: you'll not set your heart
+  On any baseless dream. But say one deed
+  Of Wentworth's since he left us....
+
+[_Shouting without._
+
+  _Vane._                             There! he comes,
+  And they shout for him! Wentworth's at Whitehall,
+  The King embracing him, now, as we speak,
+  And he, to be his match in courtesies,
+  Taking the whole war's risk upon himself,
+  Now, while you tell us here how changed he is!
+  Hear you?
+
+  _Pym._    And yet if 'tis a dream, no more,
+  That Wentworth chose their side, and brought the King
+  To love it as though Laud had loved it first,
+  And the Queen after;--that he led their cause
+  Calm to success, and kept it spotless through,
+  So that our very eyes could look upon
+  The travail of our souls, and close content
+  That violence, which something mars even right
+  Which sanctions it, had taken off no grace
+  From its serene regard. Only a dream!
+
+  _Hampden._ We meet here to accomplish certain good
+  By obvious means, and keep tradition up
+  Of free assemblages, else obsolete,
+  In this poor chamber: nor without effect
+  Has friend met friend to counsel and confirm,
+  As, listening to the beats of England's heart,
+  We spoke its wants to Scotland's prompt reply
+  By these her delegates. Remains alone
+  That word grow deed, as with God's help it shall--
+  But with the devil's hindrance, who doubts too?
+  Looked we or no that tyranny should turn
+  Her engines of oppression to their use?
+  Whereof, suppose the worst be Wentworth here--
+  Shall we break off the tactics which succeed
+  In drawing out our formidablest foe,
+  Let bickering and disunion take their place?
+  Or count his presence as our conquest's proof,
+  And keep the old arms at their steady play?
+  Proceed to England's work! Fiennes, read the list!
+
+  _Fiennes._ Ship-money is refused or fiercely paid
+  In every county, save the northern parts
+  Where Wentworth's influence....
+
+[_Shouting._
+
+  _Vane._                         I, in England's name,
+  Declare her work, this way, at end! Till now,
+  Up to this moment, peaceful strife was best.
+  We English had free leave to think; till now,
+  We had a shadow of a Parliament
+  In Scotland. But all's changed: they change the first,
+  They try brute-force for law, they, first of all....
+
+  _Voices._ Good! Talk enough! The old true hearts with Vane!
+
+  _Vane._ Till we crush Wentworth for her, there's no act
+  Serves England!
+
+  _Voices._       Vane for England!
+
+  _Pym._                            Pym should be
+  Something to England. I seek Wentworth, friends.
+
+In the second scene of the first act, the man upon whom the popular
+party has been heaping opprobrium appears to speak for himself. Again
+the historical background must be known in order that the whole drift of
+the scene may be understood. Wentworth is talking with Lady Carlisle, a
+woman celebrated for her beauty and her wit, and fond of having
+friendships with great men. Various opinions of this beautiful woman
+have been expressed by those who knew her. "Her beauty," writes one,
+"brought her adorers of all ranks, courtiers, and poets, and statesmen;
+but she remained untouched by their worship." Sir Toby Mathews who
+prefixed to a collection of letters published in 1660 "A character of
+the most excellent Lady, Lucy, Countess of Carlisle," writes that she
+will "freely discourse of love, and hear both the fancies and powers of
+it; but if you will needs bring it within knowledge, and boldly direct
+it to herself, she is likely to divert the discourse, or, at least, seem
+not to understand it. By which you may know her humour, and her justice;
+for since she cannot love in earnest she would have nothing from love."
+According to him she filled her mind "with gallant fancies, and high and
+elevated thoughts," and "her wit being most eminent among the rest of
+her great abilities," even the conversation of those most famed for it
+was affected. Quite another view of her is given in a letter of
+Voiture's written to Mr. Gordon on leaving England in 1623.
+
+"In one human being you let me see more treasures than there are there
+[the Tower], and even more lions and leopards. It will not be difficult
+for you to guess after this that I speak of the Countess of Carlisle.
+For there is nobody else of whom all this good and evil can be said. No
+matter how dangerous it is to let the memory dwell upon her, I have not,
+so far, been able to keep mine from it, and, quite honestly, I would not
+give the picture of her that lingers in my mind, for all the loveliest
+things I have seen in my life. I must confess that she is an enchanting
+personality, and there would not be a woman under heaven so worthy of
+affection, if she only knew what it was, and if she had as sensitive a
+nature as she has a reasonable mind. But with the temperament we know
+she possesses, there is nothing to be said except that she is the most
+lovable of all things not good, and the most delightful poison that
+nature ever concocted." Browning himself says he first sketched her
+character from Mathews, but finding that rather artificial, he used
+Voiture and Waller, who referred to her as the "bright Carlisle of the
+Court of Heaven." It should be remembered that she had become a widow
+and was considerably older at the time of her friendship with Wentworth
+than when Voiture wrote of her, and was probably better balanced, and
+truly worthy of Wentworth's own appreciation of her when he wrote, "A
+nobler nor a more intelligent friendship did I never meet with in my
+life." A passage in a letter to Laud indicates that Wentworth was well
+aware of the practical advantage in having such a friend as Lady
+Carlisle at Court. "I judge her ladyship very considerable. She is often
+in place, and extremely well skilled how to speak with advantage and
+spirit for those friends she professeth unto, which will not be many.
+There is this further in her disposition, she will not seem to be the
+person she is not, an ingenuity I have always observed and honoured her
+for."
+
+It is something of a shock to learn that even before the Wentworth
+episode was well over, she became a friend of his bitterest foe, Pym.
+Gardiner sums up her character in as fair a way as any one,--and not at
+all inconsistent with Browning's portrayal of her.
+
+"Lady Carlisle had now been for many years a widow. She had long been
+the reigning beauty at Court, and she loved to mingle political intrigue
+with social intercourse. For politics as a serious occupation she had no
+aptitude; but, in middle age, she felt a woman's pride in attaching to
+herself the strong heads by which the world was ruled, as she had
+attached to herself in youth, the witty courtier or the agile dancer. It
+was worth a statesman's while to cultivate her acquaintance. She could
+make him a power in society as well as in Council, could worm out a
+secret which it behoved him to know, and could convey to others his
+suggestions with assured fidelity. The calumny which treated Strafford,
+as it afterwards treated Pym, as her accepted lover, may be safely
+disregarded. But there can be no doubt that purely personal motives
+attached her both to Strafford and Pym. For Strafford's theory of
+Monarchical government she cared as little as she cared for Pym's theory
+of Parliamentary government. It may be, too, that some mingled feeling
+may have arisen in Strafford's breast. It was something to have an ally
+at Court ready at all times to plead his cause with gay enthusiasm, to
+warn him of hidden dangers, and to offer him the thread of that
+labyrinth which, under the name of 'the Queen's side,' was such a
+mystery to him. It was something, too, no doubt, that this advocate was
+not a grey haired statesman, but a woman, in spite of growing years, of
+winning grace and sparkling vivacity of eye and tongue."
+
+[Illustration: Charles I]
+
+Strafford, himself, Browning brings before us, ill, and worn out with
+responsibility as he was upon his return to England at this time.
+Carlisle tactfully lets him know how he will have to face criticisms
+from other councillors about the King, and how even the confidence of
+the fickle King cannot be relied upon. In his conference with the King
+in this scene, Strafford, at last, wins the confidence of the King as
+history relates. Wentworth, horrified at the way in which a war with
+Scotland has been precipitated, carries his point, that Parliaments
+should be called in Ireland and England. This will give time for
+preparation, and at the same time an opportunity of convincing the
+people that the war is justified by Scotland's treason, so causing them
+willingly to grant subsidies for the expense of the war. To turn from
+the play to history, Commissioners from the Scottish Parliament, the
+Earls of Loudon and Dumferling had arrived in London to ask that the
+acts of the Scottish Parliament might receive confirmation from the
+King. This question was referred to a committee of eight Privy
+Councillors. Propositions were made to put the Scotch Commissioners in
+prison; however, the King finally decided to dismiss them without
+treating with them. Scottish indignation of course ran high at this
+proceeding, and here Wentworth stepped in and won the King to his policy
+of ruling Scotland directly from England. "He insisted," writes
+Gardiner, "that a Parliament, and a Parliament alone, was the remedy
+fitted for the occasion. Laud and Hamilton gave him their support. He
+carried his point with the Committee. What was of more importance he
+carried it with the King." And as one writer expressed it the Lords were
+of the opinion that "his Majesty should make trial of that once more,
+that so he might leave his people without excuse, and have where withal
+to justify himself to God and the world that in his own inclination he
+desired the old way; but that if his people should not cheerfully,
+according to their duties, meet him in that, especially in this exigent
+when his kingdom and person are in apparent danger, the world might see
+he is forced, contrary to his own inclination, to use extraordinary
+means rather than, by the peevishness of some few factious spirits, to
+suffer his state and government to be lost."
+
+In the play as in history, Charles now confers upon Wentworth an
+Earldom. Shortly after this the King "was prepared," says Gardiner, "to
+confer upon his faithful Minister that token of his confidence which he
+had twice refused before. On January 12, Wentworth received the Earldom
+of Strafford, and a week later he exchanged the title of Lord-Deputy of
+Ireland for the higher dignity of Lord-Lieutenant."
+
+In his conference with Pym, Strafford who, in talking to Carlisle, had
+shown a slight wavering toward the popular party, because of finding
+himself so surrounded by difficulties, stands firm; this episode is a
+striking working up of the tradition of the friendship between these
+two men.
+
+The influence of the Queen upon Charles is the last strand in this
+tangled skein of human destiny brought out by Browning in the scene. The
+Parliament that Wentworth wants she is afraid of lest it should ask for
+a renewal of the persecution of the Catholics. The vacillating Charles,
+in an instant, is ready to repudiate his interview with Wentworth, and
+act only to please the Queen.
+
+
+SCENE II.--_Whitehall._
+
+_+Lady+ CARLISLE and WENTWORTH_
+
+  _Wentworth._ And the King?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._          Wentworth, lean on me! Sit then!
+  I'll tell you all; this horrible fatigue
+  Will kill you.
+
+  _Wentworth._   No;--or, Lucy, just your arm;
+  I'll not sit till I've cleared this up with him:
+  After that, rest. The King?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._            Confides in you.
+
+  _Wentworth._ Why? or, why now?--They have kind throats, the knaves!
+  Shout for me--they!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._    You come so strangely soon:
+  Yet we took measures to keep off the crowd--
+  Did they shout for you?
+
+  _Wentworth._            Wherefore should they not?
+  Does the King take such measures for himself?
+  Besides, there's such a dearth of malcontents,
+  You say!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ I said but few dared carp at you.
+
+  _Wentworth._ At me? at us, I hope! The King and I!
+  He's surely not disposed to let me bear
+  The fame away from him of these late deeds
+  In Ireland? I am yet his instrument
+  Be it for well or ill? He trusts me too!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ The King, dear Wentworth, purposes, I said,
+  To grant you, in the face of all the Court....
+
+  _Wentworth._ All the Court! Evermore the Court about us!
+  Savile and Holland, Hamilton and Vane
+  About us,--then the King will grant me--what?
+  That he for once put these aside and say--
+  "Tell me your whole mind, Wentworth!"
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                      You professed
+  You would be calm.
+
+  _Wentworth._       Lucy, and I am calm!
+  How else shall I do all I come to do,
+  Broken, as you may see, body and mind,
+  How shall I serve the King? Time wastes meanwhile,
+  You have not told me half. His footstep! No.
+  Quick, then, before I meet him,--I am calm--
+  Why does the King distrust me?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._               He does not
+  Distrust you.
+
+  _Wentworth._ Lucy, you can help me; you
+  Have even seemed to care for me: one word!
+  Is it the Queen?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ No, not the Queen: the party
+  That poisons the Queen's ear, Savile and Holland.
+
+  _Wentworth._ I know, I know: old Vane, too, he's one too?
+  Go on--and he's made Secretary. Well?
+  Or leave them out and go straight to the charge--
+  The charge!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Oh, there's no charge, no precise charge;
+  Only they sneer, make light of--one may say,
+  Nibble at what you do.
+
+  _Wentworth._           I know! but, Lucy,
+  I reckoned on you from the first!--Go on!
+  --Was sure could I once see this gentle friend
+  When I arrived, she'd throw an hour away
+  To help her ... what am I?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._           You thought of me,
+  Dear Wentworth?
+
+  _Wentworth._    But go on! The party here!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ They do not think your Irish government
+  Of that surpassing value....
+
+  _Wentworth._                 The one thing
+  Of value! The one service that the crown
+  May count on! All that keeps these very Vanes
+  In power, to vex me--not that they do vex,
+  Only it might vex some to hear that service
+  Decried, the sole support that's left the King!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ So the Archbishop says.
+
+  _Wentworth._                             Ah? well, perhaps
+  The only hand held up in my defence
+  May be old Laud's! These Hollands then, these Saviles
+  Nibble? They nibble?--that's the very word!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Your profit in the Customs, Bristol says,
+  Exceeds the due proportion: while the tax....
+
+  _Wentworth._ Enough! 'tis too unworthy,--I am not
+  So patient as I thought. What's Pym about?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Pym?
+
+  _Wentworth._          Pym and the People.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                          O, the Faction!
+  Extinct--of no account: there'll never be
+  Another Parliament.
+
+  _Wentworth._        Tell Savile that!
+  You may know--(ay, you do--the creatures here
+  Never forget!) that in my earliest life
+  I was not ... much that I am now! The King
+  May take my word on points concerning Pym
+  Before Lord Savile's, Lucy, or if not,
+  I bid them ruin their wise selves, not me,
+  These Vanes and Hollands! I'll not be their tool
+  Who might be Pym's friend yet.
+                                   But there's the King!
+  Where is he?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Just apprised that you arrive.
+
+  _Wentworth._ And why not here to meet me? I was told
+  He sent for me, nay, longed for me.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                    Because,--
+  He is now ... I think a Council's sitting now
+  About this Scots affair.
+
+  _Wentworth._            A Council sits?
+  They have not taken a decided course
+  Without me in the matter?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._          I should say....
+
+  _Wentworth._ The war? They cannot have agreed to that?
+  Not the Scots' war?--without consulting me--
+  Me, that am here to show how rash it is,
+  How easy to dispense with?--Ah, you too
+  Against me! well,--the King may take his time.
+  --Forget it, Lucy! Cares make peevish: mine
+  Weigh me (but 'tis a secret) to my grave.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ For life or death I am your own, dear friend!
+
+[_Goes out._
+
+  _Wentworth._ Heartless! but all are heartless here. Go now,
+  Forsake the People!
+                      I did not forsake
+  The People: they shall know it, when the King
+  Will trust me!--who trusts all beside at once,
+  While I have not spoke Vane and Savile fair,
+  And am not trusted: have but saved the throne:
+  Have not picked up the Queen's glove prettily,
+  And am not trusted. But he'll see me now.
+  Weston is dead: the Queen's half English now--
+  More English: one decisive word will brush
+  These insects from ... the step I know so well!
+  The King! But now, to tell him ... no--to ask
+  What's in me he distrusts:--or, best begin
+  By proving that this frightful Scots affair
+  Is just what I foretold. So much to say,
+  And the flesh fails, now, and the time is come,
+  And one false step no way to be repaired.
+  You were avenged, Pym, could you look on me.
+
+_PYM enters._
+
+  _Wentworth._ I little thought of you just then.
+
+  _Pym._                                          No? I
+  Think always of you, Wentworth.
+
+  _Wentworth._                    The old voice!
+  I wait the King, sir.
+
+  _Pym._                True--you look so pale!
+  A Council sits within; when that breaks up
+  He'll see you.
+
+  _Wentworth._   Sir, I thank you.
+
+  _Pym._                           Oh, thank Laud!
+  You know when Laud once gets on Church affairs
+  The case is desperate: he'll not be long
+  To-day: he only means to prove, to-day,
+  We English all are mad to have a hand
+  In butchering the Scots for serving God
+  After their fathers' fashion: only that!
+
+[Illustration: Whitehall]
+
+  _Wentworth._ Sir, keep your jests for those who relish them!
+  (Does he enjoy their confidence?) 'Tis kind
+  To tell me what the Council does.
+
+  _Pym._                            You grudge
+  That I should know it had resolved on war
+  Before you came? no need: you shall have all
+  The credit, trust me!
+
+  _Wentworth._          Have the Council dared--
+  They have not dared ... that is--I know you not.
+  Farewell, sir: times are changed.
+
+  _Pym._                            --Since we two met
+  At Greenwich? Yes: poor patriots though we be,
+  You cut a figure, makes some slight return
+  For your exploits in Ireland! Changed indeed,
+  Could our friend Eliot look from out his grave!
+  Ah, Wentworth, one thing for acquaintance' sake,
+  Just to decide a question; have you, now,
+  Felt your old self since you forsook us?
+
+  _Wentworth._                             Sir!
+
+  _Pym._ Spare me the gesture! you misapprehend.
+  Think not I mean the advantage is with me.
+  I was about to say that, for my part,
+  I never quite held up my head since then--
+  Was quite myself since then: for first, you see,
+  I lost all credit after that event
+  With those who recollect how sure I was
+  Wentworth would outdo Eliot on our side.
+  Forgive me: Savile, old Vane, Holland here,
+  Eschew plain-speaking: 'tis a trick I keep.
+
+  _Wentworth._ How, when, where, Savile, Vane, and Holland speak,
+  Plainly or otherwise, would have my scorn,
+  All of my scorn, sir....
+
+  _Pym._                   ... Did not my poor thoughts
+  Claim somewhat?
+
+  _Wentworth._    Keep your thoughts! believe the King
+  Mistrusts me for their prattle, all these Vanes
+  And Saviles! make your mind up, o' God's love,
+  That I am discontented with the King!
+
+  _Pym._ Why, you may be: I should be, that I know,
+  Were I like you.
+
+  _Wentworth._     Like me?
+
+  _Pym._                    I care not much
+  For titles: our friend Eliot died no lord,
+  Hampden's no lord, and Savile is a lord;
+  But you care, since you sold your soul for one.
+  I can't think, therefore, your soul's purchaser
+  Did well to laugh you to such utter scorn
+  When you twice prayed so humbly for its price,
+  The thirty silver pieces ... I should say,
+  The Earldom you expected, still expect,
+  And may. Your letters were the movingest!
+  Console yourself: I've borne him prayers just now
+  From Scotland not to be oppressed by Laud,
+  Words moving in their way: he'll pay, be sure,
+  As much attention as to those you sent.
+
+  _Wentworth._ False, sir! Who showed them you? Suppose it so,
+  The King did very well ... nay, I was glad
+  When it was shown me: I refused, the first!
+  John Pym, you were my friend--forbear me once!
+
+  _Pym._ Oh, Wentworth, ancient brother of my soul,
+  That all should come to this!
+
+  _Wentworth._                  Leave me!
+
+  _Pym._                                  My friend,
+  Why should I leave you?
+
+  _Wentworth._            To tell Rudyard this,
+  And Hampden this!
+
+  _Pym._            Whose faces once were bright
+  At my approach, now sad with doubt and fear,
+  Because I hope in you--yes, Wentworth, you
+  Who never mean to ruin England--you
+  Who shake off, with God's help, an obscene dream
+  In this Ezekiel chamber, where it crept
+  Upon you first, and wake, yourself, your true
+  And proper self, our Leader, England's Chief,
+  And Hampden's friend!
+                        This is the proudest day!
+  Come, Wentworth! Do not even see the King!
+  The rough old room will seem itself again!
+  We'll both go in together: you've not seen
+  Hampden so long: come: and there's Fiennes: you'll have
+  To know young Vane. This is the proudest day!
+
+[_The KING enters. WENTWORTH lets fall PYM'S hand._
+
+  _Charles._ Arrived, my lord?--This gentleman, we know
+  Was your old friend.
+                       The Scots shall be informed
+  What we determine for their happiness.
+
+[_PYM goes out._
+
+  You have made haste, my lord.
+
+  _Wentworth._                  Sir, I am come....
+
+  _Charles._ To see an old familiar--nay, 'tis well;
+  Aid us with his experience: this Scots' League
+  And Covenant spreads too far, and we have proofs
+  That they intrigue with France: the Faction too,
+  Whereof your friend there is the head and front,
+  Abets them,--as he boasted, very like.
+
+  _Wentworth._ Sir, trust me! but for this once, trust me, sir!
+
+  _Charles._ What can you mean?
+
+  _Wentworth._ That you should trust me, sir!
+  Oh--not for my sake! but 'tis sad, so sad
+  That for distrusting me, you suffer--you
+  Whom I would die to serve: sir, do you think
+  That I would die to serve you?
+
+  _Charles._                     But rise, Wentworth!
+
+  _Wentworth._ What shall convince you? What does Savile do
+  To prove him.... Ah, one can't tear out one's heart
+  And show it, how sincere a thing it is!
+
+  _Charles._ Have I not trusted you?
+
+  _Wentworth._                       Say aught but that!
+  There is my comfort, mark you: all will be
+  So different when you trust me--as you shall!
+  It has not been your fault,--I was away,
+  Mistook, maligned, how was the King to know?
+  I am here, now--he means to trust me, now--
+  All will go on so well!
+
+  _Charles._              Be sure I do--
+  I've heard that I should trust you: as you came,
+  Your friend, the Countess, told me....
+
+  _Wentworth._                           No,--hear nothing--
+  Be told nothing about me!--you're not told
+  Your right-hand serves you, or your children love you!
+
+  _Charles._ You love me, Wentworth: rise!
+
+  _Wentworth._                             I can speak now.
+  I have no right to hide the truth. 'Tis I
+  Can save you: only I. Sir, what must be?
+
+  _Charles._ Since Laud's assured (the minutes are within)
+  --Loath as I am to spill my subjects' blood....
+
+  _Wentworth._ That is, he'll have a war: what's done is done!
+
+  _Charles._ They have intrigued with France; that's clear to Laud.
+
+  _Wentworth._ Has Laud suggested any way to meet
+  The war's expense?
+
+  _Charles._         He'd not decide so far
+  Until you joined us.
+
+  _Wentworth._         Most considerate!
+  He's certain they intrigue with France, these Scots?
+  The People would be with us.
+
+  _Charles._                   Pym should know.
+
+  _Wentworth._ The People for us--were the People for us!
+  Sir, a great thought comes to reward your trust:
+  Summon a Parliament! in Ireland first,
+  Then, here.
+
+  _Charles._ In truth?
+
+  _Wentworth._          That saves us! that puts off
+  The war, gives time to right their grievances--
+  To talk with Pym. I know the Faction,--Laud
+  So styles it,--tutors Scotland: all their plans
+  Suppose no Parliament: in calling one
+  You take them by surprise. Produce the proofs
+  Of Scotland's treason; then bid England help:
+  Even Pym will not refuse.
+
+  _Charles._                You would begin
+  With Ireland?
+
+  _Wentworth._ Take no care for that: that's sure
+  To prosper.
+
+  _Charles._ You shall rule me. You were best
+  Return at once: but take this ere you go!
+  Now, do I trust you? You're an Earl: my Friend
+  Of Friends: yes, while.... You hear me not!
+
+  _Wentworth._ Say it all o'er again--but once again:
+  The first was for the music: once again!
+
+  _Charles._ Strafford, my friend, there may have been reports,
+  Vain rumors. Henceforth touching Strafford is
+  To touch the apple of my sight: why gaze
+  So earnestly?
+
+  _Wentworth._ I am grown young again,
+  And foolish. What was it we spoke of?
+
+  _Charles._                            Ireland,
+  The Parliament,--
+
+  _Wentworth._      I may go when I will?
+  --Now?
+
+  _Charles._ Are you tired so soon of us?
+
+  _Wentworth._                            My King!
+  But you will not so utterly abhor
+  A Parliament? I'd serve you any way.
+
+  _Charles._ You said just now this was the only way.
+
+  _Wentworth._ Sir, I will serve you.
+
+  _Charles._                          Strafford, spare yourself:
+  You are so sick, they tell me.
+
+  _Wentworth._                   'Tis my soul
+  That's well and prospers now.
+                                This Parliament--
+  We'll summon it, the English one--I'll care
+  For everything. You shall not need them much.
+
+  _Charles._ If they prove restive....
+
+  _Wentworth._                         I shall be with you.
+
+  _Charles._ Ere they assemble?
+
+  _Wentworth._                  I will come, or else
+  Deposit this infirm humanity
+  I' the dust. My whole heart stays with you, my King!
+
+[_As WENTWORTH goes out, the QUEEN enters._
+
+  _Charles._ That man must love me.
+
+  _Queen._                          Is it over then?
+  Why, he looks yellower than ever! Well,
+  At least we shall not hear eternally
+  Of service--services: he's paid at least.
+
+  _Charles._ Not done with: he engages to surpass
+  All yet performed in Ireland.
+
+  _Queen._                      I had thought
+  Nothing beyond was ever to be done.
+  The war, Charles--will he raise supplies enough?
+
+  _Charles._ We've hit on an expedient; he ... that is,
+  I have advised ... we have decided on
+  The calling--in Ireland--of a Parliament.
+
+  _Queen._ O truly! You agree to that? Is that
+  The first fruit of his counsel? But I guessed
+  As much.
+
+  _Charles._   This is too idle, Henriette!
+  I should know best. He will strain every nerve,
+  And once a precedent established....
+
+  _Queen._                              Notice
+  How sure he is of a long term of favor!
+  He'll see the next, and the next after that;
+  No end to Parliaments!
+
+  _Charles._             Well, it is done.
+  He talks it smoothly, doubtless. If, indeed,
+  The Commons here....
+
+  _Queen._             Here! you will summon them
+  Here? Would I were in France again to see
+  A King!
+
+  _Charles._ But, Henriette....
+
+  _Queen._                      Oh, the Scots see clear!
+  Why should they bear your rule?
+
+  _Charles._                      But listen, sweet!
+
+  _Queen._ Let Wentworth listen--you confide in him!
+
+  _Charles._ I do not, love,--I do not so confide!
+  The Parliament shall never trouble us
+  ... Nay, hear me! I have schemes, such schemes: we'll buy
+  The leaders off: without that, Wentworth's counsel
+  Had ne'er prevailed on me. Perhaps I call it
+  To have excuse for breaking it for ever,
+  And whose will then the blame be? See you not?
+  Come, dearest!--look, the little fairy, now,
+  That cannot reach my shoulder! Dearest, come!
+
+In the second act, the historical episode, which pervades the act is the
+assembling and the dissolution of the Short Parliament. Only the salient
+points of the political situation have been seized upon by Browning. As
+in the first act, the popular party in private conclave is introduced.
+From the talk it is gathered that feeling runs high against Strafford,
+by whose advice the Parliament had been called, because of the
+exorbitant demands made upon it for money to support an army, this army
+to crush Scotland whose cause was so nearly like its own. The popular
+party or the Faction had supposed the Parliament would be a means for
+the redressing of its long list of grievances which had been
+accumulating during the years since the last Parliament had been held.
+Instead of that the Commons was deliberately informed by Charles that
+there would be no discussions of its demands until it had granted the
+subsidies for which it had been asked. The play gives one a much more
+lively sense of the indignant feelings of the duped men than can
+possibly be gained by reading many more pages of history with its
+endless minor details. Upon this gathering, Pym suddenly enters again,
+and to the reproaches of him for his belief in Strafford, makes the
+reply that the Parliament has been dissolved, the King has cast
+Strafford off forever, and henceforth Strafford will be on their
+side,--a conclusion not warranted by history, and, of course, found out
+to be erroneous by Pym and his followers in the next scene. Again there
+is the dramatic need to emphasize the human side of life even in an
+essentially political play, by showing that Pym's friendship and loyalty
+to Wentworth were no uncertain elements in his character. The moment it
+could be proved beyond a doubt that Wentworth was in the eyes of Pym,
+England's enemy, that moment Pym knew it would become his painful duty
+to crush Wentworth utterly, therefore Pym had for his own conscience'
+sake to make the uttermost trial of his faith.
+
+The second scene, as in the first act, brings out the other side. It is
+in the main true to history though much condensed. History relates that
+after the Short Parliament was dissolved, "voices were raised at
+Whitehall in condemnation of Strafford." His policy of raising subsidies
+from the Parliament having failed, criticisms would, of course, be made
+upon his having pushed ahead a war without the proper means of
+sustaining it. Charles himself was also frightened by the manifestations
+of popular discontent and failed to uphold Wentworth in his policy.
+
+Northumberland had been appointed commander-in-chief of the army, but
+besides having little heart for an enterprise so badly prepared for, he
+was ill in bed and could not take command of the army, so the King
+appointed Strafford in his place. A hint of Strafford as he appears in
+this scene may be taken from Clarendon who writes "The earl of Strafford
+was scarce recovered from a great sickness, yet was willing to undertake
+the charge out of pure indignation to see how few men were forward to
+serve the King with that vigor of mind they ought to do; but knowing
+well the malicious designs which were contrived against himself,
+he would rather serve as lieutenant-general under the earl of
+Northumberland, than that he should resign his commission: and so, with
+and under that qualification, he made all possible haste towards the
+north before he had strength enough for the journey." Browning makes the
+King tell Strafford in this interview that he has dissolved the
+Parliament. He represents Strafford as horrified by the news and driven
+in this extremity to suggest the desperate measure of debasing the
+coinage as a means of obtaining funds. Strafford actually counseled
+this, when all else failed, namely, the proposed loan from the city, and
+one from the Spanish government, but, according to history, he himself
+voted for the dissolution of Parliament, though the play is accurate in
+laying the necessity of the dissolution at the door of old Vane. It was
+truly his ill-judged vehemence, for, not able to brook the arguments of
+the Commons, "He rose," says Gardiner, "to state that the King would
+accept nothing less than the twelve subsidies which he had demanded in
+his message. Upon this the Committee broke up without coming to a
+resolution, postponing further consideration of the matter to the
+following day." The next morning the King who had called his councillors
+together early "announced his intention of proceeding to a dissolution.
+Strafford, who arrived late, begged that the question might first be
+seriously discussed, and that the opinions of the Councillors, who were
+also members of the Lower House, might first be heard. Vane declared
+that there was no hope that the Commons 'would give one penny.' On this
+the votes were taken. Northumberland and Holland were alone in wishing
+to avert a dissolution. Supported by the rest of the Council the King
+hurried to the House of Lords and dissolved Parliament."
+
+Wholly imaginary is the episode in this scene where Pym and his
+followers break in upon the interview of Wentworth and the King. Just
+at the climax of Wentworth's sorrowful rage at the King's treatment of
+him, they come to claim Wentworth for their side.
+
+  That you would say I did advise the war;
+  And if, through your own weakness, or what's worse,
+  These Scots, with God to help them, drive me back,
+  You will not step between the raging People
+  And me, to say....
+                     I knew it! from the first
+  I knew it! Never was so cold a heart!
+  Remember that I said it--that I never
+  Believed you for a moment!
+                             --And, you loved me?
+  You thought your perfidy profoundly hid
+  Because I could not share the whisperings
+  With Vane, with Savile? What, the face was masked?
+  I had the heart to see, sir! Face of flesh,
+  But heart of stone--of smooth cold frightful stone!
+  Ay, call them! Shall I call for you? The Scots
+  Goaded to madness? Or the English--Pym--
+  Shall I call Pym, your subject? Oh, you think
+  I'll leave them in the dark about it all?
+  They shall not know you? Hampden, Pym shall not?
+
+_PYM, HAMPDEN, VANE, etc., enter._
+
+  [_Dropping on his knee._] Thus favored with your gracious countenance
+  What shall a rebel League avail against
+  Your servant, utterly and ever yours?
+  So, gentlemen, the King's not even left
+  The privilege of bidding me farewell
+  Who haste to save the People--that you style
+  Your People--from the mercies of the Scots
+  And France their friend?
+  [_To CHARLES._] Pym's grave grey eyes are fixed
+  Upon you, sir!
+                 Your pleasure, gentlemen?
+
+  _Hampden._ The King dissolved us--'tis the King we seek
+  And not Lord Strafford.
+
+  _Strafford._            --Strafford, guilty too
+  Of counselling the measure. [_To CHARLES._] (Hush ... you know--
+  You have forgotten--sir, I counselled it)
+  A heinous matter, truly! But the King
+  Will yet see cause to thank me for a course
+  Which now, perchance ... (Sir, tell them so!)--he blames.
+  Well, choose some fitter time to make your charge:
+  I shall be with the Scots, you understand?
+  Then yelp at me!
+                   Meanwhile, your Majesty
+  Binds me, by this fresh token of your trust....
+
+[_Under the pretence of an earnest farewell, STRAFFORD conducts CHARLES
+to the door, in such a manner as to hide his agitation from the rest: as
+the King disappears, they turn as by one impulse to PYM, who has not
+changed his original posture of surprise._
+
+  _Hampden._ Leave we this arrogant strong wicked man!
+
+  _Vane and others._ Hence, Pym! Come out of this unworthy place
+  To our old room again! He's gone.
+
+[_STRAFFORD, just about to follow the KING, looks back._
+
+  _Pym._                            Not gone!
+  [_To STRAFFORD._] Keep tryst! the old appointment's made anew:
+  Forget not we shall meet again!
+
+  _Strafford._                    So be it!
+  And if an army follows me?
+
+  _Vane._                    His friends
+  Will entertain your army!
+
+  _Pym._                    I'll not say
+  You have misreckoned, Strafford: time shows.
+                                               Perish
+  Body and spirit! Fool to feign a doubt,
+  Pretend the scrupulous and nice reserve
+  Of one whose prowess shall achieve the feat!
+  What share have I in it? Do I affect
+  To see no dismal sign above your head
+  When God suspends his ruinous thunder there?
+  Strafford is doomed. Touch him no one of you!
+
+[_PYM, HAMPDEN, etc., go out._
+
+  _Strafford._ Pym, we shall meet again!
+
+In the final talk of this scene with Carlisle, the pathos of Strafford's
+position is wonderfully brought out--the man who loves his King so
+overmuch that no perfidy on the King's part can make his resolution to
+serve him waver for an instant.
+
+_+Lady+ CARLISLE enters._
+
+                                You here, child?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                              Hush--
+  I know it all: hush, Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                    Ah? you know?
+  Well. I shall make a sorry soldier, Lucy!
+  All knights begin their enterprise, we read,
+  Under the best of auspices; 'tis morn,
+  The Lady girds his sword upon the Youth
+  (He's always very young)--the trumpets sound,
+  Cups pledge him, and, why, the King blesses him--
+  You need not turn a page of the romance
+  To learn the Dreadful Giant's fate. Indeed,
+  We've the fair Lady here; but she apart,--
+  A poor man, rarely having handled lance,
+  And rather old, weary, and far from sure
+  His Squires are not the Giant's friends. All's one:
+  Let us go forth!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Go forth?
+
+  _Strafford._               What matters it?
+  We shall die gloriously--as the book says.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ To Scotland? Not to Scotland?
+
+  _Strafford._                                   Am I sick
+  Like your good brother, brave Northumberland?
+  Beside, these walls seem falling on me.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                        Strafford,
+  The wind that saps these walls can undermine
+  Your camp in Scotland, too. Whence creeps the wind?
+  Have you no eyes except for Pym? Look here!
+  A breed of silken creatures lurk and thrive
+  In your contempt. You'll vanquish Pym? Old Vane
+  Can vanquish you. And Vane you think to fly?
+  Rush on the Scots! Do nobly! Vane's slight sneer
+  Shall test success, adjust the praise, suggest
+  The faint result: Vane's sneer shall reach you there.
+  --You do not listen!
+
+  _Strafford._         Oh,--I give that up!
+  There's fate in it: I give all here quite up.
+  Care not what old Vane does or Holland does
+  Against me! 'Tis so idle to withstand!
+  In no case tell me what they do!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                But, Strafford....
+
+  _Strafford._ I want a little strife, beside; real strife;
+  This petty palace-warfare does me harm:
+  I shall feel better, fairly out of it.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                        Why do you smile?
+
+  _Strafford._ I got to fear them, child!
+  I could have torn his throat at first, old Vane's,
+  As he leered at me on his stealthy way
+  To the Queen's closet. Lord, one loses heart!
+  I often found it on my lips to say
+  "Do not traduce me to her!"
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._            But the King....
+
+  _Strafford._ The King stood there, 'tis not so long ago,
+  --There; and the whisper, Lucy, "Be my friend
+  Of friends!"--My King! I would have....
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                        ... Died for him?
+
+  _Strafford._ Sworn him true, Lucy: I can die for him.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ But go not, Strafford! But you must renounce
+  This project on the Scots! Die, wherefore die?
+  Charles never loved you.
+
+  _Strafford._             And he never will.
+  He's not of those who care the more for men
+  That they're unfortunate.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._          Then wherefore die
+  For such a master?
+
+  _Strafford._       You that told me first
+  How good he was--when I must leave true friends
+  To find a truer friend!--that drew me here
+  From Ireland,--"I had but to show myself
+  And Charles would spurn Vane, Savile, and the rest"--
+  You, child, to ask me this?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._            (If he have set
+  His heart abidingly on Charles!)
+                                   Then, friend,
+  I shall not see you any more.
+
+  _Strafford._                  Yes, Lucy.
+  There's one man here I have to meet.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                     (The King!
+  What way to save him from the King?
+                                      My soul--
+  That lent from its own store the charmed disguise
+  Which clothes the King--he shall behold my soul!)
+  Strafford,--I shall speak best if you'll not gaze
+  Upon me: I had never thought, indeed,
+  To speak, but you would perish too, so sure!
+  Could you but know what 'tis to bear, my friend,
+  One image stamped within you, turning blank
+  The else imperial brilliance of your mind,--
+  A weakness, but most precious,--like a flaw
+  I' the diamond, which should shape forth some sweet face
+  Yet to create, and meanwhile treasured there
+  Lest nature lose her gracious thought for ever!
+
+  _Strafford._ When could it be? no! Yet ... was it the day
+  We waited in the anteroom, till Holland
+  Should leave the presence-chamber?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                   What?
+
+  _Strafford._                            --That I
+  Described to you my love for Charles?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                    (Ah, no--
+  One must not lure him from a love like that!
+  Oh, let him love the King and die! 'Tis past.
+  I shall not serve him worse for that one brief
+  And passionate hope, silent for ever now!)
+  And you are really bound for Scotland then?
+  I wish you well: you must be very sure
+  Of the King's faith, for Pym and all his crew
+  Will not be idle--setting Vane aside!
+
+  _Strafford._ If Pym is busy,--you may write of Pym.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ What need, since there's your King to take your part?
+  He may endure Vane's counsel; but for Pym--
+  Think you he'll suffer Pym to....
+
+  _Strafford._                      Child, your hair
+  Is glossier than the Queen's!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._              Is that to ask
+  A curl of me?
+
+  _Strafford._ Scotland----the weary way!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Stay, let me fasten it.
+                                          --A rival's, Strafford?
+
+  _Strafford_ [_showing the George_]. He hung it there: twine yours
+          around it, child!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ No--no--another time--I trifle so!
+  And there's a masque on foot. Farewell. The Court
+  Is dull; do something to enliven us
+  In Scotland: we expect it at your hands.
+
+  _Strafford._ I shall not fail in Scotland.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                           Prosper--if
+  You'll think of me sometimes!
+
+  _Strafford._                  How think of him
+  And not of you? of you, the lingering streak
+  (A golden one) in my good fortune's eve.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Strafford.... Well, when the eve has its last streak
+  The night has its first star.
+
+[_She goes out._
+
+  _Strafford._                  That voice of hers--
+  You'd think she had a heart sometimes! His voice
+  Is soft too.
+               Only God can save him now.
+  Be Thou about his bed, about his path!
+  His path! Where's England's path? Diverging wide,
+  And not to join again the track my foot
+  Must follow--whither? All that forlorn way
+  Among the tombs! Far--far--till.... What, they do
+  Then join again, these paths? For, huge in the dusk,
+  There's--Pym to face!
+                        Why then, I have a foe
+  To close with, and a fight to fight at last
+  Worthy my soul! What, do they beard the King,
+  And shall the King want Strafford at his need?
+  Am I not here?
+                 Not in the market-place,
+  Pressed on by the rough artisans, so proud
+  To catch a glance from Wentworth! They lie down
+  Hungry yet smile "Why, it must end some day:
+  Is he not watching for our sake?" Not there!
+  But in Whitehall, the whited sepulchre,
+  The....
+          Curse nothing to-night! Only one name
+  They'll curse in all those streets to-night. Whose fault?
+  Did I make kings? set up, the first, a man
+  To represent the multitude, receive
+  All love in right of them--supplant them so,
+  Until you love the man and not the king----
+  The man with the mild voice and mournful eyes
+  Which send me forth.
+                       --To breast the bloody sea
+  That sweeps before me: with one star for guide.
+  Night has its first, supreme, forsaken star.
+
+During the third act, the long Parliament is in session, and Pym is
+making his great speech impeaching Wentworth.
+
+The conditions of affairs at the time of this Parliament were well-nigh
+desperate for Charles and Wentworth. Things had not gone well with the
+Scottish war and Wentworth was falling more and more into disfavor.
+England was now threatened with a Scottish invasion. Still, even with
+this danger to face it was impossible to raise money to support the
+army. The English had a suspicion that the Scotch cause was their own.
+The universal demand for a Parliament could no longer be ignored; the
+King, therefore, summoned it to meet on the third of November. As Firth
+observes, "To Strafford this meant ruin, but he hardly realized the
+greatness of the danger in which he stood. On October 8, the Scotch
+Commissioners in a public paper denounced him as an incendiary, and
+declared that they meant to insist on his punishment.
+
+"As soon as the Parliament opened Charles discovered that it was
+necessary for his service to have Strafford again by his side, and
+summoned him to London. There is evidence that his friends urged him to
+pass over to Ireland where the army rested at his devotion, or to
+transport himself to foreign Kingdoms till fairer weather here should
+invite him home. The Marquis of Hamilton advised him to fly, but as
+Hamilton told the King, the Earl was too great-hearted to fear. Though
+conscious of the peril of obedience, he set out to London to stand by
+his Master."
+
+The enmity of the Court party to Strafford is touched upon in the first
+scene, and in the second, Strafford's return, unsuspecting of the great
+blow that awaits him. He had indeed meditated a blow on his own part.
+According to Firth, he felt that "One desperate resource remained. The
+intrigues of the parliamentary leaders with the Scots had come to
+Strafford's knowledge, and he had determined to impeach them of high
+treason. He could prove that Pym and his friends had secretly
+communicated with the rebels, and invited them to bring a Scottish army
+into England. Strafford arrived in London on Monday, November 9, 1640,
+and spent Tuesday in resting after his journey. On the morning of
+Wednesday the 11th, he took his seat in the House of Lords, but did not
+strike the blow." Upon that day he was impeached of high treason by Pym.
+Gardiner's account here has much the same dramatic force as the play.
+
+"Followed by a crowd of approving members, Pym carried up the message.
+Whilst the Lords were still debating on this unusual request for
+imprisonment before the charge had been set forth, the news of the
+impeachment was carried to Strafford. 'I will go,' he proudly said 'and
+look my accusers in the face.' With haughty mien and scowling brow he
+strode up the floor of the House to his place of honor. There were those
+amongst the Peers who had no wish to allow him to speak, lest he should
+accuse them of complicity with the Scots. The Lords, as a body, felt
+even more personally aggrieved by his method of government than the
+Commons. Shouts of 'Withdraw! withdraw!' rose from every side. As soon
+as he was gone an order was passed sequestering the Lord-Lieutenant from
+his place in the House and committing him to the custody of the
+Gentleman Usher. He was then called in and bidden to kneel whilst the
+order was read. He asked permission to speak, but his request was
+sternly refused. Maxwell, the Usher of the Black Rod, took from him his
+sword, and conducted him out of the House. The crowd outside gazed
+pitilessly on the fallen minister, 'No man capping to him, before whom
+that morning the greatest in England would have stood dis-covered.'
+'What is the matter?' they asked. 'A small matter, I warrant you,'
+replied Strafford with forced levity. 'Yes, indeed,' answered a
+bystander, 'high treason is a small matter.'"
+
+This passage brings up the scene in a manner so similar to that of the
+play, it is safe to say that Gardiner was here influenced by Browning,
+the history having been written many years after the play.
+
+
+SCENE II.--_Whitehall._
+
+_The QUEEN and +Lady+ CARLISLE._
+
+  _Queen._ It cannot be.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._       It is so.
+
+  _Queen._                         Why, the House
+  Have hardly met.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ They met for that.
+
+  _Queen._                            No, no!
+  Meet to impeach Lord Strafford? 'Tis a jest.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ A bitter one.
+
+  _Queen._                       Consider! 'Tis the House
+  We summoned so reluctantly, which nothing
+  But the disastrous issue of the war
+  Persuaded us to summon. They'll wreak all
+  Their spite on us, no doubt; but the old way
+  Is to begin by talk of grievances:
+  They have their grievances to busy them.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Pym has begun his speech.
+
+  _Queen._                                   Where's Vane?--That is,
+  Pym will impeach Lord Strafford if he leaves
+  His Presidency; he's at York, we know,
+  Since the Scots beat him: why should he leave York?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Because the King sent for him.
+
+  _Queen._                                        Ah--but if
+  The King did send for him, he let him know
+  We had been forced to call a Parliament--
+  A step which Strafford, now I come to think,
+  Was vehement against.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._      The policy
+  Escaped him, of first striking Parliaments
+  To earth, then setting them upon their feet
+  And giving them a sword: but this is idle.
+  Did the King send for Strafford? He will come.
+
+  _Queen._ And what am I to do?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ What do? Fail, madam!
+  Be ruined for his sake! what matters how,
+  So it but stand on record that you made
+  An effort, only one?
+
+  _Queen._             The King away
+  At Theobald's!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Send for him at once: he must
+  Dissolve the House.
+
+  _Queen._            Wait till Vane finds the truth
+  Of the report: then....
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._        --It will matter little
+  What the King does. Strafford that lends his arm
+  And breaks his heart for you!
+
+_+Sir+ H. VANE enters._
+
+  _Vane._                       The Commons, madam,
+  Are sitting with closed doors. A huge debate,
+  No lack of noise; but nothing, I should guess,
+  Concerning Strafford: Pym has certainly
+  Not spoken yet.
+
+  _Queen_ [_to +Lady+ CARLISLE_]. You hear?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                           I do not hear
+  That the King's sent for!
+
+  _Vane._                   Savile will be able
+  To tell you more.
+
+_HOLLAND enters._
+
+  _Queen._          The last news, Holland?
+
+  _Holland._                                Pym
+  Is raging like a fire. The whole House means
+  To follow him together to Whitehall
+  And force the King to give up Strafford.
+
+  _Queen._                                 Strafford?
+
+  _Holland._ If they content themselves with Strafford! Laud
+  Is talked of, Cottington and Windebank too.
+  Pym has not left out one of them--I would
+  You heard Pym raging!
+
+  _Queen._              Vane, go find the King!
+  Tell the King, Vane, the People follow Pym
+  To brave us at Whitehall!
+
+_SAVILE enters._
+
+  _Savile._                 Not to Whitehall--
+  'Tis to the Lords they go: they seek redress
+  On Strafford from his peers--the legal way,
+  They call it.
+
+  _Queen._      (Wait, Vane!)
+
+  _Savile._                   But the adage gives
+  Long life to threatened men. Strafford can save
+  Himself so readily: at York, remember,
+  In his own country: what has he to fear?
+  The Commons only mean to frighten him
+  From leaving York. Surely, he will not come.
+
+  _Queen._ Lucy, he will not come!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                 Once more, the King
+  Has sent for Strafford. He will come.
+
+  _Vane._                               Oh doubtless!
+  And bring destruction with him: that's his way.
+  What but his coming spoilt all Conway's plan?
+  The King must take his counsel, choose his friends,
+  Be wholly ruled by him! What's the result?
+  The North that was to rise, Ireland to help,--
+  What came of it? In my poor mind, a fright
+  Is no prodigious punishment.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._             A fright?
+  Pym will fail worse than Strafford if he thinks
+  To frighten him. [_To the QUEEN._] You will not save him then?
+
+  _Savile._ When something like a charge is made, the King
+  Will best know how to save him: and t'is clear,
+  While Strafford suffers nothing by the matter,
+  The King may reap advantage: this in question,
+  No dinning you with ship-money complaints!
+
+  _Queen_ [_to +Lady+ CARLISLE_]. If we dissolve them, who will pay
+          the army?
+  Protect us from the insolent Scots?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                    In truth,
+  I know not, madam. Strafford's fate concerns
+  Me little: you desired to learn what course
+  Would save him: I obey you.
+
+  _Vane._                     Notice, too,
+  There can't be fairer ground for taking full
+  Revenge--(Strafford's revengeful)--than he'll have
+  Against his old friend Pym.
+
+  _Queen._                    Why, he shall claim
+  Vengeance on Pym!
+
+  _Vane._           And Strafford, who is he
+  To 'scape unscathed amid the accidents
+  That harass all beside? I, for my part,
+  Should look for something of discomfiture
+  Had the King trusted me so thoroughly
+  And been so paid for it.
+
+  _Holland._               He'll keep at York:
+  All will blow over: he'll return no worse,
+  Humbled a little, thankful for a place
+  Under as good a man. Oh, we'll dispense
+  With seeing Strafford for a month or two!
+
+_STRAFFORD enters._
+
+  _Queen._ You here!
+
+  _Strafford._      The King sends for me, madam.
+
+  _Queen._                                        Sir,
+  The King....
+
+  _Strafford._ An urgent matter that imports the King!
+  [_To +Lady+ CARLISLE._] Why, Lucy, what's in agitation now,
+  That all this muttering and shrugging, see,
+  Begins at me? They do not speak!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                 'Tis welcome!
+  For we are proud of you--happy and proud
+  To have you with us, Strafford! You were staunch
+  At Durham: you did well there! Had you not
+  Been stayed, you might have ... we said, even now,
+  Our hope's in you!
+
+  _Vane_ [_to +Lady+ CARLISLE_]. The Queen would speak with you.
+
+  _Strafford._ Will one of you, his servants here, vouchsafe
+  To signify my presence to the King?
+
+  _Savile._                           An urgent matter?
+
+  _Strafford._ None that touches you,
+  Lord Savile! Say, it were some treacherous
+  Sly pitiful intriguing with the Scots--
+  You would go free, at least! (They half divine
+  My purpose!) Madam, shall I see the King?
+  The service I would render, much concerns
+  His welfare.
+
+  _Queen._     But his Majesty, my lord,
+  May not be here, may....
+
+  _Strafford._             Its importance, then,
+  Must plead excuse for this withdrawal, madam,
+  And for the grief it gives Lord Savile here.
+
+  _Queen_ [_who has been conversing with VANE and HOLLAND_].
+  The King will see you, sir!
+  [_To +Lady+ CARLISLE._]    Mark me: Pym's worst
+  Is done by now: he has impeached the Earl,
+  Or found the Earl too strong for him, by now.
+  Let us not seem instructed! We should work
+  No good to Strafford, but deform ourselves
+  With shame in the world's eye. [_To STRAFFORD._] His Majesty
+  Has much to say with you.
+
+  _Strafford._              Time fleeting, too!
+  [_To +Lady+ CARLISLE._] No means of getting them away? And She--
+  What does she whisper? Does she know my purpose?
+  What does she think of it? Get them away!
+
+  _Queen_ [_to +Lady+ CARLISLE_]. He comes to baffle Pym--he thinks
+          the danger
+  Far off: tell him no word of it! a time
+  For help will come; we'll not be wanting then.
+  Keep him in play, Lucy--you, self-possessed
+  And calm! [_To STRAFFORD._] To spare your lordship some delay
+  I will myself acquaint the King. [_To +Lady+ CARLISLE._] Beware!
+
+[_The QUEEN, VANE, HOLLAND, and SAVILE go out._
+
+  _Strafford._ She knows it?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._           Tell me, Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                                   Afterward!
+  This moment's the great moment of all time.
+  She knows my purpose?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._      Thoroughly: just now
+  She bade me hide it from you.
+
+  _Strafford._                  Quick, dear child,
+  The whole o' the scheme?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._         (Ah, he would learn if they
+  Connive at Pym's procedure! Could they but
+  Have once apprised the King! But there's no time
+  For falsehood, now.) Strafford, the whole is known.
+
+  _Strafford._ Known and approved?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                Hardly discountenanced.
+
+  _Strafford._ And the King--say, the King consents as well?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ The King's not yet informed, but will not dare
+  To interpose.
+
+  _Strafford._ What need to wait him, then?
+  He'll sanction it! I stayed, child, tell him, long!
+  It vexed me to the soul--this waiting here.
+  You know him, there's no counting on the King.
+  Tell him I waited long!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._        (What can he mean?
+  Rejoice at the King's hollowness?)
+
+  _Strafford._                       I knew
+  They would be glad of it,--all over once,
+  I knew they would be glad: but he'd contrive,
+  The Queen and he, to mar, by helping it,
+  An angel's making.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._   (Is he mad?) Dear Strafford,
+  You were not wont to look so happy.
+
+  _Strafford._                        Sweet,
+  I tried obedience thoroughly. I took
+  The King's wild plan: of course, ere I could reach
+  My army, Conway ruined it. I drew
+  The wrecks together, raised all heaven and earth,
+  And would have fought the Scots: the King at once
+  Made truce with them. Then, Lucy, then, dear child,
+  God put it in my mind to love, serve, die
+  For Charles, but never to obey him more!
+  While he endured their insolence at Ripon
+  I fell on them at Durham. But you'll tell
+  The King I waited? All the anteroom
+  Is filled with my adherents.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Strafford--Strafford,
+  What daring act is this you hint?
+
+  _Strafford._                      No, no!
+  'Tis here, not daring if you knew? all here!
+
+[_Drawing papers from his breast._
+
+  Full proof, see, ample proof--does the Queen know
+  I have such damning proof? Bedford and Essex,
+  Brooke, Warwick, Savile (did you notice Savile?
+  The simper that I spoilt?), Saye, Mandeville--
+  Sold to the Scots, body and soul, by Pym!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                          Great heaven!
+
+  _Strafford._ From Savile and his lords, to Pym
+  And his losels, crushed!--Pym shall not ward the blow
+  Nor Savile creep aside from it! The Crew
+  And the Cabal--I crush them!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._             And you go--
+  Strafford,--and now you go?--
+
+  _Strafford._                  --About no work
+  In the background, I promise you! I go
+  Straight to the House of Lords to claim these knaves.
+  Mainwaring!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Stay--stay, Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                            She'll return,
+  The Queen--some little project of her own!
+  No time to lose: the King takes fright perhaps.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Pym's strong, remember!
+
+  _Strafford._                             Very strong, as fits
+  The Faction's head--with no offence to Hampden,
+  Vane, Rudyard and my loving Hollis: one
+  And all they lodge within the Tower to-night
+  In just equality. Bryan! Mainwaring!
+
+[_Many of his +Adherents+ enter._
+
+  The Peers debate just now (a lucky chance)
+  On the Scots' war; my visit's opportune.
+  When all is over, Bryan, you proceed
+  To Ireland: these dispatches, mark me, Bryan,
+  Are for the Deputy, and these for Ormond:
+  We want the army here--my army, raised
+  At such a cost, that should have done such good,
+  And was inactive all the time! no matter,
+  We'll find a use for it. Willis ... or, no--you!
+  You, friend, make haste to York: bear this, at once ...
+  Or,--better stay for form's sake, see yourself
+  The news you carry. You remain with me
+  To execute the Parliament's command,
+  Mainwaring! Help to seize these lesser knaves,
+  Take care there's no escaping at backdoors:
+  I'll not have one escape, mind me--not one!
+  I seem revengeful, Lucy? Did you know
+  What these men dare!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._     It is so much they dare!
+
+  _Strafford._ I proved that long ago; my turn is now.
+  Keep sharp watch, Goring, on the citizens!
+  Observe who harbors any of the brood
+  That scramble off: be sure they smart for it!
+  Our coffers are but lean.
+                            And you, child, too,
+  Shall have your task; deliver this to Laud.
+  Laud will not be the slowest in thy praise:
+  "Thorough" he'll cry!--Foolish, to be so glad!
+  This life is gay and glowing, after all:
+  'Tis worth while, Lucy, having foes like mine
+  Just for the bliss of crushing them. To-day
+  Is worth the living for.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._         That reddening brow!
+  You seem....
+
+  _Strafford._ Well--do I not? I would be well--
+  I could not but be well on such a day!
+  And, this day ended, 'tis of slight import
+  How long the ravaged frame subjects the soul
+  In Strafford.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Noble Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                      No farewell!
+  I'll see you anon, to-morrow--the first thing.
+  --If She should come to stay me!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                 Go--'tis nothing--
+  Only my heart that swells: it has been thus
+  Ere now: go, Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._            To-night, then, let it be.
+  I must see Him: you, the next after Him.
+  I'll tell how Pym looked. Follow me, friends!
+  You, gentlemen, shall see a sight this hour
+  To talk of all your lives. Close after me!
+  "My friend of friends!"
+
+[_STRAFFORD and the rest go out._
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._        The King--ever the King!
+  No thought of one beside, whose little word
+  Unveils the King to him--one word from me,
+  Which yet I do not breathe!
+                              Ah, have I spared
+  Strafford a pang, and shall I seek reward
+  Beyond that memory? Surely too, some way
+  He is the better for my love. No, no--
+  He would not look so joyous--I'll believe
+  His very eye would never sparkle thus,
+  Had I not prayed for him this long, long while.
+
+
+SCENE III.--_The Antechamber of the House of Lords._
+
+_Many of the Presbyterian Party. The +Adherents+ of STRAFFORD, etc._
+
+  _A Group of Presbyterians._ --1. I tell you he struck Maxwell:
+          Maxwell sought
+  To stay the Earl: he struck him and passed on.
+  2. Fear as you may, keep a good countenance
+  Before these rufflers.
+  3.                     Strafford here the first,
+  With the great army at his back!
+  4.                               No doubt.
+  I would Pym had made haste: that's Bryan, hush--
+  The gallant pointing.
+
+  _Strafford's Followers._ --1. Mark these worthies, now!
+  2. A goodly gathering! "Where the carcass is
+  There shall the eagles"--what's the rest?
+  3.                                        For eagles
+  Say crows.
+
+  _A Presbyterian._ Stand back, sirs!
+
+  _One of Strafford's Followers._     Are we in Geneva?
+
+  _A Presbyterian._ No, nor in Ireland; we have leave to breathe.
+
+  _One of Strafford's Followers._ Truly? Behold how privileged we be
+  That serve "King Pym"! There's Some-one at Whitehall
+  Who skulks obscure; but Pym struts....
+
+  _The Presbyterian._                    Nearer.
+
+  _A Follower of Strafford._                     Higher,
+  We look to see him. [_To his +Companions+._] I'm to have St. John
+  In charge; was he among the knaves just now
+  That followed Pym within there?
+
+  _Another._                      The gaunt man
+  Talking with Rudyard. Did the Earl expect
+  Pym at his heels so fast? I like it not.
+
+_MAXWELL enters._
+
+  _Another._ Why, man, they rush into the net! Here's Maxwell--
+  Ha, Maxwell? How the brethren flock around
+  The fellow! Do you feel the Earl's hand yet
+  Upon your shoulder, Maxwell?
+
+  _Maxwell._                   Gentlemen,
+  Stand back! a great thing passes here.
+
+  _A Follower of Strafford_ [_To another_]. The Earl
+  Is at his work! [_To +M.+_] Say, Maxwell, what great thing!
+  Speak out! [_To a +Presbyterian+._] Friend, I've a kindness for you!
+          Friend,
+  I've seen you with St. John: O stockishness!
+  Wear such a ruff, and never call to mind
+  St. John's head in a charger? How, the plague,
+  Not laugh?
+
+  _Another._ Say, Maxwell, what great thing!
+
+  _Another._                                 Nay, wait:
+  The jest will be to wait.
+
+  _First._                  And who's to bear
+  These demure hypocrites? You'd swear they came ...
+  Came ... just as we come!
+
+[_A +Puritan+ enters hastily and without observing STRAFFORD'S
++Followers+._
+
+  _The Puritan._            How goes on the work?
+  Has Pym....
+
+  _A Follower of Strafford._ The secret's out at last. Aha,
+  The carrion's scented! Welcome, crow the first!
+  Gorge merrily, you with the blinking eye!
+  "King Pym has fallen!"
+
+  _The Puritan._         Pym?
+
+  _A Strafford._              Pym!
+
+  _A Presbyterian._                Only Pym?
+
+  _Many of Strafford's Followers._ No, brother, not Pym only;
+          Vane as well,
+  Rudyard as well, Hampden, St. John as well!
+
+  _A Presbyterian._ My mind misgives: can it be true?
+
+  _Another._                                          Lost! Lost!
+
+  _A Strafford._ Say we true, Maxwell?
+
+  _The Puritan._                       Pride before destruction,
+  A haughty spirit goeth before a fall.
+
+  _Many of Strafford's Followers._      Ah now! The very thing!
+          A word in season!
+  A golden apple in a silver picture,
+  To greet Pym as he passes!
+
+[_The doors at the back begin to open, noise and light issuing._
+
+  _Maxwell._                 Stand back, all!
+
+  _Many of the Presbyterians._ I hold with Pym! And I!
+
+  _Strafford's Followers._ Now for the text!
+  He comes! Quick!
+
+  _The Puritan._   How hath the oppressor ceased!
+  The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked!
+  The sceptre of the rulers, he who smote
+  The people in wrath with a continual stroke,
+  That ruled the nations in his anger--he
+  Is persecuted and none hindreth!
+
+[_The doors open, and STRAFFORD issues in the greatest disorder, and
+amid cries from within of "+Void the House+!"_
+
+  _Strafford._ Impeach me! Pym! I never struck, I think,
+  The felon on that calm insulting mouth
+  When it proclaimed--Pym's mouth proclaimed me ... God!
+  Was it a word, only a word that held
+  The outrageous blood back on my heart--which beats!
+  Which beats! Some one word--"Traitor," did he say,
+  Bending that eye, brimful of bitter fire,
+  Upon me?
+
+  _Maxwell._ In the Commons' name, their servant
+  Demands Lord Strafford's sword.
+
+  _Strafford._                    What did you say?
+
+  _Maxwell._ The Commons bid me ask your lordship's sword.
+
+  _Strafford._ Let us go forth: follow me, gentlemen!
+  Draw your swords too: cut any down that bar us.
+  On the King's service! Maxwell, clear the way!
+
+[_The +Presbyterians+ prepare to dispute his passage._
+
+  _Strafford._ I stay: the King himself shall see me here.
+  Your tablets, fellow!
+  [_To MAINWARING._] Give that to the King!
+  Yes, Maxwell, for the next half-hour, let be!
+  Nay, you shall take my sword!
+
+[_MAXWELL advances to take it._
+
+                                Or, no--not that!
+  Their blood, perhaps, may wipe out all thus far,
+  All up to that--not that! Why, friend, you see
+  When the King lays your head beneath my foot
+  It will not pay for that. Go, all of you!
+
+  _Maxwell._ I dare, my lord, to disobey: none stir!
+
+  _Strafford._ This gentle Maxwell!--Do not touch him, Bryan!
+  [_To the +Presbyterians+._] Whichever cur of you will carry this
+  Escapes his fellow's fate. None saves his life?
+  None?
+
+[_Cries from within of "STRAFFORD!"_
+
+        Slingsby, I've loved you at least: make haste!
+  Stab me! I have not time to tell you why.
+  You then, my Bryan! Mainwaring, you then!
+  Is it because I spoke so hastily
+  At Allerton? The King had vexed me.
+  [_To the +Presbyterians+._]           You!
+  --Not even you? If I live over this,
+  The King is sure to have your heads, you know!
+  But what if I can't live this minute through?
+  Pym, who is there with his pursuing smile!
+
+[_Louder cries of "STRAFFORD!"_
+
+  The King! I troubled him, stood in the way
+  Of his negotiations, was the one
+  Great obstacle to peace, the Enemy
+  Of Scotland: and he sent for me, from York,
+  My safety guaranteed--having prepared
+  A Parliament--I see! And at Whitehall
+  The Queen was whispering with Vane--I see
+  The trap!
+
+[_Tearing off the George._
+
+            I tread a gewgaw underfoot,
+  And cast a memory from me. One stroke, now!
+
+[_His own +Adherents+ disarm him. Renewed cries of "STRAFFORD!"_
+
+  England! I see thy arm in this and yield.
+  Pray you now--Pym awaits me--pray you now!
+
+[_STRAFFORD reaches the doors: they open wide. HAMPDEN and a crowd
+discovered, and, at the bar, PYM standing apart. As STRAFFORD kneels,
+the scene shuts._
+
+[Illustration: Westminster Hall]
+
+The history of the fourth act deals with further episodes of Strafford's
+trial, especially with the change in the procedure from Impeachment to a
+Bill of Attainder against Strafford. The details of this great trial are
+complicated and cannot be followed in all their ramifications here.
+There was danger that the Impeachment would not go through. Strafford,
+himself, felt confident that in law his actions could not be found
+treasonable.
+
+After Strafford's brilliant defense of himself, it was decided to bring
+in a Bill of Attainder. New evidence against Strafford contained in
+some notes which the younger Vane had found among his father's papers
+were used to strengthen the charge of treason. In these notes Strafford
+had advised the King to act "loose and absolved from all rules of
+government," and had reminded him that there was an army in Ireland,
+ready to reduce the Kingdom. These notes were found by the merest
+accident. The younger Vane who had just been knighted and was about to
+be married, borrowed his father's keys in order to look up some law
+papers. In his search he fell upon these notes taken at a committee that
+met immediately after the dissolution of the short Parliament. He made a
+copy and carried it to Pym who also made a copy.
+
+According to Baillie, the "secret" of the change from the Impeachment to
+the Bill was "to prevent the hearing of the Earl's lawyers, who give out
+that there is no law yet in force whereby he can be condemned to die for
+aught yet objected against him, and therefore their intent by this Bill
+to supply the defect of the laws therein." To this may be added the
+opinion of a member of the Commons. "If the House of Commons proceeds to
+demand judgment of the Lords, without doubt they will acquit him, there
+being no law extant whereby to condemn him of treason. Wherefore the
+Commons are determined to desert the Lord's judicature, and to proceed
+against him by Bill of Attainder, whereby he shall be adjudged to death
+upon a treason now to be declared."
+
+One of the chief results in this change of procedure, emphasized by
+Browning in an intense scene between Pym and Charles was that it altered
+entirely the King's attitude towards Strafford's trial. As Baillie
+expresses it, "Had the Commons gone on in the former way of pursuit, the
+King might have been a patient, and only beheld the striking off of
+Strafford's head; but now they have put them on a Bill which will force
+the King either to be our agent and formal voicer to his death, or else
+do the world knows not what."
+
+For the sake of a gain in dramatic power, Browning has once more
+departed from history by making Pym the moving power in the Bill of
+Attainder, and Hampden in favor of it; while in reality they were
+opposed to the change in procedure, and believed that the Impeachment
+could have been carried through.
+
+The relentless, scourging force of Pym in the play, pursuing the
+arch-foe of England as he regarded Wentworth to the death, once he is
+convinced that England's welfare demands it, would have been weakened
+had he been represented in favor of the policy which was abandoned,
+instead of with the policy that succeeded. But Pym is made to intimate
+that he will abandon the Bill unless the King gives his word that he
+will ratify it, and further, Pym declares, should he not ratify the Bill
+his next step will be against the King himself.
+
+  _Enter HAMPDEN and VANE._
+
+  _Vane._ O Hampden, save the great misguided man!
+  Plead Strafford's cause with Pym! I have remarked
+  He moved no muscle when we all declaimed
+  Against him: you had but to breathe--he turned
+  Those kind calm eyes upon you.
+
+[_Enter PYM, the +Solicitor-General+ ST. JOHN, the +Managers+ of the
+Trial, FIENNES, RUDYARD, etc._
+
+  _Rudyard._                    Horrible!
+  Till now all hearts were with you: I withdraw
+  For one. Too horrible! But we mistake
+  Your purpose, Pym: you cannot snatch away
+  The last spar from the drowning man.
+
+  _Fiennes._                           He talks
+  With St. John of it--see, how quietly!
+  [_To other +Presbyterians+._] You'll join us? Strafford may deserve
+          the worst:
+  But this new course is monstrous. Vane, take heart!
+  This Bill of his Attainder shall not have
+  One true man's hand to it.
+
+  _Vane._                    Consider, Pym!
+  Confront your Bill, your own Bill: what is it?
+  You cannot catch the Earl on any charge,--
+  No man will say the law has hold of him
+  On any charge; and therefore you resolve
+  To take the general sense on his desert,
+  As though no law existed, and we met
+  To found one. You refer to Parliament
+  To speak its thought upon the abortive mass
+  Of half-borne-out assertions, dubious hints
+  Hereafter to be cleared, distortions--ay,
+  And wild inventions. Every man is saved
+  The task of fixing any single charge
+  On Strafford: he has but to see in him
+  The enemy of England.
+
+  _Pym._                A right scruple!
+  I have heard some called England's enemy
+  With less consideration.
+
+  _Vane._                  Pity me!
+  Indeed you made me think I was your friend!
+  I who have murdered Strafford, how remove
+  That memory from me?
+
+  _Pym._               I absolve you, Vane.
+  Take you no care for aught that you have done!
+
+  _Vane._ John Hampden, not this Bill! Reject this Bill!
+  He staggers through the ordeal: let him go,
+  Strew no fresh fire before him! Plead for us!
+  When Strafford spoke, your eyes were thick with tears!
+
+  _Hampden._ England speaks louder: who are we, to play
+  The generous pardoner at her expense,
+  Magnanimously waive advantages,
+  And, if he conquer us, applaud his skill?
+
+  _Vane._ He was your friend.
+
+  _Pym._                      I have heard that before.
+
+  _Fiennes._ And England trusts you.
+
+  _Hampden._                         Shame be his, who turns
+  The opportunity of serving her
+  She trusts him with, to his own mean account--
+  Who would look nobly frank at her expense!
+
+  _Fiennes._ I never thought it could have come to this.
+
+  _Pym._ But I have made myself familiar, Fiennes,
+  With this one thought--have walked, and sat, and slept,
+  This thought before me. I have done such things,
+  Being the chosen man that should destroy
+  The traitor. You have taken up this thought
+  To play with, for a gentle stimulant,
+  To give a dignity to idler life
+  By the dim prospect of emprise to come,
+  But ever with the softening, sure belief,
+  That all would end some strange way right at last.
+
+  _Fiennes._ Had we made out some weightier charge!
+
+  _Pym._                                            You say
+  That these are petty charges: can we come
+  To the real charge at all? There he is safe
+  In tyranny's stronghold. Apostasy
+  Is not a crime, treachery not a crime:
+  The cheek burns, the blood tingles, when you speak
+  The words, but where's the power to take revenge
+  Upon them? We must make occasion serve,--
+  The oversight shall pay for the main sin
+  That mocks us.
+
+  _Rudyard._     But his unexampled course,
+  This Bill!
+
+  _Pym._     By this, we roll the clouds away
+  Of precedent and custom, and at once
+  Bid the great beacon-light God sets in all,
+  The conscience of each bosom, shine upon
+  The guilt of Strafford: each man lay his hand
+  Upon his breast, and judge!
+
+  _Vane._                     I only see
+  Strafford, nor pass his corpse for all beyond!
+
+  _Rudyard and others._ Forgive him! He would join us, now he finds
+  What the King counts reward! The pardon, too,
+  Should be your own. Yourself should bear to Strafford
+  The pardon of the Commons.
+
+  _Pym._                     Meet him? Strafford?
+  Have we to meet once more, then? Be it so!
+  And yet--the prophecy seemed half fulfilled
+  When, at the Trial, as he gazed, my youth,
+  Our friendship, divers thoughts came back at once
+  And left me, for a time.... 'Tis very sad!
+  To-morrow we discuss the points of law
+  With Lane--to-morrow?
+
+  _Vane._               Not before to-morrow--
+  So, time enough! I knew you would relent!
+
+  _Pym._ The next day, Haselrig, you introduce
+  The Bill of his Attainder. Pray for me!
+
+
+SCENE III.--_Whitehall._
+
+_The KING._
+
+  _Charles._ My loyal servant! To defend himself
+  Thus irresistibly,--withholding aught
+  That seemed to implicate us!
+                               We have done
+  Less gallantly by Strafford. Well, the future
+  Must recompense the past.
+                            She tarries long.
+  I understand you, Strafford, now!
+                                    The scheme--
+  Carlisle's mad scheme--he'll sanction it, I fear,
+  For love of me. 'Twas too precipitate:
+  Before the army's fairly on its march,
+  He'll be at large: no matter.
+                                Well, Carlisle?
+
+_Enter PYM._
+
+  _Pym._ Fear me not, sir:--my mission is to save,
+  This time.
+
+  _Charles._ To break thus on me! Unannounced!
+
+  _Pym._ It is of Strafford I would speak.
+
+  _Charles._                               No more
+  Of Strafford! I have heard too much from you.
+
+  _Pym._ I spoke, sir, for the People; will you hear
+  A word upon my own account?
+
+  _Charles._                  Of Strafford?
+  (So turns the tide already? Have we tamed
+  The insolent brawler?--Strafford's eloquence
+  Is swift in its effect.) Lord Strafford, sir,
+  Has spoken for himself.
+
+  _Pym._                  Sufficiently.
+  I would apprise you of the novel course
+  The People take: the Trial fails.
+
+  _Charles._                        Yes, yes:
+  We are aware, sir: for your part in it
+  Means shall be found to thank you.
+
+  _Pym._                             Pray you, read
+  This schedule! I would learn from your own mouth
+  --(It is a matter much concerning me)--
+  Whether, if two Estates of us concede
+  The death of Strafford, on the grounds set forth
+  Within that parchment, you, sir, can resolve
+  To grant your own consent to it. This Bill
+  Is framed by me. If you determine, sir,
+  That England's manifested will should guide
+  Your judgment, ere another week such will
+  Shall manifest itself. If not,--I cast
+  Aside the measure.
+
+  _Charles._         You can hinder, then,
+  The introduction of this Bill?
+
+  _Pym._                          I can.
+
+  _Charles._ He is my friend, sir: I have wronged him: mark you,
+  Had I not wronged him, this might be. You think
+  Because you hate the Earl ... (turn not away,
+  We know you hate him)--no one else could love
+  Strafford: but he has saved me, some affirm.
+  Think of his pride! And do you know one strange,
+  One frightful thing? We all have used the man
+  As though a drudge of ours, with not a source
+  Of happy thoughts except in us; and yet
+  Strafford has wife and children, household cares,
+  Just as if we had never been. Ah sir,
+  You are moved, even you, a solitary man
+  Wed to your cause--to England if you will!
+
+  _Pym._ Yes--think, my soul--to England! Draw not back!
+
+  _Charles._ Prevent that Bill, sir! All your course seems fair
+  Till now. Why, in the end, 'tis I should sign
+  The warrant for his death! You have said much
+  I ponder on; I never meant, indeed,
+  Strafford should serve me any more. I take
+  The Commons' counsel; but this Bill is yours--
+  Nor worthy of its leader: care not, sir,
+  For that, however! I will quite forget
+  You named it to me. You are satisfied?
+
+  _Pym._ Listen to me, sir! Eliot laid his hand,
+  Wasted and white, upon my forehead once;
+  Wentworth--he's gone now!--has talked on, whole nights,
+  And I beside him; Hampden loves me: sir,
+  How can I breathe and not wish England well,
+  And her King well?
+
+  _Charles._          I thank you, sir, who leave
+  That King his servant. Thanks, sir!
+
+  _Pym._                              Let me speak!
+  --Who may not speak again; whose spirit yearns
+  For a cool night after this weary day:
+  --Who would not have my soul turn sicker yet
+  In a new task, more fatal, more august,
+  More full of England's utter weal or woe.
+  I thought, sir, could I find myself with you,
+  After this trial, alone, as man to man--
+  I might say something, warn you, pray you, save--
+  Mark me, King Charles, save----you!
+  But God must do it. Yet I warn you, sir--
+  (With Strafford's faded eyes yet full on me)
+  As you would have no deeper question moved
+  --"How long the Many must endure the One,"
+  Assure me, sir, if England give assent
+  To Strafford's death, you will not interfere!
+  Or----
+
+  _Charles._ God forsakes me. I am in a net
+  And cannot move. Let all be as you say!
+
+_Enter +Lady+ CARLISLE._
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ He loves you--looking beautiful with joy
+  Because you sent me! he would spare you all
+  The pain! he never dreamed you would forsake
+  Your servant in the evil day--nay, see
+  Your scheme returned! That generous heart of his!
+  He needs it not--or, needing it, disdains
+  A course that might endanger you--you, sir,
+  Whom Strafford from his inmost soul....
+  [_Seeing PYM._]                        Well met!
+  No fear for Strafford! All that's true and brave
+  On your own side shall help us: we are now
+  Stronger than ever.
+                      Ha--what, sir, is this?
+  All is not well! What parchment have you there?
+
+  _Pym._ Sir, much is saved us both.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                   This Bill! Your lip
+  Whitens--you could not read one line to me
+  Your voice would falter so!
+
+  _Pym._                      No recreant yet!
+  The great word went from England to my soul,
+  And I arose. The end is very near.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ I am to save him! All have shrunk beside;
+  'Tis only I am left. Heaven will make strong
+  The hand now as the heart. Then let both die!
+
+In the last act Browning has drawn upon his imagination more than in any
+other part of the play. Strafford in prison in the Tower is the center
+around which all the other elements of the drama are made to revolve. A
+glimpse, the first, of the man in a purely human capacity is given in
+the second scene with Strafford and his children. From all accounts
+little Anne was a precocious child and Browning has sketched her
+accordingly. The scene is like a gleam of sunshine in the gathering
+gloom.
+
+The genuine grief felt by the historical Charles over the part he played
+in the ruin of Strafford is brought out in an interview between
+Strafford and Charles, who is represented as coming disguised to the
+prison. Strafford who has been hoping for pardon from the King learns
+from Hollis, in the King's presence, that the King has signed his death
+warrant. He receives this shock with the remark which history attributes
+to him.
+
+                        "Put not your trust
+    In princes, neither in the sons of men,
+    In whom is no salvation!"
+
+History tells us of two efforts to rescue Strafford. One of these was an
+attempt to bribe Balfour to allow him to escape from the tower. This
+hint the Poet has worked up into the episode of Charles, calling Balfour
+and begging him to go at once to Parliament, to say he will grant all
+demands, and that he chooses to pardon Strafford. History, however, does
+not say that Lady Carlisle was implicated in any plan for the rescue of
+Strafford, of which Browning makes so much. According to Gardiner, she
+was by this time bestowing her favors upon Pym. Devotion to the truth
+here on Browning's part would have completely ruined the inner unity of
+the play. Carlisle, the woman ready to devote herself to Strafford's
+utmost need, while Strafford is more or less indifferent to her is the
+artistic compliment of Strafford the man devoted to the unresponsive
+King. The failure of the escape through Pym's intervention is a final
+dramatic climax bringing face to face not so much the two individual men
+as the two principles of government for which England was warring, the
+Monarchical and the Parliamentary. To the last, Strafford is loyal to
+the King and the Kingly idea, while Pym crushing his human feelings
+under foot, calmly contemplates the sacrifice not only of Strafford, but
+even of the King, if England's need demand it.
+
+In this supreme moment of agony when Strafford and Pym meet face to face
+both men are made to realize an abiding love for each other beneath all
+their earthly differences. "A great poet of our own day," writes
+Gardiner, "clothing the reconciling spirit of the nineteenth century in
+words which never could have been spoken in the seventeenth, has
+breathed a high wish. On his page an imaginary Pym, recalling an
+imaginary friendship, looks forward hopefully to a reunion in a better
+and brighter world."
+
+
+SCENE II.--_The Tower._
+
+_STRAFFORD sitting with his +Children+. They sing._
+
+      _O bell 'andare
+      Per barca in mare,
+      Verso la sera
+      Di Primavera!_
+
+  _William._ The boat's in the broad moonlight all this while--
+
+      _Verso la sera
+      Di Primavera!_
+
+  And the boat shoots from underneath the moon
+  Into the shadowy distance; only still
+  You hear the dipping oar--
+
+      _Verso la sera_,
+
+  And faint, and fainter, and then all's quite gone,
+  Music and light and all, like a lost star.
+
+  _Anne._ But you should sleep, father; you were to sleep.
+
+  _Strafford._ I do sleep, Anne; or if not--you must know
+  There's such a thing as....
+
+  _William._                  You're too tired to sleep?
+
+  _Strafford._ It will come by-and-by and all day long,
+  In that old quiet house I told you of:
+  We sleep safe there.
+
+  _Anne._              Why not in Ireland?
+
+  _Strafford._                             No!
+  Too many dreams!--That song's for Venice, William:
+  You know how Venice looks upon the map--
+  Isles that the mainland hardly can let go?
+
+  _William._ You've been to Venice, father?
+
+  _Strafford._                              I was young, then.
+
+  _William._ A city with no King; that's why I like
+  Even a song that comes from Venice.
+
+  _Strafford._                        William!
+
+  _William._ Oh, I know why! Anne, do you love the King?
+  But I'll see Venice for myself one day.
+
+  _Strafford._ See many lands, boy--England last of all,--
+  That way you'll love her best.
+
+[Illustration: The Tower, London]
+
+  _William._                     Why do men say
+  You sought to ruin her then?
+
+  _Strafford._                 Ah,--they say that.
+
+  _William._ Why?
+
+  _Strafford._    I suppose they must have words to say,
+  As you to sing.
+
+  _Anne._         But they make songs beside:
+  Last night I heard one, in the street beneath,
+  That called you.... Oh, the names!
+
+  _William._                         Don't mind her, father!
+  They soon left off when I cried out to them.
+
+  _Strafford._ We shall so soon be out of it, my boy!
+  'Tis not worth while: who heeds a foolish song?
+
+  _William._ Why, not the King.
+
+  _Strafford._                  Well: it has been the fate
+  Of better; and yet,--wherefore not feel sure
+  That Time, who in the twilight comes to mend
+  All the fantastic day's caprice, consign
+  To the low ground once more the ignoble Term,
+  And raise the Genius on his orb again,--
+  That Time will do me right?
+
+  _Anne._                     (Shall we sing, William?
+  He does not look thus when we sing.)
+
+  _Strafford._                         For Ireland,
+  Something is done: too little, but enough
+  To show what might have been.
+
+  _William._                    (I have no heart
+  To sing now! Anne, how very sad he looks!
+  Oh, I so hate the King for all he says!)
+
+  _Strafford._ Forsook them! What, the common songs will run
+  That I forsook the People? Nothing more?
+  Ay, Fame, the busy scribe, will pause, no doubt,
+  Turning a deaf ear to her thousand slaves
+  Noisy to be enrolled,--will register
+  The curious glosses, subtle notices,
+  Ingenious clearings-up one fain would see
+  Beside that plain inscription of The Name--
+  The Patriot Pym, or the Apostate Strafford!
+
+[_The +Children+ resume their song timidly, but break off._
+
+_Enter HOLLIS and an +Attendant+._
+
+  _Strafford._ No,--Hollis? in good time!--Who is he?
+
+  _Hollis._                                           One
+  That must be present.
+
+  _Strafford._          Ah--I understand.
+  They will not let me see poor Laud alone.
+  How politic! They'd use me by degrees
+  To solitude: and, just as you came in,
+  I was solicitous what life to lead
+  When Strafford's "not so much as Constable
+  In the King's service." Is there any means
+  To keep oneself awake? What would you do
+  After this bustle, Hollis, in my place?
+
+  _Hollis._ Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._         Observe, not but that Pym and you
+  Will find me news enough--news I shall hear
+  Under a quince-tree by a fish-pond side
+  At Wentworth. Garrard must be re-engaged
+  My newsman. Or, a better project now--
+  What if when all's consummated, and the Saints
+  Reign, and the Senate's work goes swimmingly,--
+  What if I venture up, some day, unseen,
+  To saunter through the Town, notice how Pym,
+  Your Tribune, likes Whitehall, drop quietly
+  Into a tavern, hear a point discussed,
+  As, whether Strafford's name were John or James--
+  And be myself appealed to--I, who shall
+  Myself have near forgotten!
+
+  _Hollis._                   I would speak....
+
+  _Strafford._ Then you shall speak,--not now. I want just now,
+  To hear the sound of my own tongue. This place
+  Is full of ghosts.
+
+  _Hollis._          Nay, you must hear me, Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._ Oh, readily! Only, one rare thing more,--
+  The minister! Who will advise the King,
+  Turn his Sejanus, Richelieu and what not,
+  And yet have health--children, for aught I know--
+  My patient pair of traitors! Ah,--but, William--
+  Does not his cheek grow thin?
+
+  _William._                    'Tis you look thin, Father!
+
+  _Strafford._ A scamper o'er the breezy wolds
+  Sets all to-rights.
+
+  _Hollis._           You cannot sure forget
+  A prison-roof is o'er you, Strafford?
+
+  _Strafford._                          No,
+  Why, no. I would not touch on that, the first.
+  I left you that. Well, Hollis? Say at once,
+  The King can find no time to set me free!
+  A mask at Theobald's?
+
+  _Hollis._             Hold: no such affair
+  Detains him.
+
+  _Strafford._ True: what needs so great a matter?
+  The Queen's lip may be sore. Well: when he pleases,--
+  Only, I want the air: it vexes flesh
+  To be pent up so long.
+
+  _Hollis._              The King--I bear
+  His message, Strafford: pray you, let me speak!
+
+  _Strafford._ Go, William! Anne, try o'er your song again!
+
+[_The +Children+ retire._
+
+  They shall be loyal, friend, at all events.
+  I know your message: you have nothing new
+  To tell me: from the first I guessed as much.
+  I know, instead of coming here himself,
+  Leading me forth in public by the hand,
+  The King prefers to leave the door ajar
+  As though I were escaping--bids me trudge
+  While the mob gapes upon some show prepared
+  On the other side of the river! Give at once
+  His order of release! I've heard, as well
+  Of certain poor manoeuvres to avoid
+  The granting pardon at his proper risk;
+  First, he must prattle somewhat to the Lords,
+  Must talk a trifle with the Commons first,
+  Be grieved I should abuse his confidence,
+  And far from blaming them, and.... Where's the order?
+
+  _Hollis._ Spare me!
+
+  _Strafford._        Why, he'd not have me steal away?
+  With an old doublet and a steeple hat
+  Like Prynne's? Be smuggled into France, perhaps?
+  Hollis, 'tis for my children! 'Twas for them
+  I first consented to stand day by day
+  And give your Puritans the best of words,
+  Be patient, speak when called upon, observe
+  Their rules, and not return them prompt their lie!
+  What's in that boy of mine that he should prove
+  Son to a prison-breaker? I shall stay
+  And he'll stay with me. Charles should know as much,
+  He too has children!
+  [_Turning to HOLLIS'S +Companion+._] Sir, you feel for me!
+  No need to hide that face! Though it have looked
+  Upon me from the judgment-seat ... I know
+  Strangely, that somewhere it has looked on me, ...
+  Your coming has my pardon, nay, my thanks:
+  For there is one who comes not.
+
+  _Hollis._                       Whom forgive,
+  As one to die!
+
+  _Strafford._   True, all die, and all need
+  Forgiveness: I forgive him from my soul.
+
+  _Hollis._ 'Tis a world's wonder: Strafford, you must die!
+
+  _Strafford._ Sir, if your errand is to set me free
+  This heartless jest mars much. Ha! Tears in truth?
+  We'll end this! See this paper, warm--feel--warm
+  With lying next my heart! Whose hand is there?
+  Whose promise? Read, and loud for God to hear!
+  "Strafford shall take no hurt"--read it, I say!
+  "In person, honor, nor estate"--
+
+  _Hollis._                        The King....
+
+  _Strafford._ I could unking him by a breath! You sit
+  Where Loudon sat, who came to prophesy
+  The certain end, and offer me Pym's grace
+  If I'd renounce the King: and I stood firm
+  On the King's faith. The King who lives....
+
+  _Hollis._                                   To sign
+  The warrant for your death.
+
+  _Strafford._                "Put not your trust
+  In princes, neither in the sons of men,
+  In whom is no salvation!"
+
+  _Hollis._                 Trust in God!
+  The scaffold is prepared: they wait for you:
+  He has consented. Cast the earth behind!
+
+  _Charles._ You would not see me, Strafford, at your foot!
+  It was wrung from me! Only, curse me not!
+
+  _Hollis_ [_to STRAFFORD_]. As you hope grace and pardon in your need,
+  Be merciful to this most wretched man.
+
+[_Voices from within._
+
+      _Verso la sera
+      Di Primavera_
+
+  _Strafford._ You'll be good to those children, sir? I know
+  You'll not believe her, even should the Queen
+  Think they take after one they rarely saw.
+  I had intended that my son should live
+  A stranger to these matters: but you are
+  So utterly deprived of friends! He too
+  Must serve you--will you not be good to him?
+  Or, stay, sir, do not promise--do not swear!
+  You, Hollis--do the best you can for me!
+  I've not a soul to trust to: Wandesford's dead,
+  And you've got Radcliffe safe, Laud's turn comes next:
+  I've found small time of late for my affairs,
+  But I trust any of you, Pym himself--
+  No one could hurt them: there's an infant, too.
+  These tedious cares! Your Majesty could spare them.
+  Nay--pardon me, my King! I had forgotten
+  Your education, trials, much temptation,
+  Some weakness: there escaped a peevish word--
+  'Tis gone: I bless you at the last. You know
+  All's between you and me: what has the world
+  To do with it? Farewell!
+
+  _Charles_ [_at the door_]. Balfour! Balfour!
+
+_Enter BALFOUR._
+
+  The Parliament!--go to them: I grant all
+  Demands. Their sittings shall be permanent:
+  Tell them to keep their money if they will:
+  I'll come to them for every coat I wear
+  And every crust I eat: only I choose
+  To pardon Strafford. As the Queen shall choose!
+  --You never heard the People howl for blood,
+  Beside!
+
+  _Balfour._ Your Majesty may hear them now:
+  The walls can hardly keep their murmurs out:
+  Please you retire!
+
+  _Charles._         Take all the troops, Balfour!
+
+  _Balfour._ There are some hundred thousand of the crowd.
+
+  _Charles._ Come with me, Strafford! You'll not fear, at least!
+
+  _Strafford._ Balfour, say nothing to the world of this!
+  I charge you, as a dying man, forget
+  You gazed upon this agony of one ...
+  Of one ... or if ... why you may say, Balfour,
+  The King was sorry: 'tis no shame in him:
+  Yes, you may say he even wept, Balfour,
+  And that I walked the lighter to the block
+  Because of it. I shall walk lightly, sir!
+  Earth fades, heaven breaks on me: I shall stand next
+  Before God's throne: the moment's close at hand
+  When man the first, last time, has leave to lay
+  His whole heart bare before its Maker, leave
+  To clear up the long error of a life
+  And choose one happiness for evermore.
+  With all mortality about me, Charles,
+  The sudden wreck, the dregs of violent death--
+  What if, despite the opening angel-song,
+  There penetrate one prayer for you? Be saved
+  Through me! Bear witness, no one could prevent
+  My death! Lead on! ere he awake--best, now!
+  All must be ready: did you say, Balfour,
+  The crowd began to murmur? They'll be kept
+  Too late for sermon at St. Antholin's!
+  Now! But tread softly--children are at play
+  In the next room. Precede! I follow--
+
+_Enter +Lady+ CARLISLE with many +Attendants+._
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                      Me!
+  Follow me, Strafford, and be saved! The King?
+  [_To the KING._] Well--as you ordered, they are ranged without,
+  The convoy.... [_seeing the KING'S state._]
+  [_To STRAFFORD._] You know all, then! Why I thought
+  It looked best that the King should save you,--Charles
+  Alone; 'tis a shame that you should owe me aught.
+  Or no, not shame! Strafford, you'll not feel shame
+  At being saved by me?
+
+  _Hollis._             All true! Oh Strafford,
+  She saves you! all her deed! this lady's deed!
+  And is the boat in readiness? You, friend,
+  Are Billingsley, no doubt. Speak to her, Strafford!
+  See how she trembles, waiting for your voice!
+  The world's to learn its bravest story yet.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Talk afterward! Long nights in France enough,
+  To sit beneath the vines and talk of home.
+
+  _Strafford._ You love me, child? Ah, Strafford can be loved
+  As well as Vane! I could escape, then?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                       Haste!
+  Advance the torches, Bryan!
+
+  _Strafford._                I will die.
+  They call me proud: but England had no right,
+  When she encountered me--her strength to mine--
+  To find the chosen foe a craven. Girl,
+  I fought her to the utterance, I fell,
+  I am hers now, and I will die. Beside,
+  The lookers-on! Eliot is all about
+  This place, with his most uncomplaining brow.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                I think if you could know how much
+  I love you, you would be repaid, my friend!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Then, for my sake!
+
+  _Strafford._                        Even for your sweet sake,
+  I stay.
+
+  _Hollis._ For _their_ sake!
+
+  _Strafford._                To bequeath a stain?
+  Leave me! Girl, humor me and let me die!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Bid him escape--wake, King! Bid him escape!
+
+  _Strafford._ True, I will go! Die, and forsake the King?
+  I'll not draw back from the last service.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                And, after all, what is disgrace to me?
+  Let us come, child! That it should end this way!
+  Lead them! but I feel strangely: it was not
+  To end this way.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Lean--lean on me!
+
+  _Strafford._                       My King!
+  Oh, had he trusted me--his friend of friends!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ I can support him, Hollis!
+
+  _Strafford._                                Not this way!
+  This gate--I dreamed of it, this very gate.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ It opens on the river: our good boat
+  Is moored below, our friends are there.
+
+  _Strafford._                            The same:
+  Only with something ominous and dark,
+  Fatal, inevitable.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._   Strafford! Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._ Not by this gate! I feel what will be there!
+  I dreamed of it, I tell you: touch it not!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ To save the King,--Strafford, to save the King!
+
+[_As STRAFFORD opens the door, PYM is discovered with HAMPDEN, VANE,
+etc. STRAFFORD falls back; PYM follows slowly and confronts him._
+
+  _Pym._ Have I done well? Speak, England! Whose sole sake
+  I still have labored for, with disregard
+  To my own heart,--for whom my youth was made
+  Barren, my manhood waste, to offer up
+  Her sacrifice--this friend, this Wentworth here--
+  Who walked in youth with me, loved me, it may be,
+  And whom, for his forsaking England's cause,
+  I hunted by all means (trusting that she
+  Would sanctify all means) even to the block
+  Which waits for him. And saying this, I feel
+  No bitterer pang than first I felt, the hour
+  I swore that Wentworth might leave us, but I
+  Would never leave him: I do leave him now.
+  I render up my charge (be witness, God!)
+  To England who imposed it. I have done
+  Her bidding--poorly, wrongly,--it may be,
+  With ill effects--for I am weak, a man:
+  Still, I have done my best, my human best,
+  Not faltering for a moment. It is done.
+  And this said, if I say ... yes, I will say
+  I never loved but one man--David not
+  More Jonathan! Even thus, I love him now:
+  And look for my chief portion in that world
+  Where great hearts led astray are turned again,
+  (Soon it may be, and, certes, will be soon:
+  My mission over, I shall not live long,)--
+  Ay, here I know I talk--I dare and must,
+  Of England, and her great reward, as all
+  I look for there; but in my inmost heart,
+  Believe, I think of stealing quite away
+  To walk once more with Wentworth--my youth's friend
+  Purged from all error, gloriously renewed,
+  And Eliot shall not blame us. Then indeed....
+  This is no meeting, Wentworth! Tears increase
+  Too hot. A thin mist--is it blood?--enwraps
+  The face I loved once. Then, the meeting be!
+
+  _Strafford._ I have loved England too; we'll meet then, Pym.
+  As well die now! Youth is the only time
+  To think and to decide on a great course:
+  Manhood with action follows; but 'tis dreary,
+  To have to alter our whole life in age--
+  The time past, the strength gone! As well die now.
+  When we meet, Pym, I'd be set right--not now!
+  Best die. Then if there's any fault, fault too
+  Dies, smothered up. Poor grey old little Laud
+  May dream his dream out, of a perfect Church,
+  In some blind corner. And there's no one left.
+  I trust the King now wholly to you, Pym!
+  And yet, I know not: I shall not be there:
+  Friends fail--if he have any. And he's weak,
+  And loves the Queen, and.... Oh, my fate is nothing--
+  Nothing! But not that awful head--not that!
+
+  _Pym._ If England shall declare such will to me....
+
+  _Strafford._ Pym, you help England! I, that am to die,
+  What I must see! 'tis here--all here! My God,
+  Let me but gasp out, in one word of fire,
+  How thou wilt plague him, satiating hell!
+  What? England that you help, become through you
+  A green and putrefying charnel, left
+  Our children ... some of us have children, Pym--
+  Some who, without that, still must ever wear
+  A darkened brow, an over-serious look,
+  And never properly be young! No word?
+  What if I curse you? Send a strong curse forth
+  Clothed from my heart, lapped round with horror till
+  She's fit with her white face to walk the world
+  Scaring kind natures from your cause and you--
+  Then to sit down with you at the board-head,
+  The gathering for prayer.... O speak, but speak!
+  ... Creep up, and quietly follow each one home,
+  You, you, you, be a nestling care for each
+  To sleep with,--hardly moaning in his dreams.
+  She gnaws so quietly,--till, lo he starts,
+  Gets off with half a heart eaten away!
+  Oh, shall you 'scape with less if she's my child?
+  You will not say a word--to me--to Him?
+
+  _Pym._ If England shall declare such will to me....
+
+  _Strafford._ No, not for England now, not for Heaven now,--
+  See, Pym, for my sake, mine who kneel to you!
+  There, I will thank you for the death, my friend!
+  This is the meeting: let me love you well!
+
+  _Pym._ England,--I am thine own! Dost thou exact
+  That service? I obey thee to the end.
+
+  _Strafford._ O God, I shall die first--I shall die first!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A lively picture of Cavalier sentiment is given in the "Cavalier
+Tunes"--which ought to furnish conclusive proof that Browning does not
+always put himself into his work. They may be compared with the words
+set to Avison's march given in the last chapter which presents just as
+sympathetically "Roundhead" sentiment.
+
+
+    I. MARCHING ALONG
+
+    I
+
+    Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
+    Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing:
+    And, pressing a troop unable to stoop
+    And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,
+    Marched them along, fifty-score strong,
+    Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.
+
+[Illustration: The Tower: Traitors' Gate]
+
+    II
+
+    God for King Charles! Pym and such carles
+    To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous parles!
+    Cavaliers, up! Lips from the cup,
+    Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup
+    Till you're--
+
+      CHORUS.--_Marching along, fifty-score strong,
+                Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song._
+
+    III
+
+    Hampden to hell, and his obsequies' knell
+    Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well!
+    England, good cheer! Rupert is near!
+    Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here
+
+      CHORUS.--_Marching along, fifty-score strong,
+                Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song?_
+
+    IV
+
+    Then, God for King Charles! Pym and his snarls
+    To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles!
+    Hold by the right, you double your might;
+    So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight,
+
+      CHORUS.--_March we along, fifty-score strong,
+                Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!_
+
+
+    II. GIVE A ROUSE
+
+    I
+
+    King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
+    King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
+    Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
+    King Charles!
+
+    II
+
+    Who gave me the goods that went since?
+    Who raised me the house that sank once?
+    Who helped me to gold I spent since?
+    Who found me in wine you drank once?
+
+      CHORUS.--_King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
+                King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
+                Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
+                King Charles!_
+
+    III
+
+    To whom used my boy George quaff else,
+    By the old fool's side that begot him?
+    For whom did he cheer and laugh else,
+    While Noll's damned troopers shot him?
+
+      CHORUS.--_King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
+                King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
+                Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
+                King Charles!_
+
+
+    III. BOOT AND SADDLE
+
+    I
+
+    Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!
+    Rescue my castle before the hot day
+    Brightens to blue from its silvery grey,
+
+      CHORUS.--"_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_"
+
+    II
+
+    Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say;
+    Many's the friend there, will listen and pray
+    "God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay--"
+
+      CHORUS.--"_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_"
+
+    III
+
+    Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay,
+    Flouts Castle Brancepeth the Roundheads' array:
+    Who laughs, "Good fellows ere this, by my fay,"
+
+      CHORUS.--"_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_"
+
+    IV
+
+    Who? My wife Gertrude; that, honest and gay,
+    Laughs when you talk of surrendering, "Nay!
+    I've better counsellors; what counsel they?"
+
+      CHORUS.--"_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_"
+
+Though not illustrative of the subject in hand, "Martin Relph" is
+included here on account of the glimpse it gives of an episode,
+interesting in English History, though devoid of serious consequences,
+since it marked the final abortive struggle of a dying cause.
+
+An imaginary incident of the rebellion in the time of George II., forms
+the background of "Martin Relph," the point of the story being the
+life-long agony of reproach suffered by Martin who let his envy and
+jealousy conquer him at a crucial moment. The history of the attempt of
+Charles Edward to get back the crown of England, supported by a few
+thousand Highlanders, of his final defeat at the Battle of Culloden, and
+of the decay henceforth of Jacobitism, needs no telling. The treatment
+of spies as herein shown is a common-place of war-times, but that a
+reprieve exonerating the accused should be prevented from reaching its
+destination in time through the jealousy of the only person who saw it
+coming gives the episode a tragic touch lifting it into an atmosphere of
+peculiar individual pathos.
+
+
+    MARTIN RELPH
+
+    _My grandfather says he remembers he saw, when a youngster long ago,
+    On a bright May day, a strange old man, with a beard as white as snow,
+    Stand on the hill outside our town like a monument of woe,
+    And, striking his bare bald head the while, sob out the reason--so!_
+
+    If I last as long at Methuselah I shall never forgive myself:
+    But--God forgive me, that I pray, unhappy Martin Relph,
+    As coward, coward I call him--him, yes, him! Away from me!
+    Get you behind the man I am now, you man that I used to be!
+
+    What can have sewed my mouth up, set me a-stare, all eyes, no tongue?
+    People have urged "You visit a scare too hard on a lad so young!
+    You were taken aback, poor boy," they urge, "no time to regain
+          your wits:
+    Besides it had maybe cost you life." Ay, there is the cap which fits!
+
+    So, cap me, the coward,--thus! No fear! A cuff on the brow does good:
+    The feel of it hinders a worm inside which bores at the brain
+          for food.
+    See now, there certainly seems excuse: for a moment, I trust, dear
+          friends,
+    The fault was but folly, no fault of mine, or if mine, I have made
+          amends!
+
+    For, every day that is first of May, on the hill-top, here stand I,
+    Martin Relph, and I strike my brow, and publish the reason why,
+    When there gathers a crowd to mock the fool. No fool, friends,
+          since the bite
+    Of a worm inside is worse to bear: pray God I have balked him quite!
+
+    I'll tell you. Certainly much excuse! It came of the way they cooped
+    Us peasantry up in a ring just here, close huddling because
+          tight-hooped
+    By the red-coats round us villagers all: they meant we should see
+          the sight
+    And take the example,--see, not speak, for speech was the Captain's
+          right.
+
+    "You clowns on the slope, beware!" cried he: "This woman about to die
+    Gives by her fate fair warning to such acquaintance as play the spy.
+    Henceforth who meddle with matters of state above them perhaps will
+          learn
+    That peasants should stick to their plough-tail, leave to the King
+          the King's concern.
+
+    "Here's a quarrel that sets the land on fire, between King George
+          and his foes:
+    What call has a man of your kind--much less, a woman--to interpose?
+    Yet you needs must be meddling, folk like you, not foes--so much
+          the worse!
+    The many and loyal should keep themselves unmixed with the few
+          perverse.
+
+    "Is the counsel hard to follow? I gave it you plainly a month ago,
+    And where was the good? The rebels have learned just all that they
+          need to know.
+    Not a month since in we quietly marched: a week, and they had the
+          news,
+    From a list complete of our rank and file to a note of our caps and
+          shoes.
+
+    "All about all we did and all we were doing and like to do!
+    Only, I catch a letter by luck, and capture who wrote it, too.
+    Some of you men look black enough, but the milk-white face demure
+    Betokens the finger foul with ink: 'tis a woman who writes, be sure!
+
+    "Is it 'Dearie, how much I miss your mouth!'--good natural stuff,
+          she pens?
+    Some sprinkle of that, for a blind, of course: with talk about
+          cocks and hens,
+    How 'robin has built on the apple-tree, and our creeper which came
+          to grief
+    Through the frost, we feared, is twining afresh round casement in
+          famous leaf.'
+
+    "But all for a blind! She soon glides frank into 'Horrid the place
+          is grown
+    With Officers here and Privates there, no nook we may call our own:
+    And Farmer Giles has a tribe to house, and lodging will be to seek
+    For the second Company sure to come ('tis whispered) on Monday week.'
+
+    "And so to the end of the chapter! There! The murder you see, was out:
+    Easy to guess how the change of mind in the rebels was brought about!
+    Safe in the trap would they now lie snug, had treachery made no sign:
+    But treachery meets a just reward, no matter if fools malign!
+
+    "That traitors had played us false, was proved--sent news which fell
+          so pat:
+    And the murder was out--this letter of love, the sender of this sent
+          that!
+    'Tis an ugly job, though, all the same--a hateful, to have to deal
+    With a case of the kind, when a woman's in fault: we soldiers need
+          nerves of steel!
+
+    "So, I gave her a chance, despatched post-haste a message to
+          Vincent Parkes
+    Whom she wrote to; easy to find he was, since one of the King's
+          own clerks,
+    Ay, kept by the King's own gold in the town close by where the
+          rebels camp:
+    A sort of a lawyer, just the man to betray our sort--the scamp!
+
+    "'If her writing is simple and honest and only the lover-like stuff
+          it looks,
+    And if you yourself are a loyalist, nor down in the rebels' books,
+    Come quick,' said I, 'and in person prove you are each of you clear
+          of crime,
+    Or martial law must take its course: this day next week's the time!'
+
+    "Next week is now: does he come? Not he! Clean gone, our clerk, in
+          a trice!
+    He has left his sweetheart here in the lurch: no need of a warning
+          twice!
+    His own neck free, but his partner's fast in the noose still, here
+          she stands
+    To pay for her fault. 'Tis an ugly job: but soldiers obey commands.
+
+    "And hearken wherefore I make a speech! Should any acquaintance share
+    The folly that led to the fault that is now to be punished, let fools
+          beware!
+    Look black, if you please, but keep hands white: and, above all else,
+          keep wives--
+    Or sweethearts or what they may be--from ink! Not a word now, on your
+          lives!"
+
+    Black? but the Pit's own pitch was white to the Captain's face--the
+          brute
+    With the bloated cheeks and the bulgy nose and the bloodshot eyes
+          to suit!
+    He was muddled with wine, they say: more like, he was out of his
+          wits with fear;
+    He had but a handful of men, that's true,--a riot might cost him
+          dear.
+
+    And all that time stood Rosamund Page, with pinioned arms and face
+    Bandaged about, on the turf marked out for the party's firing-place.
+    I hope she was wholly with God: I hope 'twas His angel stretched
+          a hand
+    To steady her so, like the shape of stone you see in our
+          church-aisle stand.
+
+    I hope there was no vain fancy pierced the bandage to vex her eyes,
+    No face within which she missed without, no questions and no replies--
+    "Why did you leave me to die?"--"Because...." Oh, fiends, too soon
+          you grin
+    At merely a moment of hell, like that--such heaven as hell ended in!
+
+    Let mine end too! He gave the word, up went the guns in a line.
+    Those heaped on the hill were blind as dumb,--for, of all eyes,
+          only mine
+    Looked over the heads of the foremost rank. Some fell on their knees
+          in prayer,
+    Some sank to the earth, but all shut eyes, with a sole exception
+          there.
+
+    That was myself, who had stolen up last, had sidled behind the group:
+    I am highest of all on the hill-top, there stand fixed while the
+          others stoop!
+    From head to foot in a serpent's twine am I tightened: _I_ touch
+          ground?
+    No more than a gibbet's rigid corpse which the fetters rust around!
+
+    Can I speak, can I breathe, can I burst--aught else but see, see,
+          only see?
+    And see I do--for there comes in sight--a man, it sure must be!--
+    Who staggeringly, stumblingly rises, falls, rises, at random flings
+          his weight
+    On and on, anyhow onward--a man that's mad he arrives too late!
+
+    Else why does he wave a something white high-flourished above his
+          head?
+    Why does not he call, cry,--curse the fool!--why throw up his arms
+          instead?
+    O take his fist in your own face, fool! Why does not yourself shout
+          "Stay!
+    Here's a man comes rushing, might and main, with something he's mad
+          to say?"
+
+    And a minute, only a moment, to have hell-fire boil up in your brain,
+    And ere you can judge things right, choose heaven,--time's over,
+          repentance vain!
+    They level: a volley, a smoke and the clearing of smoke: I see no more
+    Of the man smoke hid, nor his frantic arms, nor the something white
+          he bore.
+
+    But stretched on the field, some half-mile off, is an object. Surely
+          dumb,
+    Deaf, blind were we struck, that nobody heard, not one of us saw him
+          come!
+    Has he fainted through fright? One may well believe! What is it he
+          holds so fast?
+    Turn him over, examine the face! Heyday! What, Vincent Parkes at last?
+
+    Dead! dead as she, by the self-same shot: one bullet has ended both,
+    Her in the body and him in the soul. They laugh at our plighted troth.
+    "Till death us do part?" Till death us do join past parting--that
+          sounds like
+    Betrothal indeed! O Vincent Parkes, what need has my fist to strike?
+
+    I helped you: thus were you dead and wed: one bound, and your soul
+          reached hers!
+    There is clenched in your hand the thing, signed, sealed, the paper
+          which plain avers
+    She is innocent, innocent, plain as print, with the King's Arms
+          broad engraved:
+    No one can hear, but if any one high on the hill can see, she's saved!
+
+    And torn his garb and bloody his lips with heart-break--plain it grew
+    How the week's delay had been brought about: each guess at the end
+          proved true.
+    It was hard to get at the folk in power: such waste of time! and
+          then
+    Such pleading and praying, with, all the while, his lamb in the
+          lion's den!
+
+    And at length when he wrung their pardon out, no end to the stupid
+          forms--
+    The license and leave: I make no doubt--what wonder if passion warms
+    The pulse in a man if you play with his heart?--he was something
+          hasty in speech;
+    Anyhow, none would quicken the work: he had to beseech, beseech!
+
+    And the thing once signed, sealed, safe in his grasp,--what followed
+          but fresh delays?
+    For the floods were out, he was forced to take such a roundabout of
+          ways!
+    And 'twas "Halt there!" at every turn of the road, since he had to
+          cross the thick
+    Of the red-coats: what did they care for him and his "Quick, for
+          God's sake, quick!"
+
+    Horse? but he had one: had it how long? till the first knave smirked
+          "You brag
+    Yourself a friend of the King's? then lend to a King's friend here
+          your nag!"
+    Money to buy another? Why, piece by piece they plundered him still,
+    With their "Wait you must;--no help: if aught can help you, a guinea
+          will!"
+
+    And a borough there was--I forget the name--whose Mayor must have
+          the bench
+    Of Justices ranged to clear a doubt: for "Vincent," thinks he,
+          sounds French!
+    It well may have driven him daft, God knows! all man can certainly
+          know
+    Is--rushing and falling and rising, at last he arrived in a
+          horror--so!
+
+    When a word, cry, gasp, would have rescued both! Ay bite me! The
+          worm begins
+    At his work once more. Had cowardice proved--that only--my sin of
+          sins!
+    Friends, look you here! Suppose ... suppose.... But mad I am, needs
+          must be!
+    Judas the Damned would never have dared such a sin as I dream! For,
+          see!
+
+    Suppose I had sneakingly loved her myself, my wretched self, and
+          dreamed
+    In the heart of me "She were better dead than happy and his!"--while
+          gleamed
+    A light from hell as I spied the pair in a perfectest embrace,
+    He the savior and she the saved,--bliss born of the very murder-place!
+
+    No! Say I was scared, friends! Call me fool and coward, but nothing
+          worse!
+    Jeer at the fool and gibe at the coward! 'Twas ever the coward's
+          curse
+    That fear breeds fancies in such: such take their shadow for
+          substance still,
+    --A fiend at their back. I liked poor Parkes,--loved Vincent, if
+          you will!
+
+    And her--why, I said "Good morrow" to her, "Good even," and nothing
+          more:
+    The neighborly way! She was just to me as fifty had been before.
+    So, coward it is and coward shall be! There's a friend, now!
+          Thanks! A drink
+    Of water I wanted: and now I can walk, get home by myself, I think.
+
+This poem, on an incident in Clive's life, is also included on account
+of its English historical setting.
+
+The remarkable career of Robert Clive cannot be gone into here. Suffice
+it to refresh one's memory with a few principal events of his life. He
+was born in Shopshire in 1725. He entered the service of the East India
+Company at eighteen and was sent to Madras. Here, on account of his
+falling into debt, and being in danger of losing his situation, he twice
+tried to shoot himself. The pistol failed to go off, however, and he
+became impressed with the idea that some great destiny was awaiting him.
+His feeling was fully realized as his subsequent career in India shows.
+At twenty-seven, when he returned to England he had made the English the
+first military power in India. On his return to India (1755-59) he took
+a further step and secured for the English a political supremacy.
+Finally, on his last visit, he crowned his earlier exploits by putting
+the English dominance on a sounder basis of integrity than it had before
+been.
+
+The incident related in the poem by the old man, Browning heard from
+Mrs. Jameson, who had shortly before heard it from Macaulay at Lansdowne
+House. Macaulay mentions it in his essay: "Of his personal courage he
+had, while still a writer [clerk] given signal proof by a desperate duel
+with a military bully who was the terror of Fort St. David."
+
+The old gentleman in the poem evidently mixed up his dates slightly, for
+he says this incident occurred when Clive was twenty-one, and he
+represents him as committing suicide twenty-five years afterwards. Clive
+was actually forty-nine when he took his own life.
+
+
+    CLIVE
+
+    I and Clive were friends--and why not? Friends! I think you laugh,
+          my lad.
+    Clive it was gave England India, while your father gives--egad,
+    England nothing but the graceless boy who lures him on to speak--
+    "Well, Sir, you and Clive were comrades--" with a tongue thrust in
+          your cheek!
+    Very true: in my eyes, your eyes, all the world's eyes, Clive was man,
+    I was, am and ever shall be--mouse, nay, mouse of all its clan
+    Sorriest sample, if you take the kitchen's estimate for fame;
+    While the man Clive--he fought Plassy, spoiled the clever foreign
+          game,
+    Conquered and annexed and Englished!
+                              Never mind! As o'er my punch
+    (You away) I sit of evenings,--silence, save for biscuit-crunch,
+    Black, unbroken,--thought grows busy, thrids each pathway of old
+          years,
+    Notes this forthright, that meander, till the long-past life appears
+    Like an outspread map of country plodded through, each mile and rood,
+    Once, and well remembered still: I'm startled in my solitude
+    Ever and anon by--what's the sudden mocking light that breaks
+    On me as I slap the table till no rummer-glass but shakes
+    While I ask--aloud, I do believe, God help me!--"Was it thus?
+    Can it be that so I faltered, stopped when just one step for us--"
+    (Us,--you were not born, I grant, but surely some day born would be)
+    "--One bold step had gained a province" (figurative talk, you see)
+    "Got no end of wealth and honor,--yet I stood stock still no less?"
+    --"For I was not Clive," you comment: but it needs no Clive to guess
+    Wealth were handy, honor ticklish, did no writing on the wall
+    Warn me "Trespasser, 'ware man-traps!" Him who braves that
+          notice--call
+    Hero! none of such heroics suit myself who read plain words,
+    Doff my hat, and leap no barrier. Scripture says the land's the
+          Lord's:
+    Louts them--what avail the thousand, noisy in a smock-frocked ring,
+    All-agog to have me trespass, clear the fence, be Clive their king?
+    Higher warrant must you show me ere I set one foot before
+    T'other in that dark direction, though I stand for evermore
+    Poor as Job and meek as Moses. Evermore? No! By-and-by
+    Job grows rich and Moses valiant, Clive turns out less wise than I.
+    Don't object "Why call him friend, then?" Power is power, my boy,
+          and still
+    Marks a man,--God's gift magnific, exercised for good or ill.
+    You've your boot now on my hearth-rug, tread what was a tiger's skin:
+    Rarely such a royal monster as I lodged the bullet in!
+    True, he murdered half a village, so his own death came to pass;
+    Still, for size and beauty, cunning, courage--ah, the brute he was!
+    Why, that Clive,--that youth, that greenhorn, that quill-driving
+          clerk, in fine,--
+    He sustained a siege in Arcot.... But the world knows! Pass the wine.
+
+    Where did I break off at? How bring Clive in? Oh, you mentioned
+          "fear"!
+    Just so: and, said I, that minds me of a story you shall hear.
+
+    We were friends then, Clive and I: so, when the clouds, about the orb
+    Late supreme, encroaching slowly, surely, threatened to absorb
+    Ray by ray its noontide brilliance,--friendship might, with
+          steadier eye
+    Drawing near, bear what had burned else, now no blaze--all majesty.
+    Too much bee's-wing floats my figure? Well, suppose a castle's new:
+    None presume to climb its ramparts, none find foothold sure for shoe
+    'Twixt those squares and squares of granite plating the impervious
+          pile
+    As his scale-mail's warty iron cuirasses a crocodile.
+    Reels that castle thunder-smitten, storm-dismantled? From without
+    Scrambling up by crack and crevice, every cockney prates about
+    Towers--the heap he kicks now! turrets--just the measure of his cane!
+    Will that do? Observe moreover--(same similitude again)--
+    Such a castle seldom crumbles by sheer stress of cannonade:
+    'Tis when foes are foiled and fighting's finished that vile rains
+          invade,
+    Grass o'ergrows, o'ergrows till night-birds congregating find no holes
+    Fit to build in like the topmost sockets made for banner-poles.
+    So Clive crumbled slow in London--crashed at last.
+
+                                                      A week before,
+    Dining with him,--after trying churchyard-chat of days of yore,--
+    Both of us stopped, tired as tombstones, head-piece, foot-piece,
+          when they lean
+    Each to other, drowsed in fog-smoke, o'er a coffined Past between.
+    As I saw his head sink heavy, guessed the soul's extinguishment
+    By the glazing eyeball, noticed how the furtive fingers went
+    Where a drug-box skulked behind the honest liquor,--"One more throw
+    Try for Clive!" thought I: "Let's venture some good rattling
+          question!" So--
+    "Come, Clive, tell us"--out I blurted--"what to tell in turn,
+          years hence,
+    When my boy--suppose I have one--asks me on what evidence
+    I maintain my friend of Plassy proved a warrior every whit
+    Worth your Alexanders, Cæsars, Marlboroughs and--what said Pitt?--
+    Frederick the Fierce himself! Clive told me once"--I want to say--
+    "Which feat out of all those famous doings bore the bell away
+    --In his own calm estimation, mark you, not the mob's rough guess--
+    Which stood foremost as evincing what Clive called courageousness!
+    Come! what moment of the minute, what speck-center in the wide
+    Circle of the action saw your mortal fairly deified?
+    (Let alone that filthy sleep-stuff, swallow bold this wholesome Port!)
+    If a friend has leave to question,--when were you most brave, in
+          short?"
+
+    Up he arched his brows o' the instant--formidably Clive again.
+    "When was I most brave? I'd answer, were the instance half as plain
+    As another instance that's a brain-lodged crystal--curse it!--here
+    Freezing when my memory touches--ugh!--the time I felt most fear.
+    Ugh! I cannot say for certain if I showed fear--anyhow,
+    Fear I felt, and, very likely, shuddered, since I shiver now."
+
+    "Fear!" smiled I. "Well, that's the rarer: that's a specimen to seek,
+    Ticket up in one's museum, _Mind-Freaks_, _Lord Clive's Fear_,
+          _Unique_!"
+
+    Down his brows dropped. On the table painfully he pored as though
+    Tracing, in the stains and streaks there, thoughts encrusted long ago.
+    When he spoke 'twas like a lawyer reading word by word some will,
+    Some blind jungle of a statement,--beating on and on until
+    Out there leaps fierce life to fight with.
+
+                                        "This fell in my factor-days.
+    Desk-drudge, slaving at St. David's, one must game, or drink, or
+          craze.
+    I chose gaming: and,--because your high-flown gamesters hardly take
+    Umbrage at a factor's elbow if the factor pays his stake,--
+    I was winked at in a circle where the company was choice,
+    Captain This and Major That, men high of color, loud of voice,
+    Yet indulgent, condescending to the modest juvenile
+    Who not merely risked but lost his hard-earned guineas with a smile.
+
+    "Down I sat to cards, one evening,--had for my antagonist
+    Somebody whose name's a secret--you'll know why--so, if you list,
+    Call him Cock o' the Walk, my scarlet son of Mars from head to heel!
+    Play commenced: and, whether Cocky fancied that a clerk must feel
+    Quite sufficient honor came of bending over one green baize,
+    I the scribe with him the warrior,--guessed no penman dared to raise
+    Shadow of objection should the honor stay but playing end
+    More or less abruptly,--whether disinclined he grew to spend
+    Practice strictly scientific on a booby born to stare
+    At--not ask of--lace-and-ruffles if the hand they hide plays fair,--
+    Anyhow, I marked a movement when he bade me 'Cut!'
+
+                                                      "I rose.
+    'Such the new manoeuvre, Captain? I'm a novice: knowledge grows.
+    What, you force a card, you cheat, Sir?'
+
+                                            "Never did a thunder-clap
+    Cause emotion, startle Thyrsis locked with Chloe in his lap,
+    As my word and gesture (down I flung my cards to join the pack)
+    Fired the man of arms, whose visage, simply red before, turned black.
+
+    "When he found his voice, he stammered 'That expression once again!'
+
+    "'Well, you forced a card and cheated!'
+
+                                            "'Possibly a factor's brain,
+    Busied with his all-important balance of accounts, may deem
+    Weighing words superfluous trouble: _cheat_ to clerkly ears may seem
+    Just the joke for friends to venture: but we are not friends, you see!
+    When a gentleman is joked with,--if he's good at repartee,
+    He rejoins, as do I--Sirrah, on your knees, withdraw in full!
+    Beg my pardon, or be sure a kindly bullet through your skull
+    Lets in light and teaches manners to what brain it finds! Choose
+          quick--
+    Have your life snuffed out or, kneeling, pray me trim yon
+          candle-wick!'
+
+    "'Well, you cheated!'
+
+                          "Then outbroke a howl from all the friends
+          around.
+    To his feet sprang each in fury, fists were clenched and teeth were
+          ground.
+    'End it! no time like the present! Captain, yours were our disgrace!
+    No delay, begin and finish! Stand back, leave the pair a space!
+    Let civilians be instructed: henceforth simply ply the pen,
+    Fly the sword! This clerk's no swordsman? Suit him with a pistol,
+          then!
+    Even odds! A dozen paces 'twixt the most and least expert
+    Make a dwarf a giant's equal: nay, the dwarf, if he's alert,
+    Likelier hits the broader target!'
+
+                                        "Up we stood accordingly.
+    As they handed me the weapon, such was my soul's thirst to try
+    Then and there conclusions with this bully, tread on and stamp out
+    Every spark of his existence, that,--crept close to, curled about
+    By that toying tempting teasing fool-fore-finger's middle joint,--
+    Don't you guess?--the trigger yielded. Gone my chance! and at the
+          point
+    Of such prime success moreover: scarce an inch above his head
+    Went my ball to hit the wainscot. He was living, I was dead.
+
+    "Up he marched in flaming triumph--'twas his right, mind!--up, within
+    Just an arm's length. 'Now, my clerkling,' chuckled Cocky with a grin
+    As the levelled piece quite touched me, 'Now, Sir Counting-House,
+          repeat
+    That expression which I told you proved bad manners! Did I cheat?'
+
+    "'Cheat you did, you knew you cheated, and, this moment, know as well.
+    As for me, my homely breeding bids you--fire and go to Hell!'
+
+    "Twice the muzzle touched my forehead. Heavy barrel, flurried wrist,
+    Either spoils a steady lifting. Thrice: then, 'Laugh at Hell who list,
+    I can't! God's no fable either. Did this boy's eye wink once? No!
+    There's no standing him and Hell and God all three against me,--so,
+    I did cheat!'
+
+                  "And down he threw the pistol, out rushed--by the door
+    Possibly, but, as for knowledge if by chimney, roof or floor,
+    He effected disappearance--I'll engage no glance was sent
+    That way by a single starer, such a blank astonishment
+    Swallowed up their senses: as for speaking--mute they stood as mice.
+
+    "Mute not long, though! Such reaction, such a hubbub in a trice!
+    'Rogue and rascal! Who'd have thought it? What's to be expected next,
+    When His Majesty's Commission serves a sharper as pretext
+    For.... But where's the need of wasting time now? Nought requires
+          delay:
+    Punishment the Service cries for: let disgrace be wiped away
+    Publicly, in good broad daylight! Resignation? No, indeed
+    Drum and fife must play the Rogue's March, rank and file be free to
+          speed
+    Tardy marching on the rogue's part by appliance in the rear
+    --Kicks administered shall right this wronged civilian,--never fear,
+    Mister Clive, for--though a clerk--you bore yourself--suppose we say--
+    Just as would beseem a soldier!'
+
+                                      "'Gentlemen, attention--pray!
+    First, one word!'
+
+                      "I passed each speaker severally in review.
+    When I had precise their number, names and styles, and fully knew
+    Over whom my supervision thenceforth must extend,--why, then----
+
+    "'Some five minutes since, my life lay--as you all saw, gentlemen--
+    At the mercy of your friend there. Not a single voice was raised
+    In arrest of judgment, not one tongue--before my powder blazed--
+    Ventured "Can it be the youngster blundered, really seemed to mark
+    Some irregular proceeding? We conjecture in the dark,
+    Guess at random,--still, for sake of fair play--what if for a freak,
+    In a fit of absence,--such things have been!--if our friend proved
+          weak
+    --What's the phrase?--corrected fortune! Look into the case, at
+          least!"
+    Who dared interpose between the altar's victim and the priest?
+    Yet he spared me! You eleven! Whosoever, all or each,
+    To the disadvantage of the man who spared me, utters speech
+    --To his face, behind his back,--that speaker has to do with me:
+    Me who promise, if positions change and mine the chance should be,
+    Not to imitate your friend and waive advantage!'
+
+                                                    "Twenty-five
+    Years ago this matter happened: and 'tis certain," added Clive,
+    "Never, to my knowledge, did Sir Cocky have a single breath
+    Breathed against him: lips were closed throughout his life, or
+          since his death,
+    For if he be dead or living I can tell no more than you.
+    All I know is--Cocky had one chance more; how he used it,--grew
+    Out of such unlucky habits, or relapsed, and back again
+    Brought the late-ejected devil with a score more in his train,--
+    That's for you to judge. Reprieval I procured, at any rate.
+    Ugh--the memory of that minute's fear makes gooseflesh rise! Why prate
+    Longer? You've my story, there's your instance: fear I did, you see!"
+
+    "Well"--I hardly kept from laughing--"if I see it, thanks must be
+    Wholly to your Lordship's candor. Not that--in a common case--
+    When a bully caught at cheating thrusts a pistol in one's face,
+    I should underrate, believe me, such a trial to the nerve!
+    'Tis no joke, at one-and-twenty, for a youth to stand nor swerve.
+    Fear I naturally look for--unless, of all men alive,
+    I am forced to make exception when I come to Robert Clive.
+    Since at Arcot, Plassy, elsewhere, he and death--the whole world
+          knows--
+    Came to somewhat closer quarters."
+                                      Quarters? Had we come to blows,
+    Clive and I, you had not wondered--up he sprang so, out he rapped
+    Such a round of oaths--no matter! I'll endeavor to adapt
+    To our modern usage words he--well, 'twas friendly license--flung
+    At me like so many fire-balls, fast as he could wag his tongue.
+
+    "You--a soldier? You--at Plassy? Yours the faculty to nick
+    Instantaneously occasion when your foe, if lightning-quick,
+    --At his mercy, at his malice,--has you, through some stupid inch
+    Undefended in your bulwark? Thus laid open,--not to flinch
+    --That needs courage, you'll concede me. Then, look here! Suppose
+          the man,
+    Checking his advance, his weapon still extended, not a span
+    Distant from my temple,--curse him!--quietly had bade me 'There!
+    Keep your life, calumniator!--worthless life I freely spare:
+    Mine you freely would have taken--murdered me and my good fame
+    Both at once--and all the better! Go, and thank your own bad aim
+    Which permits me to forgive you!' What if, with such words as these,
+    He had cast away his weapon? How should I have borne me, please?
+    Nay, I'll spare you pains and tell you. This, and only this,
+          remained--
+    Pick his weapon up and use it on myself. I so had gained
+    Sleep the earlier, leaving England probably to pay on still
+    Rent and taxes for half India, tenant at the Frenchman's will."
+
+    "Such the turn," said I, "the matter takes with you? Then I abate
+    --No, by not one jot nor tittle,--of your act my estimate.
+    Fear--I wish I could detect there: courage fronts me, plain enough--
+    Call it desperation, madness--never mind! for here's in rough
+    Why, had mine been such a trial, fear had overcome disgrace.
+    True, disgrace were hard to bear: but such a rush against God's face
+    --None of that for me, Lord Plassy, since I go to church at times,
+    Say the creed my mother taught me! Many years in foreign climes
+    Rub some marks away--not all, though! We poor sinners reach life's
+          brink,
+    Overlook what rolls beneath it, recklessly enough, but think
+    There's advantage in what's left us--ground to stand on, time to call
+    'Lord, have mercy!' ere we topple over--do not leap, that's all!"
+
+    Oh, he made no answer,--re-absorbed into his cloud. I caught
+    Something like "Yes--courage: only fools will call it fear."
+                                                                If aught
+    Comfort you, my great unhappy hero Clive, in that I heard,
+    Next week, how your own hand dealt you doom, and uttered just the word
+    "Fearfully courageous!"--this, be sure, and nothing else I groaned.
+    I'm no Clive, nor parson either: Clive's worst deed--we'll hope
+          condoned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+SOCIAL ASPECTS OF ENGLISH LIFE
+
+
+Browning's poetry presents no such complete panorama of phases of social
+life in England as it does of those in Italy, perhaps, because there is
+a poise and solidity about the English character which does not lend
+itself to so great a variety of mood as one may find in the peculiarly
+artistic temperament of the Italians, especially those of the
+Renaissance period. Even such irregular proceedings as murders have
+their philosophical after-claps which show their usefulness in the
+divine scheme of things, while unfortunate love affairs work such
+beneficent results in character that they are shorn of much of their
+tragedy of sorrow. There is quite a group of love-lyrics with no
+definite setting that might be put down as English in temper. It does
+not require much imagination to think of the lover who sings so lofty a
+strain in "One Way of Love" as English:--
+
+    I
+
+    All June I bound the rose in sheaves.
+    Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves
+    And strew them where Pauline may pass.
+    She will not turn aside? Alas!
+    Let them lie. Suppose they die?
+    The chance was they might take her eye.
+
+    II
+
+    How many a month I strove to suit
+    These stubborn fingers to the lute!
+    To-day I venture all I know.
+    She will not hear my music? So!
+    Break the string; fold music's wing:
+    Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!
+
+    III
+
+    My whole life long I learned to love.
+    This hour my utmost art I prove
+    And speak my passion--heaven or hell?
+    She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!
+    Lose who may--I still can say,
+    Those who win heaven, blest are they!
+
+And is not this treatment of a "pretty woman" more English than not?
+
+
+    A PRETTY WOMAN
+
+    I
+
+    That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers,
+        And the blue eye
+        Dear and dewy,
+    And that infantine fresh air of hers!
+
+    II
+
+    To think men cannot take you, Sweet,
+        And enfold you,
+        Ay, and hold you,
+    And so keep you what they make you, Sweet!
+
+    III
+
+    You like us for a glance, you know--
+        For a word's sake
+        Or a sword's sake,
+    All's the same, whate'er the chance, you know.
+
+    IV
+
+    And in turn we make you ours, we say--
+        You and youth too,
+        Eyes and mouth too,
+    All the face composed of flowers, we say.
+
+    V
+
+    All's our own, to make the most of, Sweet--
+        Sing and say for,
+        Watch and pray for,
+    Keep a secret or go boast of, Sweet!
+
+    VI
+
+    But for loving, why, you would not, Sweet,
+        Though we prayed you,
+        Paid you, brayed you
+    In a mortar--for you could not, Sweet!
+
+    VII
+
+    So, we leave the sweet face fondly there:
+        Be its beauty
+        Its sole duty!
+    Let all hope of grace beyond, lie there!
+
+    VIII
+
+    And while the face lies quiet there,
+        Who shall wonder
+        That I ponder
+    A conclusion? I will try it there.
+
+    IX
+
+    As,--why must one, for the love foregone,
+        Scout mere liking?
+        Thunder-striking
+    Earth,--the heaven, we looked above for, gone!
+
+    X
+
+    Why, with beauty, needs there money be,
+        Love with liking?
+        Crush the fly-king
+    In his gauze, because no honey-bee?
+
+    XI
+
+    May not liking be so simple-sweet,
+        If love grew there
+        'Twould undo there
+    All that breaks the cheek to dimples sweet?
+
+    XII
+
+    Is the creature too imperfect, say?
+        Would you mend it
+        And so end it?
+    Since not all addition perfects aye!
+
+    XIII
+
+    Or is it of its kind, perhaps,
+        Just perfection--
+        Whence, rejection
+    Of a grace not to its mind, perhaps?
+
+    XIV
+
+    Shall we burn up, tread that face at once
+        Into tinder,
+        And so hinder
+    Sparks from kindling all the place at once?
+
+    XV
+
+    Or else kiss away one's soul on her?
+        Your love-fancies!
+        --A sick man sees
+    Truer, when his hot eyes roll on her!
+
+    XVI
+
+    Thus the craftsman thinks to grace the rose,--
+        Plucks a mould-flower
+        For his gold flower,
+    Uses fine things that efface the rose:
+
+    XVII
+
+    Rosy rubies make its cup more rose,
+        Precious metals
+        Ape the petals,--
+    Last, some old king locks it up, morose!
+
+    XVIII
+
+    Then how grace a rose? I know a way!
+        Leave it, rather.
+        Must you gather?
+    Smell, kiss, wear it--at last, throw away!
+
+"The Last Ride Together" may be cited as another example of the
+philosophy which an Englishman, or at any rate a Browning, can evolve
+from a more or less painful episode.
+
+
+    THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER
+
+    I
+
+    I said--Then, dearest, since 'tis so,
+    Since now at length my fate I know,
+    Since nothing all my love avails,
+    Since all my life seemed meant for, fails,
+      Since this was written and needs must be--
+    My whole heart rises up to bless
+    Your name in pride and thankfulness!
+    Take back the hope you gave,--I claim
+    Only a memory of the same,
+    --And this beside, if you will not blame,
+      Your leave for one more last ride with me.
+
+    II
+
+    My mistress bent that brow of hers;
+    Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs
+    When pity would be softening through,
+    Fixed me a breathing-while or two
+      With life or death in the balance: right!
+    The blood replenished me again;
+    My last thought was at least not vain:
+    I and my mistress, side by side
+    Shall be together, breathe and ride,
+    So, one day more am I deified.
+      Who knows but the world may end to-night?
+
+    III
+
+    Hush! if you saw some western cloud
+    All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed
+    By many benedictions--sun's--
+    And moon's and evening-star's at once--
+      And so, you, looking and loving best,
+    Conscious grew, your passion drew
+    Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too,
+    Down on you, near and yet more near,
+    Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!--
+    Thus leant she and lingered--joy and fear!
+      Thus lay she a moment on my breast.
+
+    IV
+
+    Then we began to ride. My soul
+    Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll
+    Freshening and fluttering in the wind.
+    Past hopes already lay behind.
+      What need to strive with a life awry?
+    Had I said that, had I done this,
+    So might I gain, so might I miss.
+    Might she have loved me? just as well
+    She might have hated, who can tell!
+    Where had I been now if the worst befell?
+      And here we are riding, she and I.
+
+    V
+
+    Fail I alone, in words and deeds?
+    Why, all men strive and who succeeds?
+    We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,
+    Saw other regions, cities new,
+      As the world rushed by on either side.
+    I thought,--All labor, yet no less
+    Bear up beneath their unsuccess.
+    Look at the end of work, contrast
+    The petty done, the undone vast,
+    This present of theirs with the hopeful past!
+      I hoped she would love me; here we ride.
+
+    VI
+
+    What hand and brain went ever paired?
+    What heart alike conceived and dared?
+    What act proved all its thought had been?
+    What will but felt the fleshly screen?
+      We ride and I see her bosom heave.
+    There's many a crown for who can reach.
+    Ten lines, a stateman's life in each!
+    The flag stuck on a heap of bones,
+    A soldier's doing! what atones?
+    They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones.
+      My riding is better, by their leave.
+
+    VII
+
+    What does it all mean, poet? Well,
+    Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell
+    What we felt only; you expressed
+    You hold things beautiful the best,
+      And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.
+    'Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then,
+    Have you yourself what's best for men?
+    Are you--poor, sick, old ere your time--
+    Nearer one whit your own sublime
+    Than we who never have turned a rhyme?
+      Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride.
+
+    VIII
+
+    And you, great sculptor--so, you gave
+    A score of years to Art, her slave,
+    And that's your Venus, whence we turn
+    To yonder girl that fords the burn!
+      You acquiesce, and shall I repine?
+    What, man of music, you grown grey
+    With notes and nothing else to say,
+    Is this your sole praise from a friend,
+    "Greatly his opera's strains intend,
+    But in music we know how fashions end!"
+      I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.
+
+    IX
+
+    Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate
+    Proposed bliss here should sublimate
+    My being--had I signed the bond--
+    Still one must lead some life beyond,
+      Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.
+    This foot once planted on the goal,
+    This glory-garland round my soul,
+    Could I descry such? Try and test!
+    I sink back shuddering from the quest.
+    Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?
+      Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride.
+
+    X
+
+    And yet--she has not spoke so long!
+    What if heaven be that, fair and strong
+    At life's best, with our eyes upturned
+    Whither life's flower is first discerned,
+      We, fixed so, ever should so abide?
+    What if we still ride on, we two
+    With life for ever old yet new,
+    Changed not in kind but in degree,
+    The instant made eternity,--
+    And heaven just prove that I and she
+      Ride, ride together, for ever ride?
+
+"James Lee's Wife" is also English in temper as the English name
+indicates sufficiently, though the scene is laid out of England. This
+wife has her agony over the faithless husband, but she plans vengeance
+against neither him nor the other women who attract him. She realizes
+that his nature is not a deep and serious one like her own, and in her
+highest reach she sees that her own nature has been lifted up by means
+of her true and loyal feeling, that this gain to herself is her reward,
+or will be in some future state. The stanzas giving this thought are
+among the most beautiful in the poem.
+
+
+    AMONG THE ROCKS
+
+    I
+
+    Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth,
+    This autumn morning! How he sets his bones
+    To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet
+    For the ripple to run over in its mirth;
+      Listening the while, where on the heap of stones
+    The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.
+
+    II
+
+    That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true;
+      Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows.
+    If you loved only what were worth your love,
+    Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you:
+      Make the low nature better by your throes!
+    Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!
+
+Two of the longer poems have distinctly English settings: "A Blot in the
+Scutcheon" and "The Inn Album;" while, of the shorter ones, "Ned Bratts"
+has an English theme, and "Halbert and Hob" though not founded upon an
+English story has been given an English _mis en scène_ by Browning.
+
+In the "Blot," we get a glimpse of Eighteenth Century aristocratic
+England. The estate over which Lord Tresham presided was one of those
+typical country kingdoms, which have for centuries been so conspicuous a
+feature of English life, and which through the assemblies of the great,
+often gathered within their walls, wielded potent influences upon
+political life. The play opens with the talk of a group of retainers,
+such as formed the household of these lordly establishments. It was not
+a rare thing for the servants of the great to be admitted into intimacy
+with the family, as was the case with Gerard. They were often people of
+a superior grade, hardly to be classed with servants in the sense
+unfortunately given to that word to-day.
+
+Besides the house and the park which figure in the play, such an estate
+had many acres of land devoted to agriculture--some of it, called the
+demesne, which was cultivated for the benefit of the owner, and some
+land held in villeinage which the unfree tenants, called villeins, were
+allowed to till for themselves. All this land might be in one large
+tract, or the demesne might be separate from the other. Mertoun speaks
+of their demesnes touching each other. Over the villeins presided the
+Bailiff, who kept strict watch to see that they performed their work
+punctually. His duties were numerous, for he directed the ploughing,
+sowing and reaping, gave out the seed, watched the harvest, gathered and
+looked after the stock and horses. A church, a mill and an inn were
+often included in such an estate.
+
+[Illustration: An English Manor House]
+
+Pride in their ancient lineage was, of course, common to noble families,
+though probably few of them could boast as Tresham did that there was no
+blot in their escutcheon. Some writers have even declared that most of
+the nobles are descended from tradesmen. According to one of these "The
+great bulk of our peerage is comparatively modern, so far as the titles
+go; but it is not the less noble that it has been recruited to so large
+an extent from the ranks of honorable industry. In olden times, the
+wealth and commerce of London, conducted as it was by energetic and
+enterprising men was a prolific source of peerages. Thus, the earldom
+of Cornwallis was founded by Thomas Cornwallis, the Cheapside merchant;
+that of Essex by William Capel, the draper; and that of Craven by
+William Craven, the merchant tailor. The modern Earl of Warwick is not
+descended from 'the King-maker,' but from William Greville, the
+woolstapler; whilst the modern Dukes of Northumberland find their head,
+not in the Percies, but in Hugh Smithson, a respectable London
+apothecary. The founders of the families of Dartmouth, Radnor, Ducie,
+and Pomfret were respectively a skinner, a silk manufacturer, a merchant
+tailor, and a Calais merchant; whilst the founders of the peerages of
+Tankerville, Dormer, and Coventry were mercers. The ancestors of Earl
+Romney, and Lord Dudley and Ward, were goldsmiths and jewelers; and Lord
+Dacres was a banker in the reign of Charles I., as Lord Overstone is in
+that of Queen Victoria. Edward Osborne, the founder of the dukedom of
+Leeds, was apprentice to William Hewet, a rich cloth worker on London
+Bridge, whose only daughter he courageously rescued from drowning, by
+leaping into the Thames after her, and eventually married. Among other
+peerages founded by trade are those of Fitzwilliam, Leigh, Petre,
+Cowper, Darnley, Hill, and Carrington."
+
+Perhaps the imaginary house of Tresham may be said to find its closest
+counterpart in the Sidney family, for many generations owners of
+Penshurst, and with a traditional character according to which the men
+were all brave and the women were all pure. Sir Philip Sidney was
+himself the type of all the virtues of the family, while his father's
+care for his proper bringing up was not unlike Tresham's for Mildred. In
+the words of a recent writer: "The most famous scion of this Kentish
+house was above all things, the moral and intellectual product of
+Penshurst Place. In the park may still be seen an avenue of trees, under
+which the father, in his afternoon walks with the boy, tested his
+recollection of the morning's lessons conned with the tutor. There, too,
+it was that he impressed on the lad those maxims for the conduct of
+life, afterwards emphasized in the correspondence still extant among the
+Penshurst archives.
+
+"Philip was to begin every day with lifting up his mind to the Almighty
+in hearty prayer, as well as feelingly digesting all he prayed for. He
+was also, early or late, to be obedient to others, so that in due time
+others might obey him. The secret of all success lay in a moderate diet
+with rare use of wine. A gloomy brow was, however, to be avoided.
+Rather should the youth give himself to be merry, so as not to
+degenerate from his father. Above all things should he keep his wit from
+biting words, or indeed from too much talk of any kind. Had not nature
+ramparted up the tongue with teeth and the lips with hair as reins and
+bridles against the tongue's loose use. Heeding this, he must be sure to
+tell no untruth even in trifles; for that was a naughty custom, nor
+could there be a greater reproach to a gentleman than to be accounted a
+liar. _Noblesse oblige_ formed the keynote of the oral and written
+precepts with which the future Sir Philip Sidney was paternally
+supplied. By his mother, too, Lady Mary Dudley, the boy must remember
+himself to be of noble blood. Let him beware, therefore, through sloth
+and vice, of being accounted a blemish on his race."
+
+Furthermore, the brotherly and sisterly relations of Tresham and Mildred
+are not unlike those of Sir Philip Sidney and his sister Mary. They
+studied and worked together in great sympathy, broken into only by the
+tragic fate of Sir Philip. Although the education of women in those days
+was chiefly domestic, with a smattering of accomplishments, yet there
+were exceptional girls who aspired to learning and who became brilliant
+women. Mildred under her brother's tutelage bid fare to be one of this
+sort.
+
+The ideals of the Sidneys, it is true, were sixteenth-century ideals.
+Eighteenth-century ideals were proverbially low. England, then, had not
+recovered from the frivolities inaugurated after the Restoration. The
+slackness and unbelief among the clergy, and the looseness of morals in
+society were notorious, but this degeneration could not have been
+universal. There are always a few Noahs and their families left to
+repeople the world with righteousness after a deluge of degeneracy, and
+Browning is quite right in his portrayal of an eighteenth-century knight
+_sans peur et sans reproche_ who defends the honor of his house with his
+sword, because of his high moral ideals. Besides, the Methodist revival
+led by the Wesleys gained constantly in power. It affected not only the
+people of the middle and lower classes, rescuing them from brutality of
+mind and manners, but it affected the established church for the better,
+and made its mark upon the upper classes. "Religion, long despised and
+contemned by the titled and the great" writes Withrow, "began to receive
+recognition and support by men high in the councils of the nation. Many
+ladies of high rank became devout Christians. A new element of
+restraint, compelling at least some outward respect for the decencies of
+life and observances of religion, was felt at court, where too long
+corruption and back-stair influence had sway."
+
+Like all of his kind, no matter what the century, Tresham is more than
+delighted at the thought of an alliance between his house and the noble
+house to which Mertoun belonged. The youth of Mildred was no obstacle,
+for marriages were frequently contracted in those days between young
+boys and girls. The writer's English grand-father and mother were married
+at the respective ages of sixteen and fifteen within the boundaries of
+the nineteenth century.
+
+The first two scenes of the play present episodes thoroughly
+illustrative of the life lived by the "quality."
+
+
+ACT I
+
+SCENE I.--_The interior of a lodge in LORD TRESHAM'S park. Many
+Retainers crowded at the window, supposed to command a view of the
+entrance to his mansion._
+
+_GERARD, the warrener, his back to a table on which are flagons, etc._
+
+  _1st Retainer._ Ye, do! push, friends, and then you'll push down me!
+  --What for? Does any hear a runner's foot
+  Or a steed's trample or a coach-wheel's cry?
+  Is the Earl come or his least poursuivant?
+  But there's no breeding in a man of you
+  Save Gerard yonder: here's a half-place yet,
+  Old Gerard!
+
+  _Gerard._ Save your courtesies, my friend.
+  Here is my place.
+
+  _2nd Retainer._ Now, Gerard, out with it!
+  What makes you sullen, this of all the days
+  I' the year? To-day that young rich bountiful
+  Handsome Earl Mertoun, whom alone they match
+  With our Lord Tresham through the country side,
+  Is coming here in utmost bravery
+  To ask our master's sister's hand?
+
+  _Gerard._                           What then?
+
+  _2nd Retainer._ What then? Why, you, she speaks to if she meets
+  Your worship, smiles on as you hold apart
+  The boughs to let her through her forest walks
+  You, always favorite for your no deserts
+  You've heard, these three days, how Earl Mertoun sues
+  To lay his heart and house and broad lands too
+  At Lady Mildred's feet: and while we squeeze
+  Ourselves into a mousehole lest we miss
+  One congee of the least page in his train,
+  You sit o' one side--"there's the Earl," say I--
+  "What then," say you!
+
+  _3rd Retainer._          I'll wager he has let
+  Both swans be tamed for Lady Mildred swim
+  Over the falls and gain the river!
+
+  _Gerard._                           Ralph!
+  Is not to-morrow my inspecting day
+  For you and for your hawks?
+
+  _4th Retainer._             Let Gerard be!
+  He's coarse-grained, like his carved black cross-bow stock.
+  Ha, look now, while we squabble with him, look!
+  Well done, now--is not this beginning, now,
+  To purpose?
+
+  _1st Retainer._ Our retainers look as fine--
+  That's comfort. Lord, how Richard holds himself
+  With his white staff! Will not a knave behind
+  Prick him upright?
+
+  _4th Retainer._ He's only bowing, fool!
+  The Earl's man bent us lower by this much.
+
+  _1st Retainer._ That's comfort. Here's a very cavalcade!
+
+  _3rd Retainer._ I don't see wherefore Richard, and his troop
+  Of silk and silver varlets there, should find
+  Their perfumed selves so indispensable
+  On high days, holidays! Would it so disgrace
+  Our family, if I, for instance, stood--
+  In my right hand a cast of Swedish hawks,
+  A leash of greyhounds in my left?--
+
+  _Gerard._                             --With Hugh
+  The logman for supporter, in his right
+  The bill-hook, in his left the brushwood-shears!
+
+  _3rd Retainer._ Out on you, crab! What next, what next?
+  The Earl!
+
+  _1st Retainer._ Oh Walter, groom, our horses, do they match
+  The Earl's? Alas, that first pair of the six--
+  They paw the ground--Ah Walter! and that brute
+  Just on his haunches by the wheel!
+
+  _6th Retainer._                     Ay--ay!
+  You, Philip, are a special hand, I hear,
+  At soups and sauces: what's a horse to you?
+  D'ye mark that beast they've slid into the midst
+  So cunningly?--then, Philip, mark this further;
+  No leg has he to stand on!
+
+  _1st Retainer._             No? That's comfort.
+
+  _2nd Retainer._ Peace, Cook! The Earl descends. Well, Gerard, see
+  The Earl at least! Come, there's a proper man,
+  I hope! Why, Ralph, no falcon, Pole or Swede,
+  Has got a starrier eye.
+
+  _3rd Retainer._         His eyes are blue:
+  But leave my hawks alone!
+
+  _4th Retainer._           So young, and yet
+  So tall and shapely!
+
+  _5th Retainer._     Here's Lord Tresham's self!
+  There now--there's what a nobleman should be!
+  He's older, graver, loftier, he's more like
+  A House's head.
+
+  _2nd Retainer._ But you'd not have a boy
+  --And what's the Earl beside?--possess too soon
+  That stateliness?
+
+  _1st Retainer._  Our master takes his hand--
+  Richard and his white staff are on the move--
+  Back fall our people--(tsh!--there's Timothy
+  Sure to get tangled in his ribbon-ties,
+  And Peter's cursed rosette's a-coming off!)
+  --At last I see our lord's back and his friend's;
+  And the whole beautiful bright company
+  Close round them--in they go!
+
+[_Jumping down from the window-bench, and making for the table and its
+jugs._]
+
+                               Good health, long life
+  Great joy to our Lord Tresham and his House!
+
+  _6th Retainer._ My father drove his father first to court,
+  After his marriage-day--ay, did he!
+
+  _2nd Retainer._                     God bless
+  Lord Tresham, Lady Mildred, and the Earl!
+  Here, Gerard, reach your beaker!
+
+  _Gerard._                         Drink, my boys!
+  Don't mind me--all's not right about me--drink!
+
+  _2nd Retainer_ [_aside_]. He's vexed, now, that he let the show escape!
+  [_To GERARD._] Remember that the Earl returns this way.
+
+  _Gerard._ That way?
+
+  _2nd Retainer._     Just so.
+
+  _Gerard._                    Then my way's here.
+
+[_Goes._
+
+  _2nd Retainer._                                  Old Gerard
+  Will die soon--mind, I said it! He was used
+  To care about the pitifullest thing
+  That touched the House's honor, not an eye
+  But his could see wherein: and on a cause
+  Of scarce a quarter this importance, Gerard
+  Fairly had fretted flesh and bone away
+  In cares that this was right, nor that was wrong,
+  Such point decorous, and such square by rule--
+  He knew such niceties, no herald more:
+  And now--you see his humor: die he will!
+
+  _2nd Retainer._ God help him! Who's for the great servant's hall
+  To hear what's going on inside? They'd follow
+  Lord Tresham into the saloon.
+
+  _3rd Retainer._                 I!--
+
+  _4th Retainer._                       I!--
+  Leave Frank alone for catching, at the door,
+  Some hint of how the parley goes inside!
+  Prosperity to the great House once more!
+  Here's the last drop!
+
+  _1st Retainer._       Have at you! Boys, hurrah!
+
+
+SCENE II.--_A Saloon in the Mansion._
+
+_Enter LORD THESHAM, LORD MERTOUN, AUSTIN, and GUENDOLEN._
+
+  _Tresham._ I welcome you, Lord Mertoun, yet once more,
+  To this ancestral roof of mine. Your name
+  --Noble among the noblest in itself,
+  Yet taking in your person, fame avers,
+  New price and lustre,--(as that gem you wear,
+  Transmitted from a hundred knightly breasts,
+  Fresh chased and set and fixed by its last lord,
+  Seems to re-kindle at the core)--your name
+  Would win you welcome!--
+
+  _Mertoun._                Thanks!
+
+  _Tresham._                        --But add to that,
+  The worthiness and grace and dignity
+  Of your proposal for uniting both
+  Our Houses even closer than respect
+  Unites them now--add these, and you must grant
+  One favor more, nor that the least,--to think
+  The welcome I should give;--'tis given! My lord,
+  My only brother, Austin: he's the king's.
+  Our cousin, Lady Guendolen--betrothed
+  To Austin: all are yours.
+
+  _Mertoun._ I thank you--less
+  For the expressed commendings which your seal,
+  And only that, authenticates--forbids
+  My putting from me ... to my heart I take
+  Your praise ... but praise less claims my gratitude,
+  Than the indulgent insight it implies
+  Of what must needs be uppermost with one
+  Who comes, like me, with the bare leave to ask,
+  In weighed and measured unimpassioned words,
+  A gift, which, if as calmly 'tis denied,
+  He must withdraw, content upon his cheek,
+  Despair within his soul. That I dare ask
+  Firmly, near boldly, near with confidence
+  That gift, I have to thank you. Yes, Lord Tresham,
+  I love your sister--as you'd have one love
+  That lady ... oh more, more I love her! Wealth,
+  Rank, all the world thinks me, they're yours, you know,
+  To hold or part with, at your choice--but grant
+  My true self, me without a rood of land,
+  A piece of gold, a name of yesterday,
+  Grant me that lady, and you ... Death or life?
+
+  _Guendolen_ [_apart to AUSTIN_]. Why, this is loving, Austin!
+
+  _Austin._                       He's so young!
+
+  _Guendolen._ Young? Old enough, I think, to half surmise
+  He never had obtained an entrance here,
+  Were all this fear and trembling needed.
+
+  _Austin._                                Hush!
+  He reddens.
+
+  _Guendolen._ Mark him, Austin; that's true love!
+  Ours must begin again.
+
+  _Tresham._              We'll sit, my lord.
+  Ever with best desert goes diffidence.
+  I may speak plainly nor be misconceived.
+  That I am wholly satisfied with you
+  On this occasion, when a falcon's eye
+  Were dull compared with mine to search out faults,
+  Is somewhat. Mildred's hand is hers to give
+  Or to refuse.
+
+  _Mertoun._    But you, you grant my suit?
+  I have your word if hers?
+
+  _Tresham._                My best of words
+  If hers encourage you. I trust it will.
+  Have you seen Lady Mildred, by the way?
+
+  _Mertoun._ I ... I ... our two demesnes, remember, touch;
+  I have been used to wander carelessly
+  After my stricken game: the heron roused
+  Deep in my woods, has trailed its broken wing
+  Thro' thicks and glades a mile in yours,--or else
+  Some eyass ill-reclaimed has taken flight
+  And lured me after her from tree to tree,
+  I marked not whither. I have come upon
+  The lady's wondrous beauty unaware,
+  And--and then ... I have seen her.
+
+  _Guendolen_ [_aside to AUSTIN_]. Note that mode
+  Of faltering out that, when a lady passed,
+  He, having eyes, did see her! You had said--
+  "On such a day I scanned her, head to foot;
+  Observed a red, where red should not have been,
+  Outside her elbow; but was pleased enough
+  Upon the whole." Let such irreverent talk
+  Be lessoned for the future!
+
+  _Tresham._                  What's to say
+  May be said briefly. She has never known
+  A mother's care; I stand for father too.
+  Her beauty is not strange to you, it seems--
+  You cannot know the good and tender heart,
+  Its girl's trust and its woman's constancy,
+  How pure yet passionate, how calm yet kind,
+  How grave yet joyous, how reserved yet free
+  As light where friends are--how imbued with lore
+  The world most prizes, yet the simplest, yet
+  The ... one might know I talked of Mildred--thus
+  We brothers talk!
+
+  _Mertoun._        I thank you.
+
+  _Tresham._                      In a word,
+  Control's not for this lady; but her wish
+  To please me outstrips in its subtlety
+  My power of being pleased: herself creates
+  The want she means to satisfy. My heart
+  Prefers your suit to her as 'twere its own.
+  Can I say more?
+
+  _Mertoun._      No more--thanks, thanks--no more!
+
+  _Tresham._ This matter then discussed....
+
+  _Mertoun._                          --We'll waste no breath
+  On aught less precious. I'm beneath the roof
+  Which holds her: while I thought of that, my speech
+  To you would wander--as it must not do,
+  Since as you favor me I stand or fall.
+  I pray you suffer that I take my leave!
+
+  _Tresham._ With less regret 't is suffered, that again
+  We meet, I hope, so shortly.
+
+  _Mertoun._                    We? again?--
+  Ah yes, forgive me--when shall ... you will crown
+  Your goodness by forthwith apprising me
+  When ... if ... the lady will appoint a day
+  For me to wait on you--and her.
+
+  _Tresham._                      So soon
+  As I am made acquainted with her thoughts
+  On your proposal--howsoe'er they lean--
+  A messenger shall bring you the result.
+
+  _Mertoun._ You cannot bind me more to you, my lord.
+  Farewell till we renew ... I trust, renew
+  A converse ne'er to disunite again.
+
+  _Tresham._ So may it prove!
+
+  _Mertoun._                  You, lady, you, sir, take
+  My humble salutation!
+
+  _Guendolen and Austin._ Thanks!
+
+  _Tresham._                      Within there!
+
+[_+Servants+ enter. TRESHAM conducts MERTOUN to the door. Meantime
+AUSTIN remarks_,
+
+  Here I have an advantage of the Earl,
+  Confess now! I'd not think that all was safe
+  Because my lady's brother stood my friend!
+  Why, he makes sure of her--"do you say, yes"--
+  "She'll not say, no,"--what comes it to beside?
+  I should have prayed the brother, "speak this speech,
+  For Heaven's sake urge this on her--put in this--
+  Forget not, as you'd save me, t'other thing,--
+  Then set down what she says, and how she looks,
+  And if she smiles, and" (in an under breath)
+  "Only let her accept me, and do you
+  And all the world refuse me, if you dare!"
+
+  _Guendolen._ That way you'd take, friend Austin? What a shame
+  I was your cousin, tamely from the first
+  Your bride, and all this fervor's run to waste!
+  Do you know you speak sensibly to-day?
+  The Earl's a fool.
+
+  _Austin._           Here's Thorold. Tell him so!
+
+  _Tresham_ [_returning_]. Now, voices, voices! 'St! the lady's first!
+  How seems he?--seems he not ... come, faith give fraud
+  The mercy-stroke whenever they engage!
+  Down with fraud, up with faith! How seems the Earl?
+  A name! a blazon! if you knew their worth,
+  As you will never! come--the Earl?
+
+  _Guendolen._                        He's young.
+
+  _Tresham._ What's she? an infant save in heart and brain.
+  Young! Mildred is fourteen, remark! And you ...
+  Austin, how old is she?
+
+  _Guendolen._            There's tact for you!
+  I meant that being young was good excuse
+  If one should tax him....
+
+  _Tresham._                Well?
+
+  _Guendolen._                    --With lacking wit.
+
+  _Tresham._ He lacked wit? Where might he lack wit, so please you?
+
+  _Guendolen._ In standing straighter than the steward's rod
+  And making you the tiresomest harangue,
+  Instead of slipping over to my side
+  And softly whispering in my ear, "Sweet lady,
+  Your cousin there will do me detriment
+  He little dreams of: he's absorbed, I see,
+  In my old name and fame--be sure he'll leave
+  My Mildred, when his best account of me
+  Is ended, in full confidence I wear
+  My grandsire's periwig down either cheek.
+  I'm lost unless your gentleness vouchsafes"....
+
+  _Tresham._ ... "To give a best of best accounts, yourself,
+  Of me and my demerits." You are right!
+  He should have said what now I say for him.
+  Yon golden creature, will you help us all?
+  Here's Austin means to vouch for much, but you
+  --You are ... what Austin only knows! Come up,
+  All three of us: she's in the library
+  No doubt, for the day's wearing fast. Precede!
+
+  _Guendolen._ Austin, how we must--!
+
+  _Tresham._                          Must what? Must speak truth,
+  Malignant tongue! Detect one fault in him!
+  I challenge you!
+
+  _Guendolen._   Witchcraft's a fault in him,
+  For you're bewitched.
+
+  _Tresham._              What's urgent we obtain
+  Is, that she soon receive him--say, to-morrow--
+  Next day at furthest.
+
+  _Guendolen._            Ne'er instruct me!
+
+  _Tresham._                                 Come!
+  --He's out of your good graces, since forsooth,
+  He stood not as he'd carry us by storm
+  With his perfections! You're for the composed
+  Manly assured becoming confidence!
+  --Get her to say, "to-morrow," and I'll give you ...
+  I'll give you black Urganda, to be spoiled
+  With petting and snail-paces. Will you? Come!
+
+The story of the love of Mildred and Mertoun is the universally human
+one, and belongs to no one country or no one period of civilization more
+than another, but the attitude of all the actors in the tragedy belongs
+distinctively to the phase of moral culture which we saw illustrated in
+the youth of Sir Philip Sidney, and is characteristic of English ways of
+thinking whenever their moral force comes uppermost, as for example in
+the Puritan thought of the Cromwellian era.
+
+The play is in a sense a problem play, though to most modern readers the
+tragedy of its ending is all too horrible a consequence of the sin.
+Dramatically and psychically, however, the tragedy is much more
+inevitable than that of Romeo and Juliet, whose love one naturally
+thinks of in the same connection. The catastrophe in the Shakespeare
+play is almost mechanically pushed to its conclusion through mere
+external blundering, easily to have been prevented. Juliet saw clearly
+where Mildred does not, that loyalty to a deep and true love should
+triumph over all minor considerations, so that in her case the tragedy
+is, in no sense, due to her blindness of vision. In the "Blot," lack of
+perception of the true values in life makes it impossible for Mildred or
+Tresham to act otherwise than they did. But having worked out their
+problem according to their lights, a new light of a more glorious day
+dawns upon them.
+
+The ideal by which Tresham lives and moves and has his being is that of
+pride of birth, with honor and chastity as its watchwords. At the same
+time the idol of his life is his sister Mildred, over whom he has
+watched with a father's and mother's care. When the blow to his ideal
+comes at the hands of this much cherished sister, it is not to be
+wondered at that his reason almost deserts him. The greatest agony
+possible to the human soul is to have its ideals, the very food which
+has been the sustenance of its being, utterly ruined. The ideal may be a
+wrong one, or an impartial one, and through the wrack and ruin may dawn
+larger vision, but, unless the nature be a marvelously developed one the
+storm that breaks when an ideal is shattered is overwhelming.
+
+It would be equally true of Mildred that, nurtured as she had been and
+as young English girls usually are, in great purity, even ignorance of
+all things pertaining to life, the sense of her sin would be so
+overwhelming as to blind her to any possible means of expiation except
+the most extreme. And indeed may it not be said that only those who can
+see as Mertoun and Guendolen did that genuine and loyal love is no less
+love because, in a conventional sense, it has sinned,--only those would
+acknowledge, as Tresham, indeed, does after he has murdered Mertoun, how
+perfect the love of Mildred and Mertoun was. Sin flourishes only when
+insincerity tricks itself out in the garb of love, and on the whole it
+is well that human beings should have an abiding sense of their own and
+others insincerity, and test themselves by their willingness to
+acknowledge their love before God and man. There are many Mildreds but
+few Mertouns. It is little wonder that Dickens wrote with such
+enthusiasm of this play that he knew no love like that of Mildred and
+Mertoun, no passion like it.
+
+[Illustration: An English Park]
+
+One does not need to discuss whether murders were possible in English
+social life. They are possible in all life at all times as long as men
+and women allow their passions to overthrow their reason. The last act,
+however, illustrates the English poise already referred to; Tresham
+regains his equilibrium with enlarged vision, his salvation is
+accomplished, his soul awakened.
+
+
+ACT III
+
+SCENE I.--_The end of the Yew-tree Avenue under MILDRED'S window. A
+light seen through a central red pane._
+
+_Enter TRESHAM through the trees._
+
+  Again here! But I cannot lose myself.
+  The heath--the orchard--I have traversed glades
+  And dells and bosky paths which used to lead
+  Into green wild-wood depths, bewildering
+  My boy's adventurous step. And now they tend
+  Hither or soon or late; the blackest shade
+  Breaks up, the thronged trunks of the trees ope wide,
+  And the dim turret I have fled from, fronts
+  Again my step: the very river put
+  Its arm about me and conducted me
+  To this detested spot. Why then, I'll shun
+  Their will no longer: do your will with me!
+  Oh, bitter! To have reared a towering scheme
+  Of happiness, and to behold it razed,
+  Were nothing: all men hope, and see their hopes
+  Frustrate, and grieve awhile, and hope anew.
+  But I ... to hope that from a line like ours
+  No horrid prodigy like this would spring,
+  Were just as though I hoped that from these old
+  Confederates against the sovereign day,
+  Children of older and yet older sires,
+  Whose living coral berries dropped, as now
+  On me, on many a baron's surcoat once,
+  On many a beauty's wimple--would proceed
+  No poison-tree, to thrust, from hell its root,
+  Hither and thither its strange snaky arms.
+  Why came I here? What must I do? [_A bell strikes._] A bell?
+  Midnight! and 'tis at midnight.... Ah, I catch
+  --Woods, river, plains, I catch your meaning now,
+  And I obey you! Hist! This tree will serve.
+
+[_He retires behind one of the trees. After a pause, enter MERTOUN
+cloaked as before._
+
+  _Mertoun._ Not time! Beat out thy last voluptuous beat
+  Of hope and fear, my heart! I thought the clock
+  I' the chapel struck as I was pushing through
+  The ferns. And so I shall no more see rise
+  My love-star! Oh, no matter for the past!
+  So much the more delicious task to watch
+  Mildred revive: to pluck out, thorn by thorn,
+  All traces of the rough forbidden path
+  My rash love lured her to! Each day must see
+  Some fear of hers effaced, some hope renewed:
+  Then there will be surprises, unforeseen
+  Delights in store. I'll not regret the past.
+
+[_The light is placed above in the purple pane._
+
+  And see, my signal rises, Mildred's star!
+  I never saw it lovelier than now
+  It rises for the last time. If it sets,
+  'Tis that the re-assuring sun may dawn.
+
+[_As he prepares to ascend the last tree of the avenue, TRESHAM arrests
+his arm._
+
+  Unhand me--peasant, by your grasp! Here's gold.
+  'Twas a mad freak of mine. I said I'd pluck
+  A branch from the white-blossomed shrub beneath
+  The casement there. Take this, and hold your peace.
+
+  _Tresham._ Into the moonlight yonder, come with me!
+  Out of the shadow!
+
+  _Mertoun._         I am armed, fool!
+
+  _Tresham._                           Yes,
+  Or no? You'll come into the light, or no?
+  My hand is on your throat--refuse!--
+
+  _Mertoun._                           That voice!
+  Where have I heard ... no--that was mild and slow.
+  I'll come with you.
+
+[_They advance._
+
+  _Tresham._          You're armed: that's well. Declare
+  Your name: who are you?
+
+  _Mertoun._              (Tresham!--she is lost!)
+
+  _Tresham._ Oh, silent? Do you know, you bear yourself
+  Exactly as, in curious dreams I've had
+  How felons, this wild earth is full of, look
+  When they're detected, still your kind has looked!
+  The bravo holds an assured countenance,
+  The thief is voluble and plausible,
+  But silently the slave of lust has crouched
+  When I have fancied it before a man.
+  Your name!
+
+  _Mertoun._ I do conjure Lord Tresham--ay,
+  Kissing his foot, if so I might prevail--
+  That he for his own sake forbear to ask
+  My name! As heaven's above, his future weal
+  Or woe depends upon my silence! Vain!
+  I read your white inexorable face.
+  Know me, Lord Tresham!
+
+[_He throws off his disguises._
+
+  _Tresham._             Mertoun!
+           [_After a pause._] Draw now!
+
+  _Mertoun._                            Hear me
+  But speak first!
+
+  _Tresham._       Not one least word on your life!
+  Be sure that I will strangle in your throat
+  The least word that informs me how you live
+  And yet seem what you seem! No doubt 'twas you
+  Taught Mildred still to keep that face and sin.
+  We should join hands in frantic sympathy
+  If you once taught me the unteachable,
+  Explained how you can live so, and so lie.
+  With God's help I retain, despite my sense,
+  The old belief--a life like yours is still
+  Impossible. Now draw!
+
+  _Mertoun._            Not for my sake,
+  Do I entreat a hearing--for your sake,
+  And most, for her sake!
+
+  _Tresham._              Ha ha, what should I
+  Know of your ways? A miscreant like yourself,
+  How must one rouse his ire? A blow?--that's pride
+  No doubt, to him! One spurns him, does one not?
+  Or sets the foot upon his mouth, or spits
+  Into his face! Come! Which, or all of these?
+
+  _Mertoun._ 'Twixt him and me and Mildred, Heaven be judge!
+  Can I avoid this? Have your will, my lord!
+
+[_He draws and, after a few passes, falls._
+
+  _Tresham._ You are not hurt?
+
+  _Mertoun._                   You'll hear me now!
+
+  _Tresham._                                       But rise!
+
+  _Mertoun._ Ah, Tresham, say I not "you'll hear me now!"
+  And what procures a man the right to speak
+  In his defense before his fellow man,
+  But--I suppose--the thought that presently
+  He may have leave to speak before his God
+  His whole defense?
+
+  _Tresham._         Not hurt? It cannot be!
+  You made no effort to resist me. Where
+  Did my sword reach you? Why not have returned
+  My thrusts? Hurt where?
+
+  _Mertoun._              My lord--
+
+  _Tresham._                        How young he is!
+
+  _Mertoun._ Lord Tresham, I am very young, and yet
+  I have entangled other lives with mine.
+  Do let me speak, and do believe my speech!
+  That when I die before you presently,--
+
+  _Tresham._ Can you stay here till I return with help?
+
+  _Mertoun._ Oh, stay by me! When I was less than boy
+  I did you grievous wrong and knew it not--
+  Upon my honor, knew it not! Once known,
+  I could not find what seemed a better way
+  To right you than I took: my life--you feel
+  How less than nothing were the giving you
+  The life you've taken! But I thought my way
+  The better--only for your sake and hers:
+  And as you have decided otherwise,
+  Would I had an infinity of lives
+  To offer you! Now say--instruct me--think!
+  Can you, from the brief minutes I have left,
+  Eke out my reparation? Oh think--think!
+  For I must wring a partial--dare I say,
+  Forgiveness from you, ere I die?
+
+  _Tresham._                       I do
+  Forgive you.
+
+  _Mertoun._   Wait and ponder that great word!
+  Because, if you forgive me, I shall hope
+  To speak to you of--Mildred!
+
+  _Tresham._                   Mertoun, haste
+  And anger have undone us. 'Tis not you
+  Should tell me for a novelty you're young,
+  Thoughtless, unable to recall the past.
+  Be but your pardon ample as my own!
+
+  _Mertoun._ Ah, Tresham, that a sword-stroke and a drop
+  Of blood or two, should bring all this about!
+  Why, 'twas my very fear of you, my love
+  Of you--(what passion like a boy's for one
+  Like you?)--that ruined me! I dreamed of you--
+  You, all accomplished, courted everywhere,
+  The scholar and the gentleman. I burned
+  To knit myself to you: but I was young,
+  And your surpassing reputation kept me
+  So far aloof! Oh, wherefore all that love?
+  With less of love, my glorious yesterday
+  Of praise and gentlest words and kindest looks,
+  Had taken place perchance six months ago.
+  Even now, how happy we had been! And yet
+  I know the thought of this escaped you, Tresham!
+  Let me look up into your face; I feel
+  'Tis changed above me: yet my eyes are glazed.
+  Where? where?
+
+[_As he endeavors to raise himself, his eye catches the lamp._
+
+                Ah, Mildred! What will Mildred do?
+  Tresham, her life is bound up in the life
+  That's bleeding fast away! I'll live--must live,
+  There, if you'll only turn me I shall live
+  And save her! Tresham--oh, had you but heard!
+  Had you but heard! What right was yours to set
+  The thoughtless foot upon her life and mine,
+  And then say, as we perish, "Had I thought,
+  All had gone otherwise?" We've sinned and die:
+  Never you sin, Lord Tresham! for you'll die,
+  And God will judge you.
+
+  _Tresham._              Yes, be satisfied!
+  That process is begun.
+
+  _Mertoun._             And she sits there
+  Waiting for me! Now, say you this to her--
+  You, not another--say, I saw him die
+  As he breathed this, "I love her"--you don't know
+  What those three small words mean! Say, loving her
+  Lowers me down the bloody slope to death
+  With memories ... I speak to her, not you,
+  Who had no pity, will have no remorse,
+  Perchance intend her.... Die along with me,
+  Dear Mildred! 'tis so easy, and you'll 'scape
+  So much unkindness! Can I lie at rest,
+  With rude speech spoken to you, ruder deeds
+  Done to you?--heartless men shall have my heart,
+  And I tied down with grave-clothes and the worm,
+  Aware, perhaps, of every blow--oh God!--
+  Upon those lips--yet of no power to tear
+  The felon stripe by stripe! Die, Mildred! Leave
+  Their honorable world to them! For God
+  We're good enough, though the world casts us out.
+
+[_A whistle is heard._
+
+  _Tresham._ Ho, Gerard!
+
+_Enter GERARD, AUSTIN and GUENDOLEN, with lights._
+
+                        No one speak! You see what's done.
+  I cannot bear another voice.
+
+  _Mertoun._                   There's light--
+  Light all about me, and I move to it.
+  Tresham, did I not tell you--did you not
+  Just promise to deliver words of mine
+  To Mildred?
+
+  _Tresham._ I will bear these words to her.
+
+  _Mertoun._ Now?
+
+  _Tresham._      Now. Lift you the body, and leave me
+  The head.
+
+[_As they half raise MERTOUN, he turns suddenly._
+
+  _Mertoun._ I knew they turned me: turn me not from her!
+  There! stay you! there!
+
+[_Dies._
+
+  _Guendolen_ [_after a pause_]. Austin, remain you here
+  With Thorold until Gerard comes with help:
+  Then lead him to his chamber. I must go
+  To Mildred.
+
+  _Tresham._ Guendolen, I hear each word
+  You utter. Did you hear him bid me give
+  His message? Did you hear my promise? I,
+  And only I, see Mildred.
+
+  _Guendolen._             She will die.
+
+  _Tresham._ Oh no, she will not die! I dare not hope
+  She'll die. What ground have you to think she'll die?
+  Why, Austin's with you!
+
+  _Austin._               Had we but arrived
+  Before you fought!
+
+  _Tresham._         There was no fight at all.
+  He let me slaughter him--the boy! I'll trust
+  The body there to you and Gerard--thus!
+  Now bear him on before me.
+
+  _Austin._                  Whither bear him?
+
+  _Tresham._ Oh, to my chamber! When we meet there next,
+  We shall be friends.
+
+[_They bear out the body of MERTOUN._
+
+                       Will she die, Guendolen?
+
+  _Guendolen._ Where are you taking me?
+
+  _Tresham._                            He fell just here.
+  Now answer me. Shall you in your whole life
+  --You who have nought to do with Mertoun's fate,
+  Now you have seen his breast upon the turf,
+  Shall you e'er walk this way if you can help?
+  When you and Austin wander arm-in-arm
+  Through our ancestral grounds, will not a shade
+  Be ever on the meadow and the waste--
+  Another kind of shade than when the night
+  Shuts the woodside with all its whispers up?
+  But will you ever so forget his breast
+  As carelessly to cross this bloody turf
+  Under the black yew avenue? That's well!
+  You turn your head: and I then?--
+
+  _Guendolen._                      What is done
+  Is done. My care is for the living. Thorold,
+  Bear up against this burden: more remains
+  To set the neck to!
+
+  _Tresham._          Dear and ancient trees
+  My fathers planted, and I loved so well!
+  What have I done that, like some fabled crime
+  Of yore, lets loose a Fury leading thus
+  Her miserable dance amidst you all?
+  Oh, never more for me shall winds intone
+  With all your tops a vast antiphony,
+  Demanding and responding in God's praise!
+  Hers ye are now, not mine! Farewell--farewell!
+
+
+SCENE II.--_MILDRED'S chamber._
+
+_MILDRED alone._
+
+  He comes not! I have heard of those who seemed
+  Resourceless in prosperity,--you thought
+  Sorrow might slay them when she listed; yet
+  Did they so gather up their diffused strength
+  At her first menace, that they bade her strike,
+  And stood and laughed her subtlest skill to scorn.
+  Oh, 'tis not so with me! The first woe fell,
+  And the rest fall upon it, not on me:
+  Else should I bear that Henry comes not?--fails
+  Just this first night out of so many nights?
+  Loving is done with. Were he sitting now,
+  As so few hours since, on that seat, we'd love
+  No more--contrive no thousand happy ways
+  To hide love from the loveless, any more.
+  I think I might have urged some little point
+  In my defense, to Thorold; he was breathless
+  For the least hint of a defense: but no,
+  The first shame over, all that would might fall.
+  No Henry! Yet I merely sit and think
+  The morn's deed o'er and o'er. I must have crept
+  Out of myself. A Mildred that has lost
+  Her lover--oh, I dare not look upon
+  Such woe! I crouch away from it! 'Tis she,
+  Mildred, will break her heart, not I! The world
+  Forsakes me: only Henry's left me--left?
+  When I have lost him, for he does not come,
+  And I sit stupidly.... Oh Heaven, break up
+  This worse than anguish, this mad apathy,
+  By any means or any messenger!
+
+  _Tresham_ [_without_]. Mildred!
+
+  _Mildred._                      Come in! Heaven hears me!
+  [_Enter TRESHAM._] You? alone?
+  Oh, no more cursing!
+
+  _Tresham._           Mildred, I must sit.
+  There--you sit!
+
+  _Mildred._      Say it, Thorold--do not look
+  The curse! deliver all you come to say!
+  What must become of me? Oh, speak that thought
+  Which makes your brow and cheeks so pale!
+
+  _Tresham._                                My thought?
+
+  _Mildred._ All of it!
+
+  _Tresham._            How we waded--years ago--
+  After those water-lilies, till the plash,
+  I know not how, surprised us; and you dared
+  Neither advance nor turn back: so, we stood
+  Laughing and crying until Gerard came--
+  Once safe upon the turf, the loudest too,
+  For once more reaching the relinquished prize!
+  How idle thoughts are, some men's, dying men's!
+  Mildred,--
+
+  _Mildred._ You call me kindlier by my name
+  Than even yesterday: what is in that?
+
+  _Tresham._ It weighs so much upon my mind that I
+  This morning took an office not my own!
+  I might ... of course, I must be glad or grieved,
+  Content or not, at every little thing
+  That touches you. I may with a wrung heart
+  Even reprove you, Mildred; I did more:
+  Will you forgive me?
+
+  _Mildred._           Thorold? do you mock?
+  Or no ... and yet you bid me ... say that word!
+
+  _Tresham._ Forgive me, Mildred!--are you silent, Sweet?
+
+  _Mildred_ [_starting up_]. Why does not Henry Mertoun come to-night?
+  Are you, too, silent?
+
+[_Dashing his mantle aside, and pointing to his scabbard, which is
+empty._
+
+                         Ah, this speaks for you!
+  You've murdered Henry Mertoun! Now proceed!
+  What is it I must pardon? This and all?
+  Well, I do pardon you--I think I do.
+  Thorold, how very wretched you must be!
+
+  _Tresham._ He bade me tell you....
+
+  _Mildred._                         What I do forbid
+  Your utterance of! So much that you may tell
+  And will not--how you murdered him ... but, no!
+  You'll tell me that he loved me, never more
+  Than bleeding out his life there: must I say
+  "Indeed," to that? Enough! I pardon you.
+
+  _Tresham._ You cannot, Mildred! for the harsh words, yes:
+  Of this last deed Another's judge: whose doom
+  I wait in doubt, despondency and fear.
+
+  _Mildred._ Oh, true! There's nought for me to pardon! True!
+  You loose my soul of all its cares at once.
+  Death makes me sure of him for ever! You
+  Tell me his last words? He shall tell me them,
+  And take my answer--not in words, but reading
+  Himself the heart I had to read him late,
+  Which death....
+
+  _Tresham._      Death? You are dying too? Well said
+  Of Guendolen! I dared not hope you'd die:
+  But she was sure of it.
+
+  _Mildred._              Tell Guendolen
+  I loved her, and tell Austin....
+
+  _Tresham._                        Him you loved:
+  And me?
+
+  _Mildred._ Ah, Thorold! Was't not rashly done
+  To quench that blood, on fire with youth and hope
+  And love of me--whom you loved too, and yet
+  Suffered to sit here waiting his approach
+  While you were slaying him? Oh, doubtlessly
+  You let him speak his poor boy's speech
+  --Do his poor utmost to disarm your wrath
+  And respite me!--you let him try to give
+  The story of our love and ignorance,
+  And the brief madness and the long despair--
+  You let him plead all this, because your code
+  Of honor bids you hear before you strike:
+  But at the end, as he looked up for life
+  Into your eyes--you struck him down!
+
+  _Tresham._                          No! No!
+  Had I but heard him--had I let him speak
+  Half the truth--less--had I looked long on him
+  I had desisted! Why, as he lay there,
+  The moon on his flushed cheek, I gathered all
+  The story ere he told it: I saw through
+  The troubled surface of his crime and yours
+  A depth of purity immovable,
+  Had I but glanced, where all seemed turbidest
+  Had gleamed some inlet to the calm beneath;
+  I would not glance: my punishment's at hand.
+  There, Mildred, is the truth! and you--say on--
+  You curse me?
+
+  _Mildred._    As I dare approach that Heaven
+  Which has not bade a living thing despair,
+  Which needs no code to keep its grace from stain,
+  But bids the vilest worm that turns on it
+  Desist and be forgiven,--I--forgive not,
+  But bless you, Thorold, from my soul of souls!
+
+[_Falls on his neck._
+
+  There! Do not think too much upon the past!
+  The cloud that's broke was all the same a cloud
+  While it stood up between my friend and you;
+  You hurt him 'neath its shadow: but is that
+  So past retrieve? I have his heart, you know;
+  I may dispose of it: I give it you!
+  It loves you as mine loves! Confirm me, Henry!
+
+[_Dies._
+
+  _Tresham._ I wish thee joy, Beloved! I am glad
+  In thy full gladness!
+
+  _Guendolen_ [_without_]. Mildred! Tresham!
+          [_Entering with AUSTIN._] Thorold,
+  I could desist no longer. Ah, she swoons!
+  That's well.
+
+  _Tresham._ Oh, better far than that!
+
+  _Guendolen._                          She's dead!
+  Let me unlock her arms!
+
+  _Tresham._              She threw them thus
+  About my neck, and blessed me, and then died:
+  You'll let them stay now, Guendolen!
+
+  _Austin._                            Leave her
+  And look to him! What ails you, Thorold?
+
+  _Guendolen._                             White
+  As she, and whiter! Austin! quick--this side!
+
+  _Austin._ A froth is oozing through his clenched teeth;
+  Both lips, where they're not bitten through, are black:
+  Speak, dearest Thorold!
+
+  _Tresham._              Something does weigh down
+  My neck beside her weight: thanks: I should fall
+  But for you, Austin, I believe!--there, there,
+  'Twill pass away soon!--ah,--I had forgotten:
+  I am dying.
+
+  _Guendolen._ Thorold--Thorold--why was this?
+
+  _Tresham._ I said, just as I drank the poison off,
+  The earth would be no longer earth to me,
+  The life out of all life was gone from me.
+  There are blind ways provided, the foredone
+  Heart-weary player in this pageant-world
+  Drops out by, letting the main masque defile
+  By the conspicuous portal: I am through--
+  Just through!
+
+  _Guendolen._ Don't leave him, Austin! Death is close.
+
+  _Tresham._ Already Mildred's face is peacefuller.
+  I see you, Austin--feel you: here's my hand,
+  Put yours in it--you, Guendolen, yours too!
+  You're lord and lady now--you're Treshams; name
+  And fame are yours: you hold our 'scutcheon up.
+  Austin, no blot on it! You see how blood
+  Must wash one blot away: the first blot came
+  And the first blood came. To the vain world's eye
+  All's gules again: no care to the vain world,
+  From whence the red was drawn!
+
+  _Austin._                     No blot shall come!
+
+  _Tresham._ I said that: yet it did come. Should it come,
+  Vengeance is God's, not man's. Remember me!
+
+[_Dies._
+
+  _Guendolen_ [_letting fall the pulseless arm_].
+          Ah, Thorold, we can but--remember you!
+
+In "Ned Bratts," Browning has given a striking picture of the influence
+exerted by Bunyan upon some of his wicked contemporaries. The poet took
+his hints for the story from Bunyan himself, who tells it as follows in
+the "Life and Death of Mr. Badman."
+
+"At a summer assizes holden at Hertford, while the judge was sitting
+upon the bench, comes this old Tod into the Court, clothed in a green
+suit, with his leathern girdle in his hand, his bosom open, and all on a
+dung sweat, as if he had run for his life; and being come in, he spake
+aloud, as follows: 'My lord,' said he, 'here is the veriest rogue that
+breathes upon the face of the earth. I have been a thief from a child:
+when I was but a little one, I gave myself to rob orchards and to do
+other such like wicked things, and I have continued a thief ever since.
+My lord, there has not been a robbery committed these many years, within
+so many miles of this place, but I have either been at it, or privy to
+it.' The judge thought the fellow was mad, but after some conference
+with some of the justices, they agreed to indict him; and so they did of
+several felonious actions; to all of which he heartily confessed guilty,
+and so was hanged, with his wife at the same time."
+
+Browning had the happy thought of placing this episode in Bedford amid
+the scenes of Bunyan's labors and imprisonment. Bunyan, himself, was
+tried at the Bedford Assizes upon the charge of preaching things he
+should not, or according to some accounts for preaching without having
+been ordained, and was sentenced to twelve years' imprisonment in the
+Bedford Jail. At one time it was thought that he wrote "Pilgrim's
+Progress" during this imprisonment, but Dr. Brown, in his biography of
+Bunyan conjectured that this book was not begun until a later and
+shorter imprisonment of 1675-76, in the town prison and toll-house on
+Bedford Bridge. Dr. Brown supposes that the portion of the book written
+in prison closes where Christian and Hopeful part from the shepherds on
+the Delectable Mountains. "At that point a break in the narrative is
+indicated--'So I awoke from my dream;' it is resumed with the
+words--'And I slept and dreamed again, and saw the same two pilgrims
+going down the mountains along the highway towards the city.' Already
+from the top of an high hill called 'Clear,' the Celestial City was in
+view; dangers there were still to be encountered; but to have reached
+that high hill and to have seen something like a gate, and some of the
+glory of the place, was an attainment and an incentive." There Bunyan
+could pause. Several years later the pilgrimage of Christiana was
+written.
+
+Browning, however, adopts the tradition that the book was written during
+the twelve years' imprisonment, and makes use of the story of Bunyan's
+having supported himself during this time by making tagged shoe-laces.
+He brings in, also, the little blind daughter to whom Bunyan was said to
+be devoted. The Poet was evidently under the impression also that the
+assizes were held in a courthouse, but there is good authority for
+thinking that at that time they were held in the chapel of Herne.
+Nothing remains of this building now, but it was situated at the
+southwest corner of the churchyard of St. Paul, and was spoken of
+sometimes as the School-house chapel.
+
+Ned Bratts and his wife did not know, of course, that they actually
+lived in the land of the "Pilgrim's Progress." This has been pointed out
+only recently in a fascinating little book by A. J. Foster of Wootton
+Vicarage, Bedfordshire. He has been a pilgrim from Elstow, the village
+where Bunyan was born near Bedford, through all the surrounding country,
+and has fixed upon many spots beautiful and otherwise which he believes
+were transmuted in Bunyan's imagination into the House Beautiful, The
+Delectable Mountains, Vanity Fair and so on through nearly all the
+scenes of Christian's journey.
+
+The House Beautiful he identifies with Houghton House in the manor of
+Dame Ellen's Bury. This is one of the most interesting of the country
+houses of England, because of its connection with Sir Philip Sidney's
+sister, Mary Sidney. After the death of her husband, Lord Pembroke,
+James I. presented her with the royal manor of Dame Ellen's Bury, and
+under the guidance of Inigo Jones, it is generally supposed, Houghton
+House was built. It is in ruins now and covered with ivy. Trees have
+grown within the ruins themselves. Still it is one of the most beautiful
+spots in Bedfordshire. "In Bunyan's time," Mr. Foster writes, "we may
+suppose the northern slope of Houghton Park was a series of terraces
+rising one above another, and laid out in the stiff garden fashion of
+the time. A flight of steps, or maybe a steep path, would lead from one
+terrace to the next, and gradually the view over the plain of Bedford
+would reveal itself to the traveler as he mounted higher and higher."
+
+From Houghton House there is a view of the Chiltern Hills. Mr. Foster is
+of the opinion that Bunyan had this view in mind when he described
+Christian as looking from the roof of the House Beautiful southwards
+towards the Delectable Mountains. He writes, "One of the main roads to
+London from Bedford, and the one, moreover, which passes through Elstow,
+crosses the hills only a little more than a mile east of Houghton House,
+and Bunyan, in his frequent journeys to London, no doubt often passed
+along this road. All in this direction was, therefore, to him familiar
+ground. Many a pleasant walk or ride came back to him through memory, as
+he took pen in hand to describe Hill Difficulty with its steep path and
+its arbor, and the House Beautiful with its guest-chamber, its large
+upper room looking eastward, its study and its armory.
+
+"Many a time did Bunyan, as he journeyed, look southwards to the blue
+Chilterns, and when the time came he placed together all that he had
+seen, as the frame in which he should set his way-faring pilgrim."
+
+Pleasant as it would be to follow with Mr. Foster his journey through
+the real scenes of the "Pilgrim's Progress," our main interest at
+present is to observe how Browning's facile imagination has presented
+the conversion, through the impression made upon them by Bunyan's book,
+of Ned and his wife.
+
+
+    NED BRATTS
+
+    'T was Bedford Special Assize, one daft Midsummer's Day:
+    A broiling blasting June,--was never its like, men say.
+    Corn stood sheaf-ripe already, and trees looked yellow as that;
+    Ponds drained dust-dry, the cattle lay foaming around each flat.
+    Inside town, dogs went mad, and folk kept bibbing beer
+    While the parsons prayed for rain. 'T was horrible, yes--but queer:
+    Queer--for the sun laughed gay, yet nobody moved a hand
+    To work one stroke at his trade: as given to understand
+    That all was come to a stop, work and such worldly ways,
+    And the world's old self about to end in a merry blaze.
+    Midsummer's Day moreover was the first of Bedford Fair,
+    With Bedford Town's tag-rag and bobtail a-bowsing there.
+
+    But the Court House, Quality crammed: through doors ope, windows wide,
+    High on the Bench you saw sit Lordships side by side.
+    There frowned Chief Justice Jukes, fumed learned Brother Small,
+    And fretted their fellow Judge: like threshers, one and all,
+    Of a reek with laying down the law in a furnace. Why?
+    Because their lungs breathed flame--the regular crowd forbye--
+    From gentry pouring in--quite a nosegay, to be sure!
+    How else could they pass the time, six mortal hours endure
+    Till night should extinguish day, when matters might haply mend?
+    Meanwhile no bad resource was--watching begin and end
+    Some trial for life and death, in a brisk five minutes' space,
+    And betting which knave would 'scape, which hang, from his sort
+          of face.
+
+    So, their Lordships toiled and moiled, and a deal of work was done
+    (I warrant) to justify the mirth of the crazy sun
+    As this and t'other lout, struck dumb at the sudden show
+    Of red robes and white wigs, boggled nor answered "Boh!"
+    When asked why he, Tom Styles, should not--because Jack Nokes
+    Had stolen the horse--be hanged: for Judges must have their jokes,
+    And louts must make allowance--let's say, for some blue fly
+    Which punctured a dewy scalp where the frizzles stuck awry--
+    Else Tom had fleered scot-free, so nearly over and done
+    Was the main of the job. Full-measure, the gentles enjoyed their fun,
+    As a twenty-five were tried, rank puritans caught at prayer
+    In a cow-house and laid by the heels,--have at 'em, devil may care!--
+    And ten were prescribed the whip, and ten a brand on the cheek,
+    And five a slit of the nose--just leaving enough to tweak.
+
+    Well, things at jolly high-tide, amusement steeped in fire,
+    While noon smote fierce the roof's red tiles to heart's desire,
+    The Court a-simmer with smoke, one ferment of oozy flesh,
+    One spirituous humming musk mount-mounting until its mesh
+    Entoiled all heads in a fluster, and Serjeant Postlethwayte
+    --Dashing the wig oblique as he mopped his oily pate--
+    Cried "Silence, or I grow grease! No loophole lets in air?
+    Jurymen,--Guilty, Death! Gainsay me if you dare!"
+    --Things at this pitch, I say,--what hubbub without the doors?
+    What laughs, shrieks, hoots and yells, what rudest of uproars?
+
+    Bounce through the barrier throng a bulk comes rolling vast!
+    Thumps, kicks,--no manner of use!--spite of them rolls at last
+    Into the midst a ball which, bursting, brings to view
+    Publican Black Ned Bratts and Tabby his big wife too:
+    Both in a muck-sweat, both ... were never such eyes uplift
+    At the sight of yawning hell, such nostrils--snouts that sniffed
+    Sulphur, such mouths a-gape ready to swallow flame!
+    Horrified, hideous, frank fiend-faces! yet, all the same,
+    Mixed with a certain ... eh? how shall I dare style--mirth
+    The desperate grin of the guest that, could they break from earth,
+    Heaven was above, and hell might rage in impotence
+    Below the saved, the saved!
+
+                              "Confound you! (no offence!)
+    Out of our way,--push, wife! Yonder their Worships be!"
+    Ned Bratts has reached the bar, and "Hey, my Lords," roars he,
+    "A Jury of life and death, Judges the prime of the land,
+    Constables, javelineers,--all met, if I understand,
+    To decide so knotty a point as whether 't was Jack or Joan
+    Robbed the henroost, pinched the pig, hit the King's Arms with
+          a stone,
+    Dropped the baby down the well, left the tithesman in the lurch,
+    Or, three whole Sundays running, not once attended church!
+    What a pother--do these deserve the parish-stocks or whip,
+    More or less brow to brand, much or little nose to snip,--
+    When, in our Public, plain stand we--that's we stand here,
+    I and my Tab, brass-bold, brick-built of beef and beer,
+    --Do not we, slut? Step forth and show your beauty, jade!
+    Wife of my bosom--that's the word now! What a trade
+    We drove! None said us nay: nobody loved his life
+    So little as wag a tongue against us,--did they, wife?
+    Yet they knew us all the while, in their hearts, for what we are
+    --Worst couple, rogue and quean, unhanged--search near and far!
+    Eh, Tab? The pedler, now--o'er his noggin--who warned a mate
+    To cut and run, nor risk his pack where its loss of weight
+    Was the least to dread,--aha, how we two laughed a-good
+    As, stealing round the midden, he came on where I stood
+    With billet poised and raised,--you, ready with the rope,--
+    Ah, but that's past, that's sin repented of, we hope!
+    Men knew us for that same, yet safe and sound stood we!
+    The lily-livered knaves knew too (I've balked a d----)
+    Our keeping the 'Pied Bull' was just a mere pretence:
+    Too slow the pounds make food, drink, lodging, from out the pence!
+    There's not a stoppage to travel has chanced, this ten long year,
+    No break into hall or grange, no lifting of nag or steer,
+    Not a single roguery, from the clipping of a purse
+    To the cutting of a throat, but paid us toll. Od's curse!
+    When Gipsy Smouch made bold to cheat us of our due,
+    --Eh, Tab? the Squire's strong-box we helped the rascal to--
+    I think he pulled a face, next Sessions' swinging-time!
+    He danced the jig that needs no floor,--and, here's the prime,
+    'T was Scroggs that houghed the mare! Ay, those were busy days!
+
+    "Well, there we flourished brave, like scripture-trees called bays,
+    Faring high, drinking hard, in money up to head
+    --Not to say, boots and shoes, when ... Zounds, I nearly said--
+    Lord, to unlearn one's language! How shall we labor, wife?
+    Have you, fast hold, the Book? Grasp, grip it, for your life!
+    See, sirs, here's life, salvation! Here's--hold but out my breath--
+    When did I speak so long without once swearing? 'Sdeath,
+    No, nor unhelped by ale since man and boy! And yet
+    All yesterday I had to keep my whistle wet
+    While reading Tab this Book: book? don't say 'book'--they're plays,
+    Songs, ballads and the like: here's no such strawy blaze,
+    But sky wide ope, sun, moon, and seven stars out full-flare!
+    Tab, help and tell! I'm hoarse. A mug! or--no, a prayer!
+    Dip for one out of the Book! Who wrote it in the Jail
+    --He plied his pen unhelped by beer, sirs, I'll be bail!
+
+    "I've got my second wind. In trundles she--that's Tab.
+    'Why, Gammer, what's come now, that--bobbing like a crab
+    On Yule-tide bowl--your head's a-work and both your eyes
+    Break loose? Afeard, you fool? As if the dead can rise!
+    Say--Bagman Dick was found last May with fuddling-cap
+    Stuffed in his mouth: to choke's a natural mishap!'
+    'Gaffer, be--blessed,' cries she, 'and Bagman Dick as well!
+    I, you, and he are damned: this Public is our hell:
+    We live in fire: live coals don't feel!--once quenched, they learn--
+    Cinders do, to what dust they moulder while they burn!'
+
+    "'If you don't speak straight out,' says I--belike I swore--
+    'A knobstick, well you know the taste of, shall, once more,
+    Teach you to talk, my maid!' She ups with such a face,
+    Heart sunk inside me. 'Well, pad on, my prate-apace!'
+
+    "'I've been about those laces we need for ... never mind!
+    If henceforth they tie hands, 't is mine they'll have to bind.
+    You know who makes them best--the Tinker in our cage,
+    Pulled-up for gospelling, twelve years ago: no age
+    To try another trade,--yet, so he scorned to take
+    Money he did not earn, he taught himself the make
+    Of laces, tagged and tough--Dick Bagman found them so!
+    Good customers were we! Well, last week, you must know
+    His girl,--the blind young chit, who hawks about his wares,--
+    She takes it in her head to come no more--such airs
+    These hussies have! Yet, since we need a stoutish lace,--
+    "I'll to the jail-bird father, abuse her to his face!"
+    So, first I filled a jug to give me heart, and then,
+    Primed to the proper pitch, I posted to their den--
+    _Patmore_--they style their prison! I tip the turnkey, catch
+    My heart up, fix my face, and fearless lift the latch--
+    Both arms a-kimbo, in bounce with a good round oath
+    Ready for rapping out: no "Lawks" nor "By my troth!"
+
+    "'There sat my man, the father. He looked up: what one feels
+    When heart that leapt to mouth drops down again to heels!
+    He raised his hand.... Hast seen, when drinking out the night,
+    And in the day, earth grow another something quite
+    Under the sun's first stare? I stood a very stone.
+
+    "'"Woman!" (a fiery tear he put in every tone),
+    "How should my child frequent your house where lust is sport,
+    Violence--trade? Too true! I trust no vague report.
+    Her angel's hand, which stops the sight of sin, leaves clear
+    The other gate of sense, lets outrage through the ear.
+    What has she heard!--which, heard shall never be again.
+    Better lack food than feast, a Dives in the--wain
+    Or reign or train--of Charles!" (His language was not ours:
+    'T is my belief, God spoke: no tinker has such powers.)
+    "Bread, only bread they bring--my laces: if we broke
+    Your lump of leavened sin, the loaf's first crumb would choke!"
+
+    "'Down on my marrow-bones! Then all at once rose he:
+    His brown hair burst a-spread, his eyes were suns to see:
+    Up went his hands: "Through flesh, I reach, I read thy soul!
+    So may some stricken tree look blasted, bough and bole,
+    Champed by the fire-tooth, charred without, and yet, thrice-bound
+    With dreriment about, within may life be found,
+    A prisoned power to branch and blossom as before,
+    Could but the gardener cleave the cloister, reach the core,
+    Loosen the vital sap: yet where shall help be found?
+    Who says 'How save it?'--nor 'Why cumbers it the ground?'
+    Woman, that tree art thou! All sloughed about with scurf,
+    Thy stag-horns fright the sky, thy snake-roots sting the turf!
+    Drunkenness, wantonness, theft, murder gnash and gnarl
+    Thine outward, case thy soul with coating like the marle
+    Satan stamps flat upon each head beneath his hoof!
+    And how deliver such? The strong men keep aloof,
+    Lover and friend stand far, the mocking ones pass by,
+    Tophet gapes wide for prey: lost soul, despair and die!
+    What then? 'Look unto me and be ye saved!' saith God:
+    'I strike the rock, outstreats the life-stream at my rod!
+    Be your sins scarlet, wool shall they seem like,--although
+    As crimson red, yet turn white as the driven snow!'"
+
+    "'There, there, there! All I seem to somehow understand
+    Is--that, if I reached home, 't was through the guiding hand
+    Of his blind girl which led and led me through the streets
+    And out of town and up to door again. What greets
+    First thing my eye, as limbs recover from their swoon?
+    A book--this Book she gave at parting. "Father's boon--
+    The Book he wrote: it reads as if he spoke himself:
+    He cannot preach in bonds, so,--take it down from shelf
+    When you want counsel,--think you hear his very voice!"
+
+    "'Wicked dear Husband, first despair and then rejoice!
+    Dear wicked Husband, waste no tick of moment more,
+    Be saved like me, bald trunk! There's greenness yet at core,
+    Sap under slough! Read, read!'
+
+                                  "Let me take breath, my lords!
+    I'd like to know, are these--hers, mine, or Bunyan's words?
+    I'm 'wildered--scarce with drink,--nowise with drink alone!
+    You'll say, with heat: but heat's no stuff to split a stone
+    Like this black boulder--this flint heart of mine: the Book--
+    That dealt the crashing blow! Sirs, here's the fist that shook
+    His beard till Wrestler Jem howled like a just-lugged bear!
+    You had brained me with a feather: at once I grew aware
+    Christmas was meant for me. A burden at your back,
+    Good Master Christmas? Nay,--yours was that Joseph's sack,
+    --Or whose it was,--which held the cup,--compared with mine!
+    Robbery loads my loins, perjury cracks my chine,
+    Adultery ... nay, Tab, you pitched me as I flung!
+    One word, I'll up with fist.... No, sweet spouse, hold your tongue!
+
+    "I'm hasting to the end. The Book, sirs--take and read!
+    You have my history in a nutshell,--ay, indeed!
+    It must off, my burden! See,--slack straps and into pit,
+    Roll, reach, the bottom, rest, rot there--a plague on it!
+    For a mountain's sure to fall and bury Bedford Town,
+    'Destruction'--that's the name, and fire shall burn it down!
+    O 'scape the wrath in time! Time's now, if not too late.
+    How can I pilgrimage up to the wicket-gate?
+    Next comes Despond the slough: not that I fear to pull
+    Through mud, and dry my clothes at brave House Beautiful--
+    But it's late in the day, I reckon: had I left years ago
+    Town, wife, and children dear.... Well, Christmas did, you know!--
+    Soon I had met in the valley and tried my cudgel's strength
+    On the enemy horned and winged, a-straddle across its length!
+    Have at his horns, thwick--thwack: they snap, see! Hoof and hoof--
+    Bang, break the fetlock-bones! For love's sake, keep aloof
+    Angels! I'm man and match,--this cudgel for my flail,--
+    To thresh him, hoofs and horns, bat's wing and serpent's tail!
+    A chance gone by! But then, what else does Hopeful ding
+    Into the deafest ear except--hope, hope's the thing?
+    Too late i' the day for me to thrid the windings: but
+    There's still a way to win the race by death's short cut!
+    Did Master Faithful need climb the Delightful Mounts?
+    No, straight to Vanity Fair,--a fair, by all accounts,
+    Such as is held outside,--lords, ladies, grand and gay,--
+    Says he in the face of them, just what you hear me say.
+    And the Judges brought him in guilty, and brought him out
+    To die in the market-place--St. Peter's Green's about
+    The same thing: there they flogged, flayed, buffeted, lanced with
+          knives,
+    Pricked him with swords,--I'll swear, he'd full a cat's nine lives,--
+    So to his end at last came Faithful,--ha, ha, he!
+    Who holds the highest card? for there stands hid, you see,
+    Behind the rabble-rout, a chariot, pair and all:
+    He's in, he's off, he's up, through clouds, at trumpet-call,
+    Carried the nearest way to Heaven-gate! Odds my life--
+    Has nobody a sword to spare? not even a knife?
+    Then hang me, draw and quarter! Tab--do the same by her!
+    O Master Worldly-Wiseman ... that's Master Interpreter,
+    Take the will, not the deed! Our gibbet's handy close:
+    Forestall Last Judgment-Day! Be kindly, not morose!
+    There wants no earthly judge-and-jurying: here we stand--
+    Sentence our guilty selves: so, hang us out of hand!
+    Make haste for pity's sake! A single moment's loss
+    Means--Satan's lord once more: his whisper shoots across
+    All singing in my heart, all praying in my brain,
+    'It comes of heat and beer!'--hark how he guffaws plain!
+    'To-morrow you'll wake bright, and, in a safe skin, hug
+    Your sound selves, Tab and you, over a foaming jug!
+    You've had such qualms before, time out of mind!' He's right!
+    Did not we kick and cuff and curse away, that night,
+    When home we blindly reeled, and left poor humpback Joe
+    I' the lurch to pay for what ... somebody did, you know!
+    Both of us maundered then 'Lame humpback,--never more
+    Will he come limping, drain his tankard at our door!
+    He'll swing, while--somebody....' Says Tab, 'No, for I'll peach!'
+    'I'm for you, Tab,' cries I, 'there's rope enough for each!'
+    So blubbered we, and bussed, and went to bed upon
+    The grace of Tab's good thought: by morning, all was gone!
+    We laughed--'What's life to him, a cripple of no account?'
+    Oh, waves increase around--I feel them mount and mount!
+    Hang us! To-morrow brings Tom Bearward with his bears:
+    One new black-muzzled brute beats Sackerson, he swears:
+    (Sackerson, for my money!) And, baiting o'er, the Brawl
+    They lead on Turner's Patch,--lads, lasses, up tails all,--
+    I'm i' the thick o' the throng! That means the Iron Cage,
+    --Means the Lost Man inside! Where's hope for such as wage
+    War against light? Light's left, light's here, I hold light still,
+    So does Tab--make but haste to hang us both! You will?"
+
+    I promise, when he stopped you might have heard a mouse
+    Squeak, such a death-like hush sealed up the old Mote House.
+    But when the mass of man sank meek upon his knees,
+    While Tab, alongside, wheezed a hoarse "Do hang us, please!"
+    Why, then the waters rose, no eye but ran with tears,
+    Hearts heaved, heads thumped, until, paying all past arrears
+    Of pity and sorrow, at last a regular scream outbroke
+    Of triumph, joy and praise.
+
+                                      My Lord Chief Justice spoke,
+    First mopping brow and cheek, where still, for one that budged,
+    Another bead broke fresh: "What Judge, that ever judged
+    Since first the world began, judged such a case as this?
+    Why, Master Bratts, long since, folk smelt you out, I wis!
+    I had my doubts, i' faith, each time you played the fox
+    Convicting geese of crime in yonder witness-box--
+    Yea, much did I misdoubt, the thief that stole her eggs
+    Was hardly goosey's self at Reynard's game, i' feggs!
+    Yet thus much was to praise--you spoke to point, direct--
+    Swore you heard, saw the theft: no jury could suspect--
+    Dared to suspect,--I'll say,--a spot in white so clear:
+    Goosey was throttled, true: but thereof godly fear
+    Came of example set, much as our laws intend;
+    And, though a fox confessed, you proved the Judge's friend.
+    What if I had my doubts? Suppose I gave them breath,
+    Brought you to bar: what work to do, ere 'Guilty, Death,'--
+    Had paid our pains! What heaps of witnesses to drag
+    From holes and corners, paid from out the County's bag!
+    Trial three dog-days long! _Amicus Curiæ_--that's
+    Your title, no dispute--truth-telling Master Bratts!
+    Thank you, too, Mistress Tab! Why doubt one word you say?
+    Hanging you both deserve, hanged both shall be this day!
+    The tinker needs must be a proper man. I've heard
+    He lies in Jail long since: if Quality's good word
+    Warrants me letting loose,--some householder, I mean--
+    Freeholder, better still,--I don't say but--between
+    Now and next Sessions.... Well! Consider of his case,
+    I promise to, at least: we owe him so much grace.
+    Not that--no, God forbid!--I lean to think, as you,
+    The grace that such repent is any jail-bird's due:
+    I rather see the fruit of twelve years' pious reign--
+    Astræa Redux, Charles restored his rights again!
+    --Of which, another time! I somehow feel a peace
+    Stealing across the world. May deeds like this increase!
+    So, Master Sheriff, stay that sentence I pronounced
+    On those two dozen odd: deserving to be trounced
+    Soundly, and yet ... well, well, at all events despatch
+    This pair of--shall I say, sinner-saints?--ere we catch
+    Their jail-distemper too. Stop tears, or I'll indite
+    All weeping Bedfordshire for turning Bunyanite!"
+
+    So, forms were galloped through. If Justice, on the spur,
+    Proved somewhat expeditious, would Quality demur?
+    And happily hanged were they,--why lengthen out my tale?--
+    Where Bunyan's Statue stands facing where stood his Jail.
+
+The effect which "Pilgrim's Progress" had on these two miserable beings,
+may be taken as typical of the enormous influence wielded by Bunyan in
+his own time. The most innocent among us had overwhelming qualms in
+regard to our sins, as children when we listened to our mothers read the
+book. I remember having confessed some childish peccadillo that was
+weighing on my small mind as the first result of my thoroughly aroused
+sense of guilt. In these early years of the Twentieth Century, such a
+feeling seems almost as far removed as the days of Bunyan. A sense of
+guilt is not a distinguishing characteristic of the child of the present
+day, and it may also be doubted whether such reprobates as Ned and his
+wife would to-day be affected much if at all by the "Pilgrim's
+Progress." There was probably great personal magnetism in Bunyan
+himself. We are told that after his discharge from prison, his
+popularity as a preacher widened rapidly. Such vast crowds of people
+flocked to hear him that his place of worship had to be enlarged. He
+went frequently to London on week days to deliver addresses in the large
+chapel in Southwark which was invariably thronged with eager worshipers.
+
+Browning's picture of Bunyan shows the instant effect of his personality
+upon Tab.
+
+    "There sat the man, the father. He looked up: what one feels
+    When heart that leapt to mouth drops down again to heels!
+    He raised his hand.... Hast seen, when drinking out the night,
+    And in the day, earth grow another something quite
+    Under the sun's first stare? I stood a very stone."
+
+And again
+
+                                    "Then all at once rose he:
+    His brown hair burst a-spread, his eyes were suns to see:
+    Up went his hands."
+
+It is like a clever bit of stage business to make Ned and Tab use the
+shoe laces to tie up the hands of their victims, and to bring on by this
+means the meeting between Tab and Bunyan. Of course, the blind
+daughter's part is imaginary, but yet it seems to bring very vividly
+before us this well loved child. Another touch, quite in keeping with
+the time, is the decision of the Judge that the remarkable change of
+heart in Ned and Tab was due to the piety of King Charles. Like every
+one else, however, he was impressed by what he heard of the Tinker, and
+inclined to see what he could do to give him his freedom. It seems that
+Bunyan's life in jail was a good deal lightened by the favor he always
+inspired. The story goes that from the first he was in favor with the
+jailor, who nearly lost his place for permitting him on one occasion to
+go as far as London. After this he was more strictly confined, but at
+last he was often allowed to visit his family, and remain with them all
+night. One night, however, when he was allowed this liberty Bunyan felt
+resistlessly impressed with the propriety of returning to the prison. He
+arrived after the keeper had shut up for the night, much to the
+official's surprise. But his impatience at being untimely disturbed was
+changed to thankfulness, when a little after a messenger came from a
+neighboring clerical magistrate to see that the prisoner was safe. "You
+may go now when you will" said the jailer; "for you know better than I
+can tell you when to come in again."
+
+[Illustration: John Bunyan
+
+Statue by J. E. Boehm]
+
+Though Bunyan is not primarily the subject of this poem, it is an
+appreciative tribute to his genius and to his force of character,
+only to be paralleled by Dowden's sympathetic critique in his "Puritan
+and Anglican Studies." What Browning makes Ned and Tab see through
+suddenly aroused feeling--namely that it is no book but
+
+                                                      "plays,
+    Songs, ballads and the like: here's no such strawy blaze,
+    But sky wide ope, sun, moon, and seven stars out full-flare,"
+
+Dowden puts in the colder language of criticism.
+
+"The 'Pilgrim's Progress' is a gallery of portraits, admirably
+discriminated, and as convincing in their self-verification as those of
+Holbein. His personages live for us as few figures outside the drama of
+Shakespeare live.... All his powers cooperated harmoniously in creating
+this book--his religious ardor, his human tenderness, his sense of
+beauty, nourished by the Scriptures, his strong common sense, even his
+gift of humor. Through his deep seriousness play the lighter faculties.
+The whole man presses into this small volume."
+
+"Halbert and Hob" belongs here merely for its wild North of England
+setting. We may imagine, if we choose, that this wild father and son
+dwelt in the beautiful country of Northumberland, in the North of
+England, but descriptions of the scenery could add nothing to the
+atmosphere of the poem, for Northumberland is surpassingly lovely.
+Doubtless, human beings of this type have existed in all parts of the
+globe. At any rate, these particular human beings were transported by
+Browning from Aristotle's "Ethics" to the North of England. The incident
+is told by Aristotle in illustration of the contention that anger and
+asperity are more natural than excessive and unnecessary desires. "Thus
+one who was accused of striking his father said, as an apology for it,
+that his own father, and even his grandfather, had struck his; 'and he
+also (pointing to his child) will strike me, when he becomes a man; for
+it runs in our family.' A certain person, also, being dragged by his
+son, bid him stop at the door, for he himself had dragged his father as
+far as that." The dryness of "Aristotle's cheeks" is as usual so
+enlivened by Browning that the fate of Halbert and Hob grows pathetic
+and comes close to our sympathies.
+
+
+    HALBERT AND HOB
+
+    Here is a thing that happened. Like wild beasts whelped, for den,
+    In a wild part of North England, there lived once two wild men
+    Inhabiting one homestead, neither a hovel nor hut,
+    Time out of mind their birthright: father and son, these--but--
+    Such a son, such a father! Most wildness by degrees
+    Softens away: yet, last of their line, the wildest and worst were
+          these.
+
+    Criminals, then? Why, no: they did not murder and rob;
+    But, give them a word, they returned a blow--old Halbert as young Hob:
+    Harsh and fierce of word, rough and savage of deed,
+    Hated or feared the more--who knows?--the genuine wild-beast breed.
+
+    Thus were they found by the few sparse folk of the countryside;
+    But how fared each with other? E'en beasts couch, hide by hide,
+    In a growling, grudged agreement: so, father and son aye curled
+    The closelier up in their den because the last of their kind in the
+          world.
+
+    Still, beast irks beast on occasion. One Christmas night of snow,
+    Came father and son to words--such words! more cruel because the blow
+    To crown each word was wanting, while taunt matched gibe, and curse
+    Completed with oath in wager, like pastime in hell,--nay, worse:
+    For pastime turned to earnest, as up there sprang at last
+    The son at the throat of the father, seized him and held him fast.
+
+    "Out of this house you go!"--(there followed a hideous oath)--
+    "This oven where now we bake, too hot to hold us both!
+    If there's snow outside, there's coolness: out with you, bide a spell
+    In the drift and save the sexton the charge of a parish shell!"
+
+    Now, the old trunk was tough, was solid as stump of oak
+    Untouched at the core by a thousand years: much less had its
+          seventy broke
+    One whipcord nerve in the muscly mass from neck to shoulder-blade
+    Of the mountainous man, whereon his child's rash hand like a
+          feather weighed.
+
+    Nevertheless at once did the mammoth shut his eyes,
+    Drop chin to breast, drop hands to sides, stand stiffened--arms
+          and thighs
+    All of a piece--struck mute, much as a sentry stands,
+    Patient to take the enemy's fire: his captain so commands.
+
+    Whereat the son's wrath flew to fury at such sheer scorn
+    Of his puny strength by the giant eld thus acting the babe new-born:
+    And "Neither will this turn serve!" yelled he. "Out with you!
+          Trundle, log!
+    If you cannot tramp and trudge like a man, try all-fours like a dog!"
+
+    Still the old man stood mute. So, logwise,--down to floor
+    Pulled from his fireside place, dragged on from hearth to door,--
+    Was he pushed, a very log, staircase along, until
+    A certain turn in the steps was reached, a yard from the
+          house-door-sill.
+
+    Then the father opened eyes--each spark of their rage extinct,--
+    Temples, late black, dead-blanched,--right-hand with left-hand
+          linked,--
+    He faced his son submissive; when slow the accents came,
+    They were strangely mild though his son's rash hand on his neck
+          lay all the same.
+
+    "Hob, on just such a night of a Christmas long ago,
+    For such a cause, with such a gesture, did I drag--so--
+    My father down thus far: but, softening here, I heard
+    A voice in my heart, and stopped: you wait for an outer word.
+
+    "For your own sake, not mine, soften you too! Untrod
+    Leave this last step we reach, nor brave the finger of God!
+    I dared not pass its lifting: I did well. I nor blame
+    Nor praise you. I stopped here: and, Hob, do you the same!"
+
+    Straightway the son relaxed his hold of the father's throat.
+    They mounted, side by side, to the room again: no note
+    Took either of each, no sign made each to either: last
+    As first, in absolute silence, their Christmas-night they passed.
+
+    At dawn, the father sate on, dead, in the self-same place,
+    With an outburst blackening still the old bad fighting-face:
+    But the son crouched all a-tremble like any lamb new-yeaned.
+
+    When he went to the burial, someone's staff he borrowed--tottered
+          and leaned.
+    But his lips were loose, not locked,--kept muttering, mumbling.
+          "There!
+    At his cursing and swearing!" the youngsters cried: but the elders
+          thought "In prayer."
+    A boy threw stones: he picked them up and stored them in his vest.
+
+    So tottered, muttered, mumbled he, till he died, perhaps found rest.
+    "Is there a reason in nature for these hard hearts?" O Lear,
+    That a reason out of nature must turn them soft, seems clear!
+
+In the "Inn Album," a degenerate type of Nineteenth-Century Englishman
+is dissected with the keen knife of a surgeon, which Browning knows so
+well how to wield. The villain of this poem was a real personage, a Lord
+de Ros, a friend of the Duke of Wellington. The story belongs to the
+annals of crime and is necessarily unpleasant, but in order to see how
+Browning has worked up the episode it is interesting to know the bare
+facts as Furnivall gives them in "Notes and Queries" March 25, 1876. He
+says "that the gambling lord showed the portrait of the lady he had
+seduced and abandoned and offered his dupe an introduction to her, as a
+bribe to induce him to wait for payment of the money he had won; that
+the young gambler eagerly accepted the offer; and that the lady
+committed suicide on hearing of the bargain between them." Dr. Furnivall
+heard the story from some one who well remembered the sensation it had
+made in London years ago. In his management of the story, Browning has
+intensified the villainy of the Lord at the same time that he has shown
+a possible streak of goodness in him. The young man, on the other hand,
+he has made to be of very good stuff, indeed, notwithstanding his year
+of tutelage from the older man. He makes one radical change in the story
+as well as several minor ones. In the poem the younger man had been in
+love with the girl whom the older man had dishonorably treated, and had
+never ceased to love her. Of course, the two men do not know this. By
+the advice of the elder man, the younger one has decided to settle down
+and marry his cousin, a charming young girl, who is also brought upon
+the scene. The other girl is represented as having married an old
+country parson, who sought a wife simply as a helpmeet in his work. By
+thus complicating the situations, room has been given for subtle psychic
+development. The action is all concentrated into one morning in the
+parlor of the old inn, reminding one much of the method of Ibsen in his
+plays of grouping his action about a final catastrophe. At the inn one
+is introduced first to the two gamblers in talk, the young man having
+won his ten thousand pounds from the older man, who had intended to
+fleece him. The inn album plays an important part in the action,
+innocent as its first appearance upon the scene seems to be. The
+description of this and the inn parlor opens the poem.
+
+
+    THE INN ALBUM
+
+    I
+
+    "That oblong book's the Album; hand it here!
+    Exactly! page on page of gratitude
+    For breakfast, dinner, supper, and the view!
+    I praise these poets: they leave margin-space;
+    Each stanza seems to gather skirts around,
+    And primly, trimly, keep the foot's confine,
+    Modest and maidlike; lubber prose o'er-sprawls
+    And straddling stops the path from left to right.
+    Since I want space to do my cipher-work,
+    Which poem spares a corner? What comes first?
+    '_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!_'
+    (Open the window, we burn daylight, boy!)
+    Or see--succincter beauty, brief and bold--
+    '_If a fellow can dine On rumpsteaks and port wine,
+    He needs not despair Of dining well here_--'
+    '_Here!_' I myself could find a better rhyme!
+    That bard's a Browning; he neglects the form:
+    But ah, the sense, ye gods, the weighty sense!
+    Still, I prefer this classic. Ay, throw wide!
+    I'll quench the bits of candle yet unburnt.
+    A minute's fresh air, then to cipher-work!
+    Three little columns hold the whole account:
+    _Ecarté_, after which Blind Hookey, then
+    Cutting-the-Pack, five hundred pounds the cut.
+    'Tis easy reckoning: I have lost, I think."
+
+    Two personages occupy this room
+    Shabby-genteel, that's parlor to the inn
+    Perched on a view-commanding eminence;
+    --Inn which may be a veritable house
+    Where somebody once lived and pleased good taste
+    Till tourists found his coign of vantage out,
+    And fingered blunt the individual mark
+    And vulgarized things comfortably smooth.
+    On a sprig-pattern-papered wall there brays
+    Complaint to sky Sir Edwin's dripping stag;
+    His couchant coast-guard creature corresponds;
+    They face the Huguenot and Light o' the World.
+    Grim o'er the mirror on the mantlepiece,
+    Varnished and coffined, _Salmo ferox_ glares
+    --Possibly at the List of Wines which, framed
+    And glazed, hangs somewhat prominent on peg.
+
+    So much describes the stuffy little room--
+    Vulgar flat smooth respectability:
+    Not so the burst of landscape surging in,
+    Sunrise and all, as he who of the pair
+    Is, plain enough, the younger personage
+    Draws sharp the shrieking curtain, sends aloft
+    The sash, spreads wide and fastens back to wall
+    Shutter and shutter, shows you England's best.
+    He leans into a living glory-bath
+    Of air and light where seems to float and move
+    The wooded watered country, hill and dale
+    And steel-bright thread of stream, a-smoke with mist,
+    A-sparkle with May morning, diamond drift
+    O' the sun-touched dew. Except the red-roofed patch
+    Of half a dozen dwellings that, crept close
+    For hill-side shelter, make the village-clump
+    This inn is perched above to dominate--
+    Except such sign of human neighborhood,
+    (And this surmised rather than sensible)
+    There's nothing to disturb absolute peace,
+    The reign of English nature--which mean art
+    And civilized existence. Wildness' self
+    Is just the cultured triumph. Presently
+    Deep solitude, be sure, reveals a Place
+    That knows the right way to defend itself:
+    Silence hems round a burning spot of life.
+    Now, where a Place burns, must a village brood,
+    And where a village broods, an inn should boast--
+    Close and convenient: here you have them both.
+    This inn, the Something-arms--the family's--
+    (Don't trouble Guillim; heralds leave our half!)
+    Is dear to lovers of the picturesque,
+    And epics have been planned here; but who plan
+    Take holy orders and find work to do.
+    Painters are more productive, stop a week,
+    Declare the prospect quite a Corot,--ay,
+    For tender sentiment,--themselves incline
+    Rather to handsweep large and liberal;
+    Then go, but not without success achieved
+    --Haply some pencil-drawing, oak or beech,
+    Ferns at the base and ivies up the bole,
+    On this a slug, on that a butterfly.
+    Nay, he who hooked the _salmo_ pendent here,
+    Also exhibited, this same May-month,
+    '_Foxgloves: a study_'--so inspires the scene,
+    The air, which now the younger personage
+    Inflates him with till lungs o'erfraught are fain
+    Sigh forth a satisfaction might bestir
+    Even those tufts of tree-tops to the South
+    I' the distance where the green dies off to grey,
+    Which, easy of conjecture, front the Place;
+    He eyes them, elbows wide, each hand to cheek.
+    His fellow, the much older--either say
+    A youngish-old man or man oldish-young--
+    Sits at the table: wicks are noisome-deep
+    In wax, to detriment of plated ware;
+    Above--piled, strewn--is store of playing-cards,
+    Counters and all that's proper for a game.
+
+Circumstantial as the description of this parlor and the situation of
+the inn is, it is impossible to say which out of the many English inns
+Browning had in mind. Inns date back to the days of the Romans, who had
+ale-houses along the roads, the most interesting feature of which was
+the ivy garland or wreath of vine-leaves in honor of Bacchus, wreathed
+around a hoop at the end of a long pole to point out the way where good
+drink could be had. A curious survival of this in early English times
+was the "ale-stake," a tavern so called because it had a long pole
+projecting from the house front wreathed like the old Roman poles with
+furze, a garland of flowers or an ivy wreath. This decoration was called
+the "bush," and in time the London taverners so vied with each other in
+their attempt to attract attention by very long poles and very prominent
+bushes that in 1375 a law was passed according to which all taverners
+in the city of London owning ale-stakes projecting or extending over the
+King's highway more than seven feet in length, at the utmost, should be
+fined forty pence, and compelled to remove the sign. Here is the origin,
+too, of the proverb, "good wine needs no bush." In the later development
+of the inn the signs lost their Bacchic character and became most
+elaborate, often being painted by artists.
+
+The poet says this inn was the "Something-arms," and had perhaps once
+been a house. Many inns were the "Something (?) arms" and certainly many
+inns had been houses. One such is the Pounds Bridge Inn on a secluded
+road between Speldhurst and Penshurst in Kent. It was built by the
+rector of Penshurst, William Darkenoll, who lived in it only three
+years, when it became an inn. The inn of the poem might have been a
+combination in Browning's memory of this and the "White Horse" at
+Woolstone, which is described as a queerly pretty little inn with a
+front distantly resembling a Chippendale bureau-bookcase. "It is tucked
+away under the mighty sides of White Horse Hill, Berkshire, and
+additionally overhung with trees and encircled with shrubberies and
+under-woods, and is finally situated on a narrow road that presently
+leads, as it would seem, to the end of the known world." So writes the
+enthusiastic lover of inns, Charles Harper. Or, perhaps, since there is
+a river to be seen from the inn of the poem the "Swan" at Sandleford
+Water, where a foot bridge and a water splash on the river Enborne mark
+the boundaries of Hampshire and Berkshire. Here "You have the place
+wholly to yourself, or share it only with the squirrels and the birds of
+the overarching trees." The illustration given of the Black Bear Inn,
+Tewksbury, is a quite typical example of inn architecture, and may have
+helped the picture in Browning's mind, though its situation is not so
+rural as that described in the poem.
+
+Inns have, from time immemorial, been the scenes of romances and
+tragedies and crimes. There have been inns like the "Castle" where the
+"quality" loved to congregate. The "inn album" of this establishment had
+inscribed in it almost every eighteenth-century name of any distinction.
+There have been inns which were noted as the resort of the wits of the
+day. Ben Jonson loved to take "mine ease in mine inn," and Dr. Johnson
+declared that a seat in a tavern chair was the height of human felicity.
+"He was thinking," as it has been pertinently put, "not only of a
+comfortable sanded parlor, a roaring fire, and plenty of good cheer and
+good company, but also of the circle of humbly appreciative auditors who
+gathered round an accepted wit, hung upon his words, offered themselves
+as butts for his ironic or satiric humor, and--stood treat." Or there
+was the inn of sinister aspect where highwaymen might congregate, or
+inns with hosts who let their guests down through trap-doors in the
+middle of the night to rob and murder them--or is this only a vague
+remembrance of a fanciful inn of Dickens? Then there was the pilgrim's
+inn in the days when Chaucerian folks loved to go on pilgrimages, and in
+the last century the cyclists inn, and to-day the inn of the
+automobilist. The particular inn in the poem belongs to the class, rural
+inn, and in spite of its pictures by noted masters was "stuffy" as to
+the atmosphere.
+
+[Illustration: An English Inn]
+
+The "inn album" or visitors' book is a feature of inns. In this country
+we simply sign our names in the visitors' book, but the "album" feature
+of the visitors' book of an English inn is its glory and too often its
+shame, for as Mr. Harper says, "Bathos, ineptitude, and lines that
+refuse to scan are the stigmata of visitors' book verse. There is no
+worse poetry on earth than that which lurks between those covers, or in
+the pages of young ladies' albums." He declares that "The interesting
+pages of visitors' books are generally those that are not there, as an
+Irishman might say; for the world is populated very densely with those
+appreciative people who, whether from a love of literature, or with an
+instinct for collecting autographs that may have a realizable value,
+remove the signatures of distinguished men, and with them anything
+original they may have written."
+
+Browning pokes fun at the poetry of his inn album, but at the same time
+uses it as an important part of the machinery in the action. His English
+"Iago" writes in it the final damnation of his own character--the threat
+by means of which he hopes to ruin his victims, but which, instead,
+causes the lady to take poison and the young man to murder "Iago."
+
+The presence of the two men at this particular inn is explained in the
+following bit of conversation between them.
+
+    "You wrong your poor disciple. Oh, no airs!
+    Because you happen to be twice my age
+    And twenty times my master, must perforce
+    No blink of daylight struggle through the web
+    There's no unwinding? You entoil my legs,
+    And welcome, for I like it: blind me,--no!
+    A very pretty piece of shuttle-work
+    Was that--your mere chance question at the club--
+    '_Do you go anywhere this Whitsuntide?
+    I'm off for Paris, there's the Opera--there's
+    The Salon, there's a china-sale,--beside
+    Chantilly; and, for good companionship,
+    There's Such-and-such and So-and-so. Suppose
+    We start together?_' '_No such holiday!_'
+    I told you: '_Paris and the rest be hanged!
+    Why plague me who am pledged to home-delights?
+    I'm the engaged now; through whose fault but yours?
+    On duty. As you well know. Don't I drowse
+    The week away down with the Aunt and Niece?
+    No help: it's leisure, loneliness and love.
+    Wish I could take you; but fame travels fast,--
+    A man of much newspaper-paragraph,
+    You scare domestic circles; and beside
+    Would not you like your lot, that second taste
+    Of nature and approval of the grounds!
+    You might walk early or lie late, so shirk
+    Week-day devotions: but stay Sunday o'er,
+    And morning church is obligatory:
+    No mundane garb permissible, or dread
+    The butler's privileged monition! No!
+    Pack off to Paris, nor wipe tear away!_'
+    Whereon how artlessly the happy flash
+    Followed, by inspiration! '_Tell you what--
+    Let's turn their flank, try things on t'other side!
+    Inns for my money! Liberty's the life!
+    We'll lie in hiding: there's the crow-nest nook,
+    The tourist's joy, the Inn they rave about,
+    Inn that's out--out of sight and out of mind
+    And out of mischief to all four of us--
+    Aunt and niece, you and me. At night arrive;
+    At morn, find time for just a Pisgah-view
+    Of my friend's Land of Promise; then depart.
+    And while I'm whizzing onward by first train,
+    Bound for our own place (since my Brother sulks
+    And says I shun him like the plague) yourself--
+    Why, you have stepped thence, start from platform, gay
+    Despite the sleepless journey,--love lends wings,--
+    Hug aunt and niece who, none the wiser, wait
+    The faithful advent! Eh?_' '_With all my heart_,'
+    Said I to you; said I to mine own self:
+    '_Does he believe I fail to comprehend
+    He wants just one more final friendly snack
+    At friend's exchequer ere friend runs to earth,
+    Marries, renounces yielding friends such sport?_'
+    And did I spoil sport, pull face grim,--nay, grave?
+    Your pupil does you better credit! No!
+    I parleyed with my pass-book,--rubbed my pair
+    At the big balance in my banker's hands,--
+    Folded a cheque cigar-case-shape,--just wants
+    Filling and signing,--and took train, resolved
+    To execute myself with decency
+    And let you win--if not Ten thousand quite,
+    Something by way of wind-up-farewell burst
+    Of firework-nosegay! Where's your fortune fled?
+    Or is not fortune constant after all?
+    You lose ten thousand pounds: had I lost half
+    Or half that, I should bite my lips, I think.
+    You man of marble! Strut and stretch my best
+    On tiptoe, I shall never reach your height.
+    How does the loss feel! Just one lesson more!"
+
+    The more refined man smiles a frown away.
+
+On the way to the station where the older man is to take the train they
+have another talk, in which each tells the other of his experience, but
+they do not find out yet that they have both loved the same woman.
+
+                                      "Stop, my boy!
+    Don't think I'm stingy of experience! Life
+    --It's like this wood we leave. Should you and I
+    Go wandering about there, though the gaps
+    We went in and came out by were opposed
+    As the two poles, still, somehow, all the same,
+    By nightfall we should probably have chanced
+    On much the same main points of interest--
+    Both of us measured girth of mossy trunk,
+    Stript ivy from its strangled prey, clapped hands
+    At squirrel, sent a fir-cone after crow,
+    And so forth,--never mind what time betwixt.
+    So in our lives; allow I entered mine
+    Another way than you: 't is possible
+    I ended just by knocking head against
+    That plaguy low-hung branch yourself began
+    By getting bump from; as at last you too
+    May stumble o'er that stump which first of all
+    Bade me walk circumspectly. Head and feet
+    Are vulnerable both, and I, foot-sure,
+    Forgot that ducking down saves brow from bruise.
+    I, early old, played young man four years since
+    And failed confoundedly: so, hate alike
+    Failure and who caused failure,--curse her cant!"
+
+    "Oh, I see! You, though somewhat past the prime,
+    Were taken with a rosebud beauty! Ah--
+    But how should chits distinguish? She admired
+    Your marvel of a mind, I'll undertake!
+    But as to body ... nay, I mean ... that is,
+    When years have told on face and figure...."
+
+                                               "Thanks,
+    Mister _Sufficiently-Instructed_! Such
+    No doubt was bound to be the consequence
+    To suit your self-complacency: she liked
+    My head enough, but loved some heart beneath
+    Some head with plenty of brown hair a-top
+    After my young friend's fashion! What becomes
+    Of that fine speech you made a minute since
+    About the man of middle age you found
+    A formidable peer at twenty-one?
+    So much for your mock-modesty! and yet
+    I back your first against this second sprout
+    Of observation, insight, what you please.
+    My middle age, Sir, had too much success!
+    It's odd: my case occurred four years ago--
+    I finished just while you commenced that turn
+    I' the wood of life that takes us to the wealth
+    Of honeysuckle, heaped for who can reach.
+    Now, I don't boast: it's bad style, and beside,
+    The feat proves easier than it looks: I plucked
+    Full many a flower unnamed in that bouquet
+    (Mostly of peonies and poppies, though!)
+    Good nature sticks into my button-hole.
+    Therefore it was with nose in want of snuff
+    Rather than Ess or Psidium, that I chanced
+    On what--so far from '_rosebud beauty_'.... Well--
+    She's dead: at least you never heard her name;
+    She was no courtly creature, had nor birth
+    Nor breeding--mere fine-lady-breeding; but
+    Oh, such a wonder of a woman! Grand
+    As a Greek statue! Stick fine clothes on that,
+    Style that a Duchess or a Queen,--you know,
+    Artists would make an outcry: all the more,
+    That she had just a statue's sleepy grace
+    Which broods o'er its own beauty. Nay, her fault
+    (Don't laugh!) was just perfection: for suppose
+    Only the little flaw, and I had peeped
+    Inside it, learned what soul inside was like.
+    At Rome some tourist raised the grit beneath
+    A Venus' forehead with his whittling-knife--
+    I wish,--now,--I had played that brute, brought blood
+    To surface from the depths I fancied chalk!
+    As it was, her mere face surprised so much
+    That I stopped short there, struck on heap, as stares
+    The cockney stranger at a certain bust
+    With drooped eyes,--she's the thing I have in mind,--
+    Down at my Brother's. All sufficient prize--
+    Such outside! Now,--confound me for a prig!--
+    Who cares? I'll make a clean breast once for all!
+    Beside, you've heard the gossip. My life long
+    I've been a woman-liker,--liking means
+    Loving and so on. There's a lengthy list
+    By this time I shall have to answer for--
+    So say the good folk: and they don't guess half--
+    For the worst is, let once collecting-itch
+    Possess you, and, with perspicacity,
+    Keeps growing such a greediness that theft
+    Follows at no long distance,--there's the fact!
+    I knew that on my Leporello-list
+    Might figure this, that, and the other name
+    Of feminine desirability,
+    But if I happened to desire inscribe,
+    Along with these, the only Beautiful--
+    Here was the unique specimen to snatch
+    Or now or never. 'Beautiful' I said--
+    'Beautiful' say in cold blood,--boiling then
+    To tune of '_Haste, secure whate'er the cost
+    This rarity, die in the act, be damned,
+    So you complete collection, crown your list!_'
+    It seemed as though the whole world, once aroused
+    By the first notice of such wonder's birth,
+    Would break bounds to contest my prize with me
+    The first discoverer, should she but emerge
+    From that safe den of darkness where she dozed
+    Till I stole in, that country-parsonage
+    Where, country-parson's daughter, motherless,
+    Brotherless, sisterless, for eighteen years
+    She had been vegetating lily-like.
+    Her father was my brother's tutor, got
+    The living that way: him I chanced to see--
+    Her I saw--her the world would grow one eye
+    To see, I felt no sort of doubt at all!
+    '_Secure her!_' cried the devil: '_afterward
+    Arrange for the disposal of the prize!_'
+    The devil's doing! yet I seem to think--
+    Now, when all's done,--think with '_a head reposed_'
+    In French phrase--hope I think I meant to do
+    All requisite for such a rarity
+    When I should be at leisure, have due time
+    To learn requirement. But in evil day--
+    Bless me, at week's end, long as any year,
+    The father must begin '_Young Somebody,
+    Much recommended--for I break a rule--
+    Comes here to read, next Long Vacation_.' '_Young!_'
+    That did it. Had the epithet been '_rich_,'
+    '_Noble_,' '_a genius_,' even '_handsome_,'--but
+    --'_Young!_'"
+
+                        "I say--just a word! I want to know--
+    You are not married?"
+                          "I?"
+
+                              "Nor ever were?"
+    "Never! Why?"
+                  "Oh, then--never mind! Go on!
+    I had a reason for the question."
+
+                                      "Come,--
+    You could not be the young man?"
+                                    "No, indeed!
+    Certainly--if you never married her!"
+
+    "That I did not: and there's the curse, you'll see!
+    Nay, all of it's one curse, my life's mistake
+    Which, nourished with manure that's warranted
+    To make the plant bear wisdom, blew out full
+    In folly beyond field-flower-foolishness!
+    The lies I used to tell my womankind,
+    Knowing they disbelieved me all the time
+    Though they required my lies, their decent due,
+    This woman--not so much believed, I'll say,
+    As just anticipated from my mouth:
+    Since being true, devoted, constant--she
+    Found constancy, devotion, truth, the plain
+    And easy commonplace of character.
+    No mock-heroics but seemed natural
+    To her who underneath the face, I knew
+    Was fairness' self, possessed a heart, I judged
+    Must correspond in folly just as far
+    Beyond the common,--and a mind to match,--
+    Not made to puzzle conjurers like me
+    Who, therein, proved the fool who fronts you, Sir,
+    And begs leave to cut short the ugly rest!
+    '_Trust me!_' I said: she trusted. '_Marry me!_'
+    Or rather, '_We are married: when, the rite?_'
+    That brought on the collector's next-day qualm
+    At counting acquisition's cost. There lay
+    My marvel, there my purse more light by much
+    Because of its late lie-expenditure:
+    Ill-judged such moment to make fresh demand--
+    To cage as well as catch my rarity!
+    So, I began explaining. At first word
+    Outbroke the horror. '_Then, my truths were lies!_'
+    I tell you, such an outbreak, such new strange
+    All-unsuspected revelation--soul
+    As supernaturally grand as face
+    Was fair beyond example--that at once
+    Either I lost--or, if it please you, found
+    My senses,--stammered somehow--'_Jest! and now,
+    Earnest! Forget all else but--heart has loved,
+    Does love, shall love you ever! take the hand!_'
+    Not she! no marriage for superb disdain,
+    Contempt incarnate!"
+
+                        "Yes, it's different,--
+    It's only like in being four years since.
+    I see now!"
+
+                "Well, what did disdain do next,
+    Think you?"
+
+                "That's past me: did not marry you!--
+    That's the main thing I care for, I suppose.
+    Turned nun, or what?"
+
+                          "Why, married in a month
+    Some parson, some smug crop-haired smooth-chinned sort
+    Of curate-creature, I suspect,--dived down,
+    Down, deeper still, and came up somewhere else--
+    I don't know where--I've not tried much to know,--
+    In short, she's happy: what the clodpoles call
+    'Countrified' with a vengeance! leads the life
+    Respectable and all that drives you mad:
+    Still--where, I don't know, and that's best for both."
+
+    "Well, that she did not like you, I conceive.
+    But why should you hate her, I want to know?"
+
+    "My good young friend,--because or her or else
+    Malicious Providence I have to hate.
+    For, what I tell you proved the turning-point
+    Of my whole life and fortune toward success
+    Or failure. If I drown, I lay the fault
+    Much on myself who caught at reed not rope,
+    But more on reed which, with a packthread's pith,
+    Had buoyed me till the minute's cramp could thaw
+    And I strike out afresh and so be saved.
+    It's easy saying--I had sunk before,
+    Disqualified myself by idle days
+    And busy nights, long since, from holding hard
+    On cable, even, had fate cast me such!
+    You boys don't know how many times men fail
+    Perforce o' the little to succeed i' the large,
+    Husband their strength, let slip the petty prey,
+    Collect the whole power for the final pounce.
+    My fault was the mistaking man's main prize
+    For intermediate boy's diversion; clap
+    Of boyish hands here frightened game away
+    Which, once gone, goes forever. Oh, at first
+    I took the anger easily, nor much
+    Minded the anguish--having learned that storms
+    Subside, and teapot-tempests are akin.
+    Time would arrange things, mend whate'er might be
+    Somewhat amiss; precipitation, eh?
+    Reason and rhyme prompt--reparation! Tiffs
+    End properly in marriage and a dance!
+    I said 'We'll marry, make the past a blank'--
+    And never was such damnable mistake!
+    That interview, that laying bare my soul,
+    As it was first, so was it last chance--one
+    And only. Did I write? Back letter came
+    Unopened as it went. Inexorable
+    She fled, I don't know where, consoled herself
+    With the smug curate-creature: chop and change!
+    Sure am I, when she told her shaveling all
+    His Magdalen's adventure, tears were shed,
+    Forgiveness evangelically shown,
+    'Loose hair and lifted eye,'--as some one says.
+    And now, he's worshipped for his pains, the sneak!"
+
+    "Well, but your turning-point of life,--what's here
+    To hinder you contesting Finsbury
+    With Orton, next election? I don't see...."
+
+    "Not you! But _I_ see. Slowly, surely, creeps
+    Day by day o'er me the conviction--here
+    Was life's prize grasped at, gained, and then let go!
+    --That with her--may be, for her--I had felt
+    Ice in me melt, grow steam, drive to effect
+    Any or all the fancies sluggish here
+    I' the head that needs the hand she would not take
+    And I shall never lift now. Lo, your wood--
+    Its turnings which I likened life to! Well,--
+    There she stands, ending every avenue,
+    Her visionary presence on each goal
+    I might have gained had we kept side by side!
+    Still string nerve and strike foot? Her frown forbids:
+    The steam congeals once more: I'm old again!
+    Therefore I hate myself--but how much worse
+    Do not I hate who would not understand,
+    Let me repair things--no, but sent a-slide
+    My folly falteringly, stumblingly
+    Down, down and deeper down until I drop
+    Upon--the need of your ten thousand pounds
+    And consequently loss of mine! I lose
+    Character, cash, nay, common-sense itself
+    Recounting such a lengthy cock-and-bull
+    Adventure--lose my temper in the act...."
+
+    "And lose beside,--if I may supplement
+    The list of losses,--train and ten-o'clock!
+    Hark, pant and puff, there travels the swart sign!
+    So much the better! You're my captive now!
+    I'm glad you trust a fellow: friends grow thick
+    This way--that's twice said; we were thickish, though,
+    Even last night, and, ere night comes again,
+    I prophesy good luck to both of us!
+    For see now!--back to '_balmy eminence_'
+    Or '_calm acclivity_,' or what's the word!
+    Bestow you there an hour, concoct at ease
+    A sonnet for the Album, while I put
+    Bold face on, best foot forward, make for house,
+    March in to aunt and niece, and tell the truth--
+    (Even white-lying goes against my taste
+    After your little story). Oh, the niece
+    Is rationality itself! The aunt--
+    If she's amenable to reason too--
+    Why, you stooped short to pay her due respect,
+    And let the Duke wait (I'll work well the Duke).
+    If she grows gracious, I return for you;
+    If thunder's in the air, why--bear your doom,
+    Dine on rump-steaks and port, and shake the dust
+    Of aunty from your shoes as off you go
+    By evening-train, nor give the thing a thought
+    How you shall pay me--that's as sure as fate,
+    Old fellow! Off with you, face left about!
+    Yonder's the path I have to pad. You see,
+    I'm in good spirits, God knows why! Perhaps
+    Because the woman did not marry you
+    --Who look so hard at me,--and have the right,
+    One must be fair and own."
+
+                              The two stand still
+    Under an oak.
+
+                  "Look here!" resumes the youth.
+    "I never quite knew how I came to like
+    You--so much--whom I ought not court at all;
+    Nor how you had a leaning just to me
+    Who am assuredly not worth your pains.
+    For there must needs be plenty such as you
+    Somewhere about,--although I can't say where,--
+    Able and willing to teach all you know;
+    While--how can you have missed a score like me
+    With money and no wit, precisely each
+    A pupil for your purpose, were it--ease
+    Fool's poke of tutor's _honorarium_-fee?
+    And yet, howe'er it came about, I felt
+    At once my master: you as prompt descried
+    Your man, I warrant, so was bargain struck.
+    Now, these same lines of liking, loving, run
+    Sometimes so close together they converge--
+    Life's great adventures--you know what I mean--
+    In people. Do you know, as you advanced,
+    It got to be uncommonly like fact
+    We two had fallen in with--liked and loved
+    Just the same woman in our different ways?
+    I began life--poor groundling as I prove--
+    Winged and ambitious to fly high: why not?
+    There's something in 'Don Quixote' to the point,
+    My shrewd old father used to quote and praise--
+    '_Am I born man?_' asks Sancho: '_being man,
+    By possibility I may be Pope!_'
+    So, Pope I meant to make myself, by step
+    And step, whereof the first should be to find
+    A perfect woman; and I tell you this--
+    If what I fixed on, in the order due
+    Of undertakings, as next step, had first
+    Of all disposed itself to suit my tread,
+    And I had been, the day I came of age,
+    Returned at head of poll for Westminster
+    --Nay, and moreover summoned by the Queen
+    At week's end, when my maiden-speech bore fruit,
+    To form and head a Tory ministry--
+    It would not have seemed stranger, no, nor been
+    More strange to me, as now I estimate,
+    Than what did happen--sober truth, no dream.
+    I saw my wonder of a woman,--laugh,
+    I'm past that!--in Commemoration-week.
+    A plenty have I seen since, fair and foul,--
+    With eyes, too, helped by your sagacious wink;
+    But one to match that marvel--no least trace,
+    Least touch of kinship and community!
+    The end was--I did somehow state the fact,
+    Did, with no matter what imperfect words,
+    One way or other give to understand
+    That woman, soul and body were her slave
+    Would she but take, but try them--any test
+    Of will, and some poor test of power beside:
+    So did the strings within my brain grow tense
+    And capable of ... hang similitudes!
+    She answered kindly but beyond appeal.
+    '_No sort of hope for me, who came too late.
+    She was another's. Love went--mine to her,
+    Hers just as loyally to some one else._'
+    Of course! I might expect it! Nature's law--
+    Given the peerless woman, certainly
+    Somewhere shall be the peerless man to match!
+    I acquiesced at once, submitted me
+    In something of a stupor, went my way.
+    I fancy there had been some talk before
+    Of somebody--her father or the like--
+    To coach me in the holidays,--that's how
+    I came to get the sight and speech of her,--
+    But I had sense enough to break off sharp,
+    Save both of us the pain."
+
+                              "Quite right there!"
+                                                    "Eh?
+    Quite wrong, it happens! Now comes worst of all!
+    Yes, I did sulk aloof and let alone
+    The lovers--_I_ disturb the angel-mates?"
+
+    "Seraph paired off with cherub!"
+
+                                    "Thank you! While
+    I never plucked up courage to inquire
+    Who he was, even,--certain-sure of this,
+    That nobody I knew of had blue wings
+    And wore a star-crown as he needs must do,--
+    Some little lady,--plainish, pock-marked girl,--
+    Finds out my secret in my woful face,
+    Comes up to me at the Apollo Ball,
+    And pityingly pours her wine and oil
+    This way into the wound: '_Dear f-f-friend,
+    Why waste affection thus on--must I say,
+    A somewhat worthless object? Who's her choice--
+    Irrevocable as deliberate--
+    Out of the wide world? I shall name no names--
+    But there's a person in society,
+    Who, blessed with rank and talent, has grown gray
+    In idleness and sin of every sort
+    Except hypocrisy: he's thrice her age,
+    A by-word for "successes with the sex"
+    As the French say--and, as we ought to say,
+    Consummately a liar and a rogue,
+    Since--show me where's the woman won without
+    The help of this one lie which she believes--
+    That--never mind how things have come to pass,
+    And let who loves have loved a thousand times--
+    All the same he now loves her only, loves
+    Her ever! if by "won" you just mean "sold,"
+    That's quite another compact. Well, this scamp,
+    Continuing descent from bad to worse,
+    Must leave his fine and fashionable prey
+    (Who--fathered, brothered, husbanded,--are hedged
+    About with thorny danger) and apply
+    His arts to this poor country ignorance
+    Who sees forthwith in the first rag of man
+    Her model hero! Why continue waste
+    On such a woman treasures of a heart
+    Would yet find solace,--yes, my f-f-friend--
+    In some congenial_--fiddle-diddle-dee?'"
+
+    "Pray, is the pleasant gentleman described
+    Exact the portrait which my '_f-f-friends_'
+    Recognize as so like? 'T is evident
+    You half surmised the sweet original
+    Could be no other than myself, just now!
+    Your stop and start were flattering!"
+
+                                          "Of course
+    Caricature's allowed for in a sketch!
+    The longish nose becomes a foot in length,
+    The swarthy cheek gets copper-colored,--still,
+    Prominent beak and dark-hued skin are facts:
+    And '_parson's daughter_'--'_young man coachable_'--
+    '_Elderly party_'--'_four years since_'--were facts
+    To fasten on, a moment! Marriage, though--
+    That made the difference, I hope."
+
+                                      "All right!
+    I never married; wish I had--and then
+    Unwish it: people kill their wives, sometimes!
+    I hate my mistress, but I'm murder-free.
+    In your case, where's the grievance? You came last,
+    The earlier bird picked up the worm. Suppose
+    You, in the glory of your twenty-one,
+    Had happened to precede myself! 't is odds
+    But this gigantic juvenility,
+    This offering of a big arm's bony hand--
+    I'd rather shake than feel shake me, I know--
+    Had moved _my_ dainty mistress to admire
+    An altogether new Ideal--deem
+    Idolatry less due to life's decline
+    Productive of experience, powers mature
+    By dint of usage, the made man--no boy
+    That's all to make! I was the earlier bird--
+    And what I found, I let fall: what you missed
+    Who is the fool that blames you for?"
+
+They become so deeply interested in this talk that the train is missed,
+and, in the meantime, the lady who now lives in the neighborhood as the
+wife of the hard-working country parson meets the young girl at the inn.
+They are great friends and have come there, at the girl's invitation, to
+talk over her prospective husband. She desires her friend to come to her
+home and meet her fiancé, but the lady, who is in constant fear of
+meeting "Iago," never goes anywhere, and proposes a meeting with him at
+the inn. While she waits, "Iago" comes in upon her. There is a terrible
+scene of recrimination between these two, the man again daring to prefer
+his love. The lady scorns him. Horror is added to horror when the young
+man appears at the door, and recognizes the woman he really loves. His
+faith in her and his love are shaken for a moment, but return
+immediately and he stands her true friend and lover. The complete
+despicableness of "Iago's" nature finally reveals itself in the lines he
+writes in the album and gives to the lady to read. The poem is too long
+to quote in full. The closing scene, however, will give the reader a
+good idea of the poet's handling of this nineteenth-century tragedy.
+
+The true nobility of soul of the younger man links him with Mertoun
+among Browning's heroes and represents the Englishman or the man of any
+country for that matter at his highest. Whether redemption for the older
+man would have been possible had the lady believed him in the inn parlor
+is doubtful. Such natures are like Ibsen's "Peer Gynt." They need to be
+put into a button mould and moulded over again.
+
+                                  "Here's the lady back!
+    So, Madam, you have conned the Album-page
+    And come to thank its last contributor?
+    How kind and condescending! I retire
+    A moment, lest I spoil the interview,
+    And mar my own endeavor to make friends--
+    You with him, him with you, and both with me!
+    If I succeed--permit me to inquire
+    Five minutes hence! Friends bid good-by, you know."
+    And out he goes.
+
+    VII
+
+                    She, face, form, bearing, one
+    Superb composure--
+
+                      "He has told you all?
+    Yes, he has told you all, your silence says--
+    What gives him, as he thinks the mastery
+    Over my body and my soul!--has told
+    That instance, even, of their servitude
+    He now exacts of me? A silent blush!
+    That's well, though better would white ignorance
+    Beseem your brow, undesecrate before--
+    Ay, when I left you! I too learn at last
+    --Hideously learned as I seemed so late--
+    What sin may swell to. Yes,--I needed learn
+    That, when my prophet's rod became the snake
+    I fled from, it would, one day, swallow up
+    --Incorporate whatever serpentine
+    Falsehood and treason and unmanliness
+    Beslime earth's pavement: such the power of Hell,
+    And so beginning, ends no otherwise
+    The Adversary! I was ignorant,
+    Blameworthy--if you will; but blame I take
+    Nowise upon me as I ask myself
+    --_You_--how can you, whose soul I seemed to read
+    The limpid eyes through, have declined so deep
+    Even with him for consort? I revolve
+    Much memory, pry into the looks and words
+    Of that day's walk beneath the College wall,
+    And nowhere can distinguish, in what gleams
+    Only pure marble through my dusky past,
+    A dubious cranny where such poison-seed
+    Might harbor, nourish what should yield to-day
+    This dread ingredient for the cup I drink.
+    Do not I recognize and honor truth
+    In seeming?--take your truth and for return,
+    Give you my truth, a no less precious gift?
+    You loved me: I believed you. I replied
+    --How could I other? '_I was not my own_,'
+    --No longer had the eyes to see, the ears
+    To hear, the mind to judge, since heart and soul
+    Now were another's. My own right in me,
+    For well or ill, consigned away--my face
+    Fronted the honest path, deflection whence
+    Had shamed me in the furtive backward look
+    At the late bargain--fit such chapman's phrase!--
+    As though--less hasty and more provident--
+    Waiting had brought advantage. Not for me
+    The chapman's chance! Yet while thus much was true,
+    I spared you--as I knew you then--one more
+    Concluding word which, truth no less, seemed best
+    Buried away forever. Take it now
+    Its power to pain is past! Four years--that day--
+    Those lines that make the College avenue!
+    I would that--friend and foe--by miracle,
+    I had, that moment, seen into the heart
+    Of either, as I now am taught to see!
+    I do believe I should have straight assumed
+    My proper function, and sustained a soul,
+    Nor aimed at being just sustained myself
+    By some man's soul--the weaker woman's-want!
+    So had I missed the momentary thrill
+    Of finding me in presence of a god,
+    But gained the god's own feeling when he gives
+    Such thrill to what turns life from death before.
+    '_Gods many and Lords many_,' says the Book:
+    You would have yielded up your soul to me
+    --Not to the false god who has burned its clay
+    In his own image. I had shed my love
+    Like Spring dew on the clod all flowery thence,
+    Not sent up a wild vapor to the sun
+    that drinks and then disperses. Both of us
+    Blameworthy,--I first meet my punishment--
+    And not so hard to bear. I breathe again!
+    Forth from those arms' enwinding leprosy
+    At last I struggle--uncontaminate:
+    Why must I leave _you_ pressing to the breast
+    That's all one plague-spot? Did you love me once?
+    Then take love's last and best return! I think,
+    Womanliness means only motherhood;
+    All love begins and ends there,--roams enough,
+    But, having run the circle, rests at home.
+    Why is your expiation yet to make?
+    Pull shame with your own hands from your own head
+    Now,--never wait the slow envelopment
+    Submitted to by unelastic age!
+    One fierce throe frees the sapling: flake on flake
+    Lull till they leave the oak snow-stupefied.
+    Your heart retains its vital warmth--or why
+    That blushing reassurance? Blush, young blood!
+    Break from beneath this icy premature
+    Captivity of wickedness--I warn
+    Back, in God's name! No fresh encroachment here!
+    This May breaks all to bud--No Winter now!
+    Friend, we are both forgiven! Sin no more!
+    I am past sin now, so shall you become!
+    Meanwhile I testify that, lying once,
+    My foe lied ever, most lied last of all.
+    He, waking, whispered to your sense asleep
+    The wicked counsel,--and assent might seem;
+    But, roused, your healthy indignation breaks
+    The idle dream-pact. You would die--not dare
+    Confirm your dream-resolve,--nay, find the word
+    That fits the deed to bear the light of day!
+    Say I have justly judged you! then farewell
+    To blushing--nay, it ends in smiles, not tears!
+    Why tears now? I have justly judged, thank God!"
+
+    He does blush boy-like, but the man speaks out,
+    --Makes the due effort to surmount himself.
+
+    "I don't know what he wrote--how should I? Nor
+    How he could read my purpose which, it seems,
+    He chose to somehow write--mistakenly
+    Or else for mischief's sake. I scarce believe
+    My purpose put before you fair and plain
+    Would need annoy so much; but there's my luck--
+    From first to last I blunder. Still, one more
+    Turn at the target, try to speak my thought!
+    Since he could guess my purpose, won't you read
+    Right what he set down wrong? He said--let's think!
+    Ay, so!--he did begin by telling heaps
+    Of tales about you. Now, you see--suppose
+    Any one told me--my own mother died
+    Before I knew her--told me--to his cost!--
+    Such tales about my own dead mother: why,
+    You would not wonder surely if I knew,
+    By nothing but my own heart's help, he lied,
+    Would you? No reason's wanted in the case.
+    So with you! In they burnt on me, his tales,
+    Much as when madhouse-inmates crowd around,
+    Make captive any visitor and scream
+    All sorts of stories of their keeper--he's
+    Both dwarf and giant, vulture, wolf, dog, cat,
+    Serpent and scorpion, yet man all the same;
+    Sane people soon see through the gibberish!
+    I just made out, you somehow lived somewhere
+    A life of shame--I can't distinguish more--
+    Married or single--how, don't matter much:
+    Shame which himself had caused--that point was clear,
+    That fact confessed--that thing to hold and keep.
+    Oh, and he added some absurdity
+    --That you were here to make me--ha, ha, ha!--
+    Still love you, still of mind to die for you,
+    Ha, ha--as if that needed mighty pains!
+    Now, foolish as ... but never mind myself
+    --What I am, what I am not, in the eye
+    Of the world, is what I never cared for much.
+    Fool then or no fool, not one single word
+    In the whole string of lies did I believe,
+    But this--this only--if I choke, who cares?--
+    I believe somehow in your purity
+    Perfect as ever! Else what use is God?
+    He is God, and work miracles He can!
+    Then, what shall I do? Quite as clear, my course!
+    They've got a thing they call their Labyrinth
+    I' the garden yonder: and my cousin played
+    A pretty trick once, led and lost me deep
+    Inside the briery maze of hedge round hedge;
+    And there might I be staying now, stock-still,
+    But that I laughing bade eyes follow nose
+    And so straight pushed my path through let and stop
+    And soon was out in the open, face all scratched,
+    But well behind my back the prison-bars
+    In sorry plight enough, I promise you!
+    So here: I won my way to truth through lies--
+    Said, as I saw light,--if her shame be shame
+    I'll rescue and redeem her,--shame's no shame?
+    Then, I'll avenge, protect--redeem myself
+    The stupidest of sinners! Here I stand!
+    Dear,--let me once dare call you so,--you said
+    Thus ought you to have done, four years ago,
+    Such things and such! Ay, dear, and what ought I?
+    You were revealed to me: where's gratitude,
+    Where's memory even, where the gain of you
+    Discernible in my low after-life
+    Of fancied consolation? why, no horse
+    Once fed on corn, will, missing corn, go munch
+    Mere thistles like a donkey! I missed you,
+    And in your place found--him, made him my love,
+    Ay, did I,--by this token, that he taught
+    So much beast-nature that I meant ... God knows
+    Whether I bow me to the dust enough!...
+    To marry--yes, my cousin here! I hope
+    That was a master-stroke! Take heart of hers,
+    And give her hand of mine with no more heart
+    Than now you see upon this brow I strike!
+    What atom of a heart do I retain
+    Not all yours? Dear, you know it! Easily
+    May she accord me pardon when I place
+    My brow beneath her foot, if foot so deign,
+    Since uttermost indignity is spared--
+    Mere marriage and no love! And all this time
+    Not one word to the purpose! Are you free?
+    Only wait! only let me serve--deserve
+    Where you appoint and how you see the good!
+    I have the will--perhaps the power--at least
+    Means that have power against the world. For time--
+    Take my whole life for your experiment!
+    If you are bound--in marriage, say--why, still,
+    Still, sure, there's something for a friend to do,
+    Outside? A mere well-wisher, understand!
+    I'll sit, my life long, at your gate, you know,
+    Swing it wide open to let you and him
+    Pass freely,--and you need not look, much less
+    Fling me a '_Thank you--are you there, old friend_?'
+    Don't say that even: I should drop like shot!
+    So I feel now at least: some day, who knows?
+    After no end of weeks and months and years
+    You might smile '_I believe you did your best_!'
+    And that shall make my heart leap--leap such leap
+    As lands the feet in Heaven to wait you there!
+    Ah, there's just one thing more! How pale you look!
+    Why? Are you angry? If there's, after all,
+    Worst come to worst--if still there somehow be
+    The shame--I said was no shame,--none! I swear!--
+    In that case, if my hand and what it holds,--
+    My name,--might be your safeguard now--at once--
+    Why, here's the hand--you have the heart! Of course--
+    No cheat, no binding you, because I'm bound,
+    To let me off probation by one day,
+    Week, month, year, lifetime! Prove as you propose!
+    Here's the hand with the name to take or leave!
+    That's all--and no great piece of news, I hope!"
+
+    "Give me the hand, then!" she cries hastily.
+    "Quick, now! I hear his footstep!"
+                                      Hand in hand
+    The couple face him as he enters, stops
+    Short, stands surprised a moment, laughs away
+    Surprise, resumes the much-experienced man.
+
+    "So, you accept him?"
+                          "Till us death do part!"
+
+    "No longer? Come, that's right and rational!
+    I fancied there was power in common sense,
+    But did not know it worked thus promptly. Well--
+    At last each understands the other, then?
+    Each drops disguise, then? So, at supper-time
+    These masquerading people doff their gear,
+    Grand Turk his pompous turban, Quakeress
+    Her stiff-starched bib and tucker,--make-believe
+    That only bothers when, ball-business done,
+    Nature demands champagne and _mayonnaise_.
+    Just so has each of us sage three abjured
+    His and her moral pet particular
+    Pretension to superiority,
+    And, cheek by jowl, we henceforth munch and joke!
+    Go, happy pair, paternally dismissed
+    To live and die together--for a month,
+    Discretion can award no more! Depart
+    From whatsoe'er the calm sweet solitude
+    Selected--Paris not improbably--
+    At month's end, when the honeycomb's left wax,
+    --You, daughter, with a pocketful of gold
+    Enough to find your village boys and girls
+    In duffel cloaks and hobnailed shoes from May
+    To--what's the phrase?--Christmas-come-never-mas!
+    You, son and heir of mine, shall re-appear
+    Ere Spring-time, that's the ring-time, lose one leaf,
+    And--not without regretful smack of lip
+    The while you wipe it free of honey-smear--
+    Marry the cousin, play the magistrate,
+    Stand for the country, prove perfection's pink--
+    Master of hounds, gay-coated dine--nor die
+    Sooner than needs of gout, obesity,
+    And sons at Christ Church! As for me,--ah me,
+    I abdicate--retire on my success,
+    Four years well occupied in teaching youth
+    --My son and daughter the exemplary!
+    Time for me to retire now, having placed
+    Proud on their pedestal the pair: in turn,
+    Let them do homage to their master! You,--
+    Well, your flushed cheek and flashing eye proclaim
+    Sufficiently your gratitude: you paid
+    The _honorarium_, the ten thousand pounds
+    To purpose, did you not? I told you so!
+    And you, but, bless me, why so pale--so faint
+    At influx of good fortune? Certainly,
+    No matter how or why or whose the fault,
+    I save your life--save it, nor less nor more!
+    You blindly were resolved to welcome death
+    In that black boor-and-bumpkin-haunted hole
+    Of his, the prig with all the preachments! _You_
+    Installed as nurse and matron to the crones
+    And wenches, while there lay a world outside
+    Like Paris (which again I recommend)
+    In company and guidance of--first, this,
+    Then--all in good time--some new friend as fit--
+    What if I were to say, some fresh myself,
+    As I once figured? Each dog has his day,
+    And mine's at sunset: what should old dog do
+    But eye young litters' frisky puppyhood?
+    Oh I shall watch this beauty and this youth
+    Frisk it in brilliance! But don't fear! Discreet,
+    I shall pretend to no more recognize
+    My quondam pupils than the doctor nods
+    When certain old acquaintances may cross
+    His path in Park, or sit down prim beside
+    His plate at dinner-table: tip nor wink
+    Scares patients he has put, for reason good,
+    Under restriction,--maybe, talked sometimes
+    Of douche or horsewhip to,--for why? because
+    The gentleman would crazily declare
+    His best friend was--Iago! Ay, and worse--
+    The lady, all at once grown lunatic,
+    In suicidal monomania vowed,
+    To save her soul, she needs must starve herself!
+    They're cured now, both, and I tell nobody.
+    Why don't you speak? Nay, speechless, each of you
+    Can spare,--without unclasping plighted troth,--
+    At least one hand to shake! Left-hands will do--
+    Yours first, my daughter! Ah, it guards--it gripes
+    The precious Album fast--and prudently!
+    As well obliterate the record there
+    On page the last: allow me tear the leaf!
+    Pray, now! And afterward, to make amends,
+    What if all three of us contribute each
+    A line to that prelusive fragment,--help
+    The embarrassed bard who broke out to break down
+    Dumbfoundered at such unforeseen success?
+    '_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot_'
+    You begin--_place aux dames_! I'll prompt you then!
+    '_Here do I take the good the gods allot!_'
+    Next you, Sir! What, still sulky? Sing, O Muse!
+    '_Here does my lord in full discharge his shot!_'
+    Now for the crowning flourish! mine shall be...."
+
+    "Nothing to match your first effusion, mar
+    What was, is, shall remain your masterpiece!
+    Authorship has the alteration-itch!
+    No, I protest against erasure. Read,
+    My friend!" (she gasps out). "Read and quickly read
+    '_Before us death do part_,' what made you mine
+    And made me yours--the marriage-license here!
+    Decide if he is like to mend the same!"
+    And so the lady, white to ghastliness,
+    Manages somehow to display the page
+    With left-hand only, while the right retains
+    The other hand, the young man's,--dreaming-drunk
+    He, with this drench of stupefying stuff,
+    Eyes wide, mouth open,--half the idiot's stare
+    And half the prophet's insight,--holding tight,
+    All the same, by his one fact in the world--
+    The lady's right-hand: he but seems to read--
+    Does not, for certain; yet, how understand
+    Unless he reads?
+
+                    So, understand he does,
+    For certain. Slowly, word by word, _she_ reads
+    Aloud that license--or that warrant, say.
+
+    "'_One against two--and two that urge their odds
+    To uttermost--I needs must try resource!
+    Madam, I laid me prostrate, bade you spurn
+    Body and soul: you spurned and safely spurned
+    So you had spared me the superfluous taunt
+    "Prostration means no power to stand erect,
+    Stand, trampling on who trampled--prostrate now!"
+    So, with my other fool-foe: I was fain
+    Let the boy touch me with the buttoned foil,
+    And him the infection gains, he too must needs
+    Catch up the butcher's cleaver. Be it so!
+    Since play turns earnest, here's my serious fence.
+    He loves you; he demands your love: both know
+    What love means in my language. Love him then!
+    Pursuant to a pact, love pays my debt:
+    Therefore, deliver me from him, thereby
+    Likewise delivering from me yourself!
+    For, hesitate--much more, refuse consent--
+    I tell the whole truth to your husband. Flat
+    Cards lie on table, in our gamester-phrase!
+    Consent--you stop my mouth, the only way._'
+
+    "I did well, trusting instinct: knew your hand
+    Had never joined with his in fellowship
+    Over this pact of infamy. You known--
+    As he was known through every nerve of me.
+    Therefore I '_stopped his mouth the only way_'
+    But _my_ way! none was left for you, my friend--
+    The loyal--near, the loved one! No--no--no!
+    Threaten? Chastise? The coward would but quail.
+    Conquer who can, the cunning of the snake!
+    Stamp out his slimy strength from tail to head,
+    And still you leave vibration of the tongue.
+    His malice had redoubled--not on me
+    Who, myself, choose my own refining fire--
+    But on poor unsuspicious innocence;
+    And,--victim,--to turn executioner
+    Also--that feat effected, forky tongue
+    Had done indeed its office! One snake's 'mouth'
+    Thus '_open_'--how could mortal '_stop it_'?
+
+                                                "So!"
+    A tiger-flash--yell, spring, and scream: halloo!
+    Death's out and on him, has and holds him--ugh!
+    But _ne trucidet coram populo
+    Juvenis senem_! Right the Horatian rule!
+    There, see how soon a quiet comes to pass!
+
+    The youth is somehow by the lady's side.
+    His right-hand grasps her right-hand once again.
+    Both gaze on the dead body. Hers the word.
+    "And that was good but useless. Had I lived
+    The danger was to dread: but, dying now--
+    Himself would hardly become talkative,
+    Since talk no more means torture. Fools--what fools
+    These wicked men are! Had I borne four years,
+    Four years of weeks and months and days and nights,
+    Inured me to the consciousness of life
+    Coiled round by his life, with the tongue to ply,--
+    But that I bore about me, for prompt use
+    At urgent need, the thing that '_stops the mouth_'
+    And stays the venom? Since such need was now
+    Or never,--how should use not follow need?
+    Bear witness for me, I withdraw from life
+    By virtue of the license--warrant, say,
+    That blackens yet this Album--white again,
+    Thanks still to my one friend who tears the page!
+    Now, let me write the line of supplement,
+    As counselled by my foe there: '_each a line_!'"
+
+    And she does falteringly write to end.
+
+    "_I die now through the villain who lies dead,
+    Righteously slain. He would have outraged me,
+    So, my defender slew him. God protect
+    The right! Where wrong lay, I bear witness now.
+    Let man believe me, whose last breath is spent
+    In blessing my defender from my soul!_"
+
+    And so ends the Inn Album.
+
+                              As she dies,
+    Begins outside a voice that sounds like song,
+    And is indeed half song though meant for speech
+    Muttered in time to motion--stir of heart
+    That unsubduably must bubble forth
+    To match the fawn-step as it mounts the stair.
+
+    "All's ended and all's over! Verdict found
+    '_Not guilty_'--prisoner forthwith set free,
+    Mid cheers the Court pretends to disregard!
+    Now Portia, now for Daniel, late severe,
+    At last appeased, benignant! '_This young man--
+    Hem--has the young man's foibles but no fault.
+    He's virgin soil--a friend must cultivate.
+    I think no plant called "love" grows wild--a friend
+    May introduce, and name the bloom, the fruit!_'
+    Here somebody dares wave a handkerchief--
+    She'll want to hide her face with presently!
+    Good-by then! '_Cigno fedel, cigno fedel,
+    Addio!_' Now, was ever such mistake--
+    Ever such foolish ugly omen? Pshaw!
+    Wagner, beside! '_Amo te solo, te
+    Solo amai!_' That's worth fifty such!
+    But, mum, the grave face at the opened door!"
+
+    And so the good gay girl, with eyes and cheeks
+    Diamond and damask,--cheeks so white erewhile
+    Because of a vague fancy, idle fear
+    Chased on reflection!--pausing, taps discreet;
+    And then, to give herself a countenance,
+    Before she comes upon the pair inside,
+    Loud--the oft-quoted, long-laughed-over line--
+    "'_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!_'
+    Open the door!"
+
+                    No: let the curtain fall!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+In "Bishop Blougram's Apology" and "Christmas-Eve and Easter Day,"
+Browning has covered the main tendencies in religious thought of the
+nineteenth century in England; and possibly "Caliban" might be included
+as representative of Calvinistic survivals of the century.
+
+The two most strongly marked of these tendencies have been shown in the
+Tractarian Movement which took Anglican in the direction of High
+Churchism and Catholicism, and in the Scientific Movement which led in
+the direction of Agnosticism.
+
+The battle between the Church of Rome and the Church of England was
+waged the latter part of the first half of the century, and the greater
+battle between science and religion came on in its full strength the
+middle of the century when the influence of Spencer, Darwin, Tyndall,
+Huxley and other men of science began to make itself felt, as well as
+that of such critics of historical Christianity as Strauss in Germany
+and Renan in France. The influence of the dissenting bodies,--the
+Presbyterians and the Methodists--also became a power during the
+century. Broadly speaking, it may be said that the development has been
+in the direction of the utmost freedom of conscience in the matter of
+religion, though the struggles of humanity to arrive there even during
+this century are distressing to look back upon; and occasionally one is
+held up even in America to-day by the ghost of religious persecution.
+
+It is an open secret that in Bishop Blougram, Browning meant to portray
+Cardinal Wiseman, whose connection with the Tractarian Movement is of
+great interest in the history of this movement. Browning enjoyed hugely
+the joke that Cardinal Wiseman himself reviewed the poem. The Cardinal
+praised it as a poem, though he did not consider the attitude of a
+priest of Rome to be properly interpreted. A comparison of the poem with
+opinions expressed by the Cardinal as well as a glimpse into his
+activities will show how far Browning has done him justice.
+
+It is well to remember at the outset that the poet's own view is neither
+that of Blougram nor of the literary man Gigadibs, with whom Blougram
+talks over his wine. Gigadibs is an agnostic and cannot understand how a
+man of Blougram's fine intellectual and artistic perceptions is able so
+implicitly to believe in Catholic doctrine. Blougram's apology for
+himself amounts to this,--that he does not believe with absolute
+certainty any more than does Gigadibs; but, on the other hand, Gigadibs
+does not disbelieve with absolute certainty, so Blougram's state is one
+of belief shaken occasionally by doubt, while Gigadibs is one of
+unbelief shaken by fits of belief.
+
+
+    BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+      Now come, let's backward to the starting place.
+    See my way: we're two college friends, suppose.
+    Prepare together for our voyage, then;
+    Each note and check the other in his work,--
+    There's mine, a bishop's outfit; criticize!
+    What's wrong? why won't you be a bishop too?
+
+      What first, you don't believe, you don't, and can't,
+    (Not statedly, that is, and fixedly
+    And absolutely and exclusively)
+    In any revelation called divine.
+    No dogmas nail your faith; and what remains
+    But say so, like the honest man you are?
+    First, therefore, overhaul theology!
+    Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think,
+    Must find believing every whit as hard:
+    And if I do not frankly say as much,
+    The ugly consequence is clear enough.
+
+      Now wait, my friend: well, I do not believe--
+    If you'll accept no faith that is not fixed,
+    Absolute and exclusive, as you say.
+    You're wrong--I mean to prove it in due time.
+    Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie
+    I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall,
+    So give up hope accordingly to solve--
+    (To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then
+    With both of us, though in unlike degree,
+    Missing full credence--overboard with them!
+    I mean to meet you on your own premise:
+    Good, there go mine in company with yours!
+
+      And now what are we? unbelievers both,
+    Calm and complete, determinately fixed
+    To-day, to-morrow and forever, pray?
+    You'll guarantee me that? Not so, I think!
+    In no wise! all we've gained is, that belief.
+    As unbelief before, shakes us by fits,
+    Confounds us like its predecessor. Where's
+    The gain? how can we guard our unbelief,
+    Make it bear fruit to us?--the problem here.
+    Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch,
+    A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
+    A chorus-ending from Euripides,--
+    And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
+    As old and new at once as nature's self,
+    To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
+    Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,
+    Round the ancient idol, on his base again,--
+    The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly.
+    There the old misgivings, crooked questions are--
+    This good God,--what he could do, if he would,
+    Would, if he could--then must have done long since:
+    If so, when, where and how? some way must be,--
+    Once feel about, and soon or late you hit
+    Some sense, in which it might be, after all.
+    Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life?"
+
+The advantage of making belief instead of unbelief the starting point
+is, Blougram contends, that he lives by what he finds the most to his
+taste; giving him as it does, power, distinction and beauty in life as
+well as hope in the life to come.
+
+      Well, now, there's one great form of Christian faith
+    I happened to be born in--which to teach
+    Was given me as I grew up, on all hands,
+    As best and readiest means of living by;
+    The same on examination being proved
+    The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise
+    And absolute form of faith in the whole world--
+    Accordingly, most potent of all forms
+    For working on the world. Observe, my friend!
+    Such as you know me, I am free to say,
+    In these hard latter days which hamper one,
+    Myself--by no immoderate exercise
+    Of intellect and learning, but the tact
+    To let external forces work for me,
+    --Bid the street's stones be bread and they are bread;
+    Bid Peter's creed, or rather, Hildebrand's,
+    Exalt me o'er my fellows in the world
+    And make my life an ease and joy and pride;
+    It does so,--which for me's a great point gained,
+    Who have a soul and body that exact
+    A comfortable care in many ways.
+    There's power in me and will to dominate
+    Which I must exercise, they hurt me else:
+    In many ways I need mankind's respect,
+    Obedience, and the love that's born of fear:
+    While at the same time, there's a taste I have,
+    A toy of soul, a titillating thing,
+    Refuses to digest these dainties crude.
+    The naked life is gross till clothed upon:
+    I must take what men offer, with a grace
+    As though I would not, could I help it, take!
+    An uniform I wear though over-rich--
+    Something imposed on me, no choice of mine;
+    No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake
+    And despicable therefore! now folk kneel
+    And kiss my hand--of course the Church's hand.
+    Thus I am made, thus life is best for me,
+    And thus that it should be I have procured;
+    And thus it could not be another way,
+    I venture to imagine.
+
+                          You'll reply,
+    So far my choice, no doubt, is a success;
+    But were I made of better elements,
+    with nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you,
+    I hardly would account the thing success
+    Though it did all for me I say.
+
+                                    But, friend,
+    We speak of what is; not of what might be,
+    And how 'twere better if 'twere otherwise.
+    I am the man you see here plain enough:
+    Grant I'm a beast, why, beasts must lead beasts' lives!
+    Suppose I own at once to tail and claws;
+    The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed
+    I'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes
+    To dock their stump and dress their haunches up.
+    My business is not to remake myself,
+    But make the absolute best of what God made.
+
+      But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fast
+    I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes
+    Enumerated so complacently,
+    On the mere ground that you forsooth can find
+    In this particular life I choose to lead
+    No fit provision for them. Can you not?
+    Say you, my fault is I address myself
+    To grosser estimators than should judge?
+    And that's no way of holding up the soul,
+    Which, nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knows
+    One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools'--
+    Would like the two, but, forced to choose, takes that.
+    I pine among my million imbeciles
+    (You think) aware some dozen men of sense
+    Eye me and know me, whether I believe
+    In the last winking Virgin, as I vow,
+    And am a fool, or disbelieve in her
+    And am a knave,--approve in neither case,
+    Withhold their voices though I look their way:
+    Like Verdi when, at his worst opera's end
+    (The thing they gave at Florence,--what's its name?)
+    While the mad houseful's plaudits near outbang
+    His orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones,
+    He looks through all the roaring and the wreaths
+    Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.
+
+      Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here--
+    That even your prime men who appraise their kind
+    Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel,
+    See more in a truth than the truth's simple self,
+    Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street
+    Sixty the minute; what's to note in that?
+    You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack;
+    Him you must watch--he's sure to fall, yet stands!
+    Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.
+    The honest thief, the tender murderer,
+    The superstitious atheist, demirep
+    That loves and saves her soul in new French books--
+    We watch while these in equilibrium keep
+    The giddy line midway: one step aside,
+    They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line
+    Before your sages,--just the men to shrink
+    From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad
+    You offer their refinement. Fool or knave?
+    Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave
+    When there's a thousand diamond weights between?
+    So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you'll find,
+    Profess themselves indignant, scandalized
+    At thus being held unable to explain
+    How a superior man who disbelieves
+    May not believe as well: that's Schelling's way!
+    It's through my coming in the tail of time,
+    Nicking the minute with a happy tact.
+    Had I been born three hundred years ago
+    They'd say, "what's strange? Blougram of course believes;"
+    And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course."
+    But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yet
+    How can he?" All eyes turn with interest.
+    Whereas, step off the line on either side--
+    You, for example, clever to a fault,
+    The rough and ready man who write apace,
+    Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less--
+    You disbelieve! Who wonders and who cares?
+    Lord So-and-so--his coat bedropped with wax,
+    All Peter's chains about his waist, his back
+    Brave with the needlework of Noodledom--
+    Believes! Again, who wonders and who cares?
+    But I, the man of sense and learning too,
+    The able to think yet act, the this, the that,
+    I, to believe at this late time of day!
+    Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt.
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+      "Ay, but since really you lack faith," you cry,
+    "You run the same risk really on all sides,
+    In cool indifference as bold unbelief.
+    As well be Strauss as swing 'twixt Paul and him.
+    It's not worth having, such imperfect faith,
+    No more available to do faith's work
+    Than unbelief like mine. Whole faith, or none!"
+
+      Softly, my friend! I must dispute that point.
+    Once own the use of faith, I'll find you faith.
+    We're back on Christian ground. You call for faith:
+    I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.
+    The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,
+    If faith o'ercomes doubt. How I know it does?
+    By life and man's free will, God gave for that!
+    To mould life as we choose it, shows our choice:
+    That's our one act, the previous work's his own.
+    You criticize the soul? it reared this tree--
+    This broad life and whatever fruit it bears!
+    What matter though I doubt at every pore,
+    Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my finger's ends,
+    Doubts in the trivial work of every day,
+    Doubts at the very bases of my soul
+    In the grand moments when she probes herself--
+    If finally I have a life to show,
+    The thing I did, brought out in evidence
+    Against the thing done to me underground
+    By hell and all its brood, for aught I know?
+    I say, whence sprang this? shows it faith or doubt?
+    All's doubt in me; where's break of faith in this?
+    It is the idea, the feeling and the love,
+    God means mankind should strive for and show forth
+    Whatever be the process to that end,--
+    And not historic knowledge, logic sound,
+    And metaphysical acumen, sure!
+    "What think ye of Christ," friend? when all's done and said,
+    Like you this Christianity or not?
+    It may be false, but will you wish it true?
+    Has it your vote to be so if it can?
+    Trust you an instinct silenced long ago
+    That will break silence and enjoin you love
+    What mortified philosophy is hoarse,
+    And all in vain, with bidding you despise?
+    If you desire faith--then you've faith enough:
+    What else seeks God--nay, what else seek ourselves?
+    You form a notion of me, we'll suppose,
+    On hearsay; it's a favourable one:
+    "But still" (you add), "there was no such good man,
+    Because of contradiction in the facts.
+    One proves, for instance, he was born in Rome,
+    This Blougram; yet throughout the tales of him
+    I see he figures as an Englishman."
+    Well, the two things are reconcilable.
+    But would I rather you discovered that,
+    Subjoining--"Still, what matter though they be?
+    Blougram concerns me nought, born here or there."
+
+      Pure faith indeed--you know not what you ask!
+    Naked belief in God the Omnipotent,
+    Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much
+    The sense of conscious creatures to be borne.
+    It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare.
+    Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth:
+    I say it's meant to hide him all it can,
+    And that's what all the blessed evil's for.
+    Its use in Time is to environ us,
+    Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough
+    Against that sight till we can bear its stress.
+    Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain
+    And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart
+    Less certainly would wither up at once
+    Than mind, confronted with the truth of him.
+    But time and earth case-harden us to live;
+    The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child
+    Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place,
+    Plays on and grows to be a man like us.
+    With me, faith means perpetual unbelief
+    Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot
+    Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+              The sum of all is--yes, my doubt is great,
+    My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough.
+    I have read much, thought much, experienced much,
+    Yet would die rather than avow my fear
+    The Naples' liquefaction may be false,
+    When set to happen by the palace-clock
+    According to the clouds or dinner-time.
+    I hear you recommend, I might at least
+    Eliminate, decrassify my faith
+    Since I adopt it; keeping what I must
+    And leaving what I can--such points as this.
+    I won't--that is, I can't throw one away.
+    Supposing there's no truth in what I hold
+    About the need of trial to man's faith,
+    Still, when you bid me purify the same,
+    To such a process I discern no end.
+    Clearing off one excrescence to see two,
+    There's ever a next in size, now grown as big,
+    That meets the knife: I cut and cut again!
+    First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last
+    But Fichte's clever cut at God himself?
+    Experimentalize on sacred things!
+    I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain
+    To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike.
+    The first step, I am master not to take.
+
+      You'd find the cutting-process to your taste
+    As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned,
+    Nor see more danger in it,--you retort.
+    Your taste's worth mine; but my taste proves more wise
+    When we consider that the steadfast hold
+    On the extreme end of the chain of faith
+    Gives all the advantage, makes the difference
+    With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule:
+    We are their lords, or they are free of us,
+    Just as we tighten or relax our hold.
+    So, other matters equal, we'll revert
+    To the first problem--which, if solved my way
+    And thrown into the balance, turns the scale--
+    How we may lead a comfortable life,
+    How suit our luggage to the cabin's size.
+
+      Of course you are remarking all this time
+    How narrowly and grossly I view life,
+    Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule
+    The masses, and regard complacently
+    "The cabin," in our old phrase. Well, I do.
+    I act for, talk for, live for this world now,
+    As this world prizes action, life and talk:
+    No prejudice to what next world may prove,
+    Whose new laws and requirements, my best pledge
+    To observe then, is that I observe these now,
+    Shall do hereafter what I do meanwhile.
+    Let us concede (gratuitously though)
+    Next life relieves the soul of body, yields
+    Pure spiritual enjoyment: well, my friend,
+    Why lose this life i' the meantime, since its use
+    May be to make the next life more intense?
+
+      Do you know, I have often had a dream
+    (Work it up in your next month's article)
+    Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still
+    Losing true life for ever and a day
+    Through ever trying to be and ever being--
+    In the evolution of successive spheres--
+    _Before_ its actual sphere and place of life,
+    Halfway into the next, which having reached,
+    It shoots with corresponding foolery
+    Halfway into the next still, on and off!
+    As when a traveller, bound from North to South,
+    Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France?
+    In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain?
+    In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!
+    Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,
+    A superfluity at Timbuctoo.
+    When, through his journey, was the fool at ease?
+    I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world,
+    I take and like its way of life; I think
+    My brothers, who administer the means,
+    Live better for my comfort--that's good too;
+    And God, if he pronounce upon such life,
+    Approves my service, which is better still.
+    If he keep silence,--why, for you or me
+    Or that brute beast pulled-up in to-day's "Times,"
+    What odds is't, save to ourselves, what life we lead?
+
+Turning to the life of Cardinal Wiseman, it is of especial interest in
+connection with Browning's portrayal of him to observe his earlier
+years. He was born in Spain, having a Spanish father of English descent
+and an English mother, all Catholics, as Blougram says, "There's one
+great form of Christian faith I happened to be born in." His mother took
+him as an infant, and laid him upon the altar of the Cathedral of
+Seville, and consecrated him to the service of the Church.
+
+[Illustration: Cardinal Wiseman]
+
+His father having died when he was a tiny boy, his mother took him and
+his brother to England where he was trained at the Catholic college of
+Ushaw. From there he went to Rome to study at the English Catholic
+College there. Later he became Rector of this College. The sketch of
+Wiseman at this period given by his biographer, Wilfred Ward, is most
+attractive. "Scattered through his 'Recollections' are interesting
+impressions left by his student life. While mastering the regular course
+of scholastic philosophy and theology sufficiently to take his degree
+with credit, his tastes were not primarily in this direction. The study
+of Roman antiquities, Christian and Pagan, was congenial to him, as was
+also the study of Italian art--in which he ultimately became
+proficient--and of music: and he early devoted himself to the Syriac and
+Arabic languages. In all these pursuits the enthusiasm and eminence of
+men living in Rome itself at this era of renaissance was a potent
+stimulus to work. The hours he set aside for reading were many more than
+the rule demanded. But the daily walk and the occasional expedition to
+places of historic interest outside of Rome helped also to store his
+mind and to fire his imagination." Wiseman writes, himself, of this
+period, "The life of the student in Rome should be one of unblended
+enjoyment. His very relaxations become at once subsidiary to his work
+and yet most delightfully recreative. His daily walks may be through the
+field of art ... his wanderings along the stream of time ... a thousand
+memories, a thousand associations accompany him." From this letter and
+from accounts of him he would seem to have been possessed of a highly
+imaginative temperament, possibly more artistic than religious.
+Scholars, linguists, or historians, artists or antiquarians interested
+him far more than thinkers or theologians. In noting the effects on
+Wiseman's character of the thoughts and sights of Rome, "it must be
+observed," writes Ward, "that even the action of directly religious
+influences brought out his excessive impressionableness. His own inner
+life was as vivid a pageant to him as the history of the Church. He was
+liable at this time to the periods of spiritual exaltation--matched, as
+we shall see later on, by fits of intense despondency--which marked him
+through life."
+
+This remarkable intellectual activity brought with it doubts of
+religious truth. "The imaginative delight in Rome as a living witness to
+the faith entirely left him, and at the same time he was attacked by
+mental disturbances and doubts of the truth of Christianity. There are
+contemporary indications, and still plainer accounts in the letters of
+his later life, of acute suffering from these trials. The study of
+Biblical criticism, even in the early stages it had then reached, seems
+immediately to have occasioned them; and the suffering they caused him
+was aggravated into intense and almost alarming depression by the
+feebleness of his bodily health." He says, speaking of this phase in his
+life, "Many and many an hour have I passed, alone, in bitter tears, on
+the _loggia_ of the English College, when every one was reposing in the
+afternoon, and I was fighting with subtle thoughts and venomous
+suggestions of a fiendlike infidelity which I durst not confide to any
+one, for there was no one that could have sympathized with me. This
+lasted for years; but it made me study and think, to conquer the
+plague--for I can hardly call it danger--both for myself and for others.
+But during the actual struggle the simple submission of faith is the
+only remedy. Thoughts against faith must be treated at the time like
+temptations against any other virtue--put away; though in cooler moments
+they may be safely analyzed and unraveled." Again he wrote of these
+years as, "Years of solitude, of desolation, years of shattered nerves,
+dread often of instant insanity, consumptive weakness, of sleepless
+nights and weary days, and hours of tears which no one witnessed."
+
+"Of the effect of these years of desolation on his character he speaks
+as being simply invaluable. It completed what Ushaw had begun, the
+training in patience, self-reliance, and concentration in spite of
+mental depression. It was amid these trials, he adds, 'that I wrote my
+"Horæ Syriacæ" and collected my notes for the lectures on the
+"Connection between Science and Revealed Religion" and the "Eucharist."
+Without this training I should not have thrown myself into the Puseyite
+controversy at a later period.' Any usefulness which discovered itself
+in later years he considers the 'result of self-discipline' during his
+inner conflict. The struggle so absorbed his energies that his early
+life was passed almost wholly free from the special trials to which that
+period is liable. He speaks of his youth as in that respect 'almost
+temptationless.'" This state of mind seemed to last about five years and
+then he writes in a letter:
+
+"I have felt myself for some months gradually passing into a new state
+of mind and heart which I can hardly describe, but which I trust is the
+last stage of mental progress, in which I hope I may much improve, but
+out of which I trust I may never pass. I could hardly express the calm
+mild frame of mind in which I have lived; company and society I have
+almost entirely shunned, or have moved through it as a stranger; hardly
+a disturbing thought, hardly a grating sensation has crossed my being,
+of which a great feeling of love seems to have been the principle.
+Whither, I am inclined to ask myself, does all this tend? Whence does it
+proceed? I think I could make an interesting history of my mind's
+religious progress, if I may use a word shockingly perverted by modern
+fanatics, from the hard dry struggles I used to have when first I
+commenced to study on my own account, to the settling down into a state
+of stern conviction, and so after some years to the nobler and more
+soothing evidences furnished by the grand harmonies and beautiful
+features of religion, whether considered in contact with lower objects
+or viewed in her own crystal mirror. I find it curious, too, and
+interesting to trace the workings of those varied feelings upon my
+relations to the outward world. I remember how for years I lost all
+relish for the glorious ceremonies of the Church. I heeded not its
+venerable monuments and sacred records scattered over the city; or I
+studied them all with the dry eye of an antiquarian, looking in them for
+proofs, not for sensations, being ever actively alive to the collection
+of evidences and demonstrations of religious truth. But now that the
+time of my probation as I hope it was, is past, I feel as though the
+freshness of childhood's thoughts had once more returned to me, my
+heart expands with renewed delight and delicious feelings every time I
+see the holy objects and practices around me, and I might almost say
+that I am leading a life of spiritual epicureanism, opening all my
+senses to a rich draught of religious sensations."
+
+From these glimpses it would appear that Wiseman was a much more sincere
+man in his religious feeling than he is given credit for by Browning.
+His belief is with him not a matter of cold, hard calculation as to the
+attitude which will be, so to speak, the most politic from both a
+worldly and a spiritual point of view. The beautiful passage beginning
+"Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch" etc., comes nearer to
+the genuine enthusiasm of a Wiseman than any other in the poem. There is
+an essential difference between the minds of the poet and the man he
+portrays, which perhaps made it impossible for Browning fully to
+interpret Wiseman's attitude. Both have religious fervor, but Browning's
+is born of a consciousness of God revealed directly to himself, while
+Wiseman's consciousness of God comes to him primarily through the
+authority of the Church, that is through generations of authoritative
+believers the first of whom experienced the actuality of Revelation.
+Hundreds and thousands of people have minds of this caliber. They cannot
+see a truth direct for themselves, they must be told by some person
+clothed in authority that this or that is true or false. To Wiseman the
+beauty of his own form of religion with its special dogmas made so
+strong an appeal, that, since he could only believe through authority,
+under any circumstances, it was natural to him to adopt the particular
+form that gave him the most satisfaction. Proofs detrimental to belief
+do not worry long with doubts such a mind, because the authority they
+depend on is not the authority of knowledge, but the authority of
+belief. This comes out clearly enough in one of Wiseman's letters in
+which after enumerating a number of proofs brought forward by various
+scholars tending to cast discredit on the dogmas of the Church, he
+triumphantly exclaims, "And yet, who that has an understanding to judge,
+is driven for a moment from the holdings of faith by such comparisons as
+these!"
+
+[Illustration: Sacred Heart _F. Utenbach_]
+
+Upon looking through his writings there will always be found in his
+expression of belief, I think, that ring of true sincerity as well as
+what I should call an intense artistic delight in the essential beauty
+of his religion.
+
+As to Blougram's argument that he believed in living in the world while
+he was in it, Wiseman's life was certainly not that of a worldling
+alone, though he is described by one person as being "a genuine priest,
+very good looking and able bodied, and with much apparent practice in
+the world." He was far too much of a student and worker to be altogether
+so worldly-minded as Browning represents him.
+
+His chief interest for Englishmen is his connection with the Tractarian
+Movement. The wish of his soul was to aid the Catholic Revival in
+England, and with that end in view he visited England in 1835. Two years
+before, the movement at Oxford, known as the Tractarian Movement had
+begun. The opinions of the men in this movement were, as every one
+knows, printed in a series of ninety tracts of which Newman wrote
+twenty-four. It was an outgrowth of the conditions of the time. To sum
+up in the words of Withrow,[3] "The Church of England had distinctly
+lost ground as a directing and controlling force in the nation. The most
+thoughtful and earnest minds in the Church felt the need of a great
+religious awakening and an aggressive movement to regain its lost
+influence." As Dean Church describes them, the two characteristic forms
+of Christianity in the Church of England were the High Church, and the
+Evangelicals, or Low Church." Of the former he says: "Its better
+members were highly cultivated, benevolent men, intolerant of
+irregularities both of doctrine and life, whose lives were governed by
+an unostentatious but solid and unfaltering piety, ready to burst forth
+on occasion into fervid devotion. Its worse members were jobbers and
+hunters after preferment, pluralists who built fortunes and endowed
+families out of the Church, or country gentlemen in orders, who rode to
+hounds and shot and danced and farmed, and often did worse things."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] Religious Progress of the Century.
+
+But at Oxford was a group of men of intense moral earnestness including
+Newman, Pusey, Keble, Arnold, Maurice, Kingsley, and others, who began
+an active propaganda of the new or revised doctrines of the Oxford
+Movement.
+
+"The success of the Tracts," says Molesworth, "was much greater, and the
+outcry against them far louder and fiercer, than their authors had
+expected. The Tracts were at first small and simple, but became large
+and learned theological treatises. Changes, too, came over the views of
+some of the writers. Doctrines which probably would have shocked them at
+first were put forward with a recklessness which success had increased.
+Alarm was excited, remonstrances stronger and stronger were addressed to
+them. They were attacked as Romanizing in their tendency."
+
+"The effect of such writing was two-fold[4]--the public were dismayed
+and certain members of the Tractarian party avowed their intention of
+becoming Romanists. So decided was the setting of the tide towards Rome
+that Newman made a vigorous effort to turn it by his famous Tract No.
+90. In this he endeavored to show that it was possible to interpret the
+Thirty-nine Articles in the interest of Roman Catholicism. This tract
+aroused a storm of indignation. The violent controversy which it
+occasioned led to the discontinuance of the series."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] See Withrow.
+
+Such in little was this remarkable movement. When Tract No. 90 appeared
+Wiseman had been in England for some time, and had been a strong
+influence in taking many thinking men in the direction of Rome. His
+lectures and discourses upon his first visit to England had attracted
+remarkable attention. The account runs by one who attended his lectures
+to Catholics and Protestants: "Society in this country was impressed,
+and listened almost against its will, and listened not displeased. Here
+was a young Roman priest, fresh from the center of Catholicism, who
+showed himself master, not only of the intricacies of polemical
+discussion but of the amenities of civilized life. The spacious church
+of Moorfields was thronged on every evening of Dr. Wiseman's appearance.
+Many persons of position and education were converted, and all departed
+with abated prejudice, and with very different notions about Catholicism
+from those with which they had been prepossessed by their education."
+Wiseman, himself, wrote, "I had the consolation of witnessing the
+patient and edifying attention of a crowded audience, many of whom stood
+for two hours without any symptom of impatience."
+
+The great triumph for Wiseman, however, was when, shortly after Tract
+90, Newman, "a man," described "in many ways, the most remarkable that
+England has seen during the century, perhaps the most remarkable whom
+the English Church has produced in any century," went over to the Church
+of Rome and was confirmed by Wiseman. Others followed his example and by
+1853 as many as four hundred clergymen and laity had become Roman
+Catholics.
+
+The controversies and discussions of that time, it must be remembered,
+were more upon the dogmas of the church than upon what we should call
+to-day the essential truths of religion. Yet, to a certain order of mind
+dogmas seem important truths. There are those whose religious attitude
+cannot be preserved without belief in dogmas, and the advantage of the
+Catholic Church is that it holds firmly to its dogmas, come what may. It
+was expected, however, that this Romeward Movement would arouse intense
+antipathy. "The arguments by which it was justified were considered, in
+many cases, disingenuous, if not Jesuitical."
+
+In opposition of this sort we come nearer to Browning's attitude of
+mind. Because such arguments as Wiseman and the Tractarians used could
+not convince him, he takes the ordinary ground of the opposition, that
+in using such arguments they must be insincere, and they must be
+perfectly conscious of their insincerity. Still, in spite of the fact
+that Browning's mind could not get inside of Blougram's, he shows that
+he has some sympathy for the Bishop in the close of the poem where he
+says, "He said true things but called them by wrong names." Raise
+Blougram's philosophy to the plane of the mysticism of a Browning, and
+the arguments for belief would be much the same but the _counters_ in
+the arguments would become symbols instead of dogmas.
+
+In "Christmas-Eve and Easter Day," Browning becomes the true critic of
+the nineteenth-century religious movements. He passes in review in a
+series of dramatic pictures the three most diverse modes of religious
+thought of the century. The dissenter's view is symbolized by a scene in
+a very humble chapel in England, the Catholic view by a vision of high
+mass at St. Peter's and the Agnostic view by a vision of a lecture by a
+learned German professor,--while the view of the modern mystic who
+remains religious in the face of all destructive criticism is shown in
+the speaker of the poem. The intuitional, aspiring side of his nature is
+symbolized by the vision of Christ that appears to him, while the
+intensity of its power fluctuates as he either holds fast or lets go the
+garment of Christ. Opposed to his intuitional side is his reasoning
+side.
+
+Possibly the picture of the dissenting chapel is exaggeratedly humble,
+though if we suppose it to be a Methodist Chapel, it may be true to
+life, as Methodism was the form of religion which made its appeal to the
+lowest classes. Indeed, at the time of its first successes, it was the
+saving grace of England. "But for the moral antiseptic," writes Withrow,
+"furnished by Methodism, and the revival of religion in all the churches
+which it produced, the history of England would have been far other than
+it was. It would probably have been swept into the maelstrom of
+revolution and shared the political and religious convulsions of the
+neighboring nation," that is the French Revolution.
+
+"But Methodism had greatly changed the condition of the people. It had
+rescued vast multitudes from ignorance and barbarism, and raised them
+from almost the degradation of beasts to the condition of men and the
+fellowship of saints. The habits of thrift and industry which it
+fostered led to the accumulation, if not of wealth, at least to that of
+a substantial competence; and built up that safeguard of the
+Commonwealth, a great, intelligent, industrious, religious Middle-Class
+in the community."
+
+After the death of Wesley came various divisions in the Methodist
+Church; it has so flexible a system that it may be adapted to very
+varied needs of humanity, and in that has consisted its great power.
+The mission of the church was originally to the poor and lowly, but "It
+has won for itself in spite of scorn and persecution," says Dr. Schöll,
+"a place of power in the State and church of Great Britain."
+
+[Illustration: The Nativity _Fra Lippo Lippi_]
+
+A scornful attitude is vividly brought before us in the opening of this
+poem, to be succeeded later by a more charitable point of view.
+
+
+    CHRISTMAS-EVE
+
+    I
+
+    Out of the little chapel I burst
+      Into the fresh night-air again.
+    Five minutes full, I waited first
+      In the doorway, to escape the rain
+    That drove in gusts down the common's centre
+      At the edge of which the chapel stands,
+    Before I plucked up heart to enter.
+      Heaven knows how many sorts of hands
+    Reached past me, groping for the latch
+    Of the inner door that hung on catch
+    More obstinate the more they fumbled,
+      Till, giving way at last with a scold
+    Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled
+      One sheep more to the rest in fold,
+    And left me irresolute, standing sentry
+    In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry,
+    Six feet long by three feet wide,
+    Partitioned off from the vast inside--
+      I blocked up half of it at least.
+    No remedy; the rain kept driving.
+      They eyed me much as some wild beast,
+    That congregation, still arriving,
+    Some of them by the main road, white
+    A long way past me into the night,
+    Skirting the common, then diverging;
+    Not a few suddenly emerging
+    From the common's self thro' the paling-gaps,
+    --They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,
+    Where the road stops short with its safeguard border
+    Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;--
+    But the most turned in yet more abruptly
+      From a certain squalid knot of alleys,
+    Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly,
+      Which now the little chapel rallies
+    And leads into day again,--its priestliness
+    Lending itself to hide their beastliness
+    So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),
+    And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on
+    Those neophytes too much in lack of it,
+      That, where you cross the common as I did,
+      And meet the party thus presided,
+    "Mount Zion" with Love-lane at the back of it,
+    They front you as little disconcerted
+    As, bound for the hills, her fate averted,
+    And her wicked people made to mind him,
+    Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him.
+
+    II
+
+    Well, from the road, the lanes or the common
+    In came the flock: the fat weary woman,
+    Panting and bewildered, down-clapping
+      Her umbrella with a mighty report,
+    Grounded it by me, wry and flapping,
+      A wreck of whalebones; then, with a snort,
+    Like a startled horse, at the interloper
+    (Who humbly knew himself improper,
+    But could not shrink up small enough)
+    --Round to the door, and in,--the gruff
+    Hinge's invariable scold
+    Making my very blood run cold.
+    Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered
+    On broken clogs, the many-tattered
+    Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother
+    Of the sickly babe she tried to smother
+    Somehow up, with its spotted face,
+    From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place;
+    She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry
+    Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby
+    Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping
+    Already from my own clothes' dropping,
+    Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on:
+      Then, stooping down to take off her pattens,
+    She bore them defiantly, in each hand one,
+    Planted together before her breast
+    And its babe, as good as a lance in rest.
+      Close on her heels, the dingy satins
+    Of a female something, past me flitted,
+      With lips as much too white, as a streak
+      Lay far too red on each hollow cheek;
+    And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied
+    All that was left of a woman once,
+    Holding at least its tongue for the nonce.
+    Then a tall yellow man, like the _Penitent Thief_,
+    With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief,
+    And eyelids screwed together tight,
+    Led himself in by some inner light.
+    And, except from him, from each that entered,
+      I got the same interrogation--
+    "What, you the alien, you have ventured
+      To take with us, the elect, your station?
+    A carer for none of it, a _Gallio_!"--
+      Thus, plain as print, I read the glance
+    At a common prey, in each countenance
+      As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho.
+    And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder,
+      The draught, it always sent in shutting,
+    Made the flame of the single tallow candle
+    In the cracked square lantern I stood under,
+      Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting
+    As it were, the luckless cause of scandal:
+    I verily fancied the zealous light
+    (In the chapel's secret, too!) for spite
+    Would shudder itself clean off the wick,
+    With the airs of a Saint John's Candlestick.
+    There was no standing it much longer.
+    "Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew stronger,
+    "This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor
+    When the weather sends you a chance visitor?
+    You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you,
+      And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you!
+    But still, despite the pretty perfection
+      To which you carry your trick of exclusiveness,
+    And, taking God's word under wise protection,
+      Correct its tendency to diffusiveness,
+    And bid one reach it over hot plough-shares,--
+      Still, as I say, though you've found salvation,
+    If should choose to cry, as now, 'Shares!'--
+      See if the best of you bars me my ration!
+    I prefer, if you please, for my expounder
+    Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder;
+    Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest
+      Supposing I don the marriage vestiment:
+      So, shut your mouth and open your Testament,
+    And carve me my portion at your quickliest!"
+    Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad
+      With wizened face in want of soap,
+      And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope,
+    (After stopping outside, for his cough was bad,
+    To get the fit over, poor gentle creature,
+    And so avoid disturbing the preacher)
+    --Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise
+    At the shutting door, and entered likewise,
+    Received the hinge's accustomed greeting,
+      And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle,
+      And found myself in full conventicle,
+    --To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting,
+    On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine,
+      Which, calling its flock to their special clover,
+      Found all assembled and one sheep over,
+    Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine.
+
+    III
+
+    I very soon had enough of it.
+      The hot smell and the human noises,
+    And my neighbor's coat, the greasy cuff of it,
+      Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises,
+    Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure
+      Of the preaching man's immense stupidity,
+    As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure,
+      To meet his audience's avidity.
+    You needed not the wit of the Sibyl
+      To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling:
+      No sooner our friend had got an inkling
+    Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible,
+    (Whene'er 'twas the thought first struck him,
+    How death, at unawares, might duck him
+    Deeper than the grave, and quench
+    The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench)
+    Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence,
+      As to hug the book of books to pieces:
+    And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance,
+      Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases,
+    Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,--
+    So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures.
+    And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt:
+      Nay, had but a single face of my neighbors
+      Appeared to suspect that the preacher's labors
+    Were help which the world could be saved without,
+    'Tis odds but I might have borne in quiet
+    A qualm or two at my spiritual diet,
+    Or (who can tell?) perchance even mustered
+      Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon:
+    But the flock sat on, divinely flustered,
+      Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon
+    With such content in every snuffle,
+    As the devil inside us loves to ruffle.
+    My old fat woman purred with pleasure,
+      And thumb round thumb went twirling faster,
+    While she, to his periods keeping measure,
+      Maternally devoured the pastor.
+    The man with the handkerchief untied it,
+    Showed us a horrible wen inside it,
+    Gave his eyelids yet another screwing,
+    And rocked himself as the woman was doing.
+    The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking,
+    Kept down his cough. 'Twas too provoking!
+    My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it;
+      So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple,
+      "I wanted a taste, and now there's enough of it,"
+    I flung out of the little chapel.
+
+    IV
+
+    There was a lull in the rain, a lull
+      In the wind too; the moon was risen,
+    And would have shone out pure and full,
+      But for the ramparted cloud-prison,
+    Block on block built up in the West,
+    For what purpose the wind knows best,
+    Who changes his mind continually.
+    And the empty other half of the sky
+    Seemed in its silence as if it knew
+    What, any moment, might look through
+    A chance gap in that fortress massy:--
+      Through its fissures you got hints
+      Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints,
+    Now, a dull lion-color, now, brassy
+    Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow,
+    Like furnace-smoke just ere flames bellow,
+    All a-simmer with intense strain
+    To let her through,--then blank again,
+    At the hope of her appearance failing.
+    Just by the chapel, a break in the railing
+    Shows a narrow path directly across;
+    'Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss--
+    Besides, you go gently all the way uphill.
+      I stooped under and soon felt better;
+    My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple,
+      As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter.
+    My mind was full of the scene I had left,
+      That placid flock, that pastor vociferant,
+      --How this outside was pure and different!
+    The sermon, now--what a mingled weft
+    Of good and ill! Were either less,
+      Its fellow had colored the whole distinctly;
+    But alas for the excellent earnestness,
+      And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly,
+    But as surely false, in their quaint presentment,
+    However to pastor and flock's contentment!
+    Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes,
+      With his provings and parallels twisted and twined,
+    Till how could you know them, grown double their size
+      In the natural fog of the good man's mind,
+    Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps,
+    Haloed about with the common's damps?
+    Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover;
+      The zeal was good, and the aspiration;
+    And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over,
+      Pharaoh received no demonstration,
+    By his Baker's dream of Baskets Three,
+    Of the doctrine of the Trinity,--
+    Although, as our preacher thus embellished it,
+    Apparently his hearers relished it
+    With so unfeigned a gust--who knows if
+    They did not prefer our friend to Joseph?
+    But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them!
+      These people have really felt, no doubt,
+    A something, the motion they style the _Call_ of them;
+      And this is their method of bringing about,
+    By a mechanism of words and tones,
+    (So many texts in so many groans)
+    A sort of reviving and reproducing,
+      More or less perfectly, (who can tell?)
+    The mood itself, which strengthens by using;
+      And how that happens, I understand well.
+    A tune was born in my head last week,
+    Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek
+      Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester;
+    And when, next week, I take it back again.
+    My head will sing to the engine's clack again,
+      While it only makes my neighbor's haunches stir,
+    --Finding no dormant musical sprout
+    In him, as in me, to be jolted out.
+    'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching;
+    He gets no more from the railway's preaching
+      Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I:
+    Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on.
+    Still, why paint over their door "Mount Zion,"
+      To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy?
+
+The reasoning which follows upon this is characteristic of Browning.
+Perceiving everywhere in the world transcendent power, and knowing love
+in little, from that transcendent love may be deduced. His reasoning
+finally brings him to a state of vision. His subjective intuitions
+become palpable objective symbols, a not infrequent occurrence in highly
+wrought and sensitive minds.
+
+    V
+
+    But wherefore be harsh on a single case?
+      After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve,
+    Does the self-same weary thing take place?
+      The same endeavor to make you believe,
+    And with much the same effect, no more:
+      Each method abundantly convincing,
+    As I say, to those convinced before,
+      But scarce to be swallowed without wincing
+    By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me,
+    I have my own church equally:
+    And in this church my faith sprang first!
+      (I said, as I reached the rising ground,
+    And the wind began again, with a burst
+      Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound
+    From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,
+    I entered his church-door, nature leading me)
+    --In youth I looked to these very skies,
+    And probing their immensities,
+    I found God there, his visible power;
+      Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense
+      Of the power, an equal evidence
+    That his love, there too, was the nobler dower.
+    For the loving worm within its clod,
+    Were diviner than a loveless god
+    Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.
+      You know what I mean: God's all, man's nought:
+      But also, God, whose pleasure brought
+    Man into being, stands away
+      As it were a handbreadth off, to give
+    Room for the newly-made to live,
+    And look at him from a place apart,
+    And use his gifts of brain and heart,
+    Given, indeed, but to keep for ever.
+    Who speaks of man, then, must not sever
+    Man's very elements from man,
+    Saying, "But all is God's"--whose plan
+    Was to create man and then leave him
+    Able, his own word saith, to grieve him,
+    But able to glorify him too,
+    As a mere machine could never do,
+    That prayed or praised, all unaware
+    Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer,
+    Made perfect as a thing of course.
+    Man, therefore, stands on his own stock
+    Of love and power as a pin-point rock:
+    And, looking to God who ordained divorce
+    Of the rock from his boundless continent,
+    Sees, in his power made evident,
+    Only excess by a million-fold
+    O'er the power God gave man in the mould.
+    For, note: man's hand, first formed to carry
+    A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry
+    Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain,
+      --Advancing in power by one degree;
+      And why count steps through eternity?
+    But love is the ever-springing fountain:
+    Man may enlarge or narrow his bed
+    For the water's play, but the water-head--
+    How can he multiply or reduce it?
+      As easy create it, as cause it to cease;
+    He may profit by it, or abuse it,
+      But 'tis not a thing to bear increase
+    As power does: be love less or more
+      In the heart of man, he keeps it shut
+      Or opes it wide, as he pleases, but
+    Love's sum remains what it was before.
+    So, gazing up, in my youth, at love
+    As seen through power, ever above
+    All modes which make it manifest,
+    My soul brought all to a single test--
+    That he, the Eternal First and Last,
+    Who, in his power, had so surpassed
+    All man conceives of what is might,--
+    Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,
+    --Would prove as infinitely good;
+    Would never, (my soul understood,)
+    With power to work all love desires,
+    Bestow e'en less than man requires;
+    That he who endlessly was teaching,
+    Above my spirit's utmost reaching,
+    What love can do in the leaf or stone,
+    (So that to master this alone,
+    This done in the stone or leaf for me,
+    I must go on learning endlessly)
+    Would never need that I, in turn,
+      Should point him out defect unheeded,
+    And show that God had yet to learn
+      What the meanest human creature needed,
+    --Not life, to wit, for a few short years,
+    Tracking his way through doubts and fears,
+    While the stupid earth on which I stay
+      Suffers no change, but passive adds
+      Its myriad years to myriads,
+    Though I, he gave it to, decay,
+    Seeing death come and choose about me,
+    And my dearest ones depart without me.
+    No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,
+      Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,
+    The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it,
+      Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it.
+    And I shall behold thee, face to face,
+    O God, and in thy light retrace
+    How in all I loved here, still wast thou!
+    Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now,
+    I shall find as able to satiate
+      The love, thy gift, as my spirit's wonder
+    Thou art able to quicken and sublimate,
+      With this sky of thine, that I now walk under,
+    And glory in thee for, as I gaze
+    Thus, thus! Oh, let men keep their ways
+    Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine--
+    Be this my way! And this is mine!
+
+    VI
+
+    For lo, what think you? suddenly
+    The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky
+    Received at once the full fruition
+    Of the moon's consummate apparition.
+    The black cloud-barricade was riven,
+    Ruined beneath her feet, and driven
+    Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless,
+      North and South and East lay ready
+    For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless,
+      Sprang across them and stood steady.
+    'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,
+    From heaven to heaven extending, perfect
+    As the mother-moon's self, full in face.
+    It rose, distinctly at the base
+      With its seven proper colors chorded,
+    Which still, in the rising, were compressed,
+    Until at last they coalesced,
+      And supreme the spectral creature lorded
+    In a triumph of whitest white,--
+    Above which intervened the night.
+    But above night too, like only the next,
+      The second of a wondrous sequence,
+      Reaching in rare and rarer frequence,
+    Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed,
+    Another rainbow rose, a mightier,
+    Fainter, flushier and flightier,--
+    Rapture dying along its verge.
+    Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,
+    Whose, from the straining topmost dark,
+    On to the keystone of that arc?
+
+    VII
+
+    This sight was shown me, there and then,--
+    Me, one out of a world of men,
+    Singled forth, as the chance might hap
+    To another if, in a thunderclap
+    Where I heard noise and you saw flame,
+    Some one man knew God called his name.
+    For me, I think I said, "Appear!
+    Good were it to be ever here.
+    If thou wilt, let me build to thee
+    Service-tabernacles three,
+    Where, forever in thy presence,
+    In ecstatic acquiescence,
+    Far alike from thriftless learning
+    And ignorance's undiscerning,
+    I may worship and remain!"
+      Thus at the show above me, gazing
+    With upturned eyes, I felt my brain
+      Glutted with the glory, blazing
+    Throughout its whole mass, over and under
+    Until at length it burst asunder
+    And out of it bodily there streamed,
+    The too-much glory, as it seemed,
+    Passing from out me to the ground,
+    Then palely serpentining round
+    Into the dark with mazy error.
+
+    VIII
+
+    All at once I looked up with terror.
+    He was there.
+    He himself with his human air.
+    On the narrow pathway, just before.
+    I saw the back of him, no more--
+    He had left the chapel, then, as I.
+    I forgot all about the sky.
+    No face: only the sight
+    Of a sweepy garment, vast and white,
+    With a hem that I could recognize.
+    I felt terror, no surprise;
+    My mind filled with the cataract,
+    At one bound of the mighty fact.
+    "I remember, he did say
+      Doubtless that, to this world's end,
+    Where two or three should meet and pray,
+      He would be in the midst, their friend;
+    Certainly he was there with them!"
+      And my pulses leaped for joy
+      Of the golden thought without alloy,
+    That I saw his very vesture's hem.
+    Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear,
+    With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear;
+    And I hastened, cried out while I pressed
+    To the salvation of the vest,
+    "But not so, Lord! It cannot be
+    That thou, indeed, art leaving me--
+    Me, that have despised thy friends!
+    Did my heart make no amends?
+    Thou art the love _of God_--above
+    His power, didst hear me place his love,
+    And that was leaving the world for thee.
+    Therefore thou must not turn from me
+    As I had chosen the other part!
+    Folly and pride o'ercame my heart.
+    Our best is bad, nor bears thy test;
+    Still, it should be our very best.
+    I thought it best that thou, the spirit,
+      Be worshipped in spirit and in truth,
+    And in beauty, as even we require it--
+      Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth,
+    I left but now, as scarcely fitted
+    For thee: I knew not what I pitied.
+    But, all I felt there, right or wrong,
+      What is it to thee, who curest sinning?
+    Am I not weak as thou art strong?
+      I have looked to thee from the beginning,
+    Straight up to thee through all the world
+    Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled
+    To nothingness on either side:
+    And since the time thou wast descried,
+    Spite of the weak heart, so have I
+    Lived ever, and so fain would die,
+    Living and dying, thee before!
+    But if thou leavest me----"
+
+    IX
+
+                                Less or more,
+    I suppose that I spoke thus.
+    When,--have mercy, Lord, on us!
+    The whole face turned upon me full.
+      And I spread myself beneath it,
+      As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it
+    In the cleansing sun, his wool,--
+    Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness
+      Some defiled, discolored web--
+    So lay I, saturate with brightness.
+      And when the flood appeared to ebb,
+    Lo, I was walking, light and swift,
+      With my senses settling fast and steadying,
+    But my body caught up in the whirl and drift
+      Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying
+    On, just before me, still to be followed,
+      As it carried me after with its motion:
+    What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed
+      And a man went weltering through the ocean,
+    Sucked along in the flying wake
+    Of the luminous water-snake.
+    Darkness and cold were cloven, as through
+    I passed, upborne yet walking too.
+    And I turned to myself at intervals,--
+    "So he said, so it befalls.
+    God who registers the cup
+      Of mere cold water, for his sake
+    To a disciple rendered up,
+      Disdains not his own thirst to slake
+    At the poorest love was ever offered:
+    And because my heart I proffered,
+    With true love trembling at the brim,
+    He suffers me to follow him
+    For ever, my own way,--dispensed
+    From seeking to be influenced
+    By all the less immediate ways
+      That earth, in worships manifold,
+    Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise,
+      The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold!"
+
+The vision of high mass at St. Peters in Rome is the antipode of the
+little Methodist Chapel. The Catholic Church is the church of all others
+which has gathered about itself the marvels of art in sculpture,
+painting and music. As the chapel depressed with its ugliness, the great
+cathedral entrances with its beauty.
+
+[Illustration: The Transfiguration _Fra Angelico_]
+
+    X
+
+    And so we crossed the world and stopped.
+      For where am I, in city or plain,
+      Since I am 'ware of the world again?
+    And what is this that rises propped
+    With pillars of prodigious girth?
+    Is it really on the earth,
+    This miraculous Dome of God?
+    Has the angel's measuring-rod
+    Which numbered cubits, gem from gem,
+    'Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem,
+    Meted it out,--and what he meted,
+    Have the sons of men completed?
+    --Binding, ever as he bade,
+    Columns in the colonnade
+    With arms wide open to embrace
+    The entry of the human race
+    To the breast of ... what is it, yon building,
+    Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding,
+    With marble for brick, and stones of price
+    For garniture of the edifice?
+    Now I see; it is no dream;
+    It stands there and it does not seem;
+    For ever, in pictures, thus it looks,
+    And thus I have read of it in books
+    Often in England, leagues away,
+    And wondered how these fountains play,
+    Growing up eternally
+    Each to a musical water-tree,
+    Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon,
+    Before my eyes, in the light of the moon,
+    To the granite lavers underneath.
+    Liar and dreamer in your teeth!
+    I, the sinner that speak to you,
+    Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew
+    Both this and more. For see, for see,
+    The dark is rent, mine eye is free
+    To pierce the crust of the outer wall,
+    And I view inside, and all there, all,
+    As the swarming hollow of a hive,
+    The whole Basilica alive!
+    Men in the chancel, body and nave,
+    Men on the pillars' architrave,
+    Men on the statues, men on the tombs
+    With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs,
+    All famishing in expectation
+    Of the main-altar's consummation.
+    For see, for see, the rapturous moment
+    Approaches, and earth's best endowment
+    Blends with heaven's; the taper-fires
+    Pant up, the winding brazen spires
+    Heave loftier yet the baldachin;
+    The incense-gaspings, long kept in,
+    Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant
+    Holds his breath and grovels latent,
+    As if God's hushing finger grazed him,
+    (Like Behemoth when he praised him)
+    At the silver bell's shrill tinkling,
+    Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling
+    On the sudden pavement strewed
+    With faces of the multitude.
+    Earth breaks up, time drops away,
+    In flows heaven, with its new day
+    Of endless life, when He who trod,
+    Very man and very God,
+    This earth in weakness, shame and pain,
+    Dying the death whose signs remain
+    Up yonder on the accursed tree,--
+    Shall come again, no more to be
+    Of captivity the thrall,
+    But the one God, All in all,
+    King of kings, Lord of lords,
+    As His servant John received the words,
+    "I died, and live for evermore!"
+
+    XI
+
+    Yet I was left outside the door.
+    "Why sit I here on the threshold-stone
+    Left till He return, alone
+    Save for the garment's extreme fold
+    Abandoned still to bless my hold?"
+    My reason, to my doubt, replied,
+    As if a book were opened wide,
+    And at a certain page I traced
+    Every record undefaced,
+    Added by successive years,--
+    The harvestings of truth's stray ears
+    Singly gleaned, and in one sheaf
+    Bound together for belief.
+    Yes, I said--that he will go
+    And sit with these in turn, I know.
+    Their faith's heart beats, though her head swims
+    Too giddily to guide her limbs,
+    Disabled by their palsy-stroke
+    From propping mine. Though Rome's gross yoke
+    Drops off, no more to be endured,
+    Her teaching is not so obscured
+    By errors and perversities,
+    That no truth shines athwart the lies:
+    And he, whose eye detects a spark
+    Even where, to man's the whole seems dark,
+    May well see flame where each beholder
+    Acknowledges the embers smoulder.
+    But I, a mere man, fear to quit
+    The clue God gave me as most fit
+    To guide my footsteps through life's maze,
+    Because himself discerns all ways
+    Open to reach him: I, a man
+    Able to mark where faith began
+    To swerve aside, till from its summit
+    Judgment drops her damning plummet,
+    Pronouncing such a fatal space
+    Departed from the founder's base:
+    He will not bid me enter too,
+    But rather sit, as now I do,
+    Awaiting his return outside.
+    --'Twas thus my reason straight replied
+    And joyously I turned, and pressed
+    The garment's skirt upon my breast,
+    Until, afresh its light suffusing me,
+    My heart cried--What has been abusing me
+    That I should wait here lonely and coldly,
+    Instead of rising, entering boldly,
+    Baring truth's face, and letting drift
+    Her veils of lies as they choose to shift?
+    Do these men praise him? I will raise
+    My voice up to their point of praise!
+    I see the error; but above
+    The scope of error, see the love.--
+    Oh, love of those first Christian days!
+    --Fanned so soon into a blaze,
+    From the spark preserved by the trampled sect,
+    That the antique sovereign Intellect
+    Which then sat ruling in the world,
+    Like a change in dreams, was hurled
+    From the throne he reigned upon:
+    You looked up and he was gone.
+    Gone, his glory of the pen!
+    --Love, with Greece and Rome in ken,
+    Bade her scribes abhor the trick
+    Of poetry and rhetoric,
+    And exult with hearts set free,
+    In blessed imbecility
+    Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet
+    Leaving Sallust incomplete.
+    Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter!
+    --Love, while able to acquaint her
+    While the thousand statues yet
+    Fresh from chisel, pictures wet
+    From brush, she saw on every side,
+    Chose rather with an infant's pride
+    To frame those portents which impart
+    Such unction to true Christian Art.
+    Gone, music too! The air was stirred
+    By happy wings: Terpander's bird
+    (That, when the cold came, fled away)
+    Would tarry not the wintry day,--
+    As more-enduring sculpture must,
+    Till filthy saints rebuked the gust
+    With which they chanced to get a sight
+    Of some dear naked Aphrodite
+    They glanced a thought above the toes of,
+    By breaking zealously her nose off.
+    Love, surely, from that music's lingering,
+    Might have filched her organ-fingering,
+    Nor chosen rather to set prayings
+    To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings.
+    Love was the startling thing, the new:
+    Love was the all-sufficient too;
+    And seeing that, you see the rest:
+    As a babe can find its mother's breast
+    As well in darkness as in light,
+    Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right.
+    True, the world's eyes are open now:
+    --Less need for me to disallow
+    Some few that keep Love's zone unbuckled,
+    Peevish as ever to be suckled,
+    Lulled by the same old baby-prattle
+    With intermixture of the rattle,
+    When she would have them creep, stand steady
+    Upon their feet, or walk already,
+    Not to speak of trying to climb.
+    I will be wise another time,
+    And not desire a wall between us,
+      When next I see a church-roof cover
+    So many species of one genus,
+      All with foreheads bearing _lover_
+    Written above the earnest eyes of them;
+      All with breasts that beat for beauty,
+    Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them,
+      In noble daring, steadfast duty,
+    The heroic in passion, or in action,--
+    Or, lowered for sense's satisfaction,
+    To the mere outside of human creatures,
+    Mere perfect form and faultless features.
+    What? with all Rome here, whence to levy
+      Such contributions to their appetite,
+    With women and men in a gorgeous bevy,
+      They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tight
+    On their southern eyes, restrained from feeding
+    On the glories of their ancient reading,
+    On the beauties of their modern singing,
+    On the wonders of the builder's bringing,
+    On the majesties of Art around them,--
+      And, all these loves, late struggling incessant,
+    When faith has at last united and bound them,
+      They offer up to God for a present?
+    Why, I will, on the whole, be rather proud of it,--
+      And, only taking the act in reference
+    To the other recipients who might have allowed it,
+      I will rejoice that God had the preference.
+
+    XII
+
+    So I summed up my new resolves:
+      Too much love there can never be.
+    And where the intellect devolves
+      Its function on love exclusively,
+    I, a man who possesses both,
+    Will accept the provision, nothing loth,
+    --Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere,
+    That my intellect may find its share.
+
+In his next experience the speaker learns what the effect of scientific
+criticism has been upon historical Christianity.
+
+The warfare between science and religion forms one of the most
+fascinating and terrible chapters in the annals of the development of
+the human mind. About the middle of the nineteenth century the war
+became general. It was no longer a question of a skirmish over this
+or that particular discovery in science which would cause some
+long-cherished dogma to totter; it was a full battle all along the line,
+and now that the smoke has cleared away, it is safe to say that science
+sees, on the one hand, it cannot conquer religion, and religion sees, on
+the other, it cannot conquer science. What each has done is to strip the
+other of its untruths, leaving its truths to grow by the light each
+holds up for the other. Together they advance toward the knowledge of
+the Most High.
+
+    XIII
+
+    No sooner said than out in the night!
+    My heart beat lighter and more light:
+    And still, as before, I was walking swift,
+      With my senses settling fast and steadying,
+    But my body caught up in the whirl and drift
+      Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying
+    On just before me, still to be followed,
+      As it carried me after with its motion,
+    --What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed,
+      And a man went weltering through the ocean,
+    Sucked along in the flying wake
+    Of the luminous water-snake.
+
+    XIV
+
+    Alone! I am left alone once more--
+      (Save for the garment's extreme fold
+      Abandoned still to bless my hold)
+    Alone, beside the entrance-door
+    Of a sort of temple,--perhaps a college,
+    --Like nothing I ever saw before
+    At home in England, to my knowledge.
+    The tall old quaint irregular town!
+      It may be ... though which, I can't affirm ... any
+      Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany;
+    And this flight of stairs where I sit down,
+    Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort
+    Or Göttingen, I have to thank for 't?
+    It may be Göttingen,--most likely.
+    Through the open door I catch obliquely
+    Glimpses of a lecture-hall;
+      And not a bad assembly neither,
+    Ranged decent and symmetrical
+      On benches, waiting what's to see there;
+    Which, holding still by the vesture's hem,
+    I also resolve to see with them,
+    Cautious this time how I suffer to slip
+    The chance of joining in fellowship
+    With any that call themselves his friends;
+      As these folk do, I have a notion.
+      But hist--a buzzing and emotion!
+    All settle themselves, the while ascends
+    By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk,
+      Step by step, deliberate
+      Because of his cranium's over-freight,
+    Three parts sublime to one grotesque,
+    If I have proved an accurate guesser,
+    The hawk-nosed high-cheek-boned Professor.
+    I felt at once as if there ran
+    A shoot of love from my heart to the man--
+    That sallow virgin-minded studious
+      Martyr to mild enthusiasm,
+    As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious
+      That woke my sympathetic spasm,
+    (Beside some spitting that made me sorry)
+    And stood, surveying his auditory
+    With a wan pure look, well nigh celestial,--
+      Those blue eyes had survived so much!
+      While, under the foot they could not smutch,
+    Lay all the fleshly and the bestial.
+    Over he bowed, and arranged his notes,
+    Till the auditory's clearing of throats
+    Was done with, died into a silence;
+      And, when each glance was upward sent,
+      Each bearded mouth composed intent,
+    And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence,--
+    He pushed back higher his spectacles,
+    Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells,
+    And giving his head of hair--a hake
+      Of undressed tow, for color and quantity--
+    One rapid and impatient shake,
+      (As our own Young England adjusts a jaunty tie
+    When about to impart, on mature digestion,
+    Some thrilling view of the surplice-question)
+    --The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse,
+    Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse.
+
+    XV
+
+    And he began it by observing
+      How reason dictated that men
+    Should rectify the natural swerving,
+      By a reversion, now and then,
+    To the well-heads of knowledge, few
+    And far away, whence rolling grew
+    The life-stream wide whereat we drink,
+    Commingled, as we needs must think,
+    With waters alien to the source;
+    To do which, aimed this eve's discourse;
+    Since, where could be a fitter time
+    For tracing backward to its prime
+    This Christianity, this lake,
+    This reservoir, whereat we slake,
+    From one or other bank, our thirst?
+    So, he proposed inquiring first
+    Into the various sources whence
+      This Myth of Christ is derivable;
+    Demanding from the evidence,
+      (Since plainly no such life was liveable)
+    How these phenomena should class?
+    Whether 'twere best opine Christ was,
+    Or never was at all, or whether
+    He was and was not, both together--
+    It matters little for the name,
+    So the idea be left the same.
+    Only, for practical purpose's sake,
+    'Twas obviously as well to take
+    The popular story,--understanding
+      How the ineptitude of the time,
+    And the penman's prejudice, expanding
+      Fact into fable fit for the clime,
+    Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it
+      Into this myth, this Individuum,--
+    Which, when reason had strained and abated it
+      Of foreign matter, left, for residuum,
+    A man!--a right true man, however,
+    Whose work was worthy a man's endeavor:
+    Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient
+      To his disciples, for rather believing
+    He was just omnipotent and omniscient,
+      As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving
+    His word, their tradition,--which, though it meant
+    Something entirely different
+    From all that those who only heard it,
+    In their simplicity thought and averred it,
+    Had yet a meaning quite as respectable:
+    For, among other doctrines delectable,
+    Was he not surely the first to insist on
+      The natural sovereignty of our race?--
+      Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place.
+    And while his cough, like a drouthy piston,
+    Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him,
+    I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him,
+    The vesture still within my hand.
+
+    XVI
+
+    I could interpret its command.
+    This time he would not bid me enter
+    The exhausted air-bell of the Critic.
+    Truth's atmosphere may grow mephitic
+    When Papist struggles with Dissenter,
+    Impregnating its pristine clarity,
+    --One, by his daily fare's vulgarity,
+      Its gust of broken meat and garlic;
+    --One, by his soul's too-much presuming
+    To turn the frankincense's fuming
+      And vapors of the candle starlike
+    Into the cloud her wings she buoys on.
+      Each, that thus sets the pure air seething,
+      May poison it for healthy breathing--
+    But the Critic leaves no air to poison;
+    Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity
+    Atom by atom, and leaves you--vacuity.
+    Thus much of Christ does he reject?
+    And what retain? His intellect?
+    What is it I must reverence duly?
+    Poor intellect for worship, truly,
+    Which tells me simply what was told
+      (If mere morality, bereft
+      Of the God in Christ, be all that's left)
+    Elsewhere by voices manifold;
+    With this advantage, that the stater
+      Made nowise the important stumble
+      Of adding, he, the sage and humble,
+    Was also one with the Creator.
+    You urge Christ's followers' simplicity:
+      But how does shifting blame, evade it?
+    Have wisdom's words no more felicity?
+      The stumbling-block, his speech--who laid it?
+    How comes it that for one found able
+    To sift the truth of it from fable,
+    Millions believe it to the letter?
+    Christ's goodness, then--does that fare better?
+    Strange goodness, which upon the score
+      Of being goodness, the mere due
+    Of man to fellow-man, much more
+      To God,--should take another view
+    Of its possessor's privilege,
+    And bid him rule his race! You pledge
+    Your fealty to such rule? What, all--
+    From heavenly John and Attic Paul,
+    And that brave weather-battered Peter,
+    Whose stout faith only stood completer
+    For buffets, sinning to be pardoned,
+    As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened,--
+    All, down to you, the man of men,
+    Professing here at Göttingen,
+    Compose Christ's flock! They, you and I,
+    Are sheep of a good man! And why?
+    The goodness,--how did he acquire it?
+    Was it self-gained, did God inspire it?
+    Choose which; then tell me, on what ground
+    Should its possessor dare propound
+    His claim to rise o'er us an inch?
+      Were goodness all some man's invention,
+      Who arbitrarily made mention
+    What we should follow, and whence flinch,--
+    What qualities might take the style
+      Of right and wrong,--and had such guessing
+      Met with as general acquiescing
+    As graced the alphabet erewhile,
+    When A got leave an Ox to be,
+    No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G,
+    For thus inventing thing and title
+    Worship were that man's fit requital.
+    But if the common conscience must
+    Be ultimately judge, adjust
+    Its apt name to each quality
+    Already known,--I would decree
+    Worship for such mere demonstration
+      And simple work of nomenclature,
+      Only the day I praised, not nature,
+      But Harvey, for the circulation.
+    I would praise such a Christ, with pride
+    And joy, that he, as none beside,
+    Had taught us how to keep the mind
+    God gave him, as God gave his kind,
+    Freer than they from fleshly taint:
+    I would call such a Christ our Saint,
+    As I declare our Poet, him
+    Whose insight makes all others dim:
+    A thousand poets pried at life,
+    And only one amid the strife
+    Rose to be Shakespeare: each shall take
+    His crown, I'd say, for the world's sake--
+    Though some objected--"Had we seen
+    The heart and head of each, what screen
+    Was broken there to give them light,
+    While in ourselves it shuts the sight,
+    We should no more admire, perchance,
+    That these found truth out at a glance,
+    Than marvel how the bat discerns
+    Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns,
+    Led by a finer tact, a gift
+    He boasts, which other birds must shift
+    Without, and grope as best they can."
+    No, freely I would praise the man,--
+    Nor one whit more, if he contended
+    That gift of his, from God descended.
+    Ah friend, what gift of man's does not?
+    No nearer something, by a jot,
+    Rise an infinity of nothings
+      Than one: take Euclid for your teacher:
+    Distinguish kinds: do crownings, clothings,
+      Make that creator which was creature?
+    Multiply gifts upon man's head,
+    And what, when all's done, shall be said
+    But--the more gifted he, I ween!
+      That one's made Christ, this other, Pilate,
+    And this might be all that has been,--
+      So what is there to frown or smile at?
+    What is left for us, save, in growth
+    Of soul, to rise up, far past both,
+    From the gift looking to the giver,
+    And from the cistern to the river,
+    And from the finite to infinity,
+    And from man's dust to God's divinity?
+
+    XVII
+
+    Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast
+    Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed:
+    Though he is so bright and we so dim,
+    We are made in his image to witness him:
+    And were no eye in us to tell,
+      Instructed by no inner sense,
+    The light of heaven from the dark of hell,
+      That light would want its evidence,--
+    Though justice, good and truth were still
+    Divine, if, by some demon's will,
+    Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed
+    Law through the worlds, and right misnamed.
+    No mere exposition of morality
+    Made or in part or in totality,
+    Should win you to give it worship, therefore:
+    And, if no better proof you will care for,
+    --Whom do you count the worst man upon earth?
+      Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more
+    Of what right is, than arrives at birth
+      In the best man's acts that we bow before:
+    This last knows better--true, but my fact is,
+    'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.
+    And thence conclude that the real God-function
+    Is to furnish a motive and injunction
+      For practising what we know already.
+    And such an injunction and such a motive
+      As the God in Christ, do you waive, and "heady,
+    High-minded," hang your tablet-votive
+    Outside the fane on a finger-post?
+    Morality to the uttermost,
+    Supreme in Christ as we all confess,
+      Why need we prove would avail no jot
+      To make him God, if God he were not?
+    What is the point where himself lays stress?
+    Does the precept run "Believe in good,
+    In justice, truth, now understand
+    For the first time?"--or, "Believe in me,
+    Who lived and died, yet essentially
+    Am Lord of Life?" Whoever can take
+    The same to his heart and for mere love's sake
+    Conceive of the love,--that man obtains
+    A new truth; no conviction gains
+    Of an old one only, made intense
+    By a fresh appeal to his faded sense.
+
+    XVIII
+
+    Can it be that he stays inside?
+      Is the vesture left me to commune with?
+      Could my soul find aught to sing in tune with
+    Even at this lecture, if she tried?
+    Oh, let me at lowest sympathize
+    With the lurking drop of blood that lies
+    In the desiccated brain's white roots
+    Without throb for Christ's attributes,
+    As the lecturer makes his special boast!
+    If love's dead there, it has left a ghost.
+    Admire we, how from heart to brain
+      (Though to say so strike the doctors dumb)
+    One instinct rises and falls again,
+      Restoring the equilibrium.
+    And how when the Critic had done his best,
+    And the pearl of price, at reason's test,
+    Lay dust and ashes levigable
+    On the Professor's lecture-table,--
+    When we looked for the inference and monition
+    That our faith, reduced to such condition,
+    Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole,--
+      He bids us, when we least expect it,
+    Take back our faith,--if it be not just whole,
+      Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it,
+    Which fact pays damage done rewardingly,
+    So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly!
+    "Go home and venerate the myth
+    I thus have experimented with--
+    This man, continue to adore him
+    Rather than all who went before him,
+    And all who ever followed after!"--
+      Surely for this I may praise you, my brother!
+    Will you take the praise in tears or laughter?
+      That's one point gained: can I compass another?
+    Unlearned love was safe from spurning--
+    Can't we respect your loveless learning?
+    Let us at least give learning honor!
+    What laurels had we showered upon her,
+    Girding her loins up to perturb
+    Our theory of the Middle Verb;
+    Or Turk-like brandishing a scimitar
+    O'er anapæsts in comic-trimeter;
+    Or curing the halt and maimed 'Iketides,'
+    While we lounged on at our indebted ease:
+    Instead of which, a tricksy demon
+    Sets her at Titus or Philemon!
+    When ignorance wags his ears of leather
+    And hates God's word, 'tis altogether;
+    Nor leaves he his congenial thistles
+    To go and browse on Paul's Epistles.
+    --And you, the audience, who might ravage
+    The world wide, enviably savage,
+    Nor heed the cry of the retriever,
+    More than Herr Heine (before his fever),--
+    I do not tell a lie so arrant
+      As say my passion's wings are furled up,
+    And, without plainest heavenly warrant,
+      I were ready and glad to give the world up--
+    But still, when you rub brow meticulous,
+      And ponder the profit of turning holy
+      If not for God's, for your own sake solely,
+    --God forbid I should find you ridiculous!
+    Deduce from this lecture all that eases you,
+    Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you,
+    "Christians,"--abhor the deist's pravity,--
+    Go on, you shall no more move my gravity
+    Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse,
+      I find it in my heart to embarrass them
+    By hinting that their stick's a mock horse,
+    And they really carry what they say carries them.
+
+    XIX
+
+    So sat I talking with my mind.
+      I did not long to leave the door
+      And find a new church, as before,
+    But rather was quiet and inclined
+    To prolong and enjoy the gentle resting
+    From further tracking and trying and testing.
+    "This tolerance is a genial mood!"
+    (Said I, and a little pause ensued).
+    "One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf,
+      And sees, each side, the good effects of it,
+    A value for religion's self,
+      A carelessness about the sects of it.
+    Let me enjoy my own conviction,
+      Not watch my neighbor's faith with fretfulness,
+    Still spying there some dereliction
+      Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness!
+    Better a mild indifferentism,
+      Teaching that both our faiths (though duller
+    His shine through a dull spirit's prism)
+      Originally had one color!
+    Better pursue a pilgrimage
+      Through ancient and through modern times
+      To many peoples, various climes,
+    Where I may see saint, savage, sage
+    Fuse their respective creeds in one
+    Before the general Father's throne!"
+
+    XX
+
+    --'Twas the horrible storm began afresh!
+    The black night caught me in his mesh,
+    Whirled me up, and flung me prone.
+    I was left on the college-step alone.
+    I looked, and far there, ever fleeting
+    Far, far away, the receding gesture,
+    And looming of the lessening vesture!--
+    Swept forward from my stupid hand,
+    While I watched my foolish heart expand
+    In the lazy glow of benevolence,
+      O'er the various modes of man's belief.
+    I sprang up with fear's vehemence.
+      Needs must there be one way, our chief
+    Best way of worship: let me strive
+    To find it, and when found, contrive
+    My fellows also take their share!
+    This constitutes my earthly care:
+    God's is above it and distinct.
+    For I, a man, with men am linked
+    And not a brute with brutes; no gain
+    That I experience, must remain
+    Unshared: but should my best endeavor
+    To share it, fail--subsisteth ever
+    God's care above, and I exult
+    That God, by God's own ways occult,
+    May--doth, I will believe--bring back
+    All wanderers to a single track.
+    Meantime, I can but testify
+    God's care for me--no more, can I--
+    It is but for myself I know;
+      The world rolls witnessing around me
+      Only to leave me as it found me;
+    Men cry there, but my ear is slow:
+    Their races flourish or decay
+    --What boots it, while yon lucid way
+    Loaded with stars divides the vault?
+    But soon my soul repairs its fault
+    When, sharpening sense's hebetude,
+    She turns on my own life! So viewed,
+    No mere mote's-breadth but teems immense
+    With witnessings of providence:
+    And woe to me if when I look
+    Upon that record, the sole book
+    Unsealed to me, I take no heed
+    Of any warning that I read!
+    Have I been sure, this Christmas-Eve,
+    God's own hand did the rainbow weave,
+    Whereby the truth from heaven slid
+    Into my soul? I cannot bid
+    The world admit he stooped to heal
+    My soul, as if in a thunder-peal
+    Where one heard noise, and one saw flame,
+    I only knew he named my name:
+    But what is the world to me, for sorrow
+    Or joy in its censure, when to-morrow
+    It drops the remark, with just-turned head
+    Then, on again, "That man is dead"?
+    Yes, but for me--my name called,--drawn
+    As a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn,
+    He has dipt into on a battle-dawn:
+    Bid out of life by a nod, a glance,--
+    Stumbling, mute-mazed, at nature's chance,--
+    With a rapid finger circled round,
+    Fixed to the first poor inch of ground
+    To fight from, where his foot was found;
+    Whose ear but a minute since lay free
+    To the wide camp's buzz and gossipry--
+    Summoned, a solitary man
+    To end his life where his life began,
+    From the safe glad rear, to the dreadful van!
+    Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held
+      By the hem of the vesture!--
+
+    XXI
+
+                                    And I caught
+    At the flying robe, and unrepelled
+      Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught
+    With warmth and wonder and delight,
+    God's mercy being infinite.
+    For scarce had the words escaped my tongue,
+    When, at a passionate bound, I sprung,
+    Out of the wandering world of rain,
+    Into the little chapel again.
+
+He finds himself back in the chapel, all that has occurred having been a
+vision. His conclusions have that broadness of view which belongs only
+to those most advanced in thought. He has learned that not only must
+there be the essential truth behind every sincere effort to reach it,
+but that even his own vision of the truth is not necessarily the final
+way of truth but is merely the way which is true for him. The jump from
+the attitude of mind that persecutes those who do not believe according
+to one established rule to such absolute toleration of all forms because
+of their symbolizing an eternal truth gives the measure of growth in
+religious thought from the days of Wesley to Browning. The Wesleys and
+their fellow-helpers were stoned and mobbed, and some died of their
+wounds in the latter part of the eighteenth century, while in 1850, when
+"Christmas-Eve" was written, an Englishman could express a height of
+toleration and sympathy for religions not his own, as well as taking a
+religious stand for himself so exalted that it is difficult to imagine a
+further step in these directions. Perhaps we are suffering to-day from
+over-toleration, that is, we tolerate not only those whose aspiration
+takes a different form, but those whose ideals lead to degeneracy. It
+seems as though all virtues must finally develop their shadows. What,
+however, is a shadow but the darkness occasioned by the approach of some
+greater light.
+
+    XXII
+
+    How else was I found there, bolt upright
+      On my bench, as if I had never left it?
+    --Never flung out on the common at night,
+      Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it,
+    Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor,
+    Or the laboratory of the Professor!
+    For the Vision, that was true, I wist,
+    True as that heaven and earth exist.
+    There sat my friend, the yellow and tall,
+      With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place;
+    Yet my nearest neighbor's cheek showed gall.
+      She had slid away a contemptuous space:
+    And the old fat woman, late so placable,
+    Eyed me with symptoms, hardly mistakable,
+    Of her milk of kindness turning rancid.
+    In short, a spectator might have fancied
+    That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber,
+      Yet kept my seat, a warning ghastly,
+    Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number,
+      And woke up now at the tenth and lastly.
+    But again, could such disgrace have happened?
+      Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it;
+    And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end?
+      Unless I heard it, could I have judged it?
+    Could I report as I do at the close,
+    First, the preacher speaks through his nose:
+    Second, his gesture is too emphatic:
+      Thirdly, to waive what's pedagogic,
+      The subject-matter itself lacks logic:
+    Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic.
+    Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal,
+    Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call
+    Of making square to a finite eye
+    The circle of infinity,
+    And find so all-but-just-succeeding!
+    Great news! the sermon proves no reading
+    Where bee-like in the flowers I bury me,
+    Like Taylor's the immortal Jeremy!
+    And now that I know the very worst of him,
+    What was it I thought to obtain at first of him?
+    Ha! Is God mocked, as he asks?
+    Shall I take on me to change his tasks,
+    And dare, despatched to a river-head
+      For a simple draught of the element,
+    Neglect the thing for which he sent,
+      And return with another thing instead?--
+    Saying, "Because the water found
+    Welling up from underground,
+    Is mingled with the taints of earth,
+    While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth,
+    And couldst, at wink or word, convulse
+    The world with the leap of a river-pulse,--
+    Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy,
+      And bring thee a chalice I found, instead:
+    See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy!
+      One would suppose that the marble bled.
+    What matters the water? A hope I have nursed:
+    The waterless cup will quench my thirst."
+    --Better have knelt at the poorest stream
+    That trickles in pain from the straitest rift!
+    For the less or the more is all God's gift,
+      Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam.
+    And here, is there water or not, to drink?
+      I then, in ignorance and weakness,
+    Taking God's help, have attained to think
+      My heart does best to receive in meekness
+    That mode of worship, as most to his mind,
+    Where earthly aids being cast behind,
+    His All in All appears serene
+    With the thinnest human veil between,
+    Letting the mystic lamps, the seven,
+      The many motions of his spirit,
+    Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven.
+      For the preacher's merit or demerit,
+    It were to be wished the flaws were fewer
+      In the earthen vessel, holding treasure
+    Which lies as safe in a golden ewer;
+      But the main thing is, does it hold good measure?
+    Heaven soon sets right all other matters!--
+      Ask, else, these ruins of humanity,
+    This flesh worn out to rags and tatters,
+      This soul at struggle with insanity,
+    Who thence take comfort--can I doubt?--
+    Which an empire gained, were a loss without.
+    May it be mine! And let us hope
+    That no worse blessing befall the Pope,
+    Turned sick at last of to-day's buffoonery,
+      Of posturings and petticoatings,
+      Beside his Bourbon bully's gloatings
+    In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery!
+    Nor may the Professor forego its peace
+      At Göttingen presently, when, in the dusk
+    Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase,
+      Prophesied of by that horrible husk--
+    When thicker and thicker the darkness fills
+    The world through his misty spectacles,
+    And he gropes for something more substantial
+      Than a fable, myth or personification,--
+    May Christ do for him what no mere man shall,
+      And stand confessed as the God of salvation!
+    Meantime, in the still recurring fear
+      Lest myself, at unawares, be found,
+      While attacking the choice of my neighbors round,
+    With none of my own made--I choose here!
+    The giving out of the hymn reclaims me;
+    I have done: and if any blames me,
+    Thinking that merely to touch in brevity
+      The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,--
+    Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity,
+      On the bounds of the holy and the awful,--
+    I praise the heart, and pity the head of him,
+    And refer myself to THEE, instead of him,
+    Who head and heart alike discernest,
+      Looking below light speech we utter,
+      When frothy spume and frequent sputter
+    Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest!
+    May truth shine out, stand ever before us!
+    I put up pencil and join chorus
+    To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology,
+      The last five verses of the third section
+      Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's Collection,
+    To conclude with the doxology.
+
+In "Easter-Day" the interest is purely personal. It is a long and
+somewhat intricate discussion between two friends upon the basis of
+belief and gives no glimpses of the historical progress of belief. In
+brief, the poem discusses the relation of the finite life to the
+infinite life. The first speaker is not satisfied with the different
+points of view suggested by the second speaker. First, that one would be
+willing to suffer martyrdom in this life if only one could truly believe
+it would bring eternal joy. Or perhaps doubt is God's way of telling who
+are his friends, who are his foes. Or perhaps God is revealed in the law
+of the universe, or in the shows of nature, or in the emotions of the
+human heart. The first speaker takes the ground that the only
+possibility satisfying modern demands is an assurance that this world's
+gain is in its imperfectness surety for true gain in another world. An
+imaginatively pictured experience of his own soul is next presented,
+wherein he represents himself at the Judgment Day as choosing the finite
+life instead of the infinite life. As a result, he learns there is
+nothing in finite life except as related to infinite life. The way
+opened out toward the infinite through love is that which gives the
+light of life to all the good things of earth which he desired--all
+beauties, that of nature and art, and the joy of intellectual activity.
+
+
+    EASTER-DAY
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+    XV
+
+                              And as I said
+    This nonsense, throwing back my head
+    With light complacent laugh, I found
+    Suddenly all the midnight round
+    One fire. The dome of heaven had stood
+    As made up of a multitude
+    Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack
+    Of ripples infinite and black,
+    From sky to sky. Sudden there went,
+    Like horror and astonishment,
+    A fierce vindictive scribble of red
+    Quick flame across, as if one said
+    (The angry scribe of Judgment) "There--
+    Burn it!" And straight I was aware
+    That the whole ribwork round, minute
+    Cloud touching cloud beyond compute,
+    Was tinted, each with its own spot
+    Of burning at the core, till clot
+    Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire
+    Over all heaven, which 'gan suspire
+    As fanned to measure equable,--
+    Just so great conflagrations kill
+    Night overhead, and rise and sink,
+    Reflected. Now the fire would shrink
+    And wither off the blasted face
+    Of heaven, and I distinct might trace
+    The sharp black ridgy outlines left
+    Unburned like network--then, each cleft
+    The fire had been sucked back into,
+    Regorged, and out it surging flew
+    Furiously, and night writhed inflamed,
+    Till, tolerating to be tamed
+    No longer, certain rays world-wide
+    Shot downwardly. On every side
+    Caught past escape, the earth was lit;
+    As if a dragon's nostril split
+    And all his famished ire o'erflowed;
+    Then, as he winced at his lord's goad,
+    Back he inhaled: whereat I found
+    The clouds into vast pillars bound,
+    Based on the corners of the earth,
+    Propping the skies at top: a dearth
+    Of fire i' the violet intervals,
+    Leaving exposed the utmost walls
+    Of time, about to tumble in
+    And end the world.
+
+    XVI
+
+                      I felt begin
+    The Judgment-Day: to retrocede
+    Was too late now. "In very deed,"
+    (I uttered to myself) "that Day!"
+    The intuition burned away
+    All darkness from my spirit too:
+    There, stood I, found and fixed, I knew,
+    Choosing the world. The choice was made;
+    And naked and disguiseless stayed,
+    And unevadable, the fact.
+    My brain held all the same compact
+    Its senses, nor my heart declined
+    Its office; rather, both combined
+    To help me in this juncture. I
+    Lost not a second,--agony
+    Gave boldness: since my life had end
+    And my choice with it--best defend,
+    Applaud both! I resolved to say,
+    "So was I framed by thee, such way
+    I put to use thy senses here!
+    It was so beautiful, so near,
+    Thy world,--what could I then but choose
+    My part there? Nor did I refuse
+    To look above the transient boon
+    Of time; but it was hard so soon
+    As in a short life, to give up
+    Such beauty: I could put the cup
+    Undrained of half its fulness, by;
+    But, to renounce it utterly,
+    --That was too hard! Nor did the cry
+    Which bade renounce it, touch my brain
+    Authentically deep and plain
+    Enough to make my lips let go.
+    But Thou, who knowest all, dost know
+    Whether I was not, life's brief while,
+    Endeavoring to reconcile
+    Those lips (too tardily, alas!)
+    To letting the dear remnant pass,
+    One day,--some drops of earthly good
+    Untasted! Is it for this mood,
+    That Thou, whose earth delights so well,
+    Hast made its complement a hell?"
+
+    XVII
+
+    A final belch of fire like blood,
+    Overbroke all heaven in one flood
+    Of doom. Then fire was sky, and sky
+    Fire, and both, one brief ecstasy,
+    Then ashes. But I heard no noise
+    (Whatever was) because a voice
+    Beside me spoke thus, "Life is done,
+    Time ends, Eternity's begun,
+    And thou art judged for evermore."
+
+    XVIII
+
+    I looked up; all seemed as before;
+    Of that cloud-Tophet overhead
+    No trace was left: I saw instead
+    The common round me, and the sky
+    Above, stretched drear and emptily
+    Of life. 'Twas the last watch of night,
+    Except what brings the morning quite;
+    When the armed angel, conscience-clear,
+    His task nigh done, leans o'er his spear
+    And gazes on the earth he guards,
+    Safe one night more through all its wards,
+    Till God relieve him at his post.
+    "A dream--a waking dream at most!"
+    (I spoke out quick, that I might shake
+    The horrid nightmare off, and wake.)
+    "The world gone, yet the world is here?
+    Are not all things as they appear?
+    Is Judgment past for me alone?
+    --And where had place the great white throne?
+    The rising of the quick and dead?
+    Where stood they, small and great? Who read
+    The sentence from the opened book?"
+    So, by degrees, the blood forsook
+    My heart, and let it beat afresh;
+    I knew I should break through the mesh
+    Of horror, and breathe presently:
+    When, lo, again, the voice by me!
+
+    XIX
+
+    I saw.... Oh brother, 'mid far sands
+    The palm-tree-cinctured city stands,
+    Bright-white beneath, as heaven, bright-blue,
+    Leans o'er it, while the years pursue
+    Their course, unable to abate
+    Its paradisal laugh at fate!
+    One morn,--the Arab staggers blind
+    O'er a new tract of death, calcined
+    To ashes, silence, nothingness,--
+    And strives, with dizzy wits, to guess
+    Whence fell the blow. What if, 'twixt skies
+    And prostrate earth, he should surprise
+    The imaged vapor, head to foot,
+    Surveying, motionless and mute,
+    Its work, ere, in a whirlwind rapt
+    It vanished up again?--So hapt
+    My chance. HE stood there. Like the smoke
+    Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke,--
+    I saw Him. One magnific pall
+    Mantled in massive fold and fall
+    His head, and coiled in snaky swathes
+    About His feet: night's black, that bathes
+    All else, broke, grizzled with despair,
+    Against the soul of blackness there.
+    A gesture told the mood within--
+    That wrapped right hand which based the chin,
+    That intense meditation fixed
+    On His procedure,--pity mixed
+    With the fulfilment of decree.
+    Motionless, thus, He spoke to me,
+    Who fell before His feet, a mass,
+    No man now.
+
+    XX
+
+                  "All is come to pass.
+    Such shows are over for each soul
+    They had respect to. In the roll
+    Of judgment which convinced mankind
+    Of sin, stood many, bold and blind,
+    Terror must burn the truth into:
+    Their fate for them!--thou hadst to do
+    With absolute omnipotence,
+    Able its judgments to dispense
+    To the whole race, as every one
+    Were its sole object. Judgment done,
+    God is, thou art,--the rest is hurled
+    To nothingness for thee. This world,
+    This finite life, thou hast preferred,
+    In disbelief of God's plain word,
+    To heaven and to infinity.
+    Here the probation was for thee,
+    To show thy soul the earthly mixed
+    With heavenly, it must choose betwixt.
+    The earthly joys lay palpable,--
+    A taint, in each, distinct as well;
+    The heavenly flitted, faint and rare,
+    Above them, but as truly were
+    Taintless, so, in their nature, best.
+    Thy choice was earth: thou didst attest
+    'Twas fitter spirit should subserve
+    The flesh, than flesh refine to nerve
+    Beneath the spirit's play. Advance
+    No claim to their inheritance
+    Who chose the spirit's fugitive
+    Brief gleams, and yearned, 'This were to live
+    Indeed, if rays, completely pure
+    From flesh that dulls them, could endure,--
+    Not shoot in meteor-light athwart
+    Our earth, to show how cold and swart
+    It lies beneath their fire, but stand
+    As stars do, destined to expand,
+    Prove veritable worlds, our home!'
+    Thou saidst,--'Let spirit star the dome
+    Of sky, that flesh may miss no peak,
+    No nook of earth,--I shall not seek
+    Its service further!' Thou art shut
+    Out of the heaven of spirit; glut
+    Thy sense upon the world: 'tis thine
+    For ever--take it!"
+
+    XXI
+
+                          "How? Is mine,
+    The world?" (I cried, while my soul broke
+    Out in a transport.) "Hast Thou spoke
+    Plainly in that? Earth's exquisite
+    Treasures of wonder and delight,
+    For me?"
+
+    XXII
+
+              The austere voice returned,--
+    "So soon made happy? Hadst thou learned
+    What God accounteth happiness,
+    Thou wouldst not find it hard to guess
+    What hell may be his punishment
+    For those who doubt if God invent
+    Better than they. Let such men rest
+    Content with what they judged the best.
+    Let the unjust usurp at will:
+    The filthy shall be filthy still:
+    Miser, there waits the gold for thee!
+    Hater, indulge thine enmity!
+    And thou, whose heaven self-ordained
+    Was, to enjoy earth unrestrained,
+    Do it! Take all the ancient show!
+    The woods shall wave, the rivers flow,
+    And men apparently pursue
+    Their works, as they were wont to do,
+    While living in probation yet.
+    I promise not thou shalt forget
+    The past, now gone to its account;
+    But leave thee with the old amount
+    Of faculties, nor less nor more,
+    Unvisited, as heretofore,
+    By God's free spirit, that makes an end.
+    So, once more, take thy world! Expend
+    Eternity upon its shows,
+    Flung thee as freely as one rose
+    Out of a summer's opulence,
+    Over the Eden-barrier whence
+    Thou art excluded. Knock in vain!"
+
+    XXIII
+
+    I sat up. All was still again.
+    I breathed free: to my heart, back fled
+    The warmth. "But, all the world!"--I said.
+    I stooped and picked a leaf of fern,
+    And recollected I might learn
+    From books, how many myriad sorts
+    Of fern exist, to trust reports,
+    Each as distinct and beautiful
+    As this, the very first I cull.
+    Think, from the first leaf to the last!
+    Conceive, then, earth's resources! Vast
+    Exhaustless beauty, endless change
+    Of wonder! And this foot shall range
+    Alps, Andes,--and this eye devour
+    The bee-bird and the aloe-flower?
+
+    XXIV
+
+    Then the voice, "Welcome so to rate
+    The arras-folds that variegate
+    The earth, God's antechamber, well!
+    The wise, who waited there, could tell
+    By these, what royalties in store
+    Lay one step past the entrance-door.
+    For whom, was reckoned, not so much,
+    This life's munificence? For such
+    As thou,--a race, whereof scarce one
+    Was able, in a million,
+    To feel that any marvel lay
+    In objects round his feet all day;
+    Scarce one, in many millions more,
+    Willing, if able, to explore
+    The secreter, minuter charm!
+    --Brave souls, a fern-leaf could disarm
+    Of power to cope with God's intent,--
+    Or scared if the south firmament
+    With north-fire did its wings refledge!
+    All partial beauty was a pledge
+    Of beauty in its plenitude:
+    But since the pledge sufficed thy mood,
+    Retain it! plenitude be theirs
+    Who looked above!"
+
+    XXV
+
+                          Though sharp despairs
+    Shot through me, I held up, bore on.
+    "What matter though my trust were gone
+    From natural things? Henceforth my part
+    Be less with nature than with art!
+    For art supplants, gives mainly worth
+    To nature; 'tis man stamps the earth--
+    And I will seek his impress, seek
+    The statuary of the Greek,
+    Italy's painting--there my choice
+    Shall fix!"
+
+    XXVI
+
+                "Obtain it!" said the voice,
+    "--The one form with its single act,
+    Which sculptors labored to abstract,
+    The one face, painters tried to draw,
+    With its one look, from throngs they saw.
+    And that perfection in their soul,
+    These only hinted at? The whole,
+    They were but parts of? What each laid
+    His claim to glory on?--afraid
+    His fellow-men should give him rank
+    By mere tentatives which he shrank
+    Smitten at heart from, all the more,
+    That gazers pressed in to adore!
+    'Shall I be judged by only these?'
+    If such his soul's capacities,
+    Even while he trod the earth,--think, now,
+    What pomp in Buonarroti's brow,
+    With its new palace-brain where dwells
+    Superb the soul, unvexed by cells
+    That crumbled with the transient clay!
+    What visions will his right hand's sway
+    Still turn to forms, as still they burst
+    Upon him? How will he quench thirst,
+    Titanically infantine,
+    Laid at the breast of the Divine?
+    Does it confound thee,--this first page
+    Emblazoning man's heritage?--
+    Can this alone absorb thy sight,
+    As pages were not infinite,--
+    Like the omnipotence which tasks
+    Itself to furnish all that asks
+    The soul it means to satiate?
+    What was the world, the starry state
+    Of the broad skies,--what, all displays
+    Of power and beauty intermixed,
+    Which now thy soul is chained betwixt,--
+    What else than needful furniture
+    For life's first stage? God's work, be sure,
+    No more spreads wasted, than falls scant!
+    He filled, did not exceed, man's want
+    Of beauty in this life. But through
+    Life pierce,--and what has earth to do,
+    Its utmost beauty's appanage,
+    With the requirement of next stage?
+    Did God pronounce earth 'very good'?
+    Needs must it be, while understood
+    For man's preparatory state;
+    Nought here to heighten nor abate;
+    Transfer the same completeness here,
+    To serve a new state's use,--and drear
+    Deficiency gapes every side!
+    The good, tried once, were bad, retried.
+    See the enwrapping rocky niche,
+    Sufficient for the sleep in which
+    The lizard breathes for ages safe:
+    Split the mould--and as light would chafe
+    The creature's new world-widened sense,
+    Dazzled to death at evidence
+    Of all the sounds and sights that broke
+    Innumerous at the chisel's stroke,--
+    So, in God's eye, the earth's first stuff
+    Was, neither more nor less, enough
+    To house man's soul, man's need fulfil.
+    Man reckoned it immeasurable?
+    So thinks the lizard of his vault!
+    Could God be taken in default,
+    Short of contrivances, by you,--
+    Or reached, ere ready to pursue
+    His progress through eternity?
+    That chambered rock, the lizard's world,
+    Your easy mallet's blow has hurled
+    To nothingness for ever; so,
+    Has God abolished at a blow
+    This world, wherein his saints were pent,--
+    Who, though found grateful and content,
+    With the provision there, as thou,
+    Yet knew he would not disallow
+    Their spirit's hunger, felt as well,--
+    Unsated,--not unsatable,
+    As paradise gives proof. Deride
+    Their choice now, thou who sit'st outside!"
+
+    XXVII
+
+    I cried in anguish, "Mind, the mind,
+    So miserably cast behind,
+    To gain what had been wisely lost!
+    Oh, let me strive to make the most
+    Of the poor stinted soul, I nipped
+    Of budding wings, else now equipped
+    For voyage from summer isle to isle!
+    And though she needs must reconcile
+    Ambition to the life on ground,
+    Still, I can profit by late found
+    But precious knowledge. Mind is best--
+    I will seize mind, forego the rest,
+    And try how far my tethered strength
+    May crawl in this poor breadth and length.
+    Let me, since I can fly no more,
+    At least spin dervish-like about
+    (Till giddy rapture almost doubt
+    I fly) through circling sciences,
+    Philosophies and histories
+    Should the whirl slacken there, then verse,
+    Fining to music, shall asperse
+    Fresh and fresh fire-dew, till I strain
+    Intoxicate, half-break my chain!
+    Not joyless, though more favored feet
+    Stand calm, where I want wings to beat
+    The floor. At least earth's bond is broke!"
+
+    XXVIII
+
+    Then, (sickening even while I spoke)
+    "Let me alone! No answer, pray,
+    To this! I know what Thou wilt say!
+    All still is earth's,--to know, as much
+    As feel its truths, which if we touch
+    With sense, or apprehend in soul,
+    What matter? I have reached the goal--
+    'Whereto does knowledge serve!' will burn
+    My eyes, too sure, at every turn!
+    I cannot look back now, nor stake
+    Bliss on the race, for running's sake.
+    The goal's a ruin like the rest!--
+    And so much worse thy latter quest,"
+    (Added the voice) "that even on earth--
+    Whenever, in man's soul, had birth
+    Those intuitions, grasps of guess,
+    Which pull the more into the less,
+    Making the finite comprehend
+    Infinity,--the bard would spend
+    Such praise alone, upon his craft,
+    As, when wind-lyres obey the waft,
+    Goes to the craftsman who arranged
+    The seven strings, changed them and rechanged--
+    Knowing it was the South that harped.
+    He felt his song, in singing, warped;
+    Distinguished his and God's part: whence
+    A world of spirit as of sense
+    Was plain to him, yet not too plain,
+    Which he could traverse, not remain
+    A guest in:--else were permanent
+    Heaven on the earth its gleams were meant
+    To sting with hunger for full light,--
+    Made visible in verse, despite
+    The veiling weakness,--truth by means
+    Of fable, showing while it screens,--
+    Since highest truth, man e'er supplied,
+    Was ever fable on outside.
+    Such gleams made bright the earth an age;
+    Now the whole sun's his heritage!
+    Take up thy world, it is allowed,
+    Thou who hast entered in the cloud!"
+
+    XXIX
+
+    Then I--"Behold, my spirit bleeds,
+    Catches no more at broken reeds,--
+    But lilies flower those reeds above:
+    I let the world go, and take love!
+    Love survives in me, albeit those
+    I love be henceforth masks and shows,
+    Not living men and women: still
+    I mind how love repaired all ill,
+    Cured wrong, soothed grief, made earth amends
+    With parents, brothers, children, friends!
+    Some semblance of a woman yet
+    With eyes to help me to forget,
+    Shall look on me; and I will match
+    Departed love with love, attach
+    Old memories to new dreams, nor scorn
+    The poorest of the grains of corn
+    I save from shipwreck on this isle,
+    Trusting its barrenness may smile
+    With happy foodful green one day,
+    More precious for the pains. I pray,--
+    Leave to love, only!"
+
+    XXX
+
+                          At the word,
+    The form, I looked to have been stirred
+    With pity and approval, rose
+    O'er me, as when the headsman throws
+    Axe over shoulder to make end--
+    I fell prone, letting Him expend
+    His wrath, while thus the inflicting voice
+    Smote me. "Is this thy final choice?
+    Love is the best? 'Tis somewhat late!
+    And all thou dost enumerate
+    Of power and beauty in the world,
+    The mightiness of love was curled
+    Inextricably round about.
+    Love lay within it and without,
+    To clasp thee,--but in vain! Thy soul
+    Still shrunk from Him who made the whole,
+    Still set deliberate aside
+    His love!--Now take love! Well betide
+    Thy tardy conscience! Haste to take
+    The show of love for the name's sake,
+    Remembering every moment Who,
+    Beside creating thee unto
+    These ends, and these for thee, was said
+    To undergo death in thy stead
+    In flesh like thine: so ran the tale.
+    What doubt in thee could countervail
+    Belief in it? Upon the ground
+    'That in the story had been found
+    Too much love! How could God love so?'
+    He who in all his works below
+    Adapted to the needs of man,
+    Made love the basis of the plan,--
+    Did love, as was demonstrated:
+    While man, who was so fit instead
+    To hate, as every day gave proof,--
+    Man thought man, for his kind's behoof,
+    Both could and did invent that scheme
+    Of perfect love: 'twould well beseem
+    Cain's nature thou wast wont to praise,
+    Not tally with God's usual ways!"
+
+    XXXI
+
+    And I cowered deprecatingly--
+    "Thou Love of God! Or let me die,
+    Or grant what shall seem heaven almost!
+    Let me not know that all is lost,
+    Though lost it be--leave me not tied
+    To this despair, this corpse-like bride!
+    Let that old life seem mine--no more--
+    With limitation as before,
+    With darkness, hunger, toil, distress:
+    Be all the earth a wilderness!
+    Only let me go on, go on,
+    Still hoping ever and anon
+    To reach one eve the Better Land!"
+
+    XXXII
+
+    Then did the form expand, expand--
+    I knew Him through the dread disguise
+    As the whole God within His eyes
+    Embraced me.
+
+    XXXIII
+
+                  When I lived again,
+    The day was breaking,--the grey plain
+    I rose from, silvered thick with dew.
+    Was this a vision? False or true?
+    Since then, three varied years are spent,
+    And commonly my mind is bent
+    To think it was a dream--be sure
+    A mere dream and distemperature--
+    The last day's watching: then the night,--
+    The shock of that strange Northern Light
+    Set my head swimming, bred in me
+    A dream. And so I live, you see,
+    Go through the world, try, prove, reject,
+    Prefer, still struggling to effect
+    My warfare; happy that I can
+    Be crossed and thwarted as a man,
+    Not left in God's contempt apart,
+    With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart,
+    Tame in earth's paddock as her prize.
+    Thank God, she still each method tries
+    To catch me, who may yet escape,
+    She knows,--the fiend in angel's shape!
+    Thank God, no paradise stands barred
+    To entry, and I find it hard
+    To be a Christian, as I said!
+    Still every now and then my head
+    Raised glad, sinks mournful--all grows drear
+    Spite of the sunshine, while I fear
+    And think, "How dreadful to be grudged
+    No ease henceforth, as one that's judged.
+    Condemned to earth for ever, shut
+    From heaven!"
+                    But Easter-Day breaks! But
+    Christ rises! Mercy every way
+    Is infinite,--and who can say?
+
+This poem has often been cited as a proof of Browning's own belief in
+historical Christianity. It can hardly be said to be more than a
+doubtful proof, for it depends upon a subjective vision of which the
+speaker, himself, doubts the truth. The speaker in this poem belongs in
+the same category with Bishop Blougram. A belief in infinite Love can
+come to him only through the dogma of the incarnation, he therefore
+holds to that, no matter how tossed about by doubts. The failure of all
+human effort to attain the Absolute and, as a consequence, the belief in
+an Absolute beyond this life is a dominant note in Browning's own
+philosophy. The nature of that Absolute he further evolves from the
+intellectual observation of power that transcends human comprehension,
+and the even more deep-rooted sense of love in the human heart.
+
+Much of his thought resembles that of the English scientist, Herbert
+Spencer. The relativity of knowledge and the relativity of good and evil
+are cardinal doctrines with both of them. Herbert Spencer's mystery
+behind all phenomena and Browning's failure of human knowledge are
+identical--the negative proof of the absolute,--but where Spencer
+contents himself with the statement that though we cannot know the
+Absolute, yet it must transcend all that the human mind has conceived
+of perfection, Browning, as we have already seen, declares that we _can_
+know something of the nature of that Absolute through the love which we
+know in the human heart as well as the power we see displayed in Nature.
+
+In connection with this subject, which for lack of space can merely be
+touched on in the present volume, it will be instructive to round out
+Browning's presentations of his own contributions to nineteenth-century
+thought with two quotations, one from "The Parleyings:" "With Bernard de
+Mandeville," and one from a poem in his last volume "Reverie." In the
+first, human love is symbolized as the image made by a lens of the sun,
+which latter symbolizes Divine Love.
+
+
+    BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+    IX
+
+    Boundingly up through Night's wall dense and dark,
+    Embattled crags and clouds, outbroke the Sun
+    Above the conscious earth, and one by one
+    Her heights and depths absorbed to the last spark
+    His fluid glory, from the far fine ridge
+    Of mountain-granite which, transformed to gold,
+    Laughed first the thanks back, to the vale's dusk fold
+    On fold of vapor-swathing, like a bridge
+    Shattered beneath some giant's stamp. Night wist
+    Her work done and betook herself in mist
+    To marsh and hollow there to bide her time
+    Blindly in acquiescence. Everywhere
+    Did earth acknowledge Sun's embrace sublime
+    Thrilling her to the heart of things: since there
+    No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew,
+    No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew
+    Glad through the inrush--glad nor more nor less
+    Than, 'neath his gaze, forest and wilderness,
+    Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread,
+    The universal world of creatures bred
+    By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise--
+    All creatures but one only: gaze for gaze,
+    Joyless and thankless, who--all scowling can--
+    Protests against the innumerous praises? Man,
+    Sullen and silent.
+
+                      Stand thou forth then, state
+    Thy wrong, thou sole aggrieved--disconsolate--
+    While every beast, bird, reptile, insect, gay
+    And glad acknowledges the bounteous day!
+
+    X
+
+    Man speaks now:--"What avails Sun's earth-felt thrill
+    To me? Sun penetrates the ore, the plant--
+    They feel and grow: perchance with subtler skill
+    He interfuses fly, worm, brute, until
+    Each favored object pays life's ministrant
+    By pressing, in obedience to his will,
+    Up to completion of the task prescribed,
+    So stands and stays a type. Myself imbibed
+    Such influence also, stood and stand complete--
+    The perfect Man,--head, body, hands and feet,
+    True to the pattern: but does that suffice?
+    How of my superadded mind which needs
+    --Not to be, simply, but to do, and pleads
+    For--more than knowledge that by some device
+    Sun quickens matter: mind is nobly fain
+    To realize the marvel, make--for sense
+    As mind--the unseen visible, condense
+    --Myself--Sun's all-pervading influence
+    So as to serve the needs of mind, explain
+    What now perplexes. Let the oak increase
+    His corrugated strength on strength, the palm
+    Lift joint by joint her fan-fruit, ball and balm,--
+    Let the coiled serpent bask in bloated peace,--
+    The eagle, like some skyey derelict,
+    Drift in the blue, suspended glorying,--
+    The lion lord it by the desert-spring,--
+    What know or care they of the power which pricked
+    Nothingness to perfection? I, instead,
+    When all-developed still am found a thing
+    All-incomplete: for what though flesh had force
+    Transcending theirs--hands able to unring
+    The tightened snake's coil, eyes that could outcourse
+    The eagle's soaring, voice whereat the king
+    Of carnage couched discrowned? Mind seeks to see,
+    Touch, understand, by mind inside of me,
+    The outside mind--whose quickening I attain
+    To recognize--I only. All in vain
+    Would mind address itself to render plain
+    The nature of the essence. Drag what lurks
+    Behind the operation--that which works
+    Latently everywhere by outward proof--
+    Drag that mind forth to face mine? No! aloof
+    I solely crave that one of all the beams
+    Which do Sun's work in darkness, at my will
+    Should operate--myself for once have skill
+    To realize the energy which streams
+    Flooding the universe. Above, around,
+    Beneath--why mocks that mind my own thus found
+    Simply of service, when the world grows dark,
+    To half-surmise--were Sun's use understood,
+    I might demonstrate him supplying food,
+    Warmth, life, no less the while? To grant one spark
+    Myself may deal with--make it thaw my blood
+    And prompt my steps, were truer to the mark
+    Of mind's requirement than a half-surmise
+    That somehow secretly is operant
+    A power all matter feels, mind only tries
+    To comprehend! Once more--no idle vaunt
+    'Man comprehends the Sun's self!' Mysteries
+    At source why probe into? Enough: display,
+    Make demonstrable, how, by night as day,
+    Earth's centre and sky's outspan, all's informed
+    Equally by Sun's efflux!--source from whence
+    If just one spark I drew, full evidence
+    Were mine of fire ineffably enthroned--
+    Sun's self made palpable to Man!"
+
+    XI
+
+                                      Thus moaned
+    Man till Prometheus helped him,--as we learn,--
+    Offered an artifice whereby he drew
+    Sun's rays into a focus,--plain and true,
+    The very Sun in little: made fire burn
+    And henceforth do Man service--glass-conglobed
+    Though to a pin-point circle--all the same
+    Comprising the Sun's self, but Sun disrobed
+    Of that else-unconceived essential flame
+    Borne by no naked sight. Shall mind's eye strive
+    Achingly to companion as it may
+    The supersubtle effluence, and contrive
+    To follow beam and beam upon their way
+    Hand-breadth by hand-breadth, till sense faint--confessed
+    Frustrate, eluded by unknown unguessed
+    Infinitude of action? Idle quest!
+    Rather ask aid from optics. Sense, descry
+    The spectrum--mind, infer immensity!
+    Little? In little, light, warmth, life are blessed--
+    Which, in the large, who sees to bless? Not I
+    More than yourself: so, good my friend, keep still
+    Trustful with--me? with thee, sage Mandeville!
+
+The second "Reverie" has the effect of a triumphant swan song,
+especially the closing stanzas, the poem having been written very near
+the end of the poet's life.
+
+    "In a beginning God
+      Made heaven and earth." Forth flashed
+    Knowledge: from star to clod
+      Man knew things: doubt abashed
+    Closed its long period.
+
+    Knowledge obtained Power praise.
+      Had Good been manifest,
+    Broke out in cloudless blaze,
+      Unchequered as unrepressed,
+    In all things Good at best--
+
+    Then praise--all praise, no blame--
+      Had hailed the perfection. No!
+    As Power's display, the same
+      Be Good's--praise forth shall flow
+    Unisonous in acclaim!
+
+    Even as the world its life,
+      So have I lived my own--
+    Power seen with Love at strife,
+      That sure, this dimly shown,
+    --Good rare and evil rife.
+
+    Whereof the effect be--faith
+      That, some far day, were found
+    Ripeness in things now rathe,
+      Wrong righted, each chain unbound,
+    Renewal born out of scathe.
+
+    Why faith--but to lift the load,
+      To leaven the lump, where lies
+    Mind prostrate through knowledge owed
+      To the loveless Power it tries
+    To withstand, how vain! In flowed
+
+    Ever resistless fact:
+      No more than the passive clay
+    Disputes the potter's act,
+      Could the whelmed mind disobey
+    Knowledge the cataract.
+
+    But, perfect in every part,
+      Has the potter's moulded shape,
+    Leap of man's quickened heart,
+      Throe of his thought's escape,
+    Stings of his soul which dart
+
+    Through the barrier of flesh, till keen
+      She climbs from the calm and clear,
+    Through turbidity all between,
+      From the known to the unknown here,
+    Heaven's "Shall be," from Earth's "Has been"?
+
+    Then life is--to wake not sleep,
+      Rise and not rest, but press
+    From earth's level where blindly creep
+      Things perfected, more or less,
+    To the heaven's height, far and steep,
+
+    Where, amid what strifes and storms
+      May wait the adventurous quest,
+    Power is Love--transports, transforms
+      Who aspired from worst to best,
+    Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms'.
+
+    I have faith such end shall be:
+      From the first, Power was--I knew.
+    Life has made clear to me
+      That, strive but for closer view,
+    Love were as plain to see.
+
+    When see? When there dawns a day,
+      If not on the homely earth,
+    Then yonder, worlds away,
+      Where the strange and new have birth,
+    And Power comes full in play.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ART CRITICISM INSPIRED BY THE ENGLISH MUSICIAN, AVISON
+
+
+In the "Parleying" "With Charles Avison," Browning plunges into a
+discussion of the problem of the ephemeralness of musical expression.
+He hits upon Avison to have his colloquy with because a march by this
+musician came into his head, and the march came into his head for no
+better reason than that it was the month of March. Some interest
+would attach to Avison if it were only for the reason that he was
+organist of the Church of St. Nicholas in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In
+the earliest accounts St. Nicholas was styled simply, "The Church of
+Newcastle-upon-Tyne," but in 1785 it became a Cathedral. This was after
+Avison's death in 1770. All we know about the organ upon which Avison
+performed is found in a curious old history of Newcastle by Brand. "I
+have found," he writes, "no account of any organ in this church during
+the times of popery though it is very probable there has been one. About
+the year 1676, the corporation of Newcastle contributed £300 towards
+the erection of the present organ. They added a trumpet stop to it June
+22d, 1699."
+
+The year that Avison was born, 1710, it is recorded further that "the
+back front of this organ was finished which cost the said corporation
+£200 together with the expense of cleaning and repairing the whole
+instrument."
+
+June 26, 1749, the common council of Newcastle ordered a sweet stop to
+be added to the organ. This was after Avison became organist, his
+appointment to that post having been in 1736. So we know that he at
+least had a "trumpet stop" and a "sweet stop," with which to embellish
+his organ playing.
+
+The church is especially distinguished for the number and beauty of its
+chantries, and any who have a taste for examining armorial bearings will
+find two good-sized volumes devoted to a description of those in this
+church, by Richardson. Equal distinction attaches to the church owing to
+the beauty of its steeple, which has been called the pride and glory of
+the Northern Hemisphere. According to the enthusiastic Richardson it is
+justly esteemed on account of its peculiar excellency of design and
+delicacy of execution one of the finest specimens of architectural
+beauty in Europe. This steeple is as conspicuous a feature of Newcastle
+as the State House Dome is of Boston, situated, as it is, almost in the
+center of the town. Richardson gives the following minute description of
+this marvel. "It consists of a square tower forty feet in width, having
+great and small turrets with pinnacles at the angles and center of each
+front tower. From the four turrets at the angles spring two arches,
+which meet in an intersecting direction, and bear on their center an
+efficient perforated lanthorne, surmounted by a tall and beautiful
+spire: the angles of the lanthorne have pinnacles similar to those on
+the turrets, and the whole of the pinnacles, being twelve in number, and
+the spire, are ornamented with crockets and vanes."
+
+There is a stirring tradition in regard to this structure related by
+Bourne to the effect that in the time of the Civil Wars, when the Scots
+had besieged the town for several weeks, and were still as far as at
+first from taking it, the general sent a messenger to the mayor of the
+town, and demanded the keys, and the delivering up of the town, or he
+would immediately demolish the steeple of St. Nicholas. The mayor and
+aldermen upon hearing this, immediately ordered a certain number of the
+chiefest of the Scottish prisoners to be carried up to the top of the
+tower, the place below the lanthorne and there confined. After this,
+they returned the general an answer to this purpose,--that they would
+upon no terms deliver up the town, but would to the last moment defend
+it: that the steeple of St. Nicholas was indeed a beautiful and
+magnificent piece of architecture, and one of the great ornaments of the
+town; but yet should be blown into atoms before ransomed at such a rate:
+that, however, if it was to fall, it should not fall alone, that the
+same moment he destroyed the beautiful structure he should bathe his
+hands in the blood of his countrymen who were placed there on purpose
+either to preserve it from ruin or to die along with it. This message
+had the desired effect. The men were there kept prisoners during the
+whole time of the siege and not so much as one gun fired against it.
+
+Avison, however, had other claims to distinction, besides being organist
+of this ancient church. He was a composer, and was remembered by one of
+his airs, at least, into the nineteenth century, namely "Sound the Loud
+Timbrel." He appears not to be remembered, however, by his concertos, of
+which he published no less than five sets for a full band of stringed
+instruments, nor by his quartets and trios, and two sets of sonatas for
+the harpsichord and two violins. All we have to depend on now as to the
+quality of his music are the strictures of a certain Dr. Hayes, an
+Oxford Professor, who points out many errors against the rules of
+composition in the works of Avison, whence he infers that his skill in
+music is not very profound, and the somewhat more appreciative remarks
+of Hawkins who says "The music of Avison is light and elegant, but it
+wants originality, a necessary consequence of his too close attachment
+to the style of Geminiani which in a few particulars only he was able to
+imitate."
+
+Geminiani was a celebrated violin player and composer of the day, who
+had come to England from Italy. He is said to have held his pupil,
+Avison, in high esteem and to have paid him a visit at Newcastle in
+1760. Avison's early education was gained in Italy; and in addition to
+his musical attainments he was a scholar and a man of some literary
+acquirements. It is not surprising, considering all these educational
+advantages that he really made something of a stir upon the publication
+of his "small book," as Browning calls it, with, we may add, its "large
+title."
+
+  AN
+  ESSAY
+  ON
+  MUSICAL EXPRESSION
+  BY CHARLES AVISON
+  _Organist_ in NEWCASTLE
+  With ALTERATIONS and Large ADDITIONS
+
+  To which is added,
+  A LETTER to the AUTHOR
+  concerning the Music of the ANCIENTS
+  and some Passages in CLASSIC WRITERS
+  relating to the Subject.
+
+  LIKEWISE
+  Mr. AVISON'S REPLY to the Author of
+  _Remarks on the Essay on MUSICAL EXPRESSION_
+  In a Letter from Mr. _Avison_ to his Friend in _London_
+
+  THE THIRD EDITION
+  LONDON
+  Printed for LOCKYER DAVIS, in _Holborn_.
+  Printer to the ROYAL SOCIETY.
+  MDCCLXXV.
+
+The author of the "Remarks on the Essay on Musical Expression" was the
+aforementioned Dr. W. Hayes, and although the learned doctor's pamphlet
+seems to have died a natural death, some idea of its strictures may be
+gained from Avison's reply. The criticisms are rather too technical to
+be of interest to the general reader, but one is given here to show how
+gentlemanly a temper Mr. Avison possessed when he was under fire. His
+reply runs "His first critique, and, I think, his masterpiece, contains
+many circumstantial, but false and virulent remarks on the first allegro
+of these concertos, to which he supposes I would give the name of
+_fugue_. Be it just what he pleases to call it I shall not defend what
+the public is already in possession of, the public being the most proper
+judge. I shall only here observe, that our critic has wilfully, or
+ignorantly, confounded the terms _fugue_ and _imitation_, which latter
+is by no means subject to the same laws with the former.
+
+[Illustration: Handel]
+
+"Had I observed the method of answering the _accidental subjects_ in
+this _allegro_, as laid down by our critic in his remarks, they must
+have produced most shocking effects; which, though this mechanic in
+music, would, perhaps, have approved, yet better judges might, in
+reality, have imagined I had known no other art than that of the
+spruzzarino." There is a nice independence about this that would
+indicate Mr. Avison to be at least an aspirant in the right direction in
+musical composition. His criticism of Handel, too, at a time when the
+world was divided between enthusiasm for Handel and enthusiasm for
+Buononcini, shows a remarkably just and penetrating estimate of this
+great genius.
+
+"Mr. Handel is, in music, what his own Dryden was in poetry; nervous,
+exalted, and harmonious; but voluminous, and, consequently, not always
+correct. Their abilities equal to every thing; their execution
+frequently inferior. Born with genius capable of _soaring the boldest
+flights_; they have sometimes, to suit the vitiated taste of the age
+they lived in, _descended to the lowest_. Yet, as both their
+excellencies are infinitely more numerous than their deficiencies, so
+both their characters will devolve to latest posterity, not as models of
+perfection, yet glorious examples of those amazing powers that actuate
+the human soul."
+
+On the whole, Mr. Avison's "little book" on Musical Expression is
+eminently sensible as to the matter and very agreeable in style. He hits
+off well, for example, the difference between "musical expression" and
+imitation.
+
+"As dissonances and shocking sounds cannot be called Musical Expression,
+so neither do I think, can mere imitation of several other things be
+entitled to this name, which, however, among the generality of mankind
+hath often obtained it. Thus, the gradual rising or falling of the
+notes in a long succession is often used to denote ascent or descent;
+broken intervals, to denote an interrupted motion; a number of quick
+divisions, to describe swiftness or flying; sounds resembling laughter,
+to describe laughter; with a number of other contrivances of a parallel
+kind, which it is needless here to mention. Now all these I should chuse
+to style imitation, rather than expression; because it seems to me, that
+their tendency is rather to fix the hearer's attention on the similitude
+between the sounds and the things which they describe, and thereby to
+excite a reflex act of the understanding, than to affect the heart and
+raise the passions of the soul.
+
+"This distinction seems more worthy our notice at present, because some
+very eminent composers have attached themselves chiefly to the method
+here mentioned; and seem to think they have exhausted all the depths of
+expression, by a dextrous imitation of the meaning of a few particular
+words, that occur in the hymns or songs which they set to music. Thus,
+were one of these gentlemen to express the following words of _Milton_,
+
+                                  --Their songs
+    Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to heav'n:
+
+it is highly probable, that upon the word _divide_, he would run a
+_division_ of half a dozen bars; and on the subsequent part of the
+sentence, he would not think he had done the poet justice, or _risen_ to
+that _height_ of sublimity which he ought to express, till he had
+climbed up to the very top of his instrument, or at least as far as the
+human voice could follow him. And this would pass with a great part of
+mankind for musical expression; instead of that noble mixture of solemn
+airs and various harmony, which indeed elevates our thoughts, and gives
+that exquisite pleasure, which none but true lovers of harmony can
+feel." What Avison calls "musical expression," we call to-day "content."
+And thus Avison "tenders evidence that music in his day as much absorbed
+heart and soul then as Wagner's music now." It is not unlikely that this
+very passage may have started Browning off on his argumentative way
+concerning the question: how lasting and how fundamental are the powers
+of musical expression.
+
+The poet's memory goes back a hundred years only to reach "The bands-man
+Avison whose little book and large tune had led him the long way from
+to-day."
+
+
+    CHARLES AVISON
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+    And to-day's music-manufacture,--Brahms,
+    Wagner, Dvorak, Liszt,--to where--trumpets, shawms,
+    Show yourselves joyful!--Handel reigns--supreme?
+    By no means! Buononcini's work is theme
+    For fit laudation of the impartial few:
+    (We stand in England, mind you!) Fashion too
+    Favors Geminiani--of those choice
+    Concertos: nor there wants a certain voice
+    Raised in thy favor likewise, famed Pepusch
+    Dear to our great-grandfathers! In a bush
+    Of Doctor's wig, they prized thee timing beats
+    While Greenway trilled "Alexis." Such were feats
+    Of music in thy day--dispute who list--
+    Avison, of Newcastle organist!
+
+    V
+
+    And here's your music all alive once more--
+    As once it was alive, at least: just so
+    The figured worthies of a waxwork-show
+    Attest--such people, years and years ago,
+    Looked thus when outside death had life below,
+    --Could say "We are now," not "We were of yore,"
+    --"Feel how our pulses leap!" and not "Explore--
+    Explain why quietude has settled o'er
+    Surface once all-awork!" Ay, such a "Suite"
+    Roused heart to rapture, such a "Fugue" would catch
+    Soul heavenwards up, when time was: why attach
+    Blame to exhausted faultlessness, no match
+    For fresh achievement? Feat once--ever feat!
+    How can completion grow still more complete?
+    Hear Avison! He tenders evidence
+    That music in his day as much absorbed
+    Heart and soul then as Wagner's music now.
+    Perfect from center to circumference--
+    Orbed to the full can be but fully orbed:
+    And yet--and yet--whence comes it that "O Thou"--
+    Sighed by the soul at eve to Hesperus--
+    Will not again take wing and fly away
+    (Since fatal Wagner fixed it fast for us)
+    In some unmodulated minor? Nay,
+    Even by Handel's help!
+
+Having stated the problem that confronts him, namely, the change of
+fashion in music, the poet boldly goes on to declare that there is no
+truer truth obtainable by man than comes of music, because it does give
+direct expression to the moods of the soul, yet there is a hitch that
+balks her of full triumph, namely the musical form in which these moods
+are expressed does not stay fixed. This statement is enriched by a
+digression upon the meaning of the soul.
+
+    VI
+
+                                    I state it thus:
+    There is no truer truth obtainable
+    By Man than comes of music. "Soul"--(accept
+    A word which vaguely names what no adept
+    In word-use fits and fixes so that still
+    Thing shall not slip word's fetter and remain
+    Innominate as first, yet, free again,
+    Is no less recognized the absolute
+    Fact underlying that same other fact
+    Concerning which no cavil can dispute
+    Our nomenclature when we call it "Mind"--
+    Something not Matter)--"Soul," who seeks shall find
+    Distinct beneath that something. You exact
+    An illustrative image? This may suit.
+
+    VII
+
+    We see a work: the worker works behind,
+    Invisible himself. Suppose his act
+    Be to o'erarch a gulf: he digs, transports,
+    Shapes and, through enginery--all sizes, sorts,
+    Lays stone by stone until a floor compact
+    Proves our bridged causeway. So works Mind--by stress
+    Of faculty, with loose facts, more or less,
+    Builds up our solid knowledge: all the same,
+    Underneath rolls what Mind may hide not tame,
+    An element which works beyond our guess,
+    Soul, the unsounded sea--whose lift of surge,
+    Spite of all superstructure, lets emerge,
+    In flower and foam, Feeling from out the deeps
+    Mind arrogates no mastery upon--
+    Distinct indisputably. Has there gone
+    To dig up, drag forth, render smooth from rough
+    Mind's flooring,--operosity enough?
+    Still the successive labor of each inch,
+    Who lists may learn: from the last turn of winch
+    That let the polished slab-stone find its place,
+    To the first prod of pick-axe at the base
+    Of the unquarried mountain,--what was all
+    Mind's varied process except natural,
+    Nay, easy, even, to descry, describe,
+    After our fashion? "So worked Mind: its tribe
+    Of senses ministrant above, below,
+    Far, near, or now or haply long ago
+    Brought to pass knowledge." But Soul's sea,--drawn whence,
+    Fed how, forced whither,--by what evidence
+    Of ebb and flow, that's felt beneath the tread,
+    Soul has its course 'neath Mind's work over-head,--
+    Who tells of, tracks to source the founts of Soul?
+    Yet wherefore heaving sway and restless roll
+    This side and that, except to emulate
+    Stability above? To match and mate
+    Feeling with knowledge,--make as manifest
+    Soul's work as Mind's work, turbulence as rest,
+    Hates, loves, joys, woes, hopes, fears, that rise and sink
+    Ceaselessly, passion's transient flit and wink,
+    A ripple's tinting or a spume-sheet's spread
+    Whitening the wave,--to strike all this life dead,
+    Run mercury into a mould like lead,
+    And henceforth have the plain result to show--
+    How we Feel, hard and fast as what we Know--
+    This were the prize and is the puzzle!--which
+    Music essays to solve: and here's the hitch
+    That balks her of full triumph else to boast.
+
+Then follows his explanation of the "hitch," which necessitates a
+comparison with the other arts. His contention is that art adds nothing
+to the _knowledge_ of the mind. It simply moulds into a fixed form
+elements already known which before lay loose and dissociated, it
+therefore does not really create. But there is one realm, that of
+feeling, to which the arts never succeed in giving permanent form
+though all try to do it. What is it they succeed in getting? The poet
+does not make the point very clear, but he seems to be groping after the
+idea that the arts present only the _phenomena_ of feeling or the image
+of feeling instead of the _reality_. Like all people who are
+appreciative of music, he realizes that music comes nearer to expressing
+the spiritual reality of feeling than the other arts, and yet music of
+all the arts is the least permanent in its appeal.
+
+    VIII
+
+    All Arts endeavor this, and she the most
+    Attains thereto, yet fails of touching: why?
+    Does Mind get Knowledge from Art's ministry?
+    What's known once is known ever: Arts arrange,
+    Dissociate, re-distribute, interchange
+    Part with part, lengthen, broaden, high or deep
+    Construct their bravest,--still such pains produce
+    Change, not creation: simply what lay loose
+    At first lies firmly after, what design
+    Was faintly traced in hesitating line
+    Once on a time, grows firmly resolute
+    Henceforth and evermore. Now, could we shoot
+    Liquidity into a mould,--some way
+    Arrest Soul's evanescent moods, and keep
+    Unalterably still the forms that leap
+    To life for once by help of Art!--which yearns
+    To save its capture: Poetry discerns,
+    Painting is 'ware of passion's rise and fall,
+    Bursting, subsidence, intermixture--all
+    A-seethe within the gulf. Each Art a-strain
+    Would stay the apparition,--nor in vain:
+    The Poet's word-mesh, Painter's sure and swift
+    Color-and-line-throw--proud the prize they lift!
+    Thus felt Man and thus looked Man,--passions caught
+    I' the midway swim of sea,--not much, if aught,
+    Of nether-brooding loves, hates, hopes and fears,
+    Enwombed past Art's disclosure. Fleet the years,
+    And still the Poet's page holds Helena
+    At gaze from topmost Troy--"But where are they,
+    My brothers, in the armament I name
+    Hero by hero? Can it be that shame
+    For their lost sister holds them from the war?"
+    --Knowing not they already slept afar
+    Each of them in his own dear native land.
+    Still on the Painter's fresco, from the hand
+    Of God takes Eve the life-spark whereunto
+    She trembles up from nothingness. Outdo
+    Both of them, Music! Dredging deeper yet,
+    Drag into day,--by sound, thy master-net,--
+    The abysmal bottom-growth, ambiguous thing
+    Unbroken of a branch, palpitating
+    With limbs' play and life's semblance! There it lies,
+    Marvel and mystery, of mysteries
+    And marvels, most to love and laud thee for!
+    Save it from chance and change we most abhor!
+    Give momentary feeling permanence,
+    So that thy capture hold, a century hence,
+    Truth's very heart of truth as, safe to-day,
+    The Painter's Eve, the Poet's Helena,
+    Still rapturously bend, afar still throw
+    The wistful gaze! Thanks, Homer, Angelo!
+    Could Music rescue thus from Soul's profound,
+    Give feeling immortality by sound,
+    Then were she queenliest of Arts! Alas--
+    As well expect the rainbow not to pass!
+    "Praise 'Radaminta'--love attains therein
+    To perfect utterance! Pity--what shall win
+    Thy secret like 'Rinaldo'?"--so men said:
+    Once all was perfume--now, the flower is dead--
+    They spied tints, sparks have left the spar! Love, hate,
+    Joy, fear, survive,--alike importunate
+    As ever to go walk the world again,
+    Nor ghost-like pant for outlet all in vain
+    Till Music loose them, fit each filmily
+    With form enough to know and name it by
+    For any recognizer sure of ken
+    And sharp of ear, no grosser denizen
+    Of earth than needs be. Nor to such appeal
+    Is Music long obdurate: off they steal--
+    How gently, dawn-doomed phantoms! back come they
+    Full-blooded with new crimson of broad day--
+    Passion made palpable once more. Ye look
+    Your last on Handel? Gaze your first on Gluck!
+    Why wistful search, O waning ones, the chart
+    Of stars for you while Haydn, while Mozart
+    Occupies heaven? These also, fanned to fire,
+    Flamboyant wholly,--so perfections tire,--
+    Whiten to wanness, till ... let others note
+    The ever-new invasion!
+
+The poet makes no attempt to give any reason why music should be so
+ephemeral in its appeal. He merely refers to the development of harmony
+and modulation, nor does it seem to enter his head that there can be any
+question about the appeal being ephemeral. He imagines the possibility
+of resuscitating dead and gone music with modern harmonies and novel
+modulations, but gives that up as an irreverent innovation. His next
+mood is a historical one; dead and gone music may have something for us
+in a historical sense, that is, if we bring our life to kindle theirs,
+we may sympathetically enter into the life of the time.
+
+    IX
+
+                                      I devote
+    Rather my modicum of parts to use
+    What power may yet avail to re-infuse
+    (In fancy, please you!) sleep that looks like death
+    With momentary liveliness, lend breath
+    To make the torpor half inhale. O Relfe,
+    An all-unworthy pupil, from the shelf
+    Of thy laboratory, dares unstop
+    Bottle, ope box, extract thence pinch and drop
+    Of dusts and dews a many thou didst shrine
+    Each in its right receptacle, assign
+    To each its proper office, letter large
+    Label and label, then with solemn charge,
+    Reviewing learnedly the list complete
+    Of chemical reactives, from thy feet
+    Push down the same to me, attent below,
+    Power in abundance: armed wherewith I go
+    To play the enlivener. Bring good antique stuff!
+    Was it alight once? Still lives spark enough
+    For breath to quicken, run the smouldering ash
+    Red right-through. What, "stone-dead" were fools so rash
+    As style my Avison, because he lacked
+    Modern appliance, spread out phrase unracked
+    By modulations fit to make each hair
+    Stiffen upon his wig? See there--and there!
+    I sprinkle my reactives, pitch broadcast
+    Discords and resolutions, turn aghast
+    Melody's easy-going, jostle law
+    With license, modulate (no Bach in awe),
+    Change enharmonically (Hudl to thank),
+    And lo, up-start the flamelets,--what was blank
+    Turns scarlet, purple, crimson! Straightway scanned
+    By eyes that like new lustre--Love once more
+    Yearns through the Largo, Hatred as before
+    Rages in the Rubato: e'en thy March,
+    My Avison, which, sooth to say--(ne'er arch
+    Eyebrows in anger!)--timed, in Georgian years
+    The step precise of British Grenadiers
+    To such a nicety,--if score I crowd,
+    If rhythm I break, if beats I vary,--tap
+    At bar's off-starting turns true thunder-clap,
+    Ever the pace augmented till--what's here?
+    Titanic striding toward Olympus!
+
+    X
+
+                                      Fear
+    No such irreverent innovation! Still
+    Glide on, go rolling, water-like, at will--
+    Nay, were thy melody in monotone,
+    The due three-parts dispensed with!
+
+    XI
+
+                                      This alone
+    Comes of my tiresome talking: Music's throne
+    Seats somebody whom somebody unseats,
+    And whom in turn--by who knows what new feats
+    Of strength,--shall somebody as sure push down,
+    Consign him dispossessed of sceptre, crown,
+    And orb imperial--whereto?--Never dream
+    That what once lived shall ever die! They seem
+    Dead--do they? lapsed things lost in limbo? Bring
+    Our life to kindle theirs, and straight each king
+    Starts, you shall see, stands up, from head to foot
+    No inch that is not Purcell! Wherefore? (Suit
+    Measure to subject, first--no marching on
+    Yet in thy bold C Major, Avison,
+    As suited step a minute since: no: wait--
+    Into the minor key first modulate--
+    Gently with A, now--in the Lesser Third!)
+
+The really serious conclusion of the poem amounts to a doctrine of
+relativity in art and not only in art but in ethics and religion. It is
+a statement in poetry of the prevalent thought of the nineteenth
+century, of which the most widely known exponent was Herbert Spencer.
+The form in which every truth manifests itself is partial and therefore
+will pass, but the underlying truth, the absolute which unfolds itself
+in form after form is eternal. Every manifestation in form, according to
+Browning, however, has also its infinite value in relation to the truth
+which is preserved through it.
+
+    XII
+
+    Of all the lamentable debts incurred
+    By Man through buying knowledge, this were worst:
+    That he should find his last gain prove his first
+    Was futile--merely nescience absolute,
+    Not knowledge in the bud which holds a fruit
+    Haply undreamed of in the soul's Spring-tide,
+    Pursed in the petals Summer opens wide,
+    And Autumn, withering, rounds to perfect ripe,--
+    Not this,--but ignorance, a blur to wipe
+    From human records, late it graced so much.
+    "Truth--this attainment? Ah, but such and such
+    Beliefs of yore seemed inexpugnable.
+
+    "When we attained them! E'en as they, so will
+    This their successor have the due morn, noon,
+    Evening and night--just as an old-world tune
+    Wears out and drops away, until who hears
+    Smilingly questions--'This it was brought tears
+    Once to all eyes,--this roused heart's rapture once?'
+    So will it be with truth that, for the nonce,
+    Styles itself truth perennial: 'ware its wile!
+    Knowledge turns nescience,--foremost on the file,
+    Simply proves first of our delusions."
+
+    XIII
+
+                                      Now--
+    Blare it forth, bold C Major! Lift thy brow,
+    Man, the immortal, that wast never fooled
+    With gifts no gifts at all, nor ridiculed--
+    Man knowing--he who nothing knew! As Hope,
+    Fear, Joy, and Grief,--though ampler stretch and scope
+    They seek and find in novel rhythm, fresh phrase,--
+    Were equally existent in far days
+    Of Music's dim beginning--even so,
+    Truth was at full within thee long ago,
+    Alive as now it takes what latest shape
+    May startle thee by strangeness. Truths escape
+    Time's insufficient garniture; they fade,
+    They fall--those sheathings now grown sere, whose aid
+    Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine
+    And free through March frost: May dews crystalline
+    Nourish truth merely,--does June boast the fruit
+    As--not new vesture merely but, to boot,
+    Novel creation? Soon shall fade and fall
+    Myth after myth--the husk-like lies I call
+    New truth's corolla-safeguard: Autumn comes,
+    So much the better!
+
+As to the questions why music does not give feeling immortality through
+sound, and why it should be so ephemeral in its appeal, there are
+various things to be said. It is just possible that it may soon come to
+be recognized that the psychic growth of humanity is more perfectly
+reflected in music than any where else. Ephemeralness may be predicated
+of culture-music more certainly than of folk-music, why? Because
+culture-music often has occupied itself more with the technique than
+with the content, while folk-music, being the spontaneous expression of
+feeling must have content. Folk-music, it is true, is simple, but if it
+be genuine in its feeling I doubt whether it ever loses its power to
+move. Therefore, in folk-music is possibly made permanent simple states
+of feeling. Now in culture-music, the development has constantly been
+in the direction of the expression of the ultimate spiritual reality of
+emotions. Music is now actually trying to accomplish what Browning
+demands of it:
+
+                            "Dredging deeper yet,
+    Drag into day,--by sound, thy master-net,--
+    The abysmal bottom-growth, ambiguous thing
+    Unbroken of a branch, palpitating
+    With limbs' play and life's semblance! There it lies,
+    Marvel and mystery, of mysteries
+    And marvels, most to love and laud thee for!
+    Save it from chance and change we most abhor."
+
+This is true no matter what the emotion may be. Hate may have its
+"eidolon" as well as love. Above all arts, music has the power of
+raising evil into a region of the artistically beautiful. Doubt,
+despair, passion, become blossoms plucked by the hand of God when
+transmuted in the alembic of the brain of genius--which is not saying
+that he need experience any of these passions himself. In fact, it is
+his power of perceiving the eidolon of beauty in modes of passion or
+emotion not his own that makes him the great genius.
+
+It is doubtless true that whenever in culture-music there has really
+been content aroused by feeling, no matter what the stage of technique
+reached, _that_ music retains its power to move. It is also highly
+probably that in the earlier objective phases of music, even the
+contemporary audiences were not moved in the sense that we should be
+moved to-day. The audiences were objective also and their enthusiasm may
+have been aroused by merely the imitative aspects of music as Avison
+called them. It is certainly a fact that content and form are more
+closely linked in music than in any other art. Suppose, however, we
+imagine the development of melody, counterpoint, harmony, modulation,
+etc., to be symbolized by a series of concrete materials like clay
+bricks, silver bricks, gold bricks, diamond bricks; a beautiful thought
+might take as exquisite a form in bricks of clay as it would in diamond
+bricks, or diamond bricks might be flung together without any informing
+thought so that they would attract only the thoughtless by their
+glitter. But it also follows that, with the increase in the kinds of
+bricks, there is an increase in the possibilities for subtleties in
+psychic expression, therefore music to-day is coming nearer and nearer
+to the spiritual reality of feeling. It requires the awakened soul that
+Maeterlinck talks about, that is, the soul alive to the spiritual
+essences of things to recognize this new realm which composers are
+bringing to us in music.
+
+There are always, at least three kinds of appreciators of music, those
+who can see beauty only in the masters of the past, those who can see
+beauty only in the last new composer, and those who ecstatically welcome
+beauty past, present and to come. These last are not only psychically
+developed themselves, but they are able to retain delight in simpler
+modes of feeling. They may be raised to a seventh heaven of delight by a
+Bach fugue played on a clavichord by Mr. Dolmetsch, feeling as if angels
+were ministering unto them, or to a still higher heaven of delight by a
+Tschaikowsky symphony or a string quartet of Grieg, feeling that here
+the seraphim continually do cry, or they may enter into the very
+presence of the most High through some subtly exquisite and psychic song
+of an American composer, for some of the younger American composers are
+indeed approaching "Truth's very heart of truth," in their music.
+
+On the whole, one gets rather the impression that the poet has here
+tackled a problem upon which he did not have great insight. He passes
+from one mood to another, none of which seem especially satisfactory to
+himself, and concludes with one of the half-truths of nineteenth-century
+thought. It is true as far as it goes that forms evolve, and it is a
+good truth to oppose to the martinets of settled standards in poetry,
+music and painting; it is also true that the form is a partial
+expression of a whole truth, but there is the further truth that, let a
+work of art be really a work of genius, and the form as well as the
+content touches the infinite; that is, we have as Browning says in a
+poem already quoted, "Bernard de Mandeville," the very sun in little, or
+as he makes Abt Vogler say of his music, the broken arc which goes to
+the formation of the perfect round, or to quote still another poem of
+Browning's, "Cleon," the perfect rhomb or trapezoid that has its own
+place in a mosaic pavement.
+
+[Illustration: Avison's March]
+
+The poem closes in a rolicking frame of mind, which is not remarkably
+consistent with the preceding thought, except that the poet seems
+determined to get all he can out of the music of the past by enlivening
+it with his own jolly mood. To this end he sets a patriotic poem to the
+tune of Avison's march, in honor of our old friend, Pym. It is a clever
+_tour de force_ for the words are made to match exactly in rhythm and
+quantity the notes of the march. Truth to say, the essential goodness of
+the tune comes out by means of these enlivening words.
+
+    XIV
+
+                            Therefore--bang the drums,
+    Blow the trumpets, Avison! March-motive? that's
+    Truth which endures resetting. Sharps and flats,
+    Lavish at need, shall dance athwart thy score
+    When ophicleide and bombardon's uproar
+    Mate the approaching trample, even now
+    Big in the distance--or my ears deceive--
+    Of federated England, fitly weave
+    March-music for the Future!
+
+    XV
+
+                            Or suppose
+    Back, and not forward, transformation goes?
+    Once more some sable-stoled procession--say,
+    From Little-ease to Tyburn--wends its way,
+    Out of the dungeon to the gallows-tree
+    Where heading, hacking, hanging is to be
+    Of half-a-dozen recusants--this day
+    Three hundred years ago! How duly drones
+    Elizabethan plain-song--dim antique
+    Grown clarion-clear the while I humbly wreak
+    A classic vengeance on thy March! It moans--
+    Larges and Longs and Breves displacing quite
+    Crotchet-and-quaver pertness--brushing bars
+    Aside and filling vacant sky with stars
+    Hidden till now that day returns to night.
+
+    XVI
+
+    Nor night nor day: one purpose move us both,
+    Be thy mood mine! As thou wast minded, Man's
+    The cause our music champions: I were loth
+    To think we cheered our troop to Preston Pans
+    Ignobly: back to times of England's best!
+    Parliament stands for privilege--life and limb
+    Guards Hollis, Haselrig, Strode, Hampden, Pym,
+    The famous Five. There's rumor of arrest.
+    Bring up the Train Bands, Southwark! They protest:
+    Shall we not all join chorus? Hark the hymn,
+    --Rough, rude, robustious--homely heart a-throb,
+    Harsh voises a-hallo, as beseems the mob!
+    How good is noise! what's silence but despair
+    Of making sound match gladness never there?
+    Give me some great glad "subject," glorious Bach,
+    Where cannon-roar not organ-peal we lack!
+    Join in, give voice robustious rude and rough,--
+    Avison helps--so heart lend noise enough!
+
+    Fife, trump, drum, sound! and singers then,
+    Marching, say "Pym, the man of men!"
+    Up, head's, your proudest--out, throats, your loudest--
+    "Somerset's Pym!"
+
+    Strafford from the block, Eliot from the den,
+    Foes, friends, shout "Pym, our citizen!"
+    Wail, the foes he quelled,--hail, the friends he held,
+    "Tavistock's Pym!"
+
+    Hearts prompt heads, hands that ply the pen
+    Teach babes unborn the where and when
+    --Tyrants, he braved them,--
+    Patriots, he saved them--
+    "Westminster's Pym."
+
+Another English musician, Arthur Chappell, was the inspiration of a
+graceful little sonnet written by the poet in an album which was
+presented to Mr. Chappell in recognition of his popular concerts in
+London. Browning was a constant attendant at these. It gives a true
+glimpse of the poet in a highly appreciative mood:
+
+
+    THE FOUNDER OF THE FEAST
+
+    1884
+
+    "Enter my palace," if a prince should say--
+      "Feast with the Painters! See, in bounteous row,
+      They range from Titian up to Angelo!"
+    Could we be silent at the rich survey?
+    A host so kindly, in as great a way
+      Invites to banquet, substitutes for show
+      Sound that's diviner still, and bids us know
+    Bach like Beethoven; are we thankless, pray?
+
+    Thanks, then, to Arthur Chappell,--thanks to him
+      Whose every guest henceforth not idly vaunts
+      "Sense has received the utmost Nature grants,
+    My cup was filled with rapture to the brim,
+      When, night by night,--ah, memory, how it haunts!--
+      Music was poured by perfect ministrants,
+    By Halle, Schumann, Piatti, Joachim."
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber Notes
+
+Typographical inconsistencies have been changed and are listed below.
+
+Archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation are preserved.
+
+Author's punctuation style is preserved, except where noted.
+
+Some illustrations moved to one page later.
+
+Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Passages in bold indicated by =equal signs=.
+
+Emphasized words within italics indicated by plus +emphasis+.
+
+
+Transcriber Changes
+
+The following changes were made to the original text:
+
+  Page 10: Removed extra quote after Keats (What porridge had John
+           =Keats?=)
+
+  Page 21: Was 'blurrs' (Stray-leaves, fragments, =blurs= and blottings)
+
+  Page 49: Paragraph continued, no quote needed (=Tibullus= gives
+           Virgil equal credit for having in his writings touched
+           with telling truth)
+
+  Page 53: Was 'Shakesspeare' (Jonson wrote for the First Folio edition
+           of =Shakespeare= printed in 1623)
+
+  Page 53: Was 'B. I.' (=B. J.=)
+
+  Page 53: Added single quotes (Shakespeare's talk in "At the
+           ='Mermaid'=" grows out of the supposition)
+
+  Page 69: Was 'Shakepeare's' (He thinks the opening Sonnets are to the
+           Earl of Southampton, known to be =Shakespeare's= patron)
+
+  Page 81: Added comma after Strafford (not Pym, the leader of the
+           people, but =Strafford,= the supporter of the King.)
+
+  Page 85: Added end quote (some half-dozen years of immunity to the
+           'fretted tenement' of Strafford's 'fiery =soul'=)
+
+  Page 91: Capitalized King (The =King=, upon his visit to Scotland,
+           had been shocked)
+
+  Page 100: Was 'Finnees' (Hampden, Hollis, the younger Vane, Rudyard,
+            =Fiennes= and many of the Presbyterian Party)
+
+  Page 136: Removed extra start quote ("Be my friend =Of= friends!"--My
+            King! I would have....)
+
+  Page 137: Was 'brillance' (The else imperial =brilliance= of your mind)
+
+  Page 137: Was 'you way' (If Pym is busy,--=you may= write of Pym.)
+
+  Page 140: Capitalized King (the =King=, therefore, summoned it to meet
+            on the third of November.)
+
+  Page 142: Matching the original: leaving it hyphenated (the greatest
+            in England would have stood =dis-covered=.')
+
+  Page 172: Was 'Partiot' (The =Patriot= Pym, or the Apostate Strafford!)
+
+  Page 174: Was 'perfers' (The King =prefers= to leave the door ajar)
+
+  Page 178: Was 'her's' (I am =hers= now, and I will die.)
+
+  Page 193: Was 'Bethrothal' (Till death us do join past parting--that
+            sounds like =Betrothal= indeed!)
+
+  Page 200: Was 'canonade' (Such a castle seldom crumbles by sheer
+            stress of =cannonade=: 'Tis when foes are foiled and
+            fighting's finished that vile rains invade)
+
+  Page 203: Inserted stanza (=Down= I sat to cards, one evening)
+
+  Page 203: Added starting quote (="When= he found his voice, he
+            stammered 'That expression once again!')
+
+  Page 204: Added starting quote (='End= it! no time like the present!)
+
+  Page 224: Changed comma to period (the morning's lessons conned with
+            the =tutor.= There, too, it was that he impressed on the lad
+            those maxims)
+
+  Page 236: Added end quote (Why, he makes sure of her--"do you say,
+            =yes"=-- "She'll not say, no,"--what comes it to beside?)
+
+  Page 265: Added stanza ("'=I've= been about those laces we need for
+            ... never mind!)
+
+  Page 266: Keeping original spelling (With =dreriment= about, within
+            may life be found)
+
+  Page 267: Added stanza ("'=Wicked= dear Husband, first despair and
+            then rejoice!)
+
+  Page 276: Was 'checks' (The dryness of "Aristotle's =cheeks=" is as
+            usual so enlivened by Browning that the fate of Halbert and
+            Hob grows)
+
+  Page 289: Added starting quote (="You= wrong your poor disciple.)
+
+  Page 290: Removed end quote (Wish I could take you; but fame travels
+            =fast=)
+
+  Page 291: Was 'aud' (Aunt =and= niece, you and me.)
+
+  Page 294: Was 'oustide' (Such =outside=! Now,--confound me for a prig!)
+
+  Page 299: Changed singe quote to double (="Not= you! But I see.)
+
+  Page 315: Was 'Descretion' (To live and die together--for a month,
+            =Discretion= can award no more!)
+
+  Page 329: Removed starting quote ("He may believe; and yet, and yet
+            =How= can he?" All eyes turn with interest.)
+
+  Page 344: Left in ending quote with unknown start (High Church, and
+            the Evangelicals, or Low =Church."=)
+
+  Page 370: Changed period to comma (Judgment drops her damning
+            =plummet,= Pronouncing such a fatal space)
+
+  Page 421: Removed starting quote (=About= the year 1676, the
+            corporation of Newcastle contributed)
+
+  Page 429: Added period (whose little book and large tune had led him
+            the long way from =to-day.=")
+
+  Page 437: Was 'irreverant' (gives that up as an =irreverent=
+            innovation.)
+
+  Page 440: Added beginning quote (="When= we attained them!)
+
+  Page 445: Added comma (we have as Browning says in a poem already
+            =quoted,= "Bernard de Mandeville,")
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Browning's England, by Helen Archibald Clarke
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Browning's England, by Helen Archibald Clarke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Browning's England
+       A Study in English Influences in Browning
+
+Author: Helen Archibald Clarke
+
+Release Date: July 10, 2009 [EBook #29365]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING'S ENGLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Linda Cantoni (music), Katherine
+Ward and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Browning's England
+
+  A STUDY OF
+  ENGLISH INFLUENCES IN BROWNING
+
+
+  BY
+  HELEN ARCHIBALD CLARKE
+  Author of "_Browning's Italy_"
+
+  NEW YORK
+  THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
+
+  MCMVIII
+
+  _Copyright, 1908, by_
+  The Baker & Taylor Company
+
+  Published, October, 1908
+
+  _The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A._
+
+
+  To
+  MY COLLEAGUE IN PLEASANT LITERARY PATHS
+  AND
+  MANY YEARS FRIEND
+  CHARLOTTE PORTER
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+  CHAPTER I
+                                                          PAGE
+  English Poets, Friends, and Enthusiasms                    1
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  Shakespeare's Portrait                                    42
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  A Crucial Period in English History                       79
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  Social Aspects of English Life                           211
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  Religious Thought in the Nineteenth Century              322
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  Art Criticism Inspired by the English Musician, Avison   420
+
+
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  Browning at 23                                _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                          PAGE
+  Percy Bysshe Shelley                                       4
+  John Keats                                                10
+  William Wordsworth                                        16
+  Rydal Mount, the Home of Wordsworth                       22
+  An English Lane                                           33
+  First Folio Portrait of Shakespeare                       60
+  Charles I in Scene of Impeachment                         80
+  Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford                       88
+  Charles I                                                114
+  Whitehall                                                120
+  Westminster Hall                                         157
+  The Tower, London                                        170
+  The Tower, Traitors' Gate                                183
+  An English Manor House                                   222
+  An English Park                                          240
+  John Bunyan                                              274
+  An English Inn                                           288
+  Cardinal Wiseman                                         336
+  Sacred Heart                                             342
+  The Nativity                                             351
+  The Transfiguration                                      366
+  Handel                                                   426
+  Avison's March                                           446
+
+
+
+
+BROWNING'S ENGLAND
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ENGLISH POETS, FRIENDS AND ENTHUSIASMS
+
+
+To any one casually trying to recall what England has given Robert
+Browning by way of direct poetical inspiration, it is more than likely
+that the little poem about Shelley, "Memorabilia" would at once occur:
+
+    I
+
+    "Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
+      And did he stop and speak to you
+    And did you speak to him again?
+      How strange it seems and new!
+
+    II
+
+    "But you were living before that,
+      And also you are living after;
+    And the memory I started at--
+      My starting moves your laughter!
+
+    III
+
+    "I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
+      And a certain use in the world, no doubt,
+    Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
+      'Mid the blank miles round about:
+
+    IV
+
+    "For there I picked up on the heather
+      And there I put inside my breast
+    A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!
+      Well, I forget the rest."
+
+It puts into a mood and a symbol the almost worshipful admiration felt
+by Browning for the poet in his youth, which he had, many years before
+this little lyric was written, recorded in a finely appreciative passage
+in "Pauline."
+
+    "Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever!
+    Thou are gone from us; years go by and spring
+    Gladdens and the young earth is beautiful,
+    Yet thy songs come not, other bards arise,
+    But none like thee: they stand, thy majesties,
+    Like mighty works which tell some spirit there
+    Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn,
+    Till, its long task completed, it hath risen
+    And left us, never to return, and all
+    Rush in to peer and praise when all in vain.
+    The air seems bright with thy past presence yet,
+    But thou art still for me as thou hast been
+    When I have stood with thee as on a throne
+    With all thy dim creations gathered round
+    Like mountains, and I felt of mould like them,
+    And with them creatures of my own were mixed,
+    Like things, half-lived, catching and giving life.
+    But thou art still for me who have adored
+    Tho' single, panting but to hear thy name
+    Which I believed a spell to me alone,
+    Scarce deeming thou wast as a star to men!
+    As one should worship long a sacred spring
+    Scarce worth a moth's flitting, which long grasses cross,
+    And one small tree embowers droopingly--
+    Joying to see some wandering insect won
+    To live in its few rushes, or some locust
+    To pasture on its boughs, or some wild bird
+    Stoop for its freshness from the trackless air:
+    And then should find it but the fountain-head,
+    Long lost, of some great river washing towns
+    And towers, and seeing old woods which will live
+    But by its banks untrod of human foot,
+    Which, when the great sun sinks, lie quivering
+    In light as some thing lieth half of life
+    Before God's foot, waiting a wondrous change;
+    Then girt with rocks which seek to turn or stay
+    Its course in vain, for it does ever spread
+    Like a sea's arm as it goes rolling on,
+    Being the pulse of some great country--so
+    Wast thou to me, and art thou to the world!
+    And I, perchance, half feel a strange regret
+    That I am not what I have been to thee:
+    Like a girl one has silently loved long
+    In her first loneliness in some retreat,
+    When, late emerged, all gaze and glow to view
+    Her fresh eyes and soft hair and lips which bloom
+    Like a mountain berry: doubtless it is sweet
+    To see her thus adored, but there have been
+    Moments when all the world was in our praise,
+    Sweeter than any pride of after hours.
+    Yet, sun-treader, all hail! From my heart's heart
+    I bid thee hail! E'en in my wildest dreams,
+    I proudly feel I would have thrown to dust
+    The wreaths of fame which seemed o'erhanging me,
+    To see thee for a moment as thou art."
+
+Browning was only fourteen when Shelley first came into his literary
+life. The story has often been told of how the young Robert, passing a
+bookstall one day spied in a box of second-hand volumes, a shabby little
+edition of Shelley advertised "Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poems: very
+scarce." It seems almost incredible to us now that the name was an
+absolutely new one to him, and that only by questioning the bookseller
+did he learn that Shelley had written a number of volumes of poetry and
+that he was now dead. This accident was sufficient to inspire the
+incipient poet's curiosity, and he never rested until he was the owner
+of Shelley's works. They were hard to get hold of in those early days
+but the persistent searching of his mother finally unearthed them at
+Olliers' in Vere Street, London. She brought him also three volumes of
+Keats, who became a treasure second only to Shelley.
+
+[Illustration: Percy Bysshe Shelley
+
+"Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever."]
+
+The question of Shelley's influence on Browning's art has been one often
+discussed. There are many traces of Shelleyan music and idea in his
+early poems "Pauline," "Paracelsus," and "Sordello," but no marked nor
+lasting impression was made upon Browning's development as a poet by
+Shelley. Upon Browning's personal development Shelley exerted a
+short-lived though somewhat intense influence. We see the young
+enthusiast professing the atheism of his idol as the liberal views of
+Shelley were then interpreted, and even becoming a vegetarian. As time
+went on the discipleship vanished, and in its place came the recognition
+on Browning's part of a poetic spirit akin yet different from his own.
+The last trace of the disciple appears in "Sordello" when the poet
+addresses Shelley among the audience of dead great ones he has mustered
+to listen to the story of Sordello:
+
+    --"Stay--thou, spirit, come not near
+    Now--not this time desert thy cloudy place
+    To scare me, thus employed, with that pure face!
+    I need not fear this audience, I make free
+    With them, but then this is no place for thee!
+    The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown
+    Up out of memories of Marathon,
+    Would echo like his own sword's grinding screech
+    Braying a Persian shield,--the silver speech
+    Of Sidney's self, the starry paladin,
+    Turn intense as a trumpet sounding in
+    The Knights to tilt,--wert thou to hear!"
+
+Shelley appears in the work of Browning once more in the prose essay on
+Shelley which was written to a volume of spurious letters of that poet
+published in 1851. In this is summed up in a masterful paragraph
+reflecting Browning's unusual penetration into the secret paths of the
+poetic mind, the characteristics of a poet of Shelley's order. The
+paragraph is as follows:
+
+"We turn with stronger needs to the genius of an opposite tendency--the
+subjective poet of modern classification. He, gifted like the objective
+poet, with the fuller perception of nature and man, is impelled to
+embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to the many
+below as to the One above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends
+all things in their absolute truth,--an ultimate view ever aspired to,
+if but partially attained, by the poet's own soul. Not what man sees,
+but what God sees,--the _Ideas_ of Plato, seeds of creation lying
+burningly on the Divine Hand,--it is toward these that he struggles. Not
+with the combination of humanity in action, but with the primal elements
+of humanity, he has to do; and he digs where he stands,--preferring to
+seek them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of that absolute Mind,
+according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak.
+Such a poet does not deal habitually with the picturesque groupings and
+tempestuous tossings of the forest-trees, but with their roots and
+fibers naked to the chalk and stone. He does not paint pictures and
+hang them on the walls, but rather carries them on the retina of his own
+eyes: we must look deep into his human eyes, to see those pictures on
+them. He is rather a seer, accordingly, than a fashioner, and what he
+produces will be less a work than an effluence. That effluence cannot be
+easily considered in abstraction from his personality,--being indeed the
+very radiance and aroma of his personality, projected from it but not
+separated. Therefore, in our approach to the poetry, we necessarily
+approach the personality of the poet; in apprehending it, we apprehend
+him, and certainly we cannot love it without loving him. Both for love's
+and for understanding's sake we desire to know him, and, as readers of
+his poetry, must be readers of his biography too."
+
+Finally, the little "Memorabilia" lyric gives a mood of cherished memory
+of the Sun-Treader, who beaconed him upon the heights in his youth, and
+has now become a molted eagle-feather held close to his heart.
+
+Keats' lesser but assured place in the poet's affections comes out in
+the pugnacious lyric, "Popularity," one of the old-time bits of
+ammunition shot from the guns of those who found Browning "obscure." The
+poem is an "apology" for any unappreciated poet with the true stuff in
+him, but the allusion to Keats shows him to have been the fuse that
+fired this mild explosion against the dullards who pass by unknowing and
+uncaring of a genius, though he pluck with one hand thoughts from the
+stars, and with the other fight off want.
+
+
+    POPULARITY
+
+    I
+
+    Stand still, true poet that you are!
+      I know you; let me try and draw you.
+    Some night you'll fail us: when afar
+      You rise, remember one man saw you,
+    Knew you, and named a star!
+
+    II
+
+    My star, God's glow-worm! Why extend
+      That loving hand of his which leads you,
+    Yet locks you safe from end to end
+      Of this dark world, unless he needs you,
+    Just saves your light to spend?
+
+    III
+
+    His clenched hand shall unclose at last,
+      I know, and let out all the beauty:
+    My poet holds the future fast,
+      Accepts the coming ages' duty,
+    Their present for this past.
+
+    IV
+
+    That day, the earth's feast-master's brow
+      Shall clear, to God the chalice raising;
+    "Others give best at first, but thou
+      Forever set'st our table praising,
+    Keep'st the good wine till now!"
+
+    V
+
+    Meantime, I'll draw you as you stand,
+      With few or none to watch and wonder:
+    I'll say--a fisher, on the sand
+      By Tyre the old, with ocean-plunder,
+    A netful, brought to land.
+
+    VI
+
+    Who has not heard how Tyrian shells
+      Enclosed the blue, that dye of dyes
+    Whereof one drop worked miracles,
+      And colored like Astarte's eyes
+    Raw silk the merchant sells?
+
+    VII
+
+    And each bystander of them all
+      Could criticise, and quote tradition
+    How depths of blue sublimed some pall
+      --To get which, pricked a king's ambition;
+    Worth sceptre, crown and ball.
+
+    VIII
+
+    Yet there's the dye, in that rough mesh,
+      The sea has only just o'er-whispered!
+    Live whelks, each lip's beard dripping fresh
+      As if they still the water's lisp heard
+    Thro' foam the rock-weeds thresh.
+
+    IX
+
+    Enough to furnish Solomon
+      Such hangings for his cedar-house,
+    That, when gold-robed he took the throne
+      In that abyss of blue, the Spouse
+    Might swear his presence shone
+
+    X
+
+    Most like the centre-spike of gold
+      Which burns deep in the blue-bell's womb,
+    What time, with ardors manifold,
+      The bee goes singing to her groom,
+    Drunken and overbold.
+
+    XI
+
+    Mere conchs! not fit for warp or woof!
+      Till cunning come to pound and squeeze
+    And clarify,--refine to proof
+      The liquor filtered by degrees,
+    While the world stands aloof.
+
+    XII
+
+    And there's the extract, flasked and fine,
+      And priced and salable at last!
+    And Hobbs, Nobbs, Stokes and Nokes combine
+      To paint the future from the past,
+    Put blue into their line.
+
+    XIII
+
+    Hobbs hints blue,--straight he turtle eats:
+      Nobbs prints blue,--claret crowns his cup:
+    Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats,--
+      Both gorge. Who fished the murex up?
+    What porridge had John Keats?
+
+[Illustration: John Keats
+
+    "Who fished the murex up?
+    What porridge had John Keats?"]
+
+Wordsworth, it appears, was, so to speak, the inverse inspiration of the
+stirring lines "The Lost Leader." Browning's strong sympathies with the
+Liberal cause are here portrayed with an ardor which is fairly
+intoxicating poetically, but one feels it is scarcely just to the
+mild-eyed, exemplary Wordsworth, and perhaps exaggeratedly sure of
+Shakespeare's attitude on this point. It is only fair to Browning, to
+point out how he himself felt later that his artistic mood had here run
+away with him, whereupon he made amends honorable in a letter in reply
+to the question whether he had Wordsworth in mind: "I can only answer,
+with something of shame and contrition, that I undoubtedly had
+Wordsworth in my mind--but simply as a model; you know an artist takes
+one or two striking traits in the features of his 'model,' and uses them
+to start his fancy on a flight which may end far enough from the good
+man or woman who happens to be sitting for nose and eye. I thought of
+the great Poet's abandonment of liberalism at an unlucky juncture, and
+no repaying consequence that I could ever see. But, once call my
+fancy-portrait _Wordsworth_--and how much more ought one to say!"
+
+The defection of Wordsworth from liberal sympathies is one of the
+commonplaces of literary history. There was a time when he figured in
+his poetry as a patriotic leader of the people, when in clarion tones he
+exhorted his countrymen to "arm and combine in defense of their common
+birthright." But this was in the enthusiasm of his youth when he and
+Southey and Coleridge were metaphorically waving their red caps for the
+principles of the French Revolution. The unbridled actions of the French
+Revolutionists, quickly cooled off their ardor, and as Taine cleverly
+puts it, "at the end of a few years, the three, brought back into the
+pale of State and Church, were, Coleridge, a Pittite journalist,
+Wordsworth, a distributor of stamps, and Southey, poet-laureate; all
+converted zealots, decided Anglicans, and intolerant conservatives." The
+"handful of silver" for which the patriot in the poem is supposed to
+have left the cause included besides the post of "distributor of
+stamps," given to him by Lord Lonsdale in 1813, a pension of three
+hundred pounds a year in 1842, and the poet-laureateship in 1843.
+
+The first of these offices was received so long after the cooling of
+Wordsworth's "Revolution" ardors which the events of 1793 had brought
+about that it can scarcely be said to have influenced his change of
+mind.
+
+It was during Wordsworth's residence in France, from November 1791 to
+December 1792, that his enthusiasm for the French Revolution reached
+white heat. How the change was wrought in his feelings is shown with
+much penetration and sympathy by Edward Dowden in his "French Revolution
+and English Literature." "When war between France and England was
+declared Wordsworth's nature underwent the most violent strain it had
+ever experienced. He loved his native land yet he could wish for nothing
+but disaster to her arms. As the days passed he found it more and more
+difficult to sustain his faith in the Revolution. First, he abandoned
+belief in the leaders but he still trusted to the people, then the
+people seemed to have grown insane with the intoxication of blood. He
+was driven back from his defense of the Revolution, in its historical
+development, to a bare faith in the abstract idea. He clung to theories,
+the free and joyous movement of his sympathies ceased; opinions stifled
+the spontaneous life of the spirit, these opinions were tested and
+retested by the intellect, till, in the end, exhausted by inward
+debate, he yielded up moral questions in despair ... by process of
+the understanding alone Wordsworth could attain no vital body of
+truth. Rather he felt that things of far more worth than political
+opinions--natural instincts, sympathies, passions, intuitions--were
+being disintegrated or denaturalized. Wordsworth began to suspect the
+analytic intellect as a source of moral wisdom. In place of humanitarian
+dreams came a deep interest in the joys and sorrows of individual men
+and women; through his interest in this he was led back to a study of
+the mind of man and those laws which connect the work of the creative
+imagination with the play of the passions. He had begun again to think
+nobly of the world and human life." He was, in fact, a more thorough
+Democrat socially than any but Burns of the band of poets mentioned in
+Browning's gallant company, not even excepting Browning himself.
+
+
+    THE LOST LEADER
+
+    I
+
+    Just for a handful of silver he left us,
+      Just for a riband to stick in his coat--
+    Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
+      Lost all the others, she lets us devote;
+    They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
+      So much was theirs who so little allowed:
+    How all our copper had gone for his service!
+      Rags--were they purple, his heart had been proud!
+    We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him,
+      Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
+    Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
+      Made him our pattern to live and to die!
+    Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
+      Burns, Shelley, were with us,--they watch from their graves!
+    He alone breaks from the van and the freeman,
+      --He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
+
+    II
+
+    We shall march prospering,--not thro' his presence
+      Songs may inspirit us,--not from his lyre;
+    Deeds will be done,--while he boasts his quiescence,
+      Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:
+    Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
+      One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
+    One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels,
+      One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!
+    Life's night begins: let him never come back to us!
+      There would be doubt, hesitation and pain,
+    Forced praise on our part--the glimmer of twilight,
+      Never glad confident morning again!
+    Best fight on well, for we taught him--strike gallantly,
+      Menace our hearts ere we master his own;
+    Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,
+      Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!
+
+Whether an artist is justified in taking the most doubtful feature of
+his model's physiognomy and building up from it a repellent portrait is
+question for debate, especially when he admits its incompleteness. But
+we may balance against this incompleteness, the fine fire of enthusiasm
+for the "cause" in the poem, and the fact that Wordsworth has not been
+at all harmed by it. The worst that has happened is the raising in our
+minds of a question touching Browning's good taste.
+
+Just here it will be interesting to speak of a bit of purely personal
+expression on the subject of Browning's known liberal standpoint,
+written by him in answer to the question propounded to a number of
+English men of letters and printed together with other replies in a
+volume edited by Andrew Reid in 1885.
+
+
+    "Why I am a Liberal."
+
+    "'Why?' Because all I haply can and do,
+      All that I am now, all I hope to be,--
+      Whence comes it save from fortune setting free
+    Body and soul the purpose to pursue,
+    God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,
+      Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,
+      These shall I bid men--each in his degree
+    Also God-guided--bear, and gayly too?
+
+      "But little do or can the best of us:
+    That little is achieved thro' Liberty.
+      Who then dares hold, emancipated thus,
+    His fellow shall continue bound? Not I,
+      Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss
+    A brother's right to freedom. That is 'Why.'"
+
+[Illustration: William Wordsworth
+
+    "How all our copper had gone for his service.
+    Rags--were they purple, his heart had been proved."]
+
+Enthusiasm for liberal views comes out again and again in the poetry of
+Browning.
+
+His fullest treatment of the cause of political liberty is in
+"Strafford," to be considered in the third chapter, but many are the
+hints strewn about his verse that bring home with no uncertain touch the
+fact that Browning lived man's "lover" and never man's "hater." Take as
+an example "The Englishman in Italy," where the sarcastic turn he gives
+to the last stanza shows clearly where his sympathies lie:
+
+    --"Such trifles!" you say?
+    Fortu, in my England at home,
+      Men meet gravely to-day
+    And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws
+      Be righteous and wise!
+    --If 't were proper, Scirocco should vanish
+      In black from the skies!
+
+More the ordinary note of patriotism is struck in "Home-thoughts, from
+the Sea," wherein the scenes of England's victories as they come before
+the poet arouse pride in her military achievements.
+
+
+    HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA
+
+    Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away;
+    Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
+    Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
+    In the dimmest North-east distance dawned Gibraltar grand and gray;
+    "Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?"--say,
+    Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,
+    While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.
+
+In two instances Browning celebrates English friends in his poetry. The
+poems are "Waring" and "May and Death."
+
+Waring, who stands for Alfred Domett, is an interesting figure in
+Colonial history as well as a minor light among poets. But it is highly
+probable that he would not have been put into verse by Browning any more
+than many other of the poet's warm friends if it had not been for the
+incident described in the poem which actually took place, and made a
+strong enough impression to inspire a creative if not exactly an exalted
+mood on Browning's part. The incident is recorded in Thomas Powell's
+"Living Authors of England," who writes of Domett, "We have a vivid
+recollection of the last time we saw him. It was at an evening party a
+few days before he sailed from England; his intimate friend, Mr.
+Browning, was also present. It happened that the latter was introduced
+that evening for the first time to a young author who had just then
+appeared in the literary world [Powell, himself]. This, consequently,
+prevented the two friends from conversation, and they parted from each
+other without the slightest idea on Mr. Browning's part that he was
+seeing his old friend Domett for the last time. Some days after when he
+found that Domett had sailed, he expressed in strong terms to the writer
+of this sketch the self-reproach he felt at having preferred the
+conversation of a stranger to that of his old associate."
+
+This happened in 1842, when with no good-bys, Domett sailed for New
+Zealand where he lived for thirty years, and held during that time many
+important official posts. Upon his return to England, Browning and he
+met again, and in his poem "Ranolf and Amohia," published the year
+after, he wrote the often quoted line so aptly appreciative of
+Browning's genius,--"Subtlest assertor of the soul in song."
+
+The poem belongs to the _vers de societe_ order, albeit the lightness is
+of a somewhat ponderous variety. It, however, has much interest as a
+character sketch from the life, and is said by those who had the
+opportunity of knowing to be a capital portrait.
+
+
+    WARING
+
+    I
+
+    I
+
+    What's become of Waring
+    Since he gave us all the slip,
+    Chose land-travel or seafaring,
+    Boots and chest or staff and scrip,
+    Rather than pace up and down
+    Any longer London town?
+
+    II
+
+    Who'd have guessed it from his lip
+    Or his brow's accustomed bearing,
+    On the night he thus took ship
+    Or started landward?--little caring
+    For us, it seems, who supped together
+    (Friends of his too, I remember)
+    And walked home thro' the merry weather,
+    The snowiest in all December.
+    I left his arm that night myself
+    For what's-his-name's, the new prose-poet
+    Who wrote the book there, on the shelf--
+    How, forsooth, was I to know it
+    If Waring meant to glide away
+    Like a ghost at break of day?
+    Never looked he half so gay!
+
+    III
+
+    He was prouder than the devil:
+    How he must have cursed our revel!
+    Ay and many other meetings,
+    Indoor visits, outdoor greetings,
+    As up and down he paced this London,
+    With no work done, but great works undone,
+    Where scarce twenty knew his name.
+    Why not, then, have earlier spoken,
+    Written, bustled? Who's to blame
+    If your silence kept unbroken?
+    "True, but there were sundry jottings,
+    Stray-leaves, fragments, blurs and blottings,
+    Certain first steps were achieved
+    Already which"--(is that your meaning?)
+    "Had well borne out whoe'er believed
+    In more to come!" But who goes gleaning
+    Hedgeside chance-glades, while full-sheaved
+    Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o'erweening
+    Pride alone, puts forth such claims
+    O'er the day's distinguished names.
+
+    IV
+
+    Meantime, how much I loved him,
+    I find out now I've lost him.
+    I who cared not if I moved him,
+    Who could so carelessly accost him,
+    Henceforth never shall get free
+    Of his ghostly company,
+    His eyes that just a little wink
+    As deep I go into the merit
+    Of this and that distinguished spirit--
+    His cheeks' raised color, soon to sink,
+    As long I dwell on some stupendous
+    And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)
+    Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous
+    Demoniaco-seraphic
+    Penman's latest piece of graphic.
+    Nay, my very wrist grows warm
+    With his dragging weight of arm.
+    E'en so, swimmingly appears,
+    Through one's after-supper musings,
+    Some lost lady of old years
+    With her beauteous vain endeavor
+    And goodness unrepaid as ever;
+    The face, accustomed to refusings,
+    We, puppies that we were.... Oh never
+    Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled
+    Being aught like false, forsooth, to?
+    Telling aught but honest truth to?
+    What a sin, had we centupled
+    Its possessor's grace and sweetness!
+    No! she heard in its completeness
+    Truth, for truth's a weighty matter,
+    And truth, at issue, we can't flatter!
+    Well, 'tis done with; she's exempt
+    From damning us thro' such a sally;
+    And so she glides, as down a valley,
+    Taking up with her contempt,
+    Past our reach; and in, the flowers
+    Shut her unregarded hours.
+
+[Illustration: Rydal Mount, the Home of Wordsworth]
+
+    V
+
+    Oh, could I have him back once more,
+    This Waring, but one half-day more!
+    Back, with the quiet face of yore,
+    So hungry for acknowledgment
+    Like mine! I'd fool him to his bent.
+    Feed, should not he, to heart's content?
+    I'd say, "to only have conceived,
+    Planned your great works, apart from progress,
+    Surpasses little works achieved!"
+    I'd lie so, I should be believed.
+    I'd make such havoc of the claims
+    Of the day's distinguished names
+    To feast him with, as feasts an ogress
+    Her feverish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child!
+    Or as one feasts a creature rarely
+    Captured here, unreconciled
+    To capture; and completely gives
+    Its pettish humors license, barely
+    Requiring that it lives.
+
+    VI
+
+    Ichabod, Ichabod,
+    The glory is departed!
+    Travels Waring East away?
+    Who, of knowledge, by hearsay,
+    Reports a man upstarted
+    Somewhere as a god,
+    Hordes grown European-hearted,
+    Millions of the wild made tame
+    On a sudden at his fame?
+    In Vishnu-land what Avatar?
+    Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar,
+    With the demurest of footfalls
+    Over the Kremlin's pavement bright
+    With serpentine and syenite,
+    Steps, with five other Generals
+    That simultaneously take snuff,
+    For each to have pretext enough
+    And kerchiefwise unfold his sash
+    Which, softness' self, is yet the stuff
+    To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,
+    And leave the grand white neck no gash?
+    Waring in Moscow, to those rough
+    Cold northern natures born perhaps,
+    Like the lambwhite maiden dear
+    From the circle of mute kings
+    Unable to repress the tear,
+    Each as his sceptre down he flings,
+    To Dian's fane at Taurica,
+    Where now a captive priestess, she alway
+    Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech
+    With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach
+    As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands
+    Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands
+    Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry
+    Amid their barbarous twitter!
+    In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!
+    Ay, most likely 'tis in Spain
+    That we and Waring meet again
+    Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane
+    Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid
+    All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid
+    Its stiff gold blazing pall
+    From some black coffin-lid.
+    Or, best of all,
+    I love to think
+    The leaving us was just a feint;
+    Back here to London did he slink,
+    And now works on without a wink
+    Of sleep, and we are on the brink
+    Of something great in fresco-paint:
+    Some garret's ceiling, walls and floor,
+    Up and down and o'er and o'er
+    He splashes, as none splashed before
+    Since great Caldara Polidore.
+    Or Music means this land of ours
+    Some favor yet, to pity won
+    By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers,--
+    "Give me my so-long promised son,
+    Let Waring end what I begun!"
+    Then down he creeps and out he steals
+    Only when the night conceals
+    His face; in Kent 'tis cherry-time,
+    Or hops are picking: or at prime
+    Of March he wanders as, too happy,
+    Years ago when he was young,
+    Some mild eve when woods grew sappy
+    And the early moths had sprung
+    To life from many a trembling sheath
+    Woven the warm boughs beneath;
+    While small birds said to themselves
+    What should soon be actual song,
+    And young gnats, by tens and twelves,
+    Made as if they were the throng
+    That crowd around and carry aloft
+    The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure,
+    Out of a myriad noises soft,
+    Into a tone that can endure
+    Amid the noise of a July noon
+    When all God's creatures crave their boon,
+    All at once and all in tune,
+    And get it, happy as Waring then,
+    Having first within his ken
+    What a man might do with men:
+    And far too glad, in the even-glow,
+    To mix with the world he meant to take
+    Into his hand, he told you, so--
+    And out of it his world to make,
+    To contract and to expand
+    As he shut or oped his hand.
+    Oh Waring, what's to really be?
+    A clear stage and a crowd to see!
+    Some Garrick, say, out shall not he
+    The heart of Hamlet's mystery pluck?
+    Or, where most unclean beasts are rife,
+    Some Junius--am I right?--shall tuck
+    His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife!
+    Some Chatterton shall have the luck
+    Of calling Rowley into life!
+    Some one shall somehow run a muck
+    With this old world for want of strife
+    Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive
+    To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive?
+    Our men scarce seem in earnest now.
+    Distinguished names!--but 'tis, somehow,
+    As if they played at being names
+    Still more distinguished, like the games
+    Of children. Turn our sport to earnest
+    With a visage of the sternest!
+    Bring the real times back, confessed
+    Still better than our very best!
+
+
+    II
+
+    I
+
+    "When I last saw Waring...."
+    (How all turned to him who spoke!
+    You saw Waring? Truth or joke?
+    In land-travel or sea-faring?)
+
+    II
+
+    "We were sailing by Triest
+    Where a day or two we harbored:
+    A sunset was in the West,
+    When, looking over the vessel's side,
+    One of our company espied
+    A sudden speck to larboard.
+    And as a sea-duck flies and swims
+    At once, so came the light craft up,
+    With its sole lateen sail that trims
+    And turns (the water round its rims
+    Dancing, as round a sinking cup)
+    And by us like a fish it curled,
+    And drew itself up close beside,
+    Its great sail on the instant furled,
+    And o'er its thwarts a shrill voice cried,
+    (A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's)
+    'Buy wine of us, you English Brig?
+    Or fruit, tobacco and cigars?
+    A pilot for you to Triest?
+    Without one, look you ne'er so big,
+    They'll never let you up the bay!
+    We natives should know best.'
+    I turned, and 'just those fellows' way,'
+    Our captain said, 'The 'long-shore thieves
+    Are laughing at us in their sleeves.'
+
+    III
+
+    "In truth, the boy leaned laughing back;
+    And one, half-hidden by his side
+    Under the furled sail, soon I spied,
+    With great grass hat and kerchief black,
+    Who looked up with his kingly throat,
+    Said somewhat, while the other shook
+    His hair back from his eyes to look
+    Their longest at us; then the boat,
+    I know not how, turned sharply round,
+    Laying her whole side on the sea
+    As a leaping fish does; from the lee
+    Into the weather, cut somehow
+    Her sparkling path beneath our bow,
+    And so went off, as with a bound,
+    Into the rosy and golden half
+    O' the sky, to overtake the sun
+    And reach the shore, like the sea-calf
+    Its singing cave; yet I caught one
+    Glance ere away the boat quite passed,
+    And neither time nor toil could mar
+    Those features: so I saw the last
+    Of Waring!"--You? Oh, never star
+    Was lost here but it rose afar!
+    Look East, where whole new thousands are!
+    In Vishnu-land what Avatar?
+
+"May and Death" is perhaps more interesting for the glimpse it gives of
+Browning's appreciation of English Nature than for its expression of
+grief for the death of a friend.
+
+
+    MAY AND DEATH
+
+    I
+
+    I wish that when you died last May,
+      Charles, there had died along with you
+    Three parts of spring's delightful things;
+      Ay, and, for me, the fourth part too.
+
+    II
+
+    A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps!
+      There must be many a pair of friends
+    Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm
+      Moon-births and the long evening-ends.
+
+    III
+
+    So, for their sake, be May still May!
+      Let their new time, as mine of old,
+    Do all it did for me: I bid
+      Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold.
+
+    IV
+
+    Only, one little sight, one plant,
+      Woods have in May, that starts up green
+    Save a sole streak which, so to speak,
+      Is spring's blood, spilt its leaves between,--
+
+    V
+
+    That, they might spare; a certain wood
+      Might miss the plant; their loss were small:
+    But I,--whene'er the leaf grows there,
+      Its drop comes from my heart, that's all.
+
+The poet's one truly enthusiastic outburst in connection with English
+Nature he sings out in his longing for an English spring in the
+incomparable little lyric "Home-thoughts, from Abroad."
+
+
+    HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD
+
+    I
+
+    Oh, to be in England
+    Now that April's there,
+    And whoever wakes in England
+    Sees, some morning, unaware,
+    That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
+    Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
+    While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
+    In England--now!
+
+    II
+
+    And after April, when May follows,
+    And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
+    Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
+    Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
+    Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge--
+    That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over
+    Lest you should think he never could recapture
+    The first fine careless rapture!
+    And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
+    All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
+    The buttercups, the little children's dower
+    --Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
+
+After this it seems hardly possible that Browning, himself speaks in "De
+Gustibus," yet long and happy living away from England doubtless dimmed
+his sense of the beauty of English landscape. "De Gustibus" was
+published ten years later than "Home-Thoughts from Abroad," when Italy
+and he had indeed become "lovers old." A deeper reason than mere delight
+in its scenery is also reflected in the poem; the sympathy shared with
+Mrs. Browning, for the cause of Italian independence.
+
+
+    "DE GUSTIBUS----"
+
+    I
+
+    Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,
+          (If our loves remain)
+          In an English lane,
+    By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
+    Hark, those two in the hazel coppice--
+    A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,
+          Making love, say,--
+          The happier they!
+    Draw yourself up from the light of the moon,
+    And let them pass, as they will too soon,
+          With the bean-flower's boon,
+          And the blackbird's tune,
+          And May, and June!
+
+    II
+
+    What I love best in all the world
+    Is a castle, precipice-encurled,
+    In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine.
+    Or look for me, old fellow of mine,
+    (If I get my head from out the mouth
+    O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,
+    And come again to the land of lands)--
+    In a sea-side house to the farther South,
+    Where the baked cicala dies of drouth,
+    And one sharp tree--'tis a cypress--stands,
+    By the many hundred years red-rusted,
+    Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted,
+    My sentinel to guard the sands
+    To the water's edge. For, what expands
+    Before the house, but the great opaque
+    Blue breadth of sea without a break?
+    While, in the house, for ever crumbles
+    Some fragment of the frescoed walls,
+    From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.
+    A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles
+    Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons,
+    And says there's news to-day--the king
+    Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing,
+    Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling:
+    --She hopes they have not caught the felons.
+    Italy, my Italy!
+    Queen Mary's saying serves for me--
+          (When fortune's malice
+          Lost her--Calais)--
+    Open my heart and you will see
+    Graved inside of it, "Italy."
+    Such lovers old are I and she:
+    So it always was, so shall ever be!
+
+Two or three English artists called forth appreciation in verse from
+Browning. There is the exquisite bit called "Deaf and Dumb," after a
+group of statuary by Woolner, of Constance and Arthur--the deaf and dumb
+children of Sir Thomas Fairbairn.
+
+
+    DEAF AND DUMB
+
+    A GROUP BY WOOLNER.
+
+    Only the prism's obstruction shows aright
+    The secret of a sunbeam, breaks its light
+    Into the jewelled bow from blankest white;
+      So may a glory from defect arise:
+    Only by Deafness may the vexed Love wreak
+    Its insuppressive sense on brow and cheek,
+    Only by Dumbness adequately speak
+      As favored mouth could never, through the eyes.
+
+[Illustration: An English Lane]
+
+There is also the beautiful description in "Balaustion's Adventure" of
+the Alkestis by Sir Frederick Leighton.
+
+The flagrant anachronism of making a Greek girl at the time of the Fall
+of Athens describe an English picture cannot but be forgiven, since the
+artistic effect gained is so fine. The poet quite convinces the reader
+that Sir Frederick Leighton ought to have been a Kaunian painter, if he
+was not, and that Balaustion or no one was qualified to appreciate his
+picture at its full worth.
+
+    "I know, too, a great Kaunian painter, strong
+    As Herakles, though rosy with a robe
+    Of grace that softens down the sinewy strength:
+    And he has made a picture of it all.
+    There lies Alkestis dead, beneath the sun,
+    She longed to look her last upon, beside
+    The sea, which somehow tempts the life in us
+    To come trip over its white waste of waves,
+    And try escape from earth, and fleet as free.
+    Behind the body, I suppose there bends
+    Old Pheres in his hoary impotence;
+    And women-wailers, in a corner crouch
+    --Four, beautiful as you four--yes, indeed!--
+    Close, each to other, agonizing all,
+    As fastened, in fear's rhythmic sympathy,
+    To two contending opposite. There strains
+    The might o' the hero 'gainst his more than match,
+    --Death, dreadful not in thew and bone, but like
+    The envenomed substance that exudes some dew
+    Whereby the merely honest flesh and blood
+    Will fester up and run to ruin straight,
+    Ere they can close with, clasp and overcome
+    The poisonous impalpability
+    That simulates a form beneath the flow
+    Of those grey garments; I pronounce that piece
+    Worthy to set up in our Poikile!
+
+    "And all came,--glory of the golden verse,
+    And passion of the picture, and that fine
+    Frank outgush of the human gratitude
+    Which saved our ship and me, in Syracuse,--
+    Ay, and the tear or two which slipt perhaps
+    Away from you, friends, while I told my tale,
+    --It all came of this play that gained no prize!
+    Why crown whom Zeus has crowned in soul before?"
+
+Once before had Sir Frederick Leighton inspired the poet in the
+exquisite lines on Eurydice.
+
+
+    EURYDICE TO ORPHEUS
+
+    A PICTURE BY LEIGHTON
+
+    But give them me, the mouth, the eyes, the brow!
+    Let them once more absorb me! One look now
+      Will lap me round for ever, not to pass
+    Out of its light, though darkness lie beyond:
+    Hold me but safe again within the bond
+      Of one immortal look! All woe that was,
+    Forgotten, and all terror that may be,
+    Defied,--no past is mine, no future: look at me!
+
+Beautiful as these lines are, they do not impress me as fully
+interpreting Leighton's picture. The expression of Eurydice is rather
+one of unthinking confiding affection--as if she were really unconscious
+or ignorant of the danger; while that of Orpheus is one of passionate
+agony as he tries to hold her off.
+
+Though English art could not fascinate the poet as Italian art did, for
+the fully sufficient reason that it does not stand for a great epoch of
+intellectual awakening, yet with what fair alchemy he has touched those
+few artists he has chosen to honor. Notwithstanding his avowed devotion
+to Italy, expressed in "De Gustibus," one cannot help feeling that in
+the poems mentioned in this chapter, there is that ecstasy of sympathy
+which goes only to the most potent influences in the formation of
+character. Something of what I mean is expressed in one of his latest
+poems, "Development." In this we certainly get a real peep at young
+Robert Browning, led by his wise father into the delights of Homer, by
+slow degrees, where all is truth at first, to end up with the
+devastating criticism of Wolf. In spite of it all the dream stays and is
+the reality. Nothing can obliterate the magic of a strong early
+enthusiasm, as "fact still held" "Spite of new Knowledge," in his "heart
+of hearts."
+
+
+    DEVELOPMENT
+
+    My Father was a scholar and knew Greek.
+    When I was five years old, I asked him once
+    "What do you read about?"
+                              "The siege of Troy."
+    "What is a siege and what is Troy?"
+                                            Whereat
+    He piled up chairs and tables for a town,
+    Set me a-top for Priam, called our cat
+    --Helen, enticed away from home (he said)
+    By wicked Paris, who couched somewhere close
+    Under the footstool, being cowardly,
+    But whom--since she was worth the pains, poor puss--
+    Towzer and Tray,--our dogs, the Atreidai,--sought
+    By taking Troy to get possession of
+    --Always when great Achilles ceased to sulk,
+    (My pony in the stable)--forth would prance
+    And put to flight Hector--our page-boy's self.
+    This taught me who was who and what was what:
+    So far I rightly understood the case
+    At five years old: a huge delight it proved
+    And still proves--thanks to that instructor sage
+    My Father, who knew better than turn straight
+    Learning's full flare on weak-eyed ignorance,
+    Or, worse yet, leave weak eyes to grow sand-blind,
+    Content with darkness and vacuity.
+
+    It happened, two or three years afterward,
+    That--I and playmates playing at Troy's Siege--
+    My Father came upon our make-believe.
+    "How would you like to read yourself the tale
+    Properly told, of which I gave you first
+    Merely such notion as a boy could bear?
+    Pope, now, would give you the precise account
+    Of what, some day, by dint of scholarship,
+    You'll hear--who knows?--from Homer's very mouth.
+    Learn Greek by all means, read the 'Blind Old Man,
+    Sweetest of Singers'--_tuphlos_ which means 'blind,'
+    _Hedistos_ which means 'sweetest.' Time enough!
+    Try, anyhow, to master him some day;
+    Until when, take what serves for substitute,
+    Read Pope, by all means!"
+                                      So I ran through Pope,
+    Enjoyed the tale--what history so true?
+    Also attacked my Primer, duly drudged,
+    Grew fitter thus for what was promised next--
+    The very thing itself, the actual words,
+    When I could turn--say, Buttmann to account.
+
+    Time passed, I ripened somewhat: one fine day,
+    "Quite ready for the Iliad, nothing less?
+    There's Heine, where the big books block the shelf:
+    Don't skip a word, thumb well the Lexicon!"
+
+    I thumbed well and skipped nowise till I learned
+    Who was who, what was what, from Homer's tongue,
+    And there an end of learning. Had you asked
+    The all-accomplished scholar, twelve years old,
+    "Who was it wrote the Iliad?"--what a laugh!
+    "Why, Homer, all the world knows: of his life
+    Doubtless some facts exist: it's everywhere:
+    We have not settled, though, his place of birth:
+    He begged, for certain, and was blind beside:
+    Seven cites claimed him--Scio, with best right,
+    Thinks Byron. What he wrote? Those Hymns we have.
+    Then there's the 'Battle of the Frogs and Mice,'
+    That's all--unless they dig 'Margites' up
+    (I'd like that) nothing more remains to know."
+
+    Thus did youth spend a comfortable time;
+    Until--"What's this the Germans say is fact
+    That Wolf found out first? It's unpleasant work
+    Their chop and change, unsettling one's belief:
+    All the same, while we live, we learn, that's sure."
+    So, I bent brow o'er _Prolegomena_.
+    And, after Wolf, a dozen of his like
+    Proved there was never any Troy at all,
+    Neither Besiegers nor Besieged,--nay, worse,--
+    No actual Homer, no authentic text,
+    No warrant for the fiction I, as fact,
+    Had treasured in my heart and soul so long--
+    Ay, mark you! and as fact held still, still hold,
+    Spite of new knowledge, in my heart of hearts
+    And soul of souls, fact's essence freed and fixed
+    From accidental fancy's guardian sheath.
+    Assuredly thenceforward--thank my stars!--
+    However it got there, deprive who could--
+    Wring from the shrine my precious tenantry,
+    Helen, Ulysses, Hector and his Spouse,
+    Achilles and his Friend?--though Wolf--ah, Wolf!
+    Why must he needs come doubting, spoil a dream?
+
+    But then "No dream's worth waking"--Browning says:
+    And here's the reason why I tell thus much
+    I, now mature man, you anticipate,
+    May blame my Father justifiably
+    For letting me dream out my nonage thus,
+    And only by such slow and sure degrees
+    Permitting me to sift the grain from chaff,
+    Get truth and falsehood known and named as such.
+    Why did he ever let me dream at all,
+    Not bid me taste the story in its strength?
+    Suppose my childhood was scarce qualified
+    To rightly understand mythology,
+    Silence at least was in his power to keep:
+    I might have--somehow--correspondingly--
+    Well, who knows by what method, gained my gains,
+    Been taught, by forthrights not meanderings,
+    My aim should be to loathe, like Peleus's son,
+    A lie as Hell's Gate, love my wedded wife,
+    Like Hector, and so on with all the rest.
+    Could not I have excogitated this
+    Without believing such men really were?
+    That is--he might have put into my hand
+    The "Ethics"? In translation, if you please,
+    Exact, no pretty lying that improves,
+    To suit the modern taste: no more, no less--
+    The "Ethics": 'tis a treatise I find hard
+    To read aright now that my hair is grey,
+    And I can manage the original.
+    At five years old--how ill had fared its leaves!
+    Now, growing double o'er the Stagirite,
+    At least I soil no page with bread and milk,
+    Nor crumple, dogsear and deface--boys' way.
+
+This chapter would not be complete without Browning's tribute to dog
+Tray, whose traits may not be peculiar to English dogs but whose name
+is proverbially English. Besides it touches a subject upon which the
+poet had strong feelings. Vivisection he abhorred, and in the
+controversies which were tearing the scientific and philanthropic world
+asunder in the last years of his life, no one was a more determined
+opponent of vivisection than he.
+
+
+    TRAY
+
+    Sing me a hero! Quench my thirst
+    Of soul, ye bards!
+                       Quoth Bard the first:
+    "Sir Olaf, the good knight, did don
+    His helm and eke his habergeon...."
+    Sir Olaf and his bard----!
+
+    "That sin-scathed brow" (quoth Bard the second),
+    "That eye wide ope as though Fate beckoned
+    My hero to some steep, beneath
+    Which precipice smiled tempting death...."
+    You too without your host have reckoned!
+
+    "A beggar-child" (let's hear this third!)
+    "Sat on a quay's edge: like a bird
+    Sang to herself at careless play,
+    'And fell into the stream. Dismay!
+    Help, you the standers-by!' None stirred.
+
+    "Bystanders reason, think of wives
+    And children ere they risk their lives.
+    Over the balustrade has bounced
+    A mere instinctive dog, and pounced
+    Plumb on the prize. 'How well he dives!
+
+    "'Up he comes with the child, see, tight
+    In mouth, alive too, clutched from quite
+    A depth of ten feet--twelve, I bet!
+    Good dog! What, off again? There's yet
+    Another child to save? All right!
+
+    "'How strange we saw no other fall!
+    It's instinct in the animal.
+    Good dog! But he's a long while under:
+    If he got drowned I should not wonder--
+    Strong current, that against the wall!
+
+    "'Here he comes, holds in mouth this time
+    --What may the thing be? Well, that's prime!
+    Now, did you ever? Reason reigns
+    In man alone, since all Tray's pains
+    Have fished--the child's doll from the slime!'
+
+    "And so, amid the laughter gay,
+    Trotted my hero off,--old Tray,--
+    Till somebody, prerogatived
+    With reason, reasoned: 'Why he dived,
+    His brain would show us, I should say.
+
+    "'John, go and catch--or, if needs be,
+    Purchase--that animal for me!
+    By vivisection, at expense
+    Of half-an-hour and eighteenpence,
+    How brain secretes dog's soul, we'll see!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SHAKESPEARE'S PORTRAIT
+
+
+Once and once only did Browning depart from his custom of choosing
+people of minor note to figure in his dramatic monologues. In "At the
+'Mermaid'" he ventures upon the consecrated ground of a heart-to-heart
+talk between Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and the wits who gathered at the
+classic "Mermaid" Tavern in Cheapside, following this up with further
+glimpses into the inner recesses of Shakespeare's mind in the monologues
+"House" and "Shop." It is a particularly daring feat in the case of
+Shakespeare, for as all the world knows any attempt at getting in touch
+with the real man, Shakespeare, must, per force, be woven out of such
+"stuff as dreams are made on."
+
+In interpreting this portraiture of one great poet by another it will be
+of interest to glance at the actual facts as far as they are known in
+regard to the relations which existed between Shakespeare and Jonson.
+Praise and blame both are recorded on Jonson's part when writing of
+Shakespeare, yet the praise shows such undisguised admiration that the
+blame sinks into insignificance. Jonson's "learned socks" to which
+Milton refers probably tripped the critic up occasionally by reason of
+their weight.
+
+There is a charming story told of the friendship between the two men
+recorded by Sir Nicholas L'Estrange, within a very few years of
+Shakespeare's death, who attributed it to Dr. Donne. The story goes that
+"Shakespeare was godfather to one of Ben Jonson's children, and after
+the christening, being in a deep study, Jonson came to cheer him up and
+asked him why he was so melancholy. 'No, faith, Ben,' says he, 'not I,
+but I have been considering a great while what should be the fittest
+gift for me to bestow upon my godchild, and I have resolved at last.' 'I
+prythee what?' says he. 'I'faith, Ben, I'll e'en give him a dozen good
+Lattin spoons, and thou shalt translate them.'" If this must be taken
+with a grain of salt, there is another even more to the honor of
+Shakespeare reported by Rowe and considered credible by such
+Shakespearian scholars as Halliwell Phillipps and Sidney Lee. "His
+acquaintance with Ben Jonson" writes Rowe, "began with a remarkable
+piece of humanity and good nature; Mr. Jonson, who was at that time
+altogether unknown to the world, had offered one of his plays to the
+players in order to have it acted, and the persons into whose hands it
+was put, after having turned it carelessly and superciliously over, were
+just upon returning it to him with an ill-natured answer that it would
+be of no service to their company, when Shakespeare luckily cast his eye
+upon it, and found something so well in it as to engage him first to
+read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings
+to the public." The play in question was the famous comedy of "Every Man
+in His Humour," which was brought out in September, 1598, by the Lord
+Chamberlain's company, Shakespeare himself being one of the leading
+actors upon the occasion.
+
+Authentic history records a theater war in which Jonson and Shakespeare
+figured, on opposite sides, but if allusions in Jonson's play the
+"Poetaster" have been properly interpreted, their friendly relations
+were not deeply disturbed. The trouble began in the first place by the
+London of 1600 suddenly rushing into a fad for the company of boy
+players, recruited chiefly from the choristers of the Chapel Royal, and
+known as the "Children of the Chapel." They had been acting at the new
+theater in Blackfriars since 1597, and their vogue became so great as
+actually to threaten Shakespeare's company and other companies of adult
+actors. Just at this time Ben Jonson was having a personal quarrel with
+his fellow dramatists, Marston and Dekker, and as he received little
+sympathy from the actors, he took his revenge by joining his forces with
+those of the Children of the Chapel. They brought out for him in 1600
+his satire of "Cynthia's Revels," in which he held up to ridicule
+Marston, Dekker and their friends the actors. Marston and Dekker, with
+the actors of Shakespeare's company, prepared to retaliate, but Jonson
+hearing of it forestalled them with his play the "Poetaster" in which he
+spared neither dramatists nor actors. Shakespeare's company continued
+the fray by bringing out at the Globe Theatre, in the following year,
+Dekker and Marston's "Satiro-Mastix, or The Untrussing of the Humorous
+Poet," and as Ward remarks, "the quarrel had now become too hot to
+last." The excitement, however, continued for sometime, theater-goers
+took sides and watched with interest "the actors and dramatists'
+boisterous war of personalities," to quote Mr. Lee, who goes on to
+point out that on May 10, 1601, the Privy Council called the attention
+of the Middlesex magistrates to the abuse covertly leveled by the actors
+of the "Curtain" at gentlemen "of good desert and quality," and directed
+the magistrates to examine all plays before they were produced.
+
+Jonson, himself, finally made apologies in verses appended to printed
+copies of the "Poetaster."
+
+    "Now for the players 'tis true I tax'd them
+    And yet but some, and those so sparingly
+    As all the rest might have sat still unquestioned,
+    Had they but had the wit or conscience
+    To think well of themselves. But impotent they
+    Thought each man's vice belonged to their whole tribe;
+    And much good do it them. What they have done against me
+    I am not moved with, if it gave them meat
+    Or got them clothes, 'tis well: that was their end,
+    Only amongst them I was sorry for
+    Some better natures by the rest so drawn
+    To run in that vile line."
+
+Sidney Lee cleverly deduces Shakespeare's attitude in the quarrel in
+allusions to it in "Hamlet," wherein he "protested against the abusive
+comments on the men-actors of 'the common' stages or public theaters
+which were put into the children's mouths. Rosencrantz declared that the
+children 'so berattle [_i.e._ assail] the common stages--so they call
+them--that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and dare
+scarce come thither [_i.e._ to the public theaters].' Hamlet in pursuit
+of the theme pointed out that the writers who encouraged the vogue of
+the 'child actors' did them a poor service, because when the boys should
+reach men's estate they would run the risk, if they continued on the
+stage, of the same insults and neglect which now threatened their
+seniors.
+
+"'_Hamlet._ What are they children? Who maintains 'em? How are they
+escorted [_i.e._ paid]? Will they pursue the quality [_i.e._ the actor's
+profession] no longer than they can sing? Will they not say afterwards,
+if they should grow themselves to common players--as it is most like, if
+their means are no better--their writers do them wrong to make them
+exclaim against their own succession?
+
+"'_Rosencrantz._ Faith, there has been much to do on both sides, and the
+nation holds it no sin to tarre [_i.e._ incite] them to controversy;
+there was for a while no money bid for argument, unless the poet and the
+player went to cuffs in the question.'"
+
+This certainly does not reflect a very belligerent attitude since it
+merely puts in a word for the grown-up actors rather than casting any
+slurs upon the children. Further indications of Shakespeare's mildness
+in regard to the whole matter are given in the Prologue to "Troylus and
+Cressida," where, as Mr. Lee says, he made specific reference to the
+strife between Ben Jonson and the players in the lines
+
+          "And hither am I come
+    A Prologue arm'd, but not in confidence,
+    Of Authors' pen, or Actors' voyce."
+
+The most interesting bit of evidence to show that Shakespeare and Jonson
+remained friends, even in the heat of the conflict, may be gained from
+the "Poetaster" itself if we admit that the Virgil of the play, who is
+chosen peacemaker stands for Shakespeare; and who so fit to be
+peacemaker as Shakespeare for his amiable qualities seem to have
+impressed themselves upon all who knew him.
+
+Following Mr. Lee's lead, "Jonson figures personally in the 'Poetaster'
+under the name of Horace. Episodically Horace and his friends, Tibullus
+and Gallus, eulogize the work and genius of another character, Virgil,
+in terms so closely resembling those which Jonson is known to have
+applied to Shakespeare that they may be regarded as intended to apply to
+him (Act V, Scene I). Jonson points out that Virgil, by his penetrating
+intuition, achieved the great effects which others laboriously sought to
+reach through rules of art.
+
+    'His learning labors not the school-like gloss
+    That most consists of echoing words and terms ...
+    Nor any long or far-fetched circumstance--
+    Wrapt in the curious generalities of arts--
+    But a direct and analytic sum
+    Of all the worth and first effects of art.
+    And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life
+    That it shall gather strength of life with being,
+    And live hereafter, more admired than now.'
+
+Tibullus gives Virgil equal credit for having in his writings touched
+with telling truth upon every vicissitude of human existence:
+
+    'That which he hath writ
+    Is with such judgment labored and distilled
+    Through all the needful uses of our lives
+    That, could a man remember but his lines,
+    He should not touch at any serious point
+    But he might breathe his spirit out of him.'
+
+"Finally, Virgil in the play is nominated by Caesar to act as judge
+between Horace and his libellers, and he advises the administration of
+purging pills to the offenders."
+
+This neat little chain of evidence would have no weak link, if it were
+not for a passage in the play, "The Return from Parnassus," acted by
+the students in St. John's College the same year, 1601. In this there is
+a dialogue between Shakespeare's fellow-actors, Burbage and Kempe.
+Speaking of the University dramatists, Kempe says:
+
+"Why here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down; aye, and Ben
+Jonson, too. O! that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow. He brought up
+Horace, giving the poets a pill; but our fellow Shakespeare hath given
+him a purge that made him bewray his credit." Burbage continues, "He is
+a shrewd fellow indeed." This has, of course, been taken to mean that
+Shakespeare was actively against Jonson in the Dramatists' and Actors'
+war. But as everything else points, as we have seen, to the contrary,
+one accepts gladly the loophole of escape offered by Mr. Lee. "The words
+quoted from 'The Return from Parnassus' hardly admit of a literal
+interpretation. Probably the 'purge' that Shakespeare was alleged by the
+author of 'The Return from Parnassus' to have given Jonson meant no more
+than that Shakespeare had signally outstripped Jonson in popular
+esteem." That this was an actual fact is proved by the lines of Leonard
+Digges, an admiring contemporary of Shakespeare's, printed in the 1640
+edition of Shakespeare's poems, comparing "Julius Caesar" and Jonson's
+play "Cataline:"
+
+    "So have I seen when Caesar would appear,
+    And on the stage at half-sword parley were
+    Brutus and Cassius--oh, how the audience
+    Were ravish'd, with what wonder they went thence;
+    When some new day they would not brook a line
+    Of tedious, though well-labored, Cataline."
+
+This reminds one of the famous witticism attributed to Eudymion Porter
+that "Shakespeare was sent from Heaven and Ben from College."
+
+If Jonson's criticisms of Shakespeare's work were sometime not wholly
+appreciative, the fact may be set down to the distinction between the
+two here so humorously indicated. "A Winter's Tale" and the "Tempest"
+both called forth some sarcasms from Jonson, the first for its error
+about the Coast of Bohemia which Shakespeare borrowed from Greene.
+Jonson wrote in the Induction to "Bartholemew Fair;" "If there be never
+a servant-monster in the Fair, who can help it he says? Nor a nest of
+Antics. He is loth to make nature afraid in his plays like those that
+beget Tales, Tempests, and such like Drolleries." The allusions here
+are very evidently to Caliban and the satyrs who figure in the
+sheep-shearing feast in "A Winter's Tale." The worst blast of all,
+however, occurs in Jonson's "Timber," but the blows are evidently given
+with a loving hand. He writes "I remember, the players have often
+mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare that, in his writing, whatsoever
+he penn'd, hee never blotted out line. My answer hath beene, would he
+had blotted a thousand;--which they thought a malevolent speech. I had
+not told posterity this, but for their ignorance who choose that
+circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to
+justifie mine owne candor,--for I lov'd the man, and doe honor his
+memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. Hee was, indeed, honest,
+and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasie; brave
+notions and gentle expressions; wherein hee flow'd with that facility
+that sometime it was necessary he should be stop'd;--_sufflaminandus
+erat_, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his owne
+power;--would the rule of it had beene so too! Many times he fell into
+those things, could not escape laughter; as when he said in the person
+of Caesar, one speaking to him,--Caesar thou dost me wrong; hee
+replyed,--Caesar did never wrong but with just cause; and such like;
+which were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices with his virtues.
+There was ever more in him to be praysed then to be pardoned."
+
+And even this criticism is altogether controverted by the wholly
+eulogistic lines Jonson wrote for the First Folio edition of Shakespeare
+printed in 1623, "To the memory of my beloved, The Author Mr. William
+Shakespeare and what he hath left us."[1]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] See the Tempest volume in First Folio Shakespeare. (Crowell & Co.)
+
+For the same edition he also wrote the following lines for the portrait
+reproduced in this volume, which it is safe to regard as the Shakespeare
+Ben Jonson remembered:
+
+
+    "TO THE READER
+
+    This Figure, that thou here seest put,
+      It was for gentle Shakespeare cut;
+    Wherein the Graver had a strife
+      With Nature, to out-doo the life:
+    O, could he but have drawne his wit
+      As well in brasse, as he hath hit
+    His face; the Print would then surpasse
+      All, that was ever writ in brasse.
+    But, since he cannot, Reader, looke
+      Not on his Picture, but his Booke.
+
+    B. J."
+
+Shakespeare's talk in "At the 'Mermaid'" grows out of the supposition,
+not touched upon until the very last line that Ben Jonson had been
+calling him "Next Poet," a supposition quite justifiable in the light of
+Ben's praises of him. The poem also reflects the love and admiration in
+which Shakespeare the man was held by all who have left any record of
+their impressions of him. As for the portraiture of the poet's attitude
+of mind, it is deduced indirectly from his work. That he did not desire
+to become "Next Poet" may be argued from the fact that after his first
+outburst of poem and sonnet writing in the manner of the poets of the
+age, he gave up the career of gentleman-poet to devote himself wholly to
+the more independent if not so socially distinguished one of
+actor-playwright. "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece" were the only poems
+of his published under his supervision and the only works with the
+dedication to a patron such as it was customary to write at that time.
+
+I have before me as I write the recent Clarendon Press fac-similes of
+"Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece," published respectively in 1593 and
+1594,--beautiful little quartos with exquisitely artistic designs in the
+title-pages, headpieces and initials; altogether worthy of a poet who
+might have designs upon Fame. The dedication to the first reads:--
+
+  "TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE
+  Henry Wriothesley, Earle of Southampton
+  and Baron of Litchfield
+
+    _Right Honourable, I know not how I shall offend in dedicating
+    my unpolisht lines to your Lordship, nor how the worlde will
+    censure mee for choosing so strong a proppe to support so weake
+    a burthen, onelye if your Honour seeme but pleased, I account my
+    selfe highly praised, and vowe to take advantage of all idle
+    houres, till I have honoured you with some great labour. But if
+    the first heire of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorie
+    it had so noble a god-father: and never after eare so barren a
+    land, for feare it yield me still so bad a harvest, I leave it
+    to your Honourable Survey, and your Honor to your hearts
+    content, which I wish may alwaies answere your owne wish, and
+    the worlds hopeful expectation._
+
+  Your Honors in all dutie
+    WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE."
+
+The second reads:--
+
+  "TO THE RIGHT
+  HONORABLE, HENRY
+  Wriothesley, Earle of Southampton
+  and Baron of Litchfield
+
+    The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end: wherof this
+    Pamphlet without beginning is a superfluous Moiety. The warrant
+    I have of your Honourable disposition, nor the worth of my
+    untutored Lines makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done
+    is yours, what I have to doe is yours, being part in all I have,
+    devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duety would shew
+    greater, meane time, as it is, it is bound to your Lordship; To
+    whom I wish long life still lengthened with all happinesse.
+
+  Your Lordships in all duety.
+    WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE."
+
+No more after this does Shakespeare appear in the light of a poet with a
+patron. Even the sonnets, some of which evidently celebrate Southampton,
+were issued by a piratical publisher without Shakespeare's consent,
+while his plays found their way into print at the hands of other pirates
+who cribbed them from stage copies.
+
+Such hints as these have been worked up by Browning into a consistent
+characterization of a man who regards himself as having foregone his
+chances of laureateship or "Next Poet" by devoting himself to a form of
+literary art which would not appeal to the powers that be as fitting him
+for any such position. Such honors he claims do not go to the dramatic
+poet, who has never allowed the world to slip inside his breast, but has
+simply portrayed the joy and the sorrow of life as he saw it around him,
+and with an art which turns even sorrow into beauty.--"Do I stoop? I
+pluck a posy, do I stand and stare? all's blue;"--but to the subjective,
+introspective poet, out of tune with himself and with the universe. The
+allusions Shakespeare makes to the last "King" are not very definite,
+but, on the whole, they fit Edmund Spenser, whose poems from first to
+last are dedicated to people of distinction in court circles. His work,
+moreover, is full of wailing and woe in various keys, and also full of
+self-revelation. He allowed the world to slip inside his breast upon
+almost every occasion, and perhaps he may be said to have bought "his
+laurel," for it was no doubt extremely gratifying to Queen Elizabeth to
+see herself in the guise of the Faerie Queene, and even his dedication
+of the "Faerie Queene" to her, used as she was to flattery, must have
+been as music in her ears. "To the most high, mightie, and magnificent
+Empresse, renouned for piety, vertue, and all gratious government,
+Elizabeth, by the Grace of God, Queene of England, Frahnce, and Ireland
+and of Virginia. Defender of the Faith, &c. Her most humble servant
+Edmund Spenser doth in all humilitie, Dedicate, present, and consecrate
+These his labours, To live with the eternity of her Fame." The next year
+Spenser received a pension from the crown of fifty pounds per annum.
+
+It is a careful touch on Browning's part to use the phrase "Next Poet,"
+for the "laureateship" at that time was not a recognized official
+position. The term, "laureate," seems to have been used to designate
+poets who had attained fame and Royal favor, since Nash speaks of
+Spenser in his "Supplication of Piers Pennilesse" the same year the
+"Faerie Queene" was published as next laureate.
+
+The first really officially appointed Poet Laureate was Ben Jonson,
+himself, who in either 1616 or 1619 received the post from James I.,
+later ratified by Charles I., who increased the annuity to one hundred
+pounds a year and a butt of wine from the King's cellars.
+
+Probably the allusion "Your Pilgrim" in the twelfth stanza of "At the
+Mermaid" is to "The Return from Parnassus" in which the pilgrims to
+Parnassus who figure in an earlier play "The Pilgrimage to Parnassus"
+discover the world to be about as dismal a place as it is described in
+this stanza.
+
+At first sight it might seem that the position taken by Shakespeare in
+the poem is almost too modest, yet upon second thoughts it will be
+remembered that though Shakespeare had a tremendous following among the
+people, attested by the frequency with which his plays were acted; that
+though there are instances of his being highly appreciated by
+contemporaries of importance; that though his plays were given before
+the Queen, he did not have the universal acceptance among learned and
+court circles which was accorded to Spenser.
+
+It is quite fitting that the scene should be set in the "Mermaid." No
+record exists to show that Shakespeare was ever there, it is true, but
+the "Mermaid" was a favorite haunt of Ben Jonson and his circle of wits,
+whose meetings there were immortalized by Beaumont in his poetical
+letter to Jonson:--
+
+              "What things have we seen
+    Done at the Mermaid? heard words that have been
+    So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
+    As if that every one from whence they came
+    Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
+    And had resolved to live a fool the rest
+    Of his dull life."
+
+Add to this what Fuller wrote in his "Worthies," 1662, "Many were the
+wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a
+Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war; Master Jonson (like the
+former) was built far higher in learning, solid but slow in his
+performances. Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk,
+but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take
+advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention," and
+there is sufficient poetic warrant for the "Mermaid" setting.
+
+[Illustration: First Folio Portrait of Shakespeare
+
+    "Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.
+    Do I stand and stare? All's blue."]
+
+The final touch is given in the hint that all the time Shakespeare is
+aware of his own greatness, perhaps to be recognized by a future age.
+
+Let Browning, himself, now show what he has done with the material.
+
+
+    AT THE "MERMAID"
+
+        The figure that thou here seest.... Tut!
+        Was it for gentle Shakespeare put?
+
+    B. JONSON. (_Adapted._)
+
+    I
+
+    I--"Next Poet?" No, my hearties,
+      I nor am nor fain would be!
+    Choose your chiefs and pick your parties,
+      Not one soul revolt to me!
+    I, forsooth, sow song-sedition?
+      I, a schism in verse provoke?
+    I, blown up by bard's ambition,
+      Burst--your bubble-king? You joke.
+
+    II
+
+    Come, be grave! The sherris mantling
+      Still about each mouth, mayhap,
+    Breeds you insight--just a scantling--
+      Brings me truth out--just a scrap.
+    Look and tell me! Written, spoken,
+      Here's my life-long work: and where
+    --Where's your warrant or my token
+      I'm the dead king's son and heir?
+
+    III
+
+    Here's my work: does work discover--
+      What was rest from work--my life?
+    Did I live man's hater, lover?
+      Leave the world at peace, at strife?
+    Call earth ugliness or beauty?
+      See things there in large or small?
+    Use to pay its Lord my duty?
+      Use to own a lord at all?
+
+    IV
+
+    Blank of such a record, truly
+      Here's the work I hand, this scroll,
+    Yours to take or leave; as duly,
+      Mine remains the unproffered soul.
+    So much, no whit more, my debtors--
+      How should one like me lay claim
+    To that largess elders, betters
+      Sell you cheap their souls for--fame?
+
+    V
+
+    Which of you did I enable
+      Once to slip inside my breast,
+    There to catalogue and label
+      What I like least, what love best,
+    Hope and fear, believe and doubt of,
+      Seek and shun, respect--deride?
+    Who has right to make a rout of
+      Rarities he found inside?
+
+    VI
+
+    Rarities or, as he'd rather,
+      Rubbish such as stocks his own:
+    Need and greed (O strange) the Father
+      Fashioned not for him alone!
+    Whence--the comfort set a-strutting,
+      Whence--the outcry "Haste, behold!
+    Bard's breast open wide, past shutting,
+      Shows what brass we took for gold!"
+
+    VII
+
+    Friends, I doubt not he'd display you
+      Brass--myself call orichalc,--
+    Furnish much amusement; pray you
+      Therefore, be content I balk
+    Him and you, and bar my portal!
+      Here's my work outside: opine
+    What's inside me mean and mortal!
+      Take your pleasure, leave me mine!
+
+    VIII
+
+    Which is--not to buy your laurel
+      As last king did, nothing loth.
+    Tale adorned and pointed moral
+      Gained him praise and pity both.
+    Out rushed sighs and groans by dozens,
+      Forth by scores oaths, curses flew:
+    Proving you were cater-cousins,
+      Kith and kindred, king and you!
+
+    IX
+
+    Whereas do I ne'er so little
+      (Thanks to sherris) leave ajar
+    Bosom's gate--no jot nor tittle
+      Grow we nearer than we are.
+    Sinning, sorrowing, despairing,
+      Body-ruined, spirit-wrecked,--
+    Should I give my woes an airing,--
+      Where's one plague that claims respect?
+
+    X
+
+    Have you found your life distasteful?
+      My life did, and does, smack sweet.
+    Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
+      Mine I saved and hold complete.
+    Do your joys with age diminish?
+      When mine fail me, I'll complain.
+    Must in death your daylight finish?
+      My sun sets to rise again.
+
+    XI
+
+    What, like you, he proved--your Pilgrim--
+      This our world a wilderness,
+    Earth still grey and heaven still grim,
+      Not a hand there his might press,
+    Not a heart his own might throb to,
+      Men all rogues and women--say,
+    Dolls which boys' heads duck and bob to,
+      Grown folk drop or throw away?
+
+    XII
+
+    My experience being other,
+      How should I contribute verse
+    Worthy of your king and brother?
+      Balaam-like I bless, not curse.
+    I find earth not grey but rosy,
+      Heaven not grim but fair of hue.
+    Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.
+      Do I stand and stare? All's blue.
+
+    XIII
+
+    Doubtless I am pushed and shoved by
+      Rogues and fools enough: the more
+    Good luck mine, I love, am loved by
+      Some few honest to the core.
+    Scan the near high, scout the far low!
+      "But the low come close:" what then?
+    Simpletons? My match is Marlowe;
+      Sciolists? My mate is Ben.
+
+    XIV
+
+    Womankind--"the cat-like nature,
+      False and fickle, vain and weak"--
+    What of this sad nomenclature
+      Suits my tongue, if I must speak?
+    Does the sex invite, repulse so,
+      Tempt, betray, by fits and starts?
+    So becalm but to convulse so,
+      Decking heads and breaking hearts?
+
+    XV
+
+    Well may you blaspheme at fortune!
+      I "threw Venus" (Ben, expound!)
+    Never did I need importune
+      Her, of all the Olympian round.
+    Blessings on my benefactress!
+      Cursings suit--for aught I know--
+    Those who twitched her by the back tress,
+      Tugged and thought to turn her--so!
+
+    XVI
+
+    Therefore, since no leg to stand on
+      Thus I'm left with,--joy or grief
+    Be the issue,--I abandon
+      Hope or care you name me Chief!
+    Chief and king and Lord's anointed,
+      I?--who never once have wished
+    Death before the day appointed:
+      Lived and liked, not poohed and pished!
+
+    XVII
+
+    "Ah, but so I shall not enter,
+      Scroll in hand, the common heart--
+    Stopped at surface: since at centre
+      Song should reach _Welt-schmerz_, world-smart!"
+    "Enter in the heart?" Its shelly
+      Cuirass guard mine, fore and aft!
+    Such song "enters in the belly
+      And is cast out in the draught."
+
+    XVIII
+
+    Back then to our sherris-brewage!
+      "Kingship" quotha? I shall wait--
+    Waive the present time: some new age ...
+      But let fools anticipate!
+    Meanwhile greet me--"friend, good fellow,
+      Gentle Will," my merry men!
+    As for making Envy yellow
+      With "Next Poet"--(Manners, Ben!)
+
+The first stanza of "House"--
+
+    "Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself?
+      Do I live in a house you would like to see?
+    Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf?
+      'Unlock my heart with a sonnet-key?'"--
+
+brings one face to face with the interminable controversies upon the
+autobiographical significance of Shakespeare's Sonnets. As volumes upon
+the subject have been written, it is not possible even adequately to
+review the various theories here. The controversialists may be broadly
+divided into those who read complicated autobiographical details into
+the sonnets, those who scout the idea of their being autobiographical at
+all, and those who take a middle ground. Of the first there are two
+factions: one of these believes that the opening sonnets were addressed
+to Lord William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and the other that they were
+addressed to Shakespeare's patron, the Earl of Southampton. The first
+theory dates back as far as 1832 when it was started by James Boaden, a
+journalist and the biographer of Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. This theory
+has had many supporters and is associated to-day with the name of Thomas
+Tyler, who, in his edition of the Sonnets published in 1890, claimed to
+have identified the dark lady of the Sonnets with a lady of the Court,
+Mary Fitton and the mistress of the Earl of Pembroke. The theory, like
+most things of the sort, has its fascinations, and few people can read
+the Sonnets without being more or less impressed by it. It is based,
+however, upon a supposition so unlikely that it may be said to be proved
+incorrect, namely, that the dedication of the Sonnets to their "Onlie
+Begettor, Mr. W. H." is intended for "Mr. William Herbert." There was a
+Mr. William Hall, later a master printer, and the friend of Thomas
+Thorpe, the publisher of the Sonnets, who is much more likely to be the
+person meant. Lord Herbert was far too important a person to be
+addressed as Mr. W. H. As Mr. Lee points out, when Thorpe did dedicate
+books to Herbert he was careful to give full prominence to the titles
+and distinction of his patron. The Sonnets as we have already seen were
+not published with Shakespeare's sanction. In those days the author had
+no protection, and if a manuscript fell into the hands of a printer he
+could print it if he felt so disposed. Mr. William Hall was in the
+habit of looking out for manuscripts and before he became a printer, in
+1606, had one published by Southwell of which he himself wrote the
+dedication, to the "Vertuous Gentleman, Mathew Saunders, Esquire W. H.
+wisheth, with long life, a prosperous achievement of his good desires."
+"There is little doubt," writes Mr. Lee, "that the W. H. of the
+Southwell volume was Mr. William Hall, who, when he procured that
+manuscript for publication, was an humble auxiliary in the publishing
+army." To sum up in Mr. Lee's words his interesting and convincing
+chapter on "Thomas Thorpe and Mr. 'W. H.'" "'Mr. W. H.,' whom Thorpe
+described as the 'only begetter of these ensuing sonnets,' was in all
+probability the acquirer or procurer of the manuscript, who,
+figuratively speaking, brought the book into being either by first
+placing the manuscript in Thorpe's hands or by pointing out the means by
+which a copy might be acquired. To assign such significance to the word
+'begetter' was entirely in Thorpe's vein. Thorpe described his role in
+the piratical enterprise of the 'Sonnets' as that of 'the well-wishing
+adventurer in setting forth,' _i.e._, the hopeful speculator in the
+scheme. 'Mr. W. H.' doubtless played the almost equally important
+part--one as well known then as now in commercial operations--of the
+'vender' of the property to be exploited."
+
+The Southampton theory is reared into a fine air-castle by Gerald Massey
+in his lengthy book on the Sonnets--truly entertaining reading but too
+ingenious to be convincing.
+
+Finally Mr. Lee in his book looks at the subject in an unbiased and
+perfectly sane way. He thinks the opening Sonnets are to the Earl of
+Southampton, known to be Shakespeare's patron, but he warns us that
+exaggerated devotion was the hall-mark of the Sonnets of the age, and
+therefore what Shakespeare says of his young patron in these Sonnets
+need not be taken too literally as expressing the poet's sentiments,
+though he admits there may be a note of genuine feeling in them. Also he
+thinks that some of the sonnets reflecting moods of melancholy or a
+sense of sin may reveal the writer's inner consciousness. Possibly, too,
+the story of the "dark lady" may have some basis in fact, though he
+insists, "There is no clue to the lady's identity, and speculation on
+the topic is useless." Furthermore, he thinks it doubtful whether all
+the words in these Sonnets are to be taken with the seriousness implied,
+the affair probably belonging only to the annals of gallantry.
+
+It will be seen from the poem that Browning took the uncompromisingly
+non-autobiographical view of the Sonnets. In this stand present
+authoritative opinion would not justify him, but it speaks well for his
+insight and sympathy that he was not fascinated by the William Herbert
+theory which, at the time he wrote the poem, was very much in the air.
+
+In "Shop" is given, in a way, the obverse side of the idea. If it is
+proved that the dramatic poet does not allow himself to appear in his
+work, the step toward regarding him as having no individuality aside
+from his work is an easy one. The allusions in the poem to the
+mercenariness of the "Shop-Keeper" seem to hit at the criticisms of
+Shakespeare's thrift, which enabled him to buy a home in his native
+place and retire there to live some years before the end of his life. In
+some quarters it has been customary to regard Shakespeare as devoting
+himself to dramatic literature in order to make money, as if this were a
+terrible slur on his character. The superiority of such an independent
+spirit over that of those who constantly sought patrons was quite
+manifest to Browning's mind or he would not have written this sarcastic
+bit of symbolism, between the lines of which can be read that Browning
+was on Shakespeare's side.
+
+
+    HOUSE
+
+    I
+
+    Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself?
+      Do I live in a house you would like to see?
+    Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf?
+      "Unlock my heart with a sonnet key?"
+
+    II
+
+    Invite the world, as my betters have done?
+      "Take notice: this building remains on view,
+    Its suites of reception every one,
+      Its private apartment and bedroom too;
+
+    III
+
+    "For a ticket, apply to the Publisher."
+      No: thanking the public, I must decline.
+    A peep through my window, if folk prefer;
+      But, please you, no foot over threshold of mine!
+
+    IV
+
+    I have mixed with a crowd and heard free talk
+      In a foreign land where an earthquake chanced:
+    And a house stood gaping, nought to balk
+      Man's eye wherever he gazed or glanced.
+
+    V
+
+    The whole of the frontage shaven sheer,
+      The inside gaped: exposed to day,
+    Right and wrong and common and queer,
+      Bare, as the palm of your hand, it lay.
+
+    VI
+
+    The owner? Oh, he had been crushed, no doubt!
+      "Odd tables and chairs for a man of wealth!
+    What a parcel of musty old books about!
+      He smoked,--no wonder he lost his health!
+
+    VII
+
+    "I doubt if he bathed before he dressed.
+      A brasier?--the pagan, he burned perfumes!
+    You see it is proved, what the neighbors guessed:
+      His wife and himself had separate rooms."
+
+    VIII
+
+    Friends, the goodman of the house at least
+      Kept house to himself till an earthquake came:
+    'Tis the fall of its frontage permits you feast
+      On the inside arrangement you praise or blame.
+
+    IX
+
+    Outside should suffice for evidence:
+      And whoso desires to penetrate
+    Deeper, must dive by the spirit-sense--
+      No optics like yours, at any rate!
+
+    X
+
+    "Hoity toity! A street to explore,
+      Your house the exception! '_With this same key
+    Shakespeare unlocked his heart_,' once more!"
+      Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!
+
+
+    SHOP
+
+    I
+
+    So, friend, your shop was all your house!
+      Its front, astonishing the street,
+    Invited view from man and mouse
+      To what diversity of treat
+      Behind its glass--the single sheet!
+
+    II
+
+    What gimcracks, genuine Japanese:
+      Gape-jaw and goggle-eye, the frog;
+    Dragons, owls, monkeys, beetles, geese;
+      Some crush-nosed, human-hearted dog:
+      Queer names, too, such a catalogue!
+
+    III
+
+    I thought "And he who owns the wealth
+      Which blocks the window's vastitude,
+    --Ah, could I peep at him by stealth
+      Behind his ware, pass shop, intrude
+      On house itself, what scenes were viewed!
+
+    IV
+
+    "If wide and showy thus the shop,
+      What must the habitation prove?
+    The true house with no name a-top--
+      The mansion, distant one remove,
+      Once get him off his traffic-groove!
+
+    V
+
+    "Pictures he likes, or books perhaps;
+      And as for buying most and best,
+    Commend me to these City chaps!
+      Or else he's social, takes his rest
+      On Sundays, with a Lord for guest.
+
+    VI
+
+    "Some suburb-palace, parked about
+      And gated grandly, built last year:
+    The four-mile walk to keep off gout;
+      Or big seat sold by bankrupt peer:
+      But then he takes the rail, that's clear.
+
+    VII
+
+    "Or, stop! I wager, taste selects
+      Some out o' the way, some all-unknown
+    Retreat: the neighborhood suspects
+      Little that he who rambles lone
+      Makes Rothschild tremble on his throne!"
+
+    VIII
+
+    Nowise! Nor Mayfair residence
+      Fit to receive and entertain,--
+    Nor Hampstead villa's kind defence
+      From noise and crowd, from dust and drain,--
+      Nor country-box was soul's domain!
+
+    IX
+
+    Nowise! At back of all that spread
+      Of merchandize, woe's me, I find
+    A hole i' the wall where, heels by head,
+      The owner couched, his ware behind,
+      --In cupboard suited to his mind.
+
+    X
+
+    For why? He saw no use of life
+      But, while he drove a roaring trade,
+    To chuckle "Customers are rife!"
+      To chafe "So much hard cash outlaid
+      Yet zero in my profits made!
+
+    XI
+
+    "This novelty costs pains, but--takes?
+      Cumbers my counter! Stock no more!
+    This article, no such great shakes,
+      Fizzes like wildfire? Underscore
+      The cheap thing--thousands to the fore!"
+
+    XII
+
+    'Twas lodging best to live most nigh
+      (Cramp, coffinlike as crib might be)
+    Receipt of Custom; ear and eye
+      Wanted no outworld: "Hear and see
+      The bustle in the shop!" quoth he.
+
+    XIII
+
+    My fancy of a merchant-prince
+      Was different. Through his wares we groped
+    Our darkling way to--not to mince
+      The matter--no black den where moped
+      The master if we interloped!
+
+    XIV
+
+    Shop was shop only: household-stuff?
+      What did he want with comforts there?
+    "Walls, ceiling, floor, stay blank and rough,
+      So goods on sale show rich and rare!
+      '_Sell and scud home_' be shop's affair!"
+
+    XV
+
+    What might he deal in? Gems, suppose!
+      Since somehow business must be done
+    At cost of trouble,--see, he throws
+      You choice of jewels, everyone,
+      Good, better, best, star, moon and sun!
+
+    XVI
+
+    Which lies within your power of purse?
+      This ruby that would tip aright
+    Solomon's sceptre? Oh, your nurse
+      Wants simply coral, the delight
+      Of teething baby,--stuff to bite!
+
+    XVII
+
+    Howe'er your choice fell, straight you took
+      Your purchase, prompt your money rang
+    On counter,--scarce the man forsook
+      His study of the "Times," just swang
+      Till-ward his hand that stopped the clang,--
+
+    XVIII
+
+    Then off made buyer with a prize,
+      Then seller to his "Times" returned;
+    And so did day wear, wear, till eyes
+      Brightened apace, for rest was earned:
+      He locked door long ere candle burned.
+
+    XIX
+
+    And whither went he? Ask himself,
+      Not me! To change of scene, I think.
+    Once sold the ware and pursed the pelf,
+      Chaffer was scarce his meat and drink,
+      Nor all his music--money-chink.
+
+    XX
+
+    Because a man has shop to mind
+      In time and place, since flesh must live,
+    Needs spirit lack all life behind,
+      All stray thoughts, fancies fugitive,
+      All loves except what trade can give?
+
+    XXI
+
+    I want to know a butcher paints,
+      A baker rhymes for his pursuit,
+    Candlestick-maker much acquaints
+      His soul with song, or, haply mute,
+      Blows out his brains upon the flute!
+
+    XXII
+
+    But--shop each day and all day long!
+      Friend, your good angel slept, your star
+    Suffered eclipse, fate did you wrong!
+      From where these sorts of treasures are,
+      There should our hearts be--Christ, how far!
+
+These poems are valuable not only for furnishing an interesting
+interpretation of Shakespeare's character as a man and artist, but for
+the glimpses they give into Browning's stand toward his own art. He
+wished to be regarded primarily as a dramatic artist, presenting and
+interpreting the souls of his characters, and he must have felt keenly
+the stupid attitude which insisted always in reading "Browning's
+Philosophy" into all his poems. The fact that his objective material was
+of the soul rather than of the external actions of life has no doubt
+lent force to the supposition that Browning himself can be seen in
+everything he writes. It is true, nevertheless, that while much of his
+work is Shakespearian in its dramatic intensity, he had too forceful a
+philosophy of life to keep it from sometimes coming to the front.
+Besides he has written many things avowedly personal as this chapter
+amply illustrates.
+
+To what intensity of feeling Browning could rise when contemplating the
+genius of Shakespeare is revealed in his direct and outspoken tribute.
+Here there breathes an almost reverential attitude toward the one
+supremely great man he has ventured to portray.
+
+
+    THE NAMES
+
+    Shakespeare!--to such name's sounding, what succeeds
+      Fitly as silence? Falter forth the spell,--
+      Act follows word, the speaker knows full well;
+    Nor tampers with its magic more than needs.
+    Two names there are: That which the Hebrew reads
+      With his soul only: if from lips it fell,
+      Echo, back thundered by earth, heaven and hell,
+    Would own, "Thou didst create us!" Naught impedes
+    We voice the other name, man's most of might,
+      Awesomely, lovingly: let awe and love
+    Mutely await their working, leave to sight
+      All of the issue as--below--above--
+      Shakespeare's creation rises: one remove,
+    Though dread--this finite from that infinite.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A CRUCIAL PERIOD IN ENGLISH HISTORY
+
+
+"Whom the gods destroy they first make mad." Of no one in English
+history is this truer than of King Charles I. Just at a time when the
+nation was feeling the strength of its wings both in Church and State,
+when individuals were claiming the right to freedom of conscience in
+their form of worship and the people were growing more insistent for the
+recognition of their ancient rights and liberties, secured to them, in
+the first place, by the Magna Charta,--just at this time looms up the
+obstruction of a King so imbued with the defunct ideal of the divine
+right of Kings that he is blind to the tendencies of the age. What
+wonder, then, if the swirling waters of discontent should rise higher
+and higher until he became engulfed in their fury.
+
+The history of the reign of Charles I. is one full of involved details,
+yet the broader aspects of it, the great events which chiseled into
+shape the future of England stand out in bold relief in front of a
+background of interminable bickerings. There was constant quarreling
+between the factions within the English church, and between the
+Protestants and the Catholics, complicated by the discontent of the
+people and at times the nobles because of the autocratic, vacillating
+policy of the King.
+
+Among these epoch-bringing events were the emergence of the Puritans
+from the chaos of internecine church squabbles, the determined raising
+of the voice of the people in the Long Parliament, where King and people
+finally came to an open clash in the impeachment of the King's most
+devoted minister, Wentworth, Earl Strafford, by Pym, the great leader in
+the House of Commons, ending in Strafford's execution; the Grand
+Remonstrance, which sounded in no uncertain tones the tocsin of the
+coming revolution; and finally the King's impeachment of Pym, Hampden,
+Holles, Hazelrigg and Strode, one of the many ill-advised moves of this
+Monarch which at once precipitated the Revolution.
+
+These cataclysms at home were further intensified by the Scottish
+Invasion and the Irish Rebellion.
+
+[Illustration: Charles I in Scene of Impeachment]
+
+It is not surprising that Browning should have been attracted to this
+period of English history, when he contemplated the writing of a play on
+an English subject. His liberty-loving mind would naturally find
+congenial occupation in depicting this great English struggle for
+liberty. Yet the hero of the play is not Pym, the leader of the people,
+but Strafford, the supporter of the King. The dramatic reasons are
+sufficient to account for this. Strafford's career was picturesque and
+tragic and his personality so striking that more than one interpretation
+of his remarkable life is possible.
+
+The interpretation will differ according to whether one is partisan in
+hatred or admiration of his character and policy, or possesses the
+larger quality of sympathetic appreciation of the man and the problems
+with which he had to deal. Any one coming to judge him in this latter
+spirit would undoubtedly perceive all the fine points in Strafford's
+nature and would balance these against his theories of government to the
+better understanding of this extraordinary man.
+
+It is almost needless to say that Browning's perception of Strafford's
+character was penetrating and sympathetic. Strafford's devotion to his
+King had in it not only the element of loyalty to the liege, but an
+element of personal love which would make an especial appeal to
+Browning. He, in consequence, seizes upon this trait as the key-note of
+his portrayal of Strafford.
+
+The play is, on the whole, accurate in its historical details, though
+the poet's imagination has added many a flying buttress to the
+structure.
+
+Forster's lives of the English Statesmen in Lardner's Cyclopaedia
+furnished plenty of material, and he was besides familiar with some if
+not all of Forster's materials for the lives. One of the interesting
+surprises in connection with Browning's literary career was the fact
+divulged some years ago that he had actually helped Forster in the
+preparation of the Life of Strafford. Indeed it is thought that he wrote
+it almost entirely from the notes of Forster. Dr. Furnivall first called
+attention to this, and later the life of Strafford was reprinted as
+"Robert Browning's Prose Life of Strafford."[2] In his Forewords to this
+volume, Dr. Furnivall, who, among many other claims to distinction, was
+the president of the "London Browning Society," writes, "Three times
+during his life did Browning speak to me about his prose 'Life of
+Strafford.' The first time he said only--in the course of chat--that
+very few people had any idea of how much he had helped John Forster in
+it. The second time he told me at length that one day he went to see
+Forster and found him very ill, and anxious about the 'Life of
+Strafford,' which he had promised to write at once, to complete a volume
+of 'Lives of Eminent British Statesmen' for Lardner's 'Cabinet
+Cyclopaedia.' Forster had finished the 'Life of Eliot'--the first in the
+volume--and had just begun that of Strafford, for which he had made full
+collections and extracts; but illness had come on, he couldn't work, the
+book ought to be completed forthwith, as it was due in the serial issue
+of volumes; what _was_ he to do? 'Oh,' said Browning, 'don't trouble
+about it. I'll take your papers and do it for you.' Forster thanked his
+young friend heartily, Browning put the Strafford papers under his arm,
+walked off, worked hard, finished the Life, and it came out to time in
+1836, to Forster's great relief, and passed under his name." Professor
+Gardiner, the historian, was of the opinion from internal evidence that
+the Life was more Browning's than Forster's. He said to Furnivall, "It
+is not a historian's conception of the character but a poet's. I am
+certain that it's not Forster's. Yes, it makes mistakes in facts and
+dates, but, it has got the man--in the main." In this opinion Furnivall
+concurs. Of the last paragraph in the history he exclaims, "I could
+swear it was Browning's":--The paragraph in question sums up the
+character of Strafford and is interesting in this connection, as giving
+hints, though not the complete picture of the Strafford of the Drama.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] Estes and Lauriat, Boston, Mass.
+
+"A great lesson is written in the life of this truly extraordinary
+person. In the career of Strafford is to be sought the justification of
+the world's 'appeal from tyranny to God.' In him Despotism had at length
+obtained an instrument with mind to comprehend, and resolution to act
+upon, her principles in their length and breadth,--and enough of her
+purposes were effected by him, to enable mankind to 'see as from a tower
+the end of all.' I cannot discern one false step in Strafford's public
+conduct, one glimpse of a recognition of an alien principle, one
+instance of a dereliction of the law of his being, which can come in to
+dispute the decisive result of the experiment, or explain away its
+failure. The least vivid fancy will have no difficulty in taking up the
+interrupted design, and by wholly enfeebling, or materially emboldening,
+the insignificant nature of Charles; and by according some half-dozen
+years of immunity to the 'fretted tenement' of Strafford's 'fiery
+soul',--contemplate then, for itself, the perfect realization of the
+scheme of 'making the prince the most absolute lord in Christendom.'
+That done,--let it pursue the same course with respect to Eliot's noble
+imaginings, or to young Vane's dreamy aspirings, and apply in like
+manner a fit machinery to the working out the projects which made the
+dungeon of the one a holy place, and sustained the other in his
+self-imposed exile.--The result is great and decisive! It establishes,
+in renewed force, those principles of political conduct which have
+endured, and must continue to endure, 'like truth from age to age.'" The
+history, on the whole, lacks the grasp in the portrayal of Wentworth to
+be found in the drama. C. H. Firth, commenting upon this says truly,
+"One might almost say that in the first, Strafford was represented as he
+appeared to his opponents, and in the second as he appeared to himself;
+or that, having painted Strafford as he was, Browning painted him again
+as he wished to be. In the biography Strafford is exhibited as a man of
+rare gifts and noble qualities; yet in his political capacity, merely
+the conscious, the devoted tool of a tyrant. In the tragedy, on the
+other hand, Strafford is the champion of the King's will against the
+people's, but yet looks forward to the ultimate reconciliation of
+Charles and his subjects, and strives for it after his own fashion. He
+loves the master he serves, and dies for him, but when the end comes he
+can proudly answer his accusers, 'I have loved England too.'"
+
+The play opens at the important moment of Wentworth's return to London
+from Ireland, where for some time he had been governor. The occasion of
+his return, according to Gardiner, was a personal quarrel with the
+Chancellor Loftus, of Ireland. Both men were allowed to come to England
+to plead their cause, which resulted in the victory of Wentworth. In the
+play Pym says, "Ay, the Court gives out His own concerns have brought
+him back: I know 'tis the King calls him." The authority for this remark
+is found in the Forster-Browning Life. "In the danger threatened by the
+Scots' Covenant, Wentworth was Charles's only hope; the King sent for
+him, saying he desired his personal counsel and attendance. He wrote:
+'The Scots' Covenant begins to spread too far, yet, for all this, I will
+not have you take notice that I have sent for you, but pretend some
+other occasion of business.'" Certain it is that from this time
+Wentworth became the most trusted counsellor of Charles, that is, as
+far as Charles was capable of trusting any one. The condition of affairs
+to which Wentworth returned is brought out in the play in a thoroughly
+alive and human manner. We are introduced to the principal actors in the
+struggle for their rights and privileges against the government of
+Charles meeting in a house near Whitehall. Among the "great-hearted" men
+are Hampden, Hollis, the younger Vane, Rudyard, Fiennes--all leaders in
+the "Faction,"--Presbyterians, Loudon and other members of the Scots'
+commissioners. A bit of history has been drawn upon for this opening
+scene, for according to the Forster-Browning Life, "There is no doubt
+that a close correspondence with the Scotch commissioners, headed by
+Lords Loudon and Dumferling, was entered into under the management of
+Pym and Hampden. Whenever necessity obliged the meetings to be held in
+London, they took place at Pym's house in Gray's Inn Lane." In the talk
+between these men the political situation in England at the time from
+the point of view of the liberal party is brought vividly before the
+reader.
+
+There has been no Parliament in England for ten years, hence the people
+have had no say in the direction of the government. The growing
+dissatisfaction of the people at being thus deprived of their rights
+focussed itself upon the question of "ship-money." The taxes levied by
+the King for the maintainance of a fleet were loudly objected to upon
+all sides. That a fleet was a necessary means of protection in those
+threatening times is not to be doubted, but the objections of the people
+were grounded upon the fact that the King levied these taxes upon his
+own authority. "Ship-money, it was loudly declared," says Gardiner, "was
+undeniably a tax, and the ancient customs of the realm, recently
+embodied in the Petition of Right, had announced with no doubtful voice
+that no tax could be levied without consent of Parliament. Even this
+objection was not the full measure of the evil. If Charles could take
+this money without the consent of Parliament, he need not, unless some
+unforeseen emergency arose, ever summon a Parliament again. The true
+question at issue was whether Parliament formed an integral part of the
+Constitution or not." Other taxes were objected to on the same grounds,
+and the more determined the King was not to summon a Parliament, the
+greater became the political ferment.
+
+[Illustration: Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford]
+
+At the same time the religious ferment was centering itself upon
+hatred of Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury. His policy was to silence
+opposition to the methods of worship then followed by the Church of
+England, by the terrors of the Star Chamber. The Puritans were smarting
+under the sentence which had been passed upon the three pamphleteers,
+William Prynne, Henry Burton, and John Bastwick, who had expressed their
+opinions of the practises of the church with great outspokenness. Prynne
+called upon pious King Charles "to do justice on the whole Episcopal
+order by which he had been robbed of the love of God and of his people,
+and which aimed at plucking the crown from his head, that they might set
+it on their own ambitious pates." Burton hinted that "the sooner the
+office of the Bishops was abolished the better it would be for the
+nation." Bastwick, who had been brought up in the straitest principles
+of Puritanism, had ended his pamphlet "_Flagellum Pontificis_," with
+this outburst, "Take notice, so far am I from flying or fearing, as I
+resolve to make war against the Beast, and every hint of Antichrist, all
+the days of my life. If I die in that battle, so much the sooner I shall
+be sent in a chariot of triumph to heaven; and when I come there, I
+will, with those that are under the altar cry, 'How long, Lord, holy
+and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood upon them that dwell
+upon the earth?'"
+
+These men were called before the Star Chamber upon a charge of libel.
+The sentence was a foregone conclusion, and was so outrageous that its
+result could only be the strengthening of opposition. The "muckworm"
+Cottington, as Browning calls him, suggested the sentence which was
+carried out. The men were condemned to lose their ears, to pay a fine of
+L5000 each, and to be imprisoned for the remainder of their lives in the
+castles of Carnarvon, Launceston, and Lancaster. Finch, not satisfied
+with this, added the savage wish that Prynne should be branded on the
+cheek with the letters S. L., to stand for "seditious libeller," and
+this was also done.
+
+The account of the execution of this sentence is almost too horrible to
+read. Some one who recorded the scene wrote, "The humours of the people
+were various; some wept, some laughed, and some were very reserved."
+Prynne, whose sufferings had been greatest for he had been burned as
+well as having his ears taken off, was yet able to indulge in a grim
+piece of humor touching the letters S. L. branded on his cheeks. He
+called them "Stigmata Laudis," the "Scars of Laud," on his way back to
+prison. Popular demonstrations in favor of the prisoners were made all
+along the road when they were taken to their respective prisons, where
+they were allowed neither pen, ink nor books. Fearful lest they might
+somehow still disseminate their heretical doctrines to the outer world,
+the council removed them to still more distant prisons, in the Scilly
+Isles, in Guernsey and in Jersey. Retaliation against this treatment
+found open expression. "A copy of the Star Chamber decree was nailed to
+a board. Its corners were cut off as the ears of Laud's victims had been
+cut off at Westminster. A broad ink mark was drawn round Laud's name. An
+inscription declared that 'The man that puts the saints of God into a
+pillory of wood stands here in a pillory of ink!'"
+
+Things were brought to a crisis in Scotland also, through hatred of Laud
+and the new prayer-book. The King, upon his visit to Scotland, had been
+shocked at the slovenly appearance and the slovenly ritual of
+the Scottish Church, which reflected strongly survivals of the
+Presbyterianism of an earlier time. The King wrote to the Scottish
+Bishops soon after his return to England: "We, tendering the good and
+peace of that Church by having good and decent order and discipline
+observed therein, whereby religion and God's worship may increase, and
+considering that there is nothing more defective in that Church than the
+want of a Book of Common Prayer and uniform service to be kept in all
+the churches thereof, and the want of canons for the uniformity of the
+same, we are hereby pleased to authorise you as the representative body
+of that Church, and do herewith will and require you to condescend upon
+a form of Church service to be used therein, and to set down the canons
+for the uniformity of the discipline thereof." Laud, who as Archbishop
+of Canterbury had no jurisdiction over Scottish Bishops, put his finger
+into the pie as secretary of the King. As Gardiner says, "He conveyed
+instructions to the Bishops, remonstrated with proceedings which shocked
+his sense of order, and held out prospects of advancement to the
+zealous. Scotchmen naturally took offense. They did not trouble
+themselves to distinguish between the secretary and the archbishop. They
+simply said that the Pope of Canterbury was as bad as the Pope of Rome."
+
+The upshot of it all was that in May, 1637, the "new Prayer-book" was
+sent to Scotland, and every minister was ordered to buy two copies on
+pain of outlawry. Riots followed. It was finally decided that it must be
+settled once for all whether a King had any right to change the forms of
+worship without the sanction of a legislative assembly. Then came the
+Scottish Covenant which declared the intention of the signers to uphold
+religious liberty. The account of the signing of this covenant is one of
+the most impressive episodes in all history. The Covenant was carried on
+the 28th of February, 1638, to the Grey Friars' Church to which all the
+gentlemen present in Edinburgh had been summoned. The scene has been
+most sympathetically described by Gardiner.
+
+"At four o'clock in the grey winter evening, the noblemen, the Earl of
+Sutherland leading the way began to sign. Then came the gentlemen, one
+after the other until nearly eight. The next day the ministers were
+called on to testify their approval, and nearly three hundred signatures
+were obtained before night. The Commissioners of the boroughs signed at
+the same time.
+
+"On the third day the people of Edinburgh were called on to attest their
+devotion to the cause which was represented by the Covenant. Tradition
+long loved to tell how the honored parchment, carried back to the Grey
+Friars, was laid out on a tombstone in the churchyard, whilst weeping
+multitudes pressed round in numbers too great to be contained in any
+building. There are moments when the stern Scottish nature breaks out
+into an enthusiasm less passionate, but more enduring, than the frenzy
+of a Southern race. As each man and woman stepped forward in turn, with
+the right hand raised to heaven before the pen was grasped, every one
+there present knew that there would be no flinching amongst that band of
+brothers till their religion was safe from intrusive violence.
+
+"Modern narrators may well turn their attention to the picturesqueness
+of the scene, to the dark rocks of the Castle crag over against the
+churchyard, and to the earnest faces around. The men of the seventeenth
+century had no thought to spare for the earth beneath or for the sky
+above. What they saw was their country's faith trodden under foot, what
+they felt was the joy of those who had been long led astray, and had now
+returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls."
+
+Such were the conditions that brought on the Scotch war, neither Charles
+nor Wentworth being wise enough to make concessions to the Covenanters.
+
+The grievances against the King's Minister Wentworth are in this opening
+scene shown as being aggravated by the fact that the men of the
+"Faction" regard him as a deserter from their cause, Pym, himself being
+one of the number who is loth to think Wentworth stands for the King's
+policy.
+
+The historical ground for the assumption lies in the fact that Wentworth
+was one of the leaders of the opposition in the Parliament of 1628.
+
+The reason for this was largely personal, because of Buckingham's
+treatment of him. Wentworth had refused to take part in the collection
+of the forced loan of 1626, and was dismissed from his official posts in
+consequence. When he further refused to subscribe to that loan himself
+he was imprisoned in the Marshalsea and at Depford. Regarding himself as
+personally attacked by Buckingham, he joined the opposition. Yet, as
+Firth points out, "fiercely as he attacked the King's ministers, he was
+careful to exonerate the King." He concludes his list of grievances by
+saying, "This hath not been done by the King, but by projectors." Again,
+"Whether we shall look upon the King or his people, it did never more
+behove this great physician the parliament, to effect a true consent
+amongst the parties than now. Both are injured, both to be cured. By one
+and the same thing hath the King and people been hurt. I speak truly
+both for the interest of the King and the people."
+
+His intention was to find some means of cooperation which would leave
+the people their liberty and yet give the crown its prerogative, "Let us
+make what laws we can, there must--nay, there will be a trust left in
+the crown."
+
+It will be seen by any unbiased critic that Wentworth was only half for
+the people even at this time. On the other hand, it is not astonishing
+that men, heart and soul for the people, should consider Wentworth's
+subsequent complete devotion to the cause of the King sufficient to
+brand him as an apostate. The fact that he received so many official
+dignities from the King also leant color to the supposition that
+personal ambition was a leading motive with him. With true dramatic
+instinct Browning has centered this feeling and made the most of it in
+the attitude of Pym's party, while he offsets it later in the play by
+showing us the reality of the man Strafford.
+
+There is no very authentic source for the idea also brought out in this
+first scene that Strafford and Pym had been warm personal friends. The
+story is told by Dr. James Welwood, one of the physicians of William
+III., who, in the year 1700, published a volume entitled "Memoirs, of
+the most material transactions in England for the last hundred years
+preceding the Revolution of 1688." Without mentioning any source he
+tells the following story; "There had been a long and intimate
+friendship between Mr. Pym and him [Wentworth], and they had gone hand
+in hand in everything in the House of Commons. But when Sir Thomas
+Wentworth was upon making his peace with the Court, he sent to Pym to
+meet him alone at Greenwich; where he began in a set speech to sound Mr.
+Pym about the dangers they were like to run by the courses they were in;
+and what advantages they might have if they would but listen to some
+offers which would probably be made them from the Court. Pym
+understanding his speech stopped him short with this expression: 'You
+need not use all this art to tell me you have a mind to leave us; but
+remember what I tell you, you are going to be undone. But remember, that
+though you leave us now I will never leave you while your head is upon
+your shoulders.'"
+
+Though only a tradition this was entirely too useful a suggestion not to
+be used. The intensity of the situation between the leaders on opposite
+sides is enhanced tenfold by bringing into the field a personal
+sentiment.
+
+The attitude of Pym's followers is reflected again in their opinion of
+Wentworth's Irish rule. Although Wentworth's policy seemed to be
+successful in Ireland, the very fact of its success would condemn it in
+the eyes of the popular party; besides later developments revealed its
+weaknesses. How it appeared to the eyes of a non-fanatical observer at
+this time may be gathered from the following letter of Sir Thomas Roe to
+the Queen of Bohemia, written in 1634.
+
+"The Lord Deputy of Ireland doth great wonders, and governs like a King,
+and hath taught that Kingdom to show us an example of envy, by having
+parliaments, and knowing wisely how to use them; for they have given the
+King six subsidies, which will arise to L240,000, and they are like to
+have the liberty we contended for, and grace from his Majesty worth
+their gift double; and which is worth much more, the honor of good
+intelligence and love between the King and people, which I would to God
+our great wits had had eyes to see. This is a great service, and to
+give your Majesty a character of the man,--he is severe abroad and in
+business, and sweet in private conversation; retired in his friendships,
+but very firm; a terrible judge and a strong enemy; a servant violently
+zealous in his Master's ends, and not negligent of his own; one that
+will have what he will, and though of great reason, he can make his will
+greater when it may serve him; affecting glory by a seeming contempt;
+one that cannot stay long in the middle region of fortune, being
+entreprenant; but will either be the greatest man in England, or much
+less than he is; lastly, one that may (and his nature lies fit for it,
+for he is ambitious to do what others will not), do your Majesty very
+great service, if you can make him."
+
+In order to be in sympathy with the play throughout and especially with
+the first scene all this historical background must be kept in mind, for
+the talk gives no direct information, it merely in an absolutely
+dramatic fashion reveals the feelings and opinions of the men upon the
+situation, just as friends at a dinner party might discuss one of our
+own less strenuous political situations--all present being perfectly
+familiar with the issues at stake.
+
+
+STRAFFORD
+
+ACT I
+
+SCENE I.--_A House near Whitehall._
+
+_HAMPDEN, HOLLIS, the +younger+ VANE, RUDYARD, FIENNES and many of the
+Presbyterian Party: LOUDON and other Scots' Commissioners._
+
+  _Vane._ I say, if he be here--
+
+  _Rudyard._                     (And he is here!)--
+
+  _Hollis._ For England's sake let every man be still
+  Nor speak of him, so much as say his name,
+  Till Pym rejoin us! Rudyard! Henry Vane!
+  One rash conclusion may decide our course
+  And with it England's fate--think--England's fate!
+  Hampden, for England's sake they should be still!
+
+  _Vane._ You say so, Hollis? Well, I must be still.
+  It is indeed too bitter that one man,
+  Any one man's mere presence, should suspend
+  England's combined endeavor: little need
+  To name him!
+
+  _Rudyard._ For you are his brother, Hollis!
+
+  _Hampden._ Shame on you, Rudyard! time to tell him that,
+  When he forgets the Mother of us all.
+
+  _Rudyard._ Do I forget her?
+
+  _Hampden._                  You talk idle hate
+  Against her foe: is that so strange a thing?
+  Is hating Wentworth all the help she needs?
+
+  _A Puritan._ The Philistine strode, cursing as he went:
+  But David--five smooth pebbles from the brook
+  Within his scrip....
+
+  _Rudyard._           Be you as still as David!
+
+  _Fiennes._ Here's Rudyard not ashamed to wag a tongue
+  Stiff with ten years' disuse of Parliaments;
+  Why, when the last sat, Wentworth sat with us!
+
+  _Rudyard._ Let's hope for news of them now he returns--
+  He that was safe in Ireland, as we thought!
+  --But I'll abide Pym's coming.
+
+  _Vane._                        Now, by Heaven,
+  They may be cool who can, silent who will--
+  Some have a gift that way! Wentworth is here,
+  Here, and the King's safe closeted with him
+  Ere this. And when I think on all that's past
+  Since that man left us, how his single arm
+  Rolled the advancing good of England back
+  And set the woeful past up in its place,
+  Exalting Dagon where the Ark should be,--
+  How that man has made firm the fickle King
+  (Hampden, I will speak out!)--in aught he feared
+  To venture on before; taught tyranny
+  Her dismal trade, the use of all her tools,
+  To ply the scourge yet screw the gag so close
+  That strangled agony bleeds mute to death;
+  How he turns Ireland to a private stage
+  For training infant villanies, new ways
+  Of wringing treasure out of tears and blood,
+  Unheard oppressions nourished in the dark
+  To try how much man's nature can endure
+  --If he dies under it, what harm? if not,
+  Why, one more trick is added to the rest
+  Worth a king's knowing, and what Ireland bears
+  England may learn to bear:--how all this while
+  That man has set himself to one dear task,
+  The bringing Charles to relish more and more
+  Power, power without law, power and blood too
+  --Can I be still?
+
+  _Hampden._       For that you should be still.
+
+  _Vane._ Oh Hampden, then and now! The year he left us,
+  The People in full Parliament could wrest
+  The Bill of Rights from the reluctant King;
+  And now, he'll find in an obscure small room
+  A stealthy gathering of great-hearted men
+  That take up England's cause: England is here!
+
+  _Hampden._ And who despairs of England?
+
+  _Rudyard._                              That do I,
+  If Wentworth comes to rule her. I am sick
+  To think her wretched masters, Hamilton,
+  The muckworm Cottington, the maniac Laud,
+  May yet be longed-for back again. I say,
+  I do despair.
+
+  _Vane._       And, Rudyard, I'll say this--
+  Which all true men say after me, not loud
+  But solemnly and as you'd say a prayer!
+  This King, who treads our England underfoot,
+  Has just so much ... it may be fear or craft,
+  As bids him pause at each fresh outrage; friends,
+  He needs some sterner hand to grasp his own,
+  Some voice to ask, "Why shrink? Am I not by?"
+  Now, one whom England loved for serving her,
+  Found in his heart to say, "I know where best
+  The iron heel shall bruise her, for she leans
+  Upon me when you trample." Witness, you!
+  So Wentworth heartened Charles, so England fell.
+  But inasmuch as life is hard to take
+  From England....
+
+  _Many Voices._  Go on, Vane! 'Tis well said, Vane!
+
+  _Vane._ --Who has not so forgotten Runnymead!--
+
+  _Voices._ 'Tis well and bravely spoken, Vane! Go on!
+
+  _Vane._ --There are some little signs of late she knows
+  The ground no place for her. She glances round,
+  Wentworth has dropped the hand, is gone his way
+  On other service: what if she arise?
+  No! the King beckons, and beside him stands
+  The same bad man once more, with the same smile
+  And the same gesture. Now shall England crouch,
+  Or catch at us and rise?
+
+  _Voices._                The Renegade!
+  Haman! Ahithophel!
+
+  _Hampden._         Gentlemen of the North,
+  It was not thus the night your claims were urged,
+  And we pronounced the League and Covenant,
+  The cause of Scotland, England's cause as well:
+  Vane there, sat motionless the whole night through.
+
+  _Vane._ Hampden!
+
+  _Fiennes._       Stay, Vane!
+
+  _Loudon._                    Be just and patient, Vane!
+
+  _Vane._ Mind how you counsel patience, Loudon! you
+  Have still a Parliament, and this your League
+  To back it; you are free in Scotland still:
+  While we are brothers, hope's for England yet.
+  But know you wherefore Wentworth comes? to quench
+  This last of hopes? that he brings war with him?
+  Know you the man's self? what he dares?
+
+  _Loudon._                               We know,
+  All know--'tis nothing new.
+
+  _Vane._                     And what's new, then,
+  In calling for his life? Why, Pym himself--
+  You must have heard--ere Wentworth dropped our cause
+  He would see Pym first; there were many more
+  Strong on the people's side and friends of his,
+  Eliot that's dead, Rudyard and Hampden here,
+  But for these Wentworth cared not; only, Pym
+  He would see--Pym and he were sworn, 'tis said,
+  To live and die together; so, they met
+  At Greenwich. Wentworth, you are sure, was long,
+  Specious enough, the devil's argument
+  Lost nothing on his lips; he'd have Pym own
+  A patriot could not play a purer part
+  Than follow in his track; they two combined
+  Might put down England. Well, Pym heard him out;
+  One glance--you know Pym's eye--one word was all:
+  "You leave us, Wentworth! while your head is on,
+  I'll not leave you."
+
+  _Hampden._           Has he left Wentworth, then?
+  Has England lost him? Will you let him speak,
+  Or put your crude surmises in his mouth?
+  Away with this! Will you have Pym or Vane?
+
+  _Voices._ Wait Pym's arrival! Pym shall speak.
+
+  _Hampden._                                     Meanwhile
+  Let Loudon read the Parliament's report
+  From Edinburgh: our last hope, as Vane says,
+  Is in the stand it makes. Loudon!
+
+  _Vane._                           No, no!
+  Silent I can be: not indifferent!
+
+  _Hampden._ Then each keep silence, praying God to spare
+  His anger, cast not England quite away
+  In this her visitation!
+
+  _A Puritan._            Seven years long
+  The Midianite drove Israel into dens
+  And caves. Till God sent forth a mighty man,
+
+_PYM enters_
+
+  Even Gideon!
+
+  _Pym._       Wentworth's come: nor sickness, care,
+  The ravaged body nor the ruined soul,
+  More than the winds and waves that beat his ship,
+  Could keep him from the King. He has not reached
+  Whitehall: they've hurried up a Council there
+  To lose no time and find him work enough.
+  Where's Loudon? your Scots' Parliament....
+
+  _Loudon._                                  Holds firm:
+  We were about to read reports.
+
+  _Pym._                         The King
+  Has just dissolved your Parliament.
+
+  _Loudon and other Scots._           Great God!
+  An oath-breaker! Stand by us, England, then!
+
+  _Pym._ The King's too sanguine; doubtless Wentworth's here;
+  But still some little form might be kept up.
+
+  _Hampden._ Now speak, Vane! Rudyard, you had much to say!
+
+  _Hollis._ The rumor's false, then....
+
+  _Pym._                                Ay, the Court gives out
+  His own concerns have brought him back: I know
+  'Tis the King calls him. Wentworth supersedes
+  The tribe of Cottingtons and Hamiltons
+  Whose part is played; there's talk enough, by this,--
+  Merciful talk, the King thinks: time is now
+  To turn the record's last and bloody leaf
+  Which, chronicling a nation's great despair,
+  Tells they were long rebellious, and their lord
+  Indulgent, till, all kind expedients tried,
+  He drew the sword on them and reigned in peace.
+  Laud's laying his religion on the Scots
+  Was the last gentle entry: the new page
+  Shall run, the King thinks, "Wentworth thrust it down
+  At the sword's point."
+
+  _A Puritan._           I'll do your bidding, Pym,
+  England's and God's--one blow!
+
+  _Pym._                         A goodly thing--
+  We all say, friends, it is a goodly thing
+  To right that England. Heaven grows dark above:
+  Let's snatch one moment ere the thunder fall,
+  To say how well the English spirit comes out
+  Beneath it! All have done their best, indeed,
+  From lion Eliot, that grand Englishman,
+  To the least here: and who, the least one here,
+  When she is saved (for her redemption dawns
+  Dimly, most dimly, but it dawns--it dawns)
+  Who'd give at any price his hope away
+  Of being named along with the Great Men?
+  We would not--no, we would not give that up!
+
+  _Hampden._ And one name shall be dearer than all names.
+  When children, yet unborn, are taught that name
+  After their fathers',--taught what matchless man....
+
+  _Pym._ ... Saved England? What if Wentworth's should be still
+  That name?
+
+  _Rudyard and others._ We have just said it, Pym! His death
+  Saves her! We said it--there's no way beside!
+  I'll do God's bidding, Pym! They struck down Joab
+  And purged the land.
+
+  _Vane._             No villanous striking-down!
+
+  _Rudyard._ No, a calm vengeance: let the whole land rise
+  And shout for it. No Feltons!
+
+  _Pym._                        Rudyard, no!
+  England rejects all Feltons; most of all
+  Since Wentworth ... Hampden, say the trust again
+  Of England in her servants--but I'll think
+  You know me, all of you. Then, I believe,
+  Spite of the past, Wentworth rejoins you, friends!
+
+  _Vane and others._ Wentworth? Apostate! Judas! Double-dyed
+  A traitor! Is it Pym, indeed....
+
+  _Pym._                           ... Who says
+  Vane never knew that Wentworth, loved that man,
+  Was used to stroll with him, arm locked in arm,
+  Along the streets to see the people pass,
+  And read in every island-countenance
+  Fresh argument for God against the King,--
+  Never sat down, say, in the very house
+  Where Eliot's brow grew broad with noble thoughts,
+  (You've joined us, Hampden--Hollis, you as well,)
+  And then left talking over Gracchus' death....
+
+  _Vane._ To frame, we know it well, the choicest clause
+  In the Petition of Right: he framed such clause
+  One month before he took at the King's hand
+  His Northern Presidency, which that Bill
+  Denounced.
+
+  _Pym._     Too true! Never more, never more
+  Walked we together! Most alone I went.
+  I have had friends--all here are fast my friends--
+  But I shall never quite forget that friend.
+  And yet it could not but be real in him!
+  You, Vane,--you, Rudyard, have no right to trust
+  To Wentworth: but can no one hope with me?
+  Hampden, will Wentworth dare shed English blood
+  Like water?
+
+  _Hampden._ Ireland is Aceldama.
+
+  _Pym._ Will he turn Scotland to a hunting-ground
+  To please the King, now that he knows the King?
+  The People or the King? and that King, Charles!
+
+  _Hampden._ Pym, all here know you: you'll not set your heart
+  On any baseless dream. But say one deed
+  Of Wentworth's since he left us....
+
+[_Shouting without._
+
+  _Vane._                             There! he comes,
+  And they shout for him! Wentworth's at Whitehall,
+  The King embracing him, now, as we speak,
+  And he, to be his match in courtesies,
+  Taking the whole war's risk upon himself,
+  Now, while you tell us here how changed he is!
+  Hear you?
+
+  _Pym._    And yet if 'tis a dream, no more,
+  That Wentworth chose their side, and brought the King
+  To love it as though Laud had loved it first,
+  And the Queen after;--that he led their cause
+  Calm to success, and kept it spotless through,
+  So that our very eyes could look upon
+  The travail of our souls, and close content
+  That violence, which something mars even right
+  Which sanctions it, had taken off no grace
+  From its serene regard. Only a dream!
+
+  _Hampden._ We meet here to accomplish certain good
+  By obvious means, and keep tradition up
+  Of free assemblages, else obsolete,
+  In this poor chamber: nor without effect
+  Has friend met friend to counsel and confirm,
+  As, listening to the beats of England's heart,
+  We spoke its wants to Scotland's prompt reply
+  By these her delegates. Remains alone
+  That word grow deed, as with God's help it shall--
+  But with the devil's hindrance, who doubts too?
+  Looked we or no that tyranny should turn
+  Her engines of oppression to their use?
+  Whereof, suppose the worst be Wentworth here--
+  Shall we break off the tactics which succeed
+  In drawing out our formidablest foe,
+  Let bickering and disunion take their place?
+  Or count his presence as our conquest's proof,
+  And keep the old arms at their steady play?
+  Proceed to England's work! Fiennes, read the list!
+
+  _Fiennes._ Ship-money is refused or fiercely paid
+  In every county, save the northern parts
+  Where Wentworth's influence....
+
+[_Shouting._
+
+  _Vane._                         I, in England's name,
+  Declare her work, this way, at end! Till now,
+  Up to this moment, peaceful strife was best.
+  We English had free leave to think; till now,
+  We had a shadow of a Parliament
+  In Scotland. But all's changed: they change the first,
+  They try brute-force for law, they, first of all....
+
+  _Voices._ Good! Talk enough! The old true hearts with Vane!
+
+  _Vane._ Till we crush Wentworth for her, there's no act
+  Serves England!
+
+  _Voices._       Vane for England!
+
+  _Pym._                            Pym should be
+  Something to England. I seek Wentworth, friends.
+
+In the second scene of the first act, the man upon whom the popular
+party has been heaping opprobrium appears to speak for himself. Again
+the historical background must be known in order that the whole drift of
+the scene may be understood. Wentworth is talking with Lady Carlisle, a
+woman celebrated for her beauty and her wit, and fond of having
+friendships with great men. Various opinions of this beautiful woman
+have been expressed by those who knew her. "Her beauty," writes one,
+"brought her adorers of all ranks, courtiers, and poets, and statesmen;
+but she remained untouched by their worship." Sir Toby Mathews who
+prefixed to a collection of letters published in 1660 "A character of
+the most excellent Lady, Lucy, Countess of Carlisle," writes that she
+will "freely discourse of love, and hear both the fancies and powers of
+it; but if you will needs bring it within knowledge, and boldly direct
+it to herself, she is likely to divert the discourse, or, at least, seem
+not to understand it. By which you may know her humour, and her justice;
+for since she cannot love in earnest she would have nothing from love."
+According to him she filled her mind "with gallant fancies, and high and
+elevated thoughts," and "her wit being most eminent among the rest of
+her great abilities," even the conversation of those most famed for it
+was affected. Quite another view of her is given in a letter of
+Voiture's written to Mr. Gordon on leaving England in 1623.
+
+"In one human being you let me see more treasures than there are there
+[the Tower], and even more lions and leopards. It will not be difficult
+for you to guess after this that I speak of the Countess of Carlisle.
+For there is nobody else of whom all this good and evil can be said. No
+matter how dangerous it is to let the memory dwell upon her, I have not,
+so far, been able to keep mine from it, and, quite honestly, I would not
+give the picture of her that lingers in my mind, for all the loveliest
+things I have seen in my life. I must confess that she is an enchanting
+personality, and there would not be a woman under heaven so worthy of
+affection, if she only knew what it was, and if she had as sensitive a
+nature as she has a reasonable mind. But with the temperament we know
+she possesses, there is nothing to be said except that she is the most
+lovable of all things not good, and the most delightful poison that
+nature ever concocted." Browning himself says he first sketched her
+character from Mathews, but finding that rather artificial, he used
+Voiture and Waller, who referred to her as the "bright Carlisle of the
+Court of Heaven." It should be remembered that she had become a widow
+and was considerably older at the time of her friendship with Wentworth
+than when Voiture wrote of her, and was probably better balanced, and
+truly worthy of Wentworth's own appreciation of her when he wrote, "A
+nobler nor a more intelligent friendship did I never meet with in my
+life." A passage in a letter to Laud indicates that Wentworth was well
+aware of the practical advantage in having such a friend as Lady
+Carlisle at Court. "I judge her ladyship very considerable. She is often
+in place, and extremely well skilled how to speak with advantage and
+spirit for those friends she professeth unto, which will not be many.
+There is this further in her disposition, she will not seem to be the
+person she is not, an ingenuity I have always observed and honoured her
+for."
+
+It is something of a shock to learn that even before the Wentworth
+episode was well over, she became a friend of his bitterest foe, Pym.
+Gardiner sums up her character in as fair a way as any one,--and not at
+all inconsistent with Browning's portrayal of her.
+
+"Lady Carlisle had now been for many years a widow. She had long been
+the reigning beauty at Court, and she loved to mingle political intrigue
+with social intercourse. For politics as a serious occupation she had no
+aptitude; but, in middle age, she felt a woman's pride in attaching to
+herself the strong heads by which the world was ruled, as she had
+attached to herself in youth, the witty courtier or the agile dancer. It
+was worth a statesman's while to cultivate her acquaintance. She could
+make him a power in society as well as in Council, could worm out a
+secret which it behoved him to know, and could convey to others his
+suggestions with assured fidelity. The calumny which treated Strafford,
+as it afterwards treated Pym, as her accepted lover, may be safely
+disregarded. But there can be no doubt that purely personal motives
+attached her both to Strafford and Pym. For Strafford's theory of
+Monarchical government she cared as little as she cared for Pym's theory
+of Parliamentary government. It may be, too, that some mingled feeling
+may have arisen in Strafford's breast. It was something to have an ally
+at Court ready at all times to plead his cause with gay enthusiasm, to
+warn him of hidden dangers, and to offer him the thread of that
+labyrinth which, under the name of 'the Queen's side,' was such a
+mystery to him. It was something, too, no doubt, that this advocate was
+not a grey haired statesman, but a woman, in spite of growing years, of
+winning grace and sparkling vivacity of eye and tongue."
+
+[Illustration: Charles I]
+
+Strafford, himself, Browning brings before us, ill, and worn out with
+responsibility as he was upon his return to England at this time.
+Carlisle tactfully lets him know how he will have to face criticisms
+from other councillors about the King, and how even the confidence of
+the fickle King cannot be relied upon. In his conference with the King
+in this scene, Strafford, at last, wins the confidence of the King as
+history relates. Wentworth, horrified at the way in which a war with
+Scotland has been precipitated, carries his point, that Parliaments
+should be called in Ireland and England. This will give time for
+preparation, and at the same time an opportunity of convincing the
+people that the war is justified by Scotland's treason, so causing them
+willingly to grant subsidies for the expense of the war. To turn from
+the play to history, Commissioners from the Scottish Parliament, the
+Earls of Loudon and Dumferling had arrived in London to ask that the
+acts of the Scottish Parliament might receive confirmation from the
+King. This question was referred to a committee of eight Privy
+Councillors. Propositions were made to put the Scotch Commissioners in
+prison; however, the King finally decided to dismiss them without
+treating with them. Scottish indignation of course ran high at this
+proceeding, and here Wentworth stepped in and won the King to his policy
+of ruling Scotland directly from England. "He insisted," writes
+Gardiner, "that a Parliament, and a Parliament alone, was the remedy
+fitted for the occasion. Laud and Hamilton gave him their support. He
+carried his point with the Committee. What was of more importance he
+carried it with the King." And as one writer expressed it the Lords were
+of the opinion that "his Majesty should make trial of that once more,
+that so he might leave his people without excuse, and have where withal
+to justify himself to God and the world that in his own inclination he
+desired the old way; but that if his people should not cheerfully,
+according to their duties, meet him in that, especially in this exigent
+when his kingdom and person are in apparent danger, the world might see
+he is forced, contrary to his own inclination, to use extraordinary
+means rather than, by the peevishness of some few factious spirits, to
+suffer his state and government to be lost."
+
+In the play as in history, Charles now confers upon Wentworth an
+Earldom. Shortly after this the King "was prepared," says Gardiner, "to
+confer upon his faithful Minister that token of his confidence which he
+had twice refused before. On January 12, Wentworth received the Earldom
+of Strafford, and a week later he exchanged the title of Lord-Deputy of
+Ireland for the higher dignity of Lord-Lieutenant."
+
+In his conference with Pym, Strafford who, in talking to Carlisle, had
+shown a slight wavering toward the popular party, because of finding
+himself so surrounded by difficulties, stands firm; this episode is a
+striking working up of the tradition of the friendship between these
+two men.
+
+The influence of the Queen upon Charles is the last strand in this
+tangled skein of human destiny brought out by Browning in the scene. The
+Parliament that Wentworth wants she is afraid of lest it should ask for
+a renewal of the persecution of the Catholics. The vacillating Charles,
+in an instant, is ready to repudiate his interview with Wentworth, and
+act only to please the Queen.
+
+
+SCENE II.--_Whitehall._
+
+_+Lady+ CARLISLE and WENTWORTH_
+
+  _Wentworth._ And the King?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._          Wentworth, lean on me! Sit then!
+  I'll tell you all; this horrible fatigue
+  Will kill you.
+
+  _Wentworth._   No;--or, Lucy, just your arm;
+  I'll not sit till I've cleared this up with him:
+  After that, rest. The King?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._            Confides in you.
+
+  _Wentworth._ Why? or, why now?--They have kind throats, the knaves!
+  Shout for me--they!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._    You come so strangely soon:
+  Yet we took measures to keep off the crowd--
+  Did they shout for you?
+
+  _Wentworth._            Wherefore should they not?
+  Does the King take such measures for himself?
+  Besides, there's such a dearth of malcontents,
+  You say!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ I said but few dared carp at you.
+
+  _Wentworth._ At me? at us, I hope! The King and I!
+  He's surely not disposed to let me bear
+  The fame away from him of these late deeds
+  In Ireland? I am yet his instrument
+  Be it for well or ill? He trusts me too!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ The King, dear Wentworth, purposes, I said,
+  To grant you, in the face of all the Court....
+
+  _Wentworth._ All the Court! Evermore the Court about us!
+  Savile and Holland, Hamilton and Vane
+  About us,--then the King will grant me--what?
+  That he for once put these aside and say--
+  "Tell me your whole mind, Wentworth!"
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                      You professed
+  You would be calm.
+
+  _Wentworth._       Lucy, and I am calm!
+  How else shall I do all I come to do,
+  Broken, as you may see, body and mind,
+  How shall I serve the King? Time wastes meanwhile,
+  You have not told me half. His footstep! No.
+  Quick, then, before I meet him,--I am calm--
+  Why does the King distrust me?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._               He does not
+  Distrust you.
+
+  _Wentworth._ Lucy, you can help me; you
+  Have even seemed to care for me: one word!
+  Is it the Queen?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ No, not the Queen: the party
+  That poisons the Queen's ear, Savile and Holland.
+
+  _Wentworth._ I know, I know: old Vane, too, he's one too?
+  Go on--and he's made Secretary. Well?
+  Or leave them out and go straight to the charge--
+  The charge!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Oh, there's no charge, no precise charge;
+  Only they sneer, make light of--one may say,
+  Nibble at what you do.
+
+  _Wentworth._           I know! but, Lucy,
+  I reckoned on you from the first!--Go on!
+  --Was sure could I once see this gentle friend
+  When I arrived, she'd throw an hour away
+  To help her ... what am I?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._           You thought of me,
+  Dear Wentworth?
+
+  _Wentworth._    But go on! The party here!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ They do not think your Irish government
+  Of that surpassing value....
+
+  _Wentworth._                 The one thing
+  Of value! The one service that the crown
+  May count on! All that keeps these very Vanes
+  In power, to vex me--not that they do vex,
+  Only it might vex some to hear that service
+  Decried, the sole support that's left the King!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ So the Archbishop says.
+
+  _Wentworth._                             Ah? well, perhaps
+  The only hand held up in my defence
+  May be old Laud's! These Hollands then, these Saviles
+  Nibble? They nibble?--that's the very word!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Your profit in the Customs, Bristol says,
+  Exceeds the due proportion: while the tax....
+
+  _Wentworth._ Enough! 'tis too unworthy,--I am not
+  So patient as I thought. What's Pym about?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Pym?
+
+  _Wentworth._          Pym and the People.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                          O, the Faction!
+  Extinct--of no account: there'll never be
+  Another Parliament.
+
+  _Wentworth._        Tell Savile that!
+  You may know--(ay, you do--the creatures here
+  Never forget!) that in my earliest life
+  I was not ... much that I am now! The King
+  May take my word on points concerning Pym
+  Before Lord Savile's, Lucy, or if not,
+  I bid them ruin their wise selves, not me,
+  These Vanes and Hollands! I'll not be their tool
+  Who might be Pym's friend yet.
+                                   But there's the King!
+  Where is he?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Just apprised that you arrive.
+
+  _Wentworth._ And why not here to meet me? I was told
+  He sent for me, nay, longed for me.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                    Because,--
+  He is now ... I think a Council's sitting now
+  About this Scots affair.
+
+  _Wentworth._            A Council sits?
+  They have not taken a decided course
+  Without me in the matter?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._          I should say....
+
+  _Wentworth._ The war? They cannot have agreed to that?
+  Not the Scots' war?--without consulting me--
+  Me, that am here to show how rash it is,
+  How easy to dispense with?--Ah, you too
+  Against me! well,--the King may take his time.
+  --Forget it, Lucy! Cares make peevish: mine
+  Weigh me (but 'tis a secret) to my grave.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ For life or death I am your own, dear friend!
+
+[_Goes out._
+
+  _Wentworth._ Heartless! but all are heartless here. Go now,
+  Forsake the People!
+                      I did not forsake
+  The People: they shall know it, when the King
+  Will trust me!--who trusts all beside at once,
+  While I have not spoke Vane and Savile fair,
+  And am not trusted: have but saved the throne:
+  Have not picked up the Queen's glove prettily,
+  And am not trusted. But he'll see me now.
+  Weston is dead: the Queen's half English now--
+  More English: one decisive word will brush
+  These insects from ... the step I know so well!
+  The King! But now, to tell him ... no--to ask
+  What's in me he distrusts:--or, best begin
+  By proving that this frightful Scots affair
+  Is just what I foretold. So much to say,
+  And the flesh fails, now, and the time is come,
+  And one false step no way to be repaired.
+  You were avenged, Pym, could you look on me.
+
+_PYM enters._
+
+  _Wentworth._ I little thought of you just then.
+
+  _Pym._                                          No? I
+  Think always of you, Wentworth.
+
+  _Wentworth._                    The old voice!
+  I wait the King, sir.
+
+  _Pym._                True--you look so pale!
+  A Council sits within; when that breaks up
+  He'll see you.
+
+  _Wentworth._   Sir, I thank you.
+
+  _Pym._                           Oh, thank Laud!
+  You know when Laud once gets on Church affairs
+  The case is desperate: he'll not be long
+  To-day: he only means to prove, to-day,
+  We English all are mad to have a hand
+  In butchering the Scots for serving God
+  After their fathers' fashion: only that!
+
+[Illustration: Whitehall]
+
+  _Wentworth._ Sir, keep your jests for those who relish them!
+  (Does he enjoy their confidence?) 'Tis kind
+  To tell me what the Council does.
+
+  _Pym._                            You grudge
+  That I should know it had resolved on war
+  Before you came? no need: you shall have all
+  The credit, trust me!
+
+  _Wentworth._          Have the Council dared--
+  They have not dared ... that is--I know you not.
+  Farewell, sir: times are changed.
+
+  _Pym._                            --Since we two met
+  At Greenwich? Yes: poor patriots though we be,
+  You cut a figure, makes some slight return
+  For your exploits in Ireland! Changed indeed,
+  Could our friend Eliot look from out his grave!
+  Ah, Wentworth, one thing for acquaintance' sake,
+  Just to decide a question; have you, now,
+  Felt your old self since you forsook us?
+
+  _Wentworth._                             Sir!
+
+  _Pym._ Spare me the gesture! you misapprehend.
+  Think not I mean the advantage is with me.
+  I was about to say that, for my part,
+  I never quite held up my head since then--
+  Was quite myself since then: for first, you see,
+  I lost all credit after that event
+  With those who recollect how sure I was
+  Wentworth would outdo Eliot on our side.
+  Forgive me: Savile, old Vane, Holland here,
+  Eschew plain-speaking: 'tis a trick I keep.
+
+  _Wentworth._ How, when, where, Savile, Vane, and Holland speak,
+  Plainly or otherwise, would have my scorn,
+  All of my scorn, sir....
+
+  _Pym._                   ... Did not my poor thoughts
+  Claim somewhat?
+
+  _Wentworth._    Keep your thoughts! believe the King
+  Mistrusts me for their prattle, all these Vanes
+  And Saviles! make your mind up, o' God's love,
+  That I am discontented with the King!
+
+  _Pym._ Why, you may be: I should be, that I know,
+  Were I like you.
+
+  _Wentworth._     Like me?
+
+  _Pym._                    I care not much
+  For titles: our friend Eliot died no lord,
+  Hampden's no lord, and Savile is a lord;
+  But you care, since you sold your soul for one.
+  I can't think, therefore, your soul's purchaser
+  Did well to laugh you to such utter scorn
+  When you twice prayed so humbly for its price,
+  The thirty silver pieces ... I should say,
+  The Earldom you expected, still expect,
+  And may. Your letters were the movingest!
+  Console yourself: I've borne him prayers just now
+  From Scotland not to be oppressed by Laud,
+  Words moving in their way: he'll pay, be sure,
+  As much attention as to those you sent.
+
+  _Wentworth._ False, sir! Who showed them you? Suppose it so,
+  The King did very well ... nay, I was glad
+  When it was shown me: I refused, the first!
+  John Pym, you were my friend--forbear me once!
+
+  _Pym._ Oh, Wentworth, ancient brother of my soul,
+  That all should come to this!
+
+  _Wentworth._                  Leave me!
+
+  _Pym._                                  My friend,
+  Why should I leave you?
+
+  _Wentworth._            To tell Rudyard this,
+  And Hampden this!
+
+  _Pym._            Whose faces once were bright
+  At my approach, now sad with doubt and fear,
+  Because I hope in you--yes, Wentworth, you
+  Who never mean to ruin England--you
+  Who shake off, with God's help, an obscene dream
+  In this Ezekiel chamber, where it crept
+  Upon you first, and wake, yourself, your true
+  And proper self, our Leader, England's Chief,
+  And Hampden's friend!
+                        This is the proudest day!
+  Come, Wentworth! Do not even see the King!
+  The rough old room will seem itself again!
+  We'll both go in together: you've not seen
+  Hampden so long: come: and there's Fiennes: you'll have
+  To know young Vane. This is the proudest day!
+
+[_The KING enters. WENTWORTH lets fall PYM'S hand._
+
+  _Charles._ Arrived, my lord?--This gentleman, we know
+  Was your old friend.
+                       The Scots shall be informed
+  What we determine for their happiness.
+
+[_PYM goes out._
+
+  You have made haste, my lord.
+
+  _Wentworth._                  Sir, I am come....
+
+  _Charles._ To see an old familiar--nay, 'tis well;
+  Aid us with his experience: this Scots' League
+  And Covenant spreads too far, and we have proofs
+  That they intrigue with France: the Faction too,
+  Whereof your friend there is the head and front,
+  Abets them,--as he boasted, very like.
+
+  _Wentworth._ Sir, trust me! but for this once, trust me, sir!
+
+  _Charles._ What can you mean?
+
+  _Wentworth._ That you should trust me, sir!
+  Oh--not for my sake! but 'tis sad, so sad
+  That for distrusting me, you suffer--you
+  Whom I would die to serve: sir, do you think
+  That I would die to serve you?
+
+  _Charles._                     But rise, Wentworth!
+
+  _Wentworth._ What shall convince you? What does Savile do
+  To prove him.... Ah, one can't tear out one's heart
+  And show it, how sincere a thing it is!
+
+  _Charles._ Have I not trusted you?
+
+  _Wentworth._                       Say aught but that!
+  There is my comfort, mark you: all will be
+  So different when you trust me--as you shall!
+  It has not been your fault,--I was away,
+  Mistook, maligned, how was the King to know?
+  I am here, now--he means to trust me, now--
+  All will go on so well!
+
+  _Charles._              Be sure I do--
+  I've heard that I should trust you: as you came,
+  Your friend, the Countess, told me....
+
+  _Wentworth._                           No,--hear nothing--
+  Be told nothing about me!--you're not told
+  Your right-hand serves you, or your children love you!
+
+  _Charles._ You love me, Wentworth: rise!
+
+  _Wentworth._                             I can speak now.
+  I have no right to hide the truth. 'Tis I
+  Can save you: only I. Sir, what must be?
+
+  _Charles._ Since Laud's assured (the minutes are within)
+  --Loath as I am to spill my subjects' blood....
+
+  _Wentworth._ That is, he'll have a war: what's done is done!
+
+  _Charles._ They have intrigued with France; that's clear to Laud.
+
+  _Wentworth._ Has Laud suggested any way to meet
+  The war's expense?
+
+  _Charles._         He'd not decide so far
+  Until you joined us.
+
+  _Wentworth._         Most considerate!
+  He's certain they intrigue with France, these Scots?
+  The People would be with us.
+
+  _Charles._                   Pym should know.
+
+  _Wentworth._ The People for us--were the People for us!
+  Sir, a great thought comes to reward your trust:
+  Summon a Parliament! in Ireland first,
+  Then, here.
+
+  _Charles._ In truth?
+
+  _Wentworth._          That saves us! that puts off
+  The war, gives time to right their grievances--
+  To talk with Pym. I know the Faction,--Laud
+  So styles it,--tutors Scotland: all their plans
+  Suppose no Parliament: in calling one
+  You take them by surprise. Produce the proofs
+  Of Scotland's treason; then bid England help:
+  Even Pym will not refuse.
+
+  _Charles._                You would begin
+  With Ireland?
+
+  _Wentworth._ Take no care for that: that's sure
+  To prosper.
+
+  _Charles._ You shall rule me. You were best
+  Return at once: but take this ere you go!
+  Now, do I trust you? You're an Earl: my Friend
+  Of Friends: yes, while.... You hear me not!
+
+  _Wentworth._ Say it all o'er again--but once again:
+  The first was for the music: once again!
+
+  _Charles._ Strafford, my friend, there may have been reports,
+  Vain rumors. Henceforth touching Strafford is
+  To touch the apple of my sight: why gaze
+  So earnestly?
+
+  _Wentworth._ I am grown young again,
+  And foolish. What was it we spoke of?
+
+  _Charles._                            Ireland,
+  The Parliament,--
+
+  _Wentworth._      I may go when I will?
+  --Now?
+
+  _Charles._ Are you tired so soon of us?
+
+  _Wentworth._                            My King!
+  But you will not so utterly abhor
+  A Parliament? I'd serve you any way.
+
+  _Charles._ You said just now this was the only way.
+
+  _Wentworth._ Sir, I will serve you.
+
+  _Charles._                          Strafford, spare yourself:
+  You are so sick, they tell me.
+
+  _Wentworth._                   'Tis my soul
+  That's well and prospers now.
+                                This Parliament--
+  We'll summon it, the English one--I'll care
+  For everything. You shall not need them much.
+
+  _Charles._ If they prove restive....
+
+  _Wentworth._                         I shall be with you.
+
+  _Charles._ Ere they assemble?
+
+  _Wentworth._                  I will come, or else
+  Deposit this infirm humanity
+  I' the dust. My whole heart stays with you, my King!
+
+[_As WENTWORTH goes out, the QUEEN enters._
+
+  _Charles._ That man must love me.
+
+  _Queen._                          Is it over then?
+  Why, he looks yellower than ever! Well,
+  At least we shall not hear eternally
+  Of service--services: he's paid at least.
+
+  _Charles._ Not done with: he engages to surpass
+  All yet performed in Ireland.
+
+  _Queen._                      I had thought
+  Nothing beyond was ever to be done.
+  The war, Charles--will he raise supplies enough?
+
+  _Charles._ We've hit on an expedient; he ... that is,
+  I have advised ... we have decided on
+  The calling--in Ireland--of a Parliament.
+
+  _Queen._ O truly! You agree to that? Is that
+  The first fruit of his counsel? But I guessed
+  As much.
+
+  _Charles._   This is too idle, Henriette!
+  I should know best. He will strain every nerve,
+  And once a precedent established....
+
+  _Queen._                              Notice
+  How sure he is of a long term of favor!
+  He'll see the next, and the next after that;
+  No end to Parliaments!
+
+  _Charles._             Well, it is done.
+  He talks it smoothly, doubtless. If, indeed,
+  The Commons here....
+
+  _Queen._             Here! you will summon them
+  Here? Would I were in France again to see
+  A King!
+
+  _Charles._ But, Henriette....
+
+  _Queen._                      Oh, the Scots see clear!
+  Why should they bear your rule?
+
+  _Charles._                      But listen, sweet!
+
+  _Queen._ Let Wentworth listen--you confide in him!
+
+  _Charles._ I do not, love,--I do not so confide!
+  The Parliament shall never trouble us
+  ... Nay, hear me! I have schemes, such schemes: we'll buy
+  The leaders off: without that, Wentworth's counsel
+  Had ne'er prevailed on me. Perhaps I call it
+  To have excuse for breaking it for ever,
+  And whose will then the blame be? See you not?
+  Come, dearest!--look, the little fairy, now,
+  That cannot reach my shoulder! Dearest, come!
+
+In the second act, the historical episode, which pervades the act is the
+assembling and the dissolution of the Short Parliament. Only the salient
+points of the political situation have been seized upon by Browning. As
+in the first act, the popular party in private conclave is introduced.
+From the talk it is gathered that feeling runs high against Strafford,
+by whose advice the Parliament had been called, because of the
+exorbitant demands made upon it for money to support an army, this army
+to crush Scotland whose cause was so nearly like its own. The popular
+party or the Faction had supposed the Parliament would be a means for
+the redressing of its long list of grievances which had been
+accumulating during the years since the last Parliament had been held.
+Instead of that the Commons was deliberately informed by Charles that
+there would be no discussions of its demands until it had granted the
+subsidies for which it had been asked. The play gives one a much more
+lively sense of the indignant feelings of the duped men than can
+possibly be gained by reading many more pages of history with its
+endless minor details. Upon this gathering, Pym suddenly enters again,
+and to the reproaches of him for his belief in Strafford, makes the
+reply that the Parliament has been dissolved, the King has cast
+Strafford off forever, and henceforth Strafford will be on their
+side,--a conclusion not warranted by history, and, of course, found out
+to be erroneous by Pym and his followers in the next scene. Again there
+is the dramatic need to emphasize the human side of life even in an
+essentially political play, by showing that Pym's friendship and loyalty
+to Wentworth were no uncertain elements in his character. The moment it
+could be proved beyond a doubt that Wentworth was in the eyes of Pym,
+England's enemy, that moment Pym knew it would become his painful duty
+to crush Wentworth utterly, therefore Pym had for his own conscience'
+sake to make the uttermost trial of his faith.
+
+The second scene, as in the first act, brings out the other side. It is
+in the main true to history though much condensed. History relates that
+after the Short Parliament was dissolved, "voices were raised at
+Whitehall in condemnation of Strafford." His policy of raising subsidies
+from the Parliament having failed, criticisms would, of course, be made
+upon his having pushed ahead a war without the proper means of
+sustaining it. Charles himself was also frightened by the manifestations
+of popular discontent and failed to uphold Wentworth in his policy.
+
+Northumberland had been appointed commander-in-chief of the army, but
+besides having little heart for an enterprise so badly prepared for, he
+was ill in bed and could not take command of the army, so the King
+appointed Strafford in his place. A hint of Strafford as he appears in
+this scene may be taken from Clarendon who writes "The earl of Strafford
+was scarce recovered from a great sickness, yet was willing to undertake
+the charge out of pure indignation to see how few men were forward to
+serve the King with that vigor of mind they ought to do; but knowing
+well the malicious designs which were contrived against himself,
+he would rather serve as lieutenant-general under the earl of
+Northumberland, than that he should resign his commission: and so, with
+and under that qualification, he made all possible haste towards the
+north before he had strength enough for the journey." Browning makes the
+King tell Strafford in this interview that he has dissolved the
+Parliament. He represents Strafford as horrified by the news and driven
+in this extremity to suggest the desperate measure of debasing the
+coinage as a means of obtaining funds. Strafford actually counseled
+this, when all else failed, namely, the proposed loan from the city, and
+one from the Spanish government, but, according to history, he himself
+voted for the dissolution of Parliament, though the play is accurate in
+laying the necessity of the dissolution at the door of old Vane. It was
+truly his ill-judged vehemence, for, not able to brook the arguments of
+the Commons, "He rose," says Gardiner, "to state that the King would
+accept nothing less than the twelve subsidies which he had demanded in
+his message. Upon this the Committee broke up without coming to a
+resolution, postponing further consideration of the matter to the
+following day." The next morning the King who had called his councillors
+together early "announced his intention of proceeding to a dissolution.
+Strafford, who arrived late, begged that the question might first be
+seriously discussed, and that the opinions of the Councillors, who were
+also members of the Lower House, might first be heard. Vane declared
+that there was no hope that the Commons 'would give one penny.' On this
+the votes were taken. Northumberland and Holland were alone in wishing
+to avert a dissolution. Supported by the rest of the Council the King
+hurried to the House of Lords and dissolved Parliament."
+
+Wholly imaginary is the episode in this scene where Pym and his
+followers break in upon the interview of Wentworth and the King. Just
+at the climax of Wentworth's sorrowful rage at the King's treatment of
+him, they come to claim Wentworth for their side.
+
+  That you would say I did advise the war;
+  And if, through your own weakness, or what's worse,
+  These Scots, with God to help them, drive me back,
+  You will not step between the raging People
+  And me, to say....
+                     I knew it! from the first
+  I knew it! Never was so cold a heart!
+  Remember that I said it--that I never
+  Believed you for a moment!
+                             --And, you loved me?
+  You thought your perfidy profoundly hid
+  Because I could not share the whisperings
+  With Vane, with Savile? What, the face was masked?
+  I had the heart to see, sir! Face of flesh,
+  But heart of stone--of smooth cold frightful stone!
+  Ay, call them! Shall I call for you? The Scots
+  Goaded to madness? Or the English--Pym--
+  Shall I call Pym, your subject? Oh, you think
+  I'll leave them in the dark about it all?
+  They shall not know you? Hampden, Pym shall not?
+
+_PYM, HAMPDEN, VANE, etc., enter._
+
+  [_Dropping on his knee._] Thus favored with your gracious countenance
+  What shall a rebel League avail against
+  Your servant, utterly and ever yours?
+  So, gentlemen, the King's not even left
+  The privilege of bidding me farewell
+  Who haste to save the People--that you style
+  Your People--from the mercies of the Scots
+  And France their friend?
+  [_To CHARLES._] Pym's grave grey eyes are fixed
+  Upon you, sir!
+                 Your pleasure, gentlemen?
+
+  _Hampden._ The King dissolved us--'tis the King we seek
+  And not Lord Strafford.
+
+  _Strafford._            --Strafford, guilty too
+  Of counselling the measure. [_To CHARLES._] (Hush ... you know--
+  You have forgotten--sir, I counselled it)
+  A heinous matter, truly! But the King
+  Will yet see cause to thank me for a course
+  Which now, perchance ... (Sir, tell them so!)--he blames.
+  Well, choose some fitter time to make your charge:
+  I shall be with the Scots, you understand?
+  Then yelp at me!
+                   Meanwhile, your Majesty
+  Binds me, by this fresh token of your trust....
+
+[_Under the pretence of an earnest farewell, STRAFFORD conducts CHARLES
+to the door, in such a manner as to hide his agitation from the rest: as
+the King disappears, they turn as by one impulse to PYM, who has not
+changed his original posture of surprise._
+
+  _Hampden._ Leave we this arrogant strong wicked man!
+
+  _Vane and others._ Hence, Pym! Come out of this unworthy place
+  To our old room again! He's gone.
+
+[_STRAFFORD, just about to follow the KING, looks back._
+
+  _Pym._                            Not gone!
+  [_To STRAFFORD._] Keep tryst! the old appointment's made anew:
+  Forget not we shall meet again!
+
+  _Strafford._                    So be it!
+  And if an army follows me?
+
+  _Vane._                    His friends
+  Will entertain your army!
+
+  _Pym._                    I'll not say
+  You have misreckoned, Strafford: time shows.
+                                               Perish
+  Body and spirit! Fool to feign a doubt,
+  Pretend the scrupulous and nice reserve
+  Of one whose prowess shall achieve the feat!
+  What share have I in it? Do I affect
+  To see no dismal sign above your head
+  When God suspends his ruinous thunder there?
+  Strafford is doomed. Touch him no one of you!
+
+[_PYM, HAMPDEN, etc., go out._
+
+  _Strafford._ Pym, we shall meet again!
+
+In the final talk of this scene with Carlisle, the pathos of Strafford's
+position is wonderfully brought out--the man who loves his King so
+overmuch that no perfidy on the King's part can make his resolution to
+serve him waver for an instant.
+
+_+Lady+ CARLISLE enters._
+
+                                You here, child?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                              Hush--
+  I know it all: hush, Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                    Ah? you know?
+  Well. I shall make a sorry soldier, Lucy!
+  All knights begin their enterprise, we read,
+  Under the best of auspices; 'tis morn,
+  The Lady girds his sword upon the Youth
+  (He's always very young)--the trumpets sound,
+  Cups pledge him, and, why, the King blesses him--
+  You need not turn a page of the romance
+  To learn the Dreadful Giant's fate. Indeed,
+  We've the fair Lady here; but she apart,--
+  A poor man, rarely having handled lance,
+  And rather old, weary, and far from sure
+  His Squires are not the Giant's friends. All's one:
+  Let us go forth!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Go forth?
+
+  _Strafford._               What matters it?
+  We shall die gloriously--as the book says.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ To Scotland? Not to Scotland?
+
+  _Strafford._                                   Am I sick
+  Like your good brother, brave Northumberland?
+  Beside, these walls seem falling on me.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                        Strafford,
+  The wind that saps these walls can undermine
+  Your camp in Scotland, too. Whence creeps the wind?
+  Have you no eyes except for Pym? Look here!
+  A breed of silken creatures lurk and thrive
+  In your contempt. You'll vanquish Pym? Old Vane
+  Can vanquish you. And Vane you think to fly?
+  Rush on the Scots! Do nobly! Vane's slight sneer
+  Shall test success, adjust the praise, suggest
+  The faint result: Vane's sneer shall reach you there.
+  --You do not listen!
+
+  _Strafford._         Oh,--I give that up!
+  There's fate in it: I give all here quite up.
+  Care not what old Vane does or Holland does
+  Against me! 'Tis so idle to withstand!
+  In no case tell me what they do!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                But, Strafford....
+
+  _Strafford._ I want a little strife, beside; real strife;
+  This petty palace-warfare does me harm:
+  I shall feel better, fairly out of it.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                        Why do you smile?
+
+  _Strafford._ I got to fear them, child!
+  I could have torn his throat at first, old Vane's,
+  As he leered at me on his stealthy way
+  To the Queen's closet. Lord, one loses heart!
+  I often found it on my lips to say
+  "Do not traduce me to her!"
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._            But the King....
+
+  _Strafford._ The King stood there, 'tis not so long ago,
+  --There; and the whisper, Lucy, "Be my friend
+  Of friends!"--My King! I would have....
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                        ... Died for him?
+
+  _Strafford._ Sworn him true, Lucy: I can die for him.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ But go not, Strafford! But you must renounce
+  This project on the Scots! Die, wherefore die?
+  Charles never loved you.
+
+  _Strafford._             And he never will.
+  He's not of those who care the more for men
+  That they're unfortunate.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._          Then wherefore die
+  For such a master?
+
+  _Strafford._       You that told me first
+  How good he was--when I must leave true friends
+  To find a truer friend!--that drew me here
+  From Ireland,--"I had but to show myself
+  And Charles would spurn Vane, Savile, and the rest"--
+  You, child, to ask me this?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._            (If he have set
+  His heart abidingly on Charles!)
+                                   Then, friend,
+  I shall not see you any more.
+
+  _Strafford._                  Yes, Lucy.
+  There's one man here I have to meet.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                     (The King!
+  What way to save him from the King?
+                                      My soul--
+  That lent from its own store the charmed disguise
+  Which clothes the King--he shall behold my soul!)
+  Strafford,--I shall speak best if you'll not gaze
+  Upon me: I had never thought, indeed,
+  To speak, but you would perish too, so sure!
+  Could you but know what 'tis to bear, my friend,
+  One image stamped within you, turning blank
+  The else imperial brilliance of your mind,--
+  A weakness, but most precious,--like a flaw
+  I' the diamond, which should shape forth some sweet face
+  Yet to create, and meanwhile treasured there
+  Lest nature lose her gracious thought for ever!
+
+  _Strafford._ When could it be? no! Yet ... was it the day
+  We waited in the anteroom, till Holland
+  Should leave the presence-chamber?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                   What?
+
+  _Strafford._                            --That I
+  Described to you my love for Charles?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                    (Ah, no--
+  One must not lure him from a love like that!
+  Oh, let him love the King and die! 'Tis past.
+  I shall not serve him worse for that one brief
+  And passionate hope, silent for ever now!)
+  And you are really bound for Scotland then?
+  I wish you well: you must be very sure
+  Of the King's faith, for Pym and all his crew
+  Will not be idle--setting Vane aside!
+
+  _Strafford._ If Pym is busy,--you may write of Pym.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ What need, since there's your King to take your part?
+  He may endure Vane's counsel; but for Pym--
+  Think you he'll suffer Pym to....
+
+  _Strafford._                      Child, your hair
+  Is glossier than the Queen's!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._              Is that to ask
+  A curl of me?
+
+  _Strafford._ Scotland----the weary way!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Stay, let me fasten it.
+                                          --A rival's, Strafford?
+
+  _Strafford_ [_showing the George_]. He hung it there: twine yours
+          around it, child!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ No--no--another time--I trifle so!
+  And there's a masque on foot. Farewell. The Court
+  Is dull; do something to enliven us
+  In Scotland: we expect it at your hands.
+
+  _Strafford._ I shall not fail in Scotland.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                           Prosper--if
+  You'll think of me sometimes!
+
+  _Strafford._                  How think of him
+  And not of you? of you, the lingering streak
+  (A golden one) in my good fortune's eve.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Strafford.... Well, when the eve has its last streak
+  The night has its first star.
+
+[_She goes out._
+
+  _Strafford._                  That voice of hers--
+  You'd think she had a heart sometimes! His voice
+  Is soft too.
+               Only God can save him now.
+  Be Thou about his bed, about his path!
+  His path! Where's England's path? Diverging wide,
+  And not to join again the track my foot
+  Must follow--whither? All that forlorn way
+  Among the tombs! Far--far--till.... What, they do
+  Then join again, these paths? For, huge in the dusk,
+  There's--Pym to face!
+                        Why then, I have a foe
+  To close with, and a fight to fight at last
+  Worthy my soul! What, do they beard the King,
+  And shall the King want Strafford at his need?
+  Am I not here?
+                 Not in the market-place,
+  Pressed on by the rough artisans, so proud
+  To catch a glance from Wentworth! They lie down
+  Hungry yet smile "Why, it must end some day:
+  Is he not watching for our sake?" Not there!
+  But in Whitehall, the whited sepulchre,
+  The....
+          Curse nothing to-night! Only one name
+  They'll curse in all those streets to-night. Whose fault?
+  Did I make kings? set up, the first, a man
+  To represent the multitude, receive
+  All love in right of them--supplant them so,
+  Until you love the man and not the king----
+  The man with the mild voice and mournful eyes
+  Which send me forth.
+                       --To breast the bloody sea
+  That sweeps before me: with one star for guide.
+  Night has its first, supreme, forsaken star.
+
+During the third act, the long Parliament is in session, and Pym is
+making his great speech impeaching Wentworth.
+
+The conditions of affairs at the time of this Parliament were well-nigh
+desperate for Charles and Wentworth. Things had not gone well with the
+Scottish war and Wentworth was falling more and more into disfavor.
+England was now threatened with a Scottish invasion. Still, even with
+this danger to face it was impossible to raise money to support the
+army. The English had a suspicion that the Scotch cause was their own.
+The universal demand for a Parliament could no longer be ignored; the
+King, therefore, summoned it to meet on the third of November. As Firth
+observes, "To Strafford this meant ruin, but he hardly realized the
+greatness of the danger in which he stood. On October 8, the Scotch
+Commissioners in a public paper denounced him as an incendiary, and
+declared that they meant to insist on his punishment.
+
+"As soon as the Parliament opened Charles discovered that it was
+necessary for his service to have Strafford again by his side, and
+summoned him to London. There is evidence that his friends urged him to
+pass over to Ireland where the army rested at his devotion, or to
+transport himself to foreign Kingdoms till fairer weather here should
+invite him home. The Marquis of Hamilton advised him to fly, but as
+Hamilton told the King, the Earl was too great-hearted to fear. Though
+conscious of the peril of obedience, he set out to London to stand by
+his Master."
+
+The enmity of the Court party to Strafford is touched upon in the first
+scene, and in the second, Strafford's return, unsuspecting of the great
+blow that awaits him. He had indeed meditated a blow on his own part.
+According to Firth, he felt that "One desperate resource remained. The
+intrigues of the parliamentary leaders with the Scots had come to
+Strafford's knowledge, and he had determined to impeach them of high
+treason. He could prove that Pym and his friends had secretly
+communicated with the rebels, and invited them to bring a Scottish army
+into England. Strafford arrived in London on Monday, November 9, 1640,
+and spent Tuesday in resting after his journey. On the morning of
+Wednesday the 11th, he took his seat in the House of Lords, but did not
+strike the blow." Upon that day he was impeached of high treason by Pym.
+Gardiner's account here has much the same dramatic force as the play.
+
+"Followed by a crowd of approving members, Pym carried up the message.
+Whilst the Lords were still debating on this unusual request for
+imprisonment before the charge had been set forth, the news of the
+impeachment was carried to Strafford. 'I will go,' he proudly said 'and
+look my accusers in the face.' With haughty mien and scowling brow he
+strode up the floor of the House to his place of honor. There were those
+amongst the Peers who had no wish to allow him to speak, lest he should
+accuse them of complicity with the Scots. The Lords, as a body, felt
+even more personally aggrieved by his method of government than the
+Commons. Shouts of 'Withdraw! withdraw!' rose from every side. As soon
+as he was gone an order was passed sequestering the Lord-Lieutenant from
+his place in the House and committing him to the custody of the
+Gentleman Usher. He was then called in and bidden to kneel whilst the
+order was read. He asked permission to speak, but his request was
+sternly refused. Maxwell, the Usher of the Black Rod, took from him his
+sword, and conducted him out of the House. The crowd outside gazed
+pitilessly on the fallen minister, 'No man capping to him, before whom
+that morning the greatest in England would have stood dis-covered.'
+'What is the matter?' they asked. 'A small matter, I warrant you,'
+replied Strafford with forced levity. 'Yes, indeed,' answered a
+bystander, 'high treason is a small matter.'"
+
+This passage brings up the scene in a manner so similar to that of the
+play, it is safe to say that Gardiner was here influenced by Browning,
+the history having been written many years after the play.
+
+
+SCENE II.--_Whitehall._
+
+_The QUEEN and +Lady+ CARLISLE._
+
+  _Queen._ It cannot be.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._       It is so.
+
+  _Queen._                         Why, the House
+  Have hardly met.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ They met for that.
+
+  _Queen._                            No, no!
+  Meet to impeach Lord Strafford? 'Tis a jest.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ A bitter one.
+
+  _Queen._                       Consider! 'Tis the House
+  We summoned so reluctantly, which nothing
+  But the disastrous issue of the war
+  Persuaded us to summon. They'll wreak all
+  Their spite on us, no doubt; but the old way
+  Is to begin by talk of grievances:
+  They have their grievances to busy them.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Pym has begun his speech.
+
+  _Queen._                                   Where's Vane?--That is,
+  Pym will impeach Lord Strafford if he leaves
+  His Presidency; he's at York, we know,
+  Since the Scots beat him: why should he leave York?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Because the King sent for him.
+
+  _Queen._                                        Ah--but if
+  The King did send for him, he let him know
+  We had been forced to call a Parliament--
+  A step which Strafford, now I come to think,
+  Was vehement against.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._      The policy
+  Escaped him, of first striking Parliaments
+  To earth, then setting them upon their feet
+  And giving them a sword: but this is idle.
+  Did the King send for Strafford? He will come.
+
+  _Queen._ And what am I to do?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ What do? Fail, madam!
+  Be ruined for his sake! what matters how,
+  So it but stand on record that you made
+  An effort, only one?
+
+  _Queen._             The King away
+  At Theobald's!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Send for him at once: he must
+  Dissolve the House.
+
+  _Queen._            Wait till Vane finds the truth
+  Of the report: then....
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._        --It will matter little
+  What the King does. Strafford that lends his arm
+  And breaks his heart for you!
+
+_+Sir+ H. VANE enters._
+
+  _Vane._                       The Commons, madam,
+  Are sitting with closed doors. A huge debate,
+  No lack of noise; but nothing, I should guess,
+  Concerning Strafford: Pym has certainly
+  Not spoken yet.
+
+  _Queen_ [_to +Lady+ CARLISLE_]. You hear?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                           I do not hear
+  That the King's sent for!
+
+  _Vane._                   Savile will be able
+  To tell you more.
+
+_HOLLAND enters._
+
+  _Queen._          The last news, Holland?
+
+  _Holland._                                Pym
+  Is raging like a fire. The whole House means
+  To follow him together to Whitehall
+  And force the King to give up Strafford.
+
+  _Queen._                                 Strafford?
+
+  _Holland._ If they content themselves with Strafford! Laud
+  Is talked of, Cottington and Windebank too.
+  Pym has not left out one of them--I would
+  You heard Pym raging!
+
+  _Queen._              Vane, go find the King!
+  Tell the King, Vane, the People follow Pym
+  To brave us at Whitehall!
+
+_SAVILE enters._
+
+  _Savile._                 Not to Whitehall--
+  'Tis to the Lords they go: they seek redress
+  On Strafford from his peers--the legal way,
+  They call it.
+
+  _Queen._      (Wait, Vane!)
+
+  _Savile._                   But the adage gives
+  Long life to threatened men. Strafford can save
+  Himself so readily: at York, remember,
+  In his own country: what has he to fear?
+  The Commons only mean to frighten him
+  From leaving York. Surely, he will not come.
+
+  _Queen._ Lucy, he will not come!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                 Once more, the King
+  Has sent for Strafford. He will come.
+
+  _Vane._                               Oh doubtless!
+  And bring destruction with him: that's his way.
+  What but his coming spoilt all Conway's plan?
+  The King must take his counsel, choose his friends,
+  Be wholly ruled by him! What's the result?
+  The North that was to rise, Ireland to help,--
+  What came of it? In my poor mind, a fright
+  Is no prodigious punishment.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._             A fright?
+  Pym will fail worse than Strafford if he thinks
+  To frighten him. [_To the QUEEN._] You will not save him then?
+
+  _Savile._ When something like a charge is made, the King
+  Will best know how to save him: and t'is clear,
+  While Strafford suffers nothing by the matter,
+  The King may reap advantage: this in question,
+  No dinning you with ship-money complaints!
+
+  _Queen_ [_to +Lady+ CARLISLE_]. If we dissolve them, who will pay
+          the army?
+  Protect us from the insolent Scots?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                    In truth,
+  I know not, madam. Strafford's fate concerns
+  Me little: you desired to learn what course
+  Would save him: I obey you.
+
+  _Vane._                     Notice, too,
+  There can't be fairer ground for taking full
+  Revenge--(Strafford's revengeful)--than he'll have
+  Against his old friend Pym.
+
+  _Queen._                    Why, he shall claim
+  Vengeance on Pym!
+
+  _Vane._           And Strafford, who is he
+  To 'scape unscathed amid the accidents
+  That harass all beside? I, for my part,
+  Should look for something of discomfiture
+  Had the King trusted me so thoroughly
+  And been so paid for it.
+
+  _Holland._               He'll keep at York:
+  All will blow over: he'll return no worse,
+  Humbled a little, thankful for a place
+  Under as good a man. Oh, we'll dispense
+  With seeing Strafford for a month or two!
+
+_STRAFFORD enters._
+
+  _Queen._ You here!
+
+  _Strafford._      The King sends for me, madam.
+
+  _Queen._                                        Sir,
+  The King....
+
+  _Strafford._ An urgent matter that imports the King!
+  [_To +Lady+ CARLISLE._] Why, Lucy, what's in agitation now,
+  That all this muttering and shrugging, see,
+  Begins at me? They do not speak!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                 'Tis welcome!
+  For we are proud of you--happy and proud
+  To have you with us, Strafford! You were staunch
+  At Durham: you did well there! Had you not
+  Been stayed, you might have ... we said, even now,
+  Our hope's in you!
+
+  _Vane_ [_to +Lady+ CARLISLE_]. The Queen would speak with you.
+
+  _Strafford._ Will one of you, his servants here, vouchsafe
+  To signify my presence to the King?
+
+  _Savile._                           An urgent matter?
+
+  _Strafford._ None that touches you,
+  Lord Savile! Say, it were some treacherous
+  Sly pitiful intriguing with the Scots--
+  You would go free, at least! (They half divine
+  My purpose!) Madam, shall I see the King?
+  The service I would render, much concerns
+  His welfare.
+
+  _Queen._     But his Majesty, my lord,
+  May not be here, may....
+
+  _Strafford._             Its importance, then,
+  Must plead excuse for this withdrawal, madam,
+  And for the grief it gives Lord Savile here.
+
+  _Queen_ [_who has been conversing with VANE and HOLLAND_].
+  The King will see you, sir!
+  [_To +Lady+ CARLISLE._]    Mark me: Pym's worst
+  Is done by now: he has impeached the Earl,
+  Or found the Earl too strong for him, by now.
+  Let us not seem instructed! We should work
+  No good to Strafford, but deform ourselves
+  With shame in the world's eye. [_To STRAFFORD._] His Majesty
+  Has much to say with you.
+
+  _Strafford._              Time fleeting, too!
+  [_To +Lady+ CARLISLE._] No means of getting them away? And She--
+  What does she whisper? Does she know my purpose?
+  What does she think of it? Get them away!
+
+  _Queen_ [_to +Lady+ CARLISLE_]. He comes to baffle Pym--he thinks
+          the danger
+  Far off: tell him no word of it! a time
+  For help will come; we'll not be wanting then.
+  Keep him in play, Lucy--you, self-possessed
+  And calm! [_To STRAFFORD._] To spare your lordship some delay
+  I will myself acquaint the King. [_To +Lady+ CARLISLE._] Beware!
+
+[_The QUEEN, VANE, HOLLAND, and SAVILE go out._
+
+  _Strafford._ She knows it?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._           Tell me, Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                                   Afterward!
+  This moment's the great moment of all time.
+  She knows my purpose?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._      Thoroughly: just now
+  She bade me hide it from you.
+
+  _Strafford._                  Quick, dear child,
+  The whole o' the scheme?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._         (Ah, he would learn if they
+  Connive at Pym's procedure! Could they but
+  Have once apprised the King! But there's no time
+  For falsehood, now.) Strafford, the whole is known.
+
+  _Strafford._ Known and approved?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                Hardly discountenanced.
+
+  _Strafford._ And the King--say, the King consents as well?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ The King's not yet informed, but will not dare
+  To interpose.
+
+  _Strafford._ What need to wait him, then?
+  He'll sanction it! I stayed, child, tell him, long!
+  It vexed me to the soul--this waiting here.
+  You know him, there's no counting on the King.
+  Tell him I waited long!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._        (What can he mean?
+  Rejoice at the King's hollowness?)
+
+  _Strafford._                       I knew
+  They would be glad of it,--all over once,
+  I knew they would be glad: but he'd contrive,
+  The Queen and he, to mar, by helping it,
+  An angel's making.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._   (Is he mad?) Dear Strafford,
+  You were not wont to look so happy.
+
+  _Strafford._                        Sweet,
+  I tried obedience thoroughly. I took
+  The King's wild plan: of course, ere I could reach
+  My army, Conway ruined it. I drew
+  The wrecks together, raised all heaven and earth,
+  And would have fought the Scots: the King at once
+  Made truce with them. Then, Lucy, then, dear child,
+  God put it in my mind to love, serve, die
+  For Charles, but never to obey him more!
+  While he endured their insolence at Ripon
+  I fell on them at Durham. But you'll tell
+  The King I waited? All the anteroom
+  Is filled with my adherents.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Strafford--Strafford,
+  What daring act is this you hint?
+
+  _Strafford._                      No, no!
+  'Tis here, not daring if you knew? all here!
+
+[_Drawing papers from his breast._
+
+  Full proof, see, ample proof--does the Queen know
+  I have such damning proof? Bedford and Essex,
+  Brooke, Warwick, Savile (did you notice Savile?
+  The simper that I spoilt?), Saye, Mandeville--
+  Sold to the Scots, body and soul, by Pym!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                          Great heaven!
+
+  _Strafford._ From Savile and his lords, to Pym
+  And his losels, crushed!--Pym shall not ward the blow
+  Nor Savile creep aside from it! The Crew
+  And the Cabal--I crush them!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._             And you go--
+  Strafford,--and now you go?--
+
+  _Strafford._                  --About no work
+  In the background, I promise you! I go
+  Straight to the House of Lords to claim these knaves.
+  Mainwaring!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Stay--stay, Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                            She'll return,
+  The Queen--some little project of her own!
+  No time to lose: the King takes fright perhaps.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Pym's strong, remember!
+
+  _Strafford._                             Very strong, as fits
+  The Faction's head--with no offence to Hampden,
+  Vane, Rudyard and my loving Hollis: one
+  And all they lodge within the Tower to-night
+  In just equality. Bryan! Mainwaring!
+
+[_Many of his +Adherents+ enter._
+
+  The Peers debate just now (a lucky chance)
+  On the Scots' war; my visit's opportune.
+  When all is over, Bryan, you proceed
+  To Ireland: these dispatches, mark me, Bryan,
+  Are for the Deputy, and these for Ormond:
+  We want the army here--my army, raised
+  At such a cost, that should have done such good,
+  And was inactive all the time! no matter,
+  We'll find a use for it. Willis ... or, no--you!
+  You, friend, make haste to York: bear this, at once ...
+  Or,--better stay for form's sake, see yourself
+  The news you carry. You remain with me
+  To execute the Parliament's command,
+  Mainwaring! Help to seize these lesser knaves,
+  Take care there's no escaping at backdoors:
+  I'll not have one escape, mind me--not one!
+  I seem revengeful, Lucy? Did you know
+  What these men dare!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._     It is so much they dare!
+
+  _Strafford._ I proved that long ago; my turn is now.
+  Keep sharp watch, Goring, on the citizens!
+  Observe who harbors any of the brood
+  That scramble off: be sure they smart for it!
+  Our coffers are but lean.
+                            And you, child, too,
+  Shall have your task; deliver this to Laud.
+  Laud will not be the slowest in thy praise:
+  "Thorough" he'll cry!--Foolish, to be so glad!
+  This life is gay and glowing, after all:
+  'Tis worth while, Lucy, having foes like mine
+  Just for the bliss of crushing them. To-day
+  Is worth the living for.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._         That reddening brow!
+  You seem....
+
+  _Strafford._ Well--do I not? I would be well--
+  I could not but be well on such a day!
+  And, this day ended, 'tis of slight import
+  How long the ravaged frame subjects the soul
+  In Strafford.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Noble Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                      No farewell!
+  I'll see you anon, to-morrow--the first thing.
+  --If She should come to stay me!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                 Go--'tis nothing--
+  Only my heart that swells: it has been thus
+  Ere now: go, Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._            To-night, then, let it be.
+  I must see Him: you, the next after Him.
+  I'll tell how Pym looked. Follow me, friends!
+  You, gentlemen, shall see a sight this hour
+  To talk of all your lives. Close after me!
+  "My friend of friends!"
+
+[_STRAFFORD and the rest go out._
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._        The King--ever the King!
+  No thought of one beside, whose little word
+  Unveils the King to him--one word from me,
+  Which yet I do not breathe!
+                              Ah, have I spared
+  Strafford a pang, and shall I seek reward
+  Beyond that memory? Surely too, some way
+  He is the better for my love. No, no--
+  He would not look so joyous--I'll believe
+  His very eye would never sparkle thus,
+  Had I not prayed for him this long, long while.
+
+
+SCENE III.--_The Antechamber of the House of Lords._
+
+_Many of the Presbyterian Party. The +Adherents+ of STRAFFORD, etc._
+
+  _A Group of Presbyterians._ --1. I tell you he struck Maxwell:
+          Maxwell sought
+  To stay the Earl: he struck him and passed on.
+  2. Fear as you may, keep a good countenance
+  Before these rufflers.
+  3.                     Strafford here the first,
+  With the great army at his back!
+  4.                               No doubt.
+  I would Pym had made haste: that's Bryan, hush--
+  The gallant pointing.
+
+  _Strafford's Followers._ --1. Mark these worthies, now!
+  2. A goodly gathering! "Where the carcass is
+  There shall the eagles"--what's the rest?
+  3.                                        For eagles
+  Say crows.
+
+  _A Presbyterian._ Stand back, sirs!
+
+  _One of Strafford's Followers._     Are we in Geneva?
+
+  _A Presbyterian._ No, nor in Ireland; we have leave to breathe.
+
+  _One of Strafford's Followers._ Truly? Behold how privileged we be
+  That serve "King Pym"! There's Some-one at Whitehall
+  Who skulks obscure; but Pym struts....
+
+  _The Presbyterian._                    Nearer.
+
+  _A Follower of Strafford._                     Higher,
+  We look to see him. [_To his +Companions+._] I'm to have St. John
+  In charge; was he among the knaves just now
+  That followed Pym within there?
+
+  _Another._                      The gaunt man
+  Talking with Rudyard. Did the Earl expect
+  Pym at his heels so fast? I like it not.
+
+_MAXWELL enters._
+
+  _Another._ Why, man, they rush into the net! Here's Maxwell--
+  Ha, Maxwell? How the brethren flock around
+  The fellow! Do you feel the Earl's hand yet
+  Upon your shoulder, Maxwell?
+
+  _Maxwell._                   Gentlemen,
+  Stand back! a great thing passes here.
+
+  _A Follower of Strafford_ [_To another_]. The Earl
+  Is at his work! [_To +M.+_] Say, Maxwell, what great thing!
+  Speak out! [_To a +Presbyterian+._] Friend, I've a kindness for you!
+          Friend,
+  I've seen you with St. John: O stockishness!
+  Wear such a ruff, and never call to mind
+  St. John's head in a charger? How, the plague,
+  Not laugh?
+
+  _Another._ Say, Maxwell, what great thing!
+
+  _Another._                                 Nay, wait:
+  The jest will be to wait.
+
+  _First._                  And who's to bear
+  These demure hypocrites? You'd swear they came ...
+  Came ... just as we come!
+
+[_A +Puritan+ enters hastily and without observing STRAFFORD'S
++Followers+._
+
+  _The Puritan._            How goes on the work?
+  Has Pym....
+
+  _A Follower of Strafford._ The secret's out at last. Aha,
+  The carrion's scented! Welcome, crow the first!
+  Gorge merrily, you with the blinking eye!
+  "King Pym has fallen!"
+
+  _The Puritan._         Pym?
+
+  _A Strafford._              Pym!
+
+  _A Presbyterian._                Only Pym?
+
+  _Many of Strafford's Followers._ No, brother, not Pym only;
+          Vane as well,
+  Rudyard as well, Hampden, St. John as well!
+
+  _A Presbyterian._ My mind misgives: can it be true?
+
+  _Another._                                          Lost! Lost!
+
+  _A Strafford._ Say we true, Maxwell?
+
+  _The Puritan._                       Pride before destruction,
+  A haughty spirit goeth before a fall.
+
+  _Many of Strafford's Followers._      Ah now! The very thing!
+          A word in season!
+  A golden apple in a silver picture,
+  To greet Pym as he passes!
+
+[_The doors at the back begin to open, noise and light issuing._
+
+  _Maxwell._                 Stand back, all!
+
+  _Many of the Presbyterians._ I hold with Pym! And I!
+
+  _Strafford's Followers._ Now for the text!
+  He comes! Quick!
+
+  _The Puritan._   How hath the oppressor ceased!
+  The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked!
+  The sceptre of the rulers, he who smote
+  The people in wrath with a continual stroke,
+  That ruled the nations in his anger--he
+  Is persecuted and none hindreth!
+
+[_The doors open, and STRAFFORD issues in the greatest disorder, and
+amid cries from within of "+Void the House+!"_
+
+  _Strafford._ Impeach me! Pym! I never struck, I think,
+  The felon on that calm insulting mouth
+  When it proclaimed--Pym's mouth proclaimed me ... God!
+  Was it a word, only a word that held
+  The outrageous blood back on my heart--which beats!
+  Which beats! Some one word--"Traitor," did he say,
+  Bending that eye, brimful of bitter fire,
+  Upon me?
+
+  _Maxwell._ In the Commons' name, their servant
+  Demands Lord Strafford's sword.
+
+  _Strafford._                    What did you say?
+
+  _Maxwell._ The Commons bid me ask your lordship's sword.
+
+  _Strafford._ Let us go forth: follow me, gentlemen!
+  Draw your swords too: cut any down that bar us.
+  On the King's service! Maxwell, clear the way!
+
+[_The +Presbyterians+ prepare to dispute his passage._
+
+  _Strafford._ I stay: the King himself shall see me here.
+  Your tablets, fellow!
+  [_To MAINWARING._] Give that to the King!
+  Yes, Maxwell, for the next half-hour, let be!
+  Nay, you shall take my sword!
+
+[_MAXWELL advances to take it._
+
+                                Or, no--not that!
+  Their blood, perhaps, may wipe out all thus far,
+  All up to that--not that! Why, friend, you see
+  When the King lays your head beneath my foot
+  It will not pay for that. Go, all of you!
+
+  _Maxwell._ I dare, my lord, to disobey: none stir!
+
+  _Strafford._ This gentle Maxwell!--Do not touch him, Bryan!
+  [_To the +Presbyterians+._] Whichever cur of you will carry this
+  Escapes his fellow's fate. None saves his life?
+  None?
+
+[_Cries from within of "STRAFFORD!"_
+
+        Slingsby, I've loved you at least: make haste!
+  Stab me! I have not time to tell you why.
+  You then, my Bryan! Mainwaring, you then!
+  Is it because I spoke so hastily
+  At Allerton? The King had vexed me.
+  [_To the +Presbyterians+._]           You!
+  --Not even you? If I live over this,
+  The King is sure to have your heads, you know!
+  But what if I can't live this minute through?
+  Pym, who is there with his pursuing smile!
+
+[_Louder cries of "STRAFFORD!"_
+
+  The King! I troubled him, stood in the way
+  Of his negotiations, was the one
+  Great obstacle to peace, the Enemy
+  Of Scotland: and he sent for me, from York,
+  My safety guaranteed--having prepared
+  A Parliament--I see! And at Whitehall
+  The Queen was whispering with Vane--I see
+  The trap!
+
+[_Tearing off the George._
+
+            I tread a gewgaw underfoot,
+  And cast a memory from me. One stroke, now!
+
+[_His own +Adherents+ disarm him. Renewed cries of "STRAFFORD!"_
+
+  England! I see thy arm in this and yield.
+  Pray you now--Pym awaits me--pray you now!
+
+[_STRAFFORD reaches the doors: they open wide. HAMPDEN and a crowd
+discovered, and, at the bar, PYM standing apart. As STRAFFORD kneels,
+the scene shuts._
+
+[Illustration: Westminster Hall]
+
+The history of the fourth act deals with further episodes of Strafford's
+trial, especially with the change in the procedure from Impeachment to a
+Bill of Attainder against Strafford. The details of this great trial are
+complicated and cannot be followed in all their ramifications here.
+There was danger that the Impeachment would not go through. Strafford,
+himself, felt confident that in law his actions could not be found
+treasonable.
+
+After Strafford's brilliant defense of himself, it was decided to bring
+in a Bill of Attainder. New evidence against Strafford contained in
+some notes which the younger Vane had found among his father's papers
+were used to strengthen the charge of treason. In these notes Strafford
+had advised the King to act "loose and absolved from all rules of
+government," and had reminded him that there was an army in Ireland,
+ready to reduce the Kingdom. These notes were found by the merest
+accident. The younger Vane who had just been knighted and was about to
+be married, borrowed his father's keys in order to look up some law
+papers. In his search he fell upon these notes taken at a committee that
+met immediately after the dissolution of the short Parliament. He made a
+copy and carried it to Pym who also made a copy.
+
+According to Baillie, the "secret" of the change from the Impeachment to
+the Bill was "to prevent the hearing of the Earl's lawyers, who give out
+that there is no law yet in force whereby he can be condemned to die for
+aught yet objected against him, and therefore their intent by this Bill
+to supply the defect of the laws therein." To this may be added the
+opinion of a member of the Commons. "If the House of Commons proceeds to
+demand judgment of the Lords, without doubt they will acquit him, there
+being no law extant whereby to condemn him of treason. Wherefore the
+Commons are determined to desert the Lord's judicature, and to proceed
+against him by Bill of Attainder, whereby he shall be adjudged to death
+upon a treason now to be declared."
+
+One of the chief results in this change of procedure, emphasized by
+Browning in an intense scene between Pym and Charles was that it altered
+entirely the King's attitude towards Strafford's trial. As Baillie
+expresses it, "Had the Commons gone on in the former way of pursuit, the
+King might have been a patient, and only beheld the striking off of
+Strafford's head; but now they have put them on a Bill which will force
+the King either to be our agent and formal voicer to his death, or else
+do the world knows not what."
+
+For the sake of a gain in dramatic power, Browning has once more
+departed from history by making Pym the moving power in the Bill of
+Attainder, and Hampden in favor of it; while in reality they were
+opposed to the change in procedure, and believed that the Impeachment
+could have been carried through.
+
+The relentless, scourging force of Pym in the play, pursuing the
+arch-foe of England as he regarded Wentworth to the death, once he is
+convinced that England's welfare demands it, would have been weakened
+had he been represented in favor of the policy which was abandoned,
+instead of with the policy that succeeded. But Pym is made to intimate
+that he will abandon the Bill unless the King gives his word that he
+will ratify it, and further, Pym declares, should he not ratify the Bill
+his next step will be against the King himself.
+
+  _Enter HAMPDEN and VANE._
+
+  _Vane._ O Hampden, save the great misguided man!
+  Plead Strafford's cause with Pym! I have remarked
+  He moved no muscle when we all declaimed
+  Against him: you had but to breathe--he turned
+  Those kind calm eyes upon you.
+
+[_Enter PYM, the +Solicitor-General+ ST. JOHN, the +Managers+ of the
+Trial, FIENNES, RUDYARD, etc._
+
+  _Rudyard._                    Horrible!
+  Till now all hearts were with you: I withdraw
+  For one. Too horrible! But we mistake
+  Your purpose, Pym: you cannot snatch away
+  The last spar from the drowning man.
+
+  _Fiennes._                           He talks
+  With St. John of it--see, how quietly!
+  [_To other +Presbyterians+._] You'll join us? Strafford may deserve
+          the worst:
+  But this new course is monstrous. Vane, take heart!
+  This Bill of his Attainder shall not have
+  One true man's hand to it.
+
+  _Vane._                    Consider, Pym!
+  Confront your Bill, your own Bill: what is it?
+  You cannot catch the Earl on any charge,--
+  No man will say the law has hold of him
+  On any charge; and therefore you resolve
+  To take the general sense on his desert,
+  As though no law existed, and we met
+  To found one. You refer to Parliament
+  To speak its thought upon the abortive mass
+  Of half-borne-out assertions, dubious hints
+  Hereafter to be cleared, distortions--ay,
+  And wild inventions. Every man is saved
+  The task of fixing any single charge
+  On Strafford: he has but to see in him
+  The enemy of England.
+
+  _Pym._                A right scruple!
+  I have heard some called England's enemy
+  With less consideration.
+
+  _Vane._                  Pity me!
+  Indeed you made me think I was your friend!
+  I who have murdered Strafford, how remove
+  That memory from me?
+
+  _Pym._               I absolve you, Vane.
+  Take you no care for aught that you have done!
+
+  _Vane._ John Hampden, not this Bill! Reject this Bill!
+  He staggers through the ordeal: let him go,
+  Strew no fresh fire before him! Plead for us!
+  When Strafford spoke, your eyes were thick with tears!
+
+  _Hampden._ England speaks louder: who are we, to play
+  The generous pardoner at her expense,
+  Magnanimously waive advantages,
+  And, if he conquer us, applaud his skill?
+
+  _Vane._ He was your friend.
+
+  _Pym._                      I have heard that before.
+
+  _Fiennes._ And England trusts you.
+
+  _Hampden._                         Shame be his, who turns
+  The opportunity of serving her
+  She trusts him with, to his own mean account--
+  Who would look nobly frank at her expense!
+
+  _Fiennes._ I never thought it could have come to this.
+
+  _Pym._ But I have made myself familiar, Fiennes,
+  With this one thought--have walked, and sat, and slept,
+  This thought before me. I have done such things,
+  Being the chosen man that should destroy
+  The traitor. You have taken up this thought
+  To play with, for a gentle stimulant,
+  To give a dignity to idler life
+  By the dim prospect of emprise to come,
+  But ever with the softening, sure belief,
+  That all would end some strange way right at last.
+
+  _Fiennes._ Had we made out some weightier charge!
+
+  _Pym._                                            You say
+  That these are petty charges: can we come
+  To the real charge at all? There he is safe
+  In tyranny's stronghold. Apostasy
+  Is not a crime, treachery not a crime:
+  The cheek burns, the blood tingles, when you speak
+  The words, but where's the power to take revenge
+  Upon them? We must make occasion serve,--
+  The oversight shall pay for the main sin
+  That mocks us.
+
+  _Rudyard._     But his unexampled course,
+  This Bill!
+
+  _Pym._     By this, we roll the clouds away
+  Of precedent and custom, and at once
+  Bid the great beacon-light God sets in all,
+  The conscience of each bosom, shine upon
+  The guilt of Strafford: each man lay his hand
+  Upon his breast, and judge!
+
+  _Vane._                     I only see
+  Strafford, nor pass his corpse for all beyond!
+
+  _Rudyard and others._ Forgive him! He would join us, now he finds
+  What the King counts reward! The pardon, too,
+  Should be your own. Yourself should bear to Strafford
+  The pardon of the Commons.
+
+  _Pym._                     Meet him? Strafford?
+  Have we to meet once more, then? Be it so!
+  And yet--the prophecy seemed half fulfilled
+  When, at the Trial, as he gazed, my youth,
+  Our friendship, divers thoughts came back at once
+  And left me, for a time.... 'Tis very sad!
+  To-morrow we discuss the points of law
+  With Lane--to-morrow?
+
+  _Vane._               Not before to-morrow--
+  So, time enough! I knew you would relent!
+
+  _Pym._ The next day, Haselrig, you introduce
+  The Bill of his Attainder. Pray for me!
+
+
+SCENE III.--_Whitehall._
+
+_The KING._
+
+  _Charles._ My loyal servant! To defend himself
+  Thus irresistibly,--withholding aught
+  That seemed to implicate us!
+                               We have done
+  Less gallantly by Strafford. Well, the future
+  Must recompense the past.
+                            She tarries long.
+  I understand you, Strafford, now!
+                                    The scheme--
+  Carlisle's mad scheme--he'll sanction it, I fear,
+  For love of me. 'Twas too precipitate:
+  Before the army's fairly on its march,
+  He'll be at large: no matter.
+                                Well, Carlisle?
+
+_Enter PYM._
+
+  _Pym._ Fear me not, sir:--my mission is to save,
+  This time.
+
+  _Charles._ To break thus on me! Unannounced!
+
+  _Pym._ It is of Strafford I would speak.
+
+  _Charles._                               No more
+  Of Strafford! I have heard too much from you.
+
+  _Pym._ I spoke, sir, for the People; will you hear
+  A word upon my own account?
+
+  _Charles._                  Of Strafford?
+  (So turns the tide already? Have we tamed
+  The insolent brawler?--Strafford's eloquence
+  Is swift in its effect.) Lord Strafford, sir,
+  Has spoken for himself.
+
+  _Pym._                  Sufficiently.
+  I would apprise you of the novel course
+  The People take: the Trial fails.
+
+  _Charles._                        Yes, yes:
+  We are aware, sir: for your part in it
+  Means shall be found to thank you.
+
+  _Pym._                             Pray you, read
+  This schedule! I would learn from your own mouth
+  --(It is a matter much concerning me)--
+  Whether, if two Estates of us concede
+  The death of Strafford, on the grounds set forth
+  Within that parchment, you, sir, can resolve
+  To grant your own consent to it. This Bill
+  Is framed by me. If you determine, sir,
+  That England's manifested will should guide
+  Your judgment, ere another week such will
+  Shall manifest itself. If not,--I cast
+  Aside the measure.
+
+  _Charles._         You can hinder, then,
+  The introduction of this Bill?
+
+  _Pym._                          I can.
+
+  _Charles._ He is my friend, sir: I have wronged him: mark you,
+  Had I not wronged him, this might be. You think
+  Because you hate the Earl ... (turn not away,
+  We know you hate him)--no one else could love
+  Strafford: but he has saved me, some affirm.
+  Think of his pride! And do you know one strange,
+  One frightful thing? We all have used the man
+  As though a drudge of ours, with not a source
+  Of happy thoughts except in us; and yet
+  Strafford has wife and children, household cares,
+  Just as if we had never been. Ah sir,
+  You are moved, even you, a solitary man
+  Wed to your cause--to England if you will!
+
+  _Pym._ Yes--think, my soul--to England! Draw not back!
+
+  _Charles._ Prevent that Bill, sir! All your course seems fair
+  Till now. Why, in the end, 'tis I should sign
+  The warrant for his death! You have said much
+  I ponder on; I never meant, indeed,
+  Strafford should serve me any more. I take
+  The Commons' counsel; but this Bill is yours--
+  Nor worthy of its leader: care not, sir,
+  For that, however! I will quite forget
+  You named it to me. You are satisfied?
+
+  _Pym._ Listen to me, sir! Eliot laid his hand,
+  Wasted and white, upon my forehead once;
+  Wentworth--he's gone now!--has talked on, whole nights,
+  And I beside him; Hampden loves me: sir,
+  How can I breathe and not wish England well,
+  And her King well?
+
+  _Charles._          I thank you, sir, who leave
+  That King his servant. Thanks, sir!
+
+  _Pym._                              Let me speak!
+  --Who may not speak again; whose spirit yearns
+  For a cool night after this weary day:
+  --Who would not have my soul turn sicker yet
+  In a new task, more fatal, more august,
+  More full of England's utter weal or woe.
+  I thought, sir, could I find myself with you,
+  After this trial, alone, as man to man--
+  I might say something, warn you, pray you, save--
+  Mark me, King Charles, save----you!
+  But God must do it. Yet I warn you, sir--
+  (With Strafford's faded eyes yet full on me)
+  As you would have no deeper question moved
+  --"How long the Many must endure the One,"
+  Assure me, sir, if England give assent
+  To Strafford's death, you will not interfere!
+  Or----
+
+  _Charles._ God forsakes me. I am in a net
+  And cannot move. Let all be as you say!
+
+_Enter +Lady+ CARLISLE._
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ He loves you--looking beautiful with joy
+  Because you sent me! he would spare you all
+  The pain! he never dreamed you would forsake
+  Your servant in the evil day--nay, see
+  Your scheme returned! That generous heart of his!
+  He needs it not--or, needing it, disdains
+  A course that might endanger you--you, sir,
+  Whom Strafford from his inmost soul....
+  [_Seeing PYM._]                        Well met!
+  No fear for Strafford! All that's true and brave
+  On your own side shall help us: we are now
+  Stronger than ever.
+                      Ha--what, sir, is this?
+  All is not well! What parchment have you there?
+
+  _Pym._ Sir, much is saved us both.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                   This Bill! Your lip
+  Whitens--you could not read one line to me
+  Your voice would falter so!
+
+  _Pym._                      No recreant yet!
+  The great word went from England to my soul,
+  And I arose. The end is very near.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ I am to save him! All have shrunk beside;
+  'Tis only I am left. Heaven will make strong
+  The hand now as the heart. Then let both die!
+
+In the last act Browning has drawn upon his imagination more than in any
+other part of the play. Strafford in prison in the Tower is the center
+around which all the other elements of the drama are made to revolve. A
+glimpse, the first, of the man in a purely human capacity is given in
+the second scene with Strafford and his children. From all accounts
+little Anne was a precocious child and Browning has sketched her
+accordingly. The scene is like a gleam of sunshine in the gathering
+gloom.
+
+The genuine grief felt by the historical Charles over the part he played
+in the ruin of Strafford is brought out in an interview between
+Strafford and Charles, who is represented as coming disguised to the
+prison. Strafford who has been hoping for pardon from the King learns
+from Hollis, in the King's presence, that the King has signed his death
+warrant. He receives this shock with the remark which history attributes
+to him.
+
+                        "Put not your trust
+    In princes, neither in the sons of men,
+    In whom is no salvation!"
+
+History tells us of two efforts to rescue Strafford. One of these was an
+attempt to bribe Balfour to allow him to escape from the tower. This
+hint the Poet has worked up into the episode of Charles, calling Balfour
+and begging him to go at once to Parliament, to say he will grant all
+demands, and that he chooses to pardon Strafford. History, however, does
+not say that Lady Carlisle was implicated in any plan for the rescue of
+Strafford, of which Browning makes so much. According to Gardiner, she
+was by this time bestowing her favors upon Pym. Devotion to the truth
+here on Browning's part would have completely ruined the inner unity of
+the play. Carlisle, the woman ready to devote herself to Strafford's
+utmost need, while Strafford is more or less indifferent to her is the
+artistic compliment of Strafford the man devoted to the unresponsive
+King. The failure of the escape through Pym's intervention is a final
+dramatic climax bringing face to face not so much the two individual men
+as the two principles of government for which England was warring, the
+Monarchical and the Parliamentary. To the last, Strafford is loyal to
+the King and the Kingly idea, while Pym crushing his human feelings
+under foot, calmly contemplates the sacrifice not only of Strafford, but
+even of the King, if England's need demand it.
+
+In this supreme moment of agony when Strafford and Pym meet face to face
+both men are made to realize an abiding love for each other beneath all
+their earthly differences. "A great poet of our own day," writes
+Gardiner, "clothing the reconciling spirit of the nineteenth century in
+words which never could have been spoken in the seventeenth, has
+breathed a high wish. On his page an imaginary Pym, recalling an
+imaginary friendship, looks forward hopefully to a reunion in a better
+and brighter world."
+
+
+SCENE II.--_The Tower._
+
+_STRAFFORD sitting with his +Children+. They sing._
+
+      _O bell 'andare
+      Per barca in mare,
+      Verso la sera
+      Di Primavera!_
+
+  _William._ The boat's in the broad moonlight all this while--
+
+      _Verso la sera
+      Di Primavera!_
+
+  And the boat shoots from underneath the moon
+  Into the shadowy distance; only still
+  You hear the dipping oar--
+
+      _Verso la sera_,
+
+  And faint, and fainter, and then all's quite gone,
+  Music and light and all, like a lost star.
+
+  _Anne._ But you should sleep, father; you were to sleep.
+
+  _Strafford._ I do sleep, Anne; or if not--you must know
+  There's such a thing as....
+
+  _William._                  You're too tired to sleep?
+
+  _Strafford._ It will come by-and-by and all day long,
+  In that old quiet house I told you of:
+  We sleep safe there.
+
+  _Anne._              Why not in Ireland?
+
+  _Strafford._                             No!
+  Too many dreams!--That song's for Venice, William:
+  You know how Venice looks upon the map--
+  Isles that the mainland hardly can let go?
+
+  _William._ You've been to Venice, father?
+
+  _Strafford._                              I was young, then.
+
+  _William._ A city with no King; that's why I like
+  Even a song that comes from Venice.
+
+  _Strafford._                        William!
+
+  _William._ Oh, I know why! Anne, do you love the King?
+  But I'll see Venice for myself one day.
+
+  _Strafford._ See many lands, boy--England last of all,--
+  That way you'll love her best.
+
+[Illustration: The Tower, London]
+
+  _William._                     Why do men say
+  You sought to ruin her then?
+
+  _Strafford._                 Ah,--they say that.
+
+  _William._ Why?
+
+  _Strafford._    I suppose they must have words to say,
+  As you to sing.
+
+  _Anne._         But they make songs beside:
+  Last night I heard one, in the street beneath,
+  That called you.... Oh, the names!
+
+  _William._                         Don't mind her, father!
+  They soon left off when I cried out to them.
+
+  _Strafford._ We shall so soon be out of it, my boy!
+  'Tis not worth while: who heeds a foolish song?
+
+  _William._ Why, not the King.
+
+  _Strafford._                  Well: it has been the fate
+  Of better; and yet,--wherefore not feel sure
+  That Time, who in the twilight comes to mend
+  All the fantastic day's caprice, consign
+  To the low ground once more the ignoble Term,
+  And raise the Genius on his orb again,--
+  That Time will do me right?
+
+  _Anne._                     (Shall we sing, William?
+  He does not look thus when we sing.)
+
+  _Strafford._                         For Ireland,
+  Something is done: too little, but enough
+  To show what might have been.
+
+  _William._                    (I have no heart
+  To sing now! Anne, how very sad he looks!
+  Oh, I so hate the King for all he says!)
+
+  _Strafford._ Forsook them! What, the common songs will run
+  That I forsook the People? Nothing more?
+  Ay, Fame, the busy scribe, will pause, no doubt,
+  Turning a deaf ear to her thousand slaves
+  Noisy to be enrolled,--will register
+  The curious glosses, subtle notices,
+  Ingenious clearings-up one fain would see
+  Beside that plain inscription of The Name--
+  The Patriot Pym, or the Apostate Strafford!
+
+[_The +Children+ resume their song timidly, but break off._
+
+_Enter HOLLIS and an +Attendant+._
+
+  _Strafford._ No,--Hollis? in good time!--Who is he?
+
+  _Hollis._                                           One
+  That must be present.
+
+  _Strafford._          Ah--I understand.
+  They will not let me see poor Laud alone.
+  How politic! They'd use me by degrees
+  To solitude: and, just as you came in,
+  I was solicitous what life to lead
+  When Strafford's "not so much as Constable
+  In the King's service." Is there any means
+  To keep oneself awake? What would you do
+  After this bustle, Hollis, in my place?
+
+  _Hollis._ Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._         Observe, not but that Pym and you
+  Will find me news enough--news I shall hear
+  Under a quince-tree by a fish-pond side
+  At Wentworth. Garrard must be re-engaged
+  My newsman. Or, a better project now--
+  What if when all's consummated, and the Saints
+  Reign, and the Senate's work goes swimmingly,--
+  What if I venture up, some day, unseen,
+  To saunter through the Town, notice how Pym,
+  Your Tribune, likes Whitehall, drop quietly
+  Into a tavern, hear a point discussed,
+  As, whether Strafford's name were John or James--
+  And be myself appealed to--I, who shall
+  Myself have near forgotten!
+
+  _Hollis._                   I would speak....
+
+  _Strafford._ Then you shall speak,--not now. I want just now,
+  To hear the sound of my own tongue. This place
+  Is full of ghosts.
+
+  _Hollis._          Nay, you must hear me, Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._ Oh, readily! Only, one rare thing more,--
+  The minister! Who will advise the King,
+  Turn his Sejanus, Richelieu and what not,
+  And yet have health--children, for aught I know--
+  My patient pair of traitors! Ah,--but, William--
+  Does not his cheek grow thin?
+
+  _William._                    'Tis you look thin, Father!
+
+  _Strafford._ A scamper o'er the breezy wolds
+  Sets all to-rights.
+
+  _Hollis._           You cannot sure forget
+  A prison-roof is o'er you, Strafford?
+
+  _Strafford._                          No,
+  Why, no. I would not touch on that, the first.
+  I left you that. Well, Hollis? Say at once,
+  The King can find no time to set me free!
+  A mask at Theobald's?
+
+  _Hollis._             Hold: no such affair
+  Detains him.
+
+  _Strafford._ True: what needs so great a matter?
+  The Queen's lip may be sore. Well: when he pleases,--
+  Only, I want the air: it vexes flesh
+  To be pent up so long.
+
+  _Hollis._              The King--I bear
+  His message, Strafford: pray you, let me speak!
+
+  _Strafford._ Go, William! Anne, try o'er your song again!
+
+[_The +Children+ retire._
+
+  They shall be loyal, friend, at all events.
+  I know your message: you have nothing new
+  To tell me: from the first I guessed as much.
+  I know, instead of coming here himself,
+  Leading me forth in public by the hand,
+  The King prefers to leave the door ajar
+  As though I were escaping--bids me trudge
+  While the mob gapes upon some show prepared
+  On the other side of the river! Give at once
+  His order of release! I've heard, as well
+  Of certain poor manoeuvres to avoid
+  The granting pardon at his proper risk;
+  First, he must prattle somewhat to the Lords,
+  Must talk a trifle with the Commons first,
+  Be grieved I should abuse his confidence,
+  And far from blaming them, and.... Where's the order?
+
+  _Hollis._ Spare me!
+
+  _Strafford._        Why, he'd not have me steal away?
+  With an old doublet and a steeple hat
+  Like Prynne's? Be smuggled into France, perhaps?
+  Hollis, 'tis for my children! 'Twas for them
+  I first consented to stand day by day
+  And give your Puritans the best of words,
+  Be patient, speak when called upon, observe
+  Their rules, and not return them prompt their lie!
+  What's in that boy of mine that he should prove
+  Son to a prison-breaker? I shall stay
+  And he'll stay with me. Charles should know as much,
+  He too has children!
+  [_Turning to HOLLIS'S +Companion+._] Sir, you feel for me!
+  No need to hide that face! Though it have looked
+  Upon me from the judgment-seat ... I know
+  Strangely, that somewhere it has looked on me, ...
+  Your coming has my pardon, nay, my thanks:
+  For there is one who comes not.
+
+  _Hollis._                       Whom forgive,
+  As one to die!
+
+  _Strafford._   True, all die, and all need
+  Forgiveness: I forgive him from my soul.
+
+  _Hollis._ 'Tis a world's wonder: Strafford, you must die!
+
+  _Strafford._ Sir, if your errand is to set me free
+  This heartless jest mars much. Ha! Tears in truth?
+  We'll end this! See this paper, warm--feel--warm
+  With lying next my heart! Whose hand is there?
+  Whose promise? Read, and loud for God to hear!
+  "Strafford shall take no hurt"--read it, I say!
+  "In person, honor, nor estate"--
+
+  _Hollis._                        The King....
+
+  _Strafford._ I could unking him by a breath! You sit
+  Where Loudon sat, who came to prophesy
+  The certain end, and offer me Pym's grace
+  If I'd renounce the King: and I stood firm
+  On the King's faith. The King who lives....
+
+  _Hollis._                                   To sign
+  The warrant for your death.
+
+  _Strafford._                "Put not your trust
+  In princes, neither in the sons of men,
+  In whom is no salvation!"
+
+  _Hollis._                 Trust in God!
+  The scaffold is prepared: they wait for you:
+  He has consented. Cast the earth behind!
+
+  _Charles._ You would not see me, Strafford, at your foot!
+  It was wrung from me! Only, curse me not!
+
+  _Hollis_ [_to STRAFFORD_]. As you hope grace and pardon in your need,
+  Be merciful to this most wretched man.
+
+[_Voices from within._
+
+      _Verso la sera
+      Di Primavera_
+
+  _Strafford._ You'll be good to those children, sir? I know
+  You'll not believe her, even should the Queen
+  Think they take after one they rarely saw.
+  I had intended that my son should live
+  A stranger to these matters: but you are
+  So utterly deprived of friends! He too
+  Must serve you--will you not be good to him?
+  Or, stay, sir, do not promise--do not swear!
+  You, Hollis--do the best you can for me!
+  I've not a soul to trust to: Wandesford's dead,
+  And you've got Radcliffe safe, Laud's turn comes next:
+  I've found small time of late for my affairs,
+  But I trust any of you, Pym himself--
+  No one could hurt them: there's an infant, too.
+  These tedious cares! Your Majesty could spare them.
+  Nay--pardon me, my King! I had forgotten
+  Your education, trials, much temptation,
+  Some weakness: there escaped a peevish word--
+  'Tis gone: I bless you at the last. You know
+  All's between you and me: what has the world
+  To do with it? Farewell!
+
+  _Charles_ [_at the door_]. Balfour! Balfour!
+
+_Enter BALFOUR._
+
+  The Parliament!--go to them: I grant all
+  Demands. Their sittings shall be permanent:
+  Tell them to keep their money if they will:
+  I'll come to them for every coat I wear
+  And every crust I eat: only I choose
+  To pardon Strafford. As the Queen shall choose!
+  --You never heard the People howl for blood,
+  Beside!
+
+  _Balfour._ Your Majesty may hear them now:
+  The walls can hardly keep their murmurs out:
+  Please you retire!
+
+  _Charles._         Take all the troops, Balfour!
+
+  _Balfour._ There are some hundred thousand of the crowd.
+
+  _Charles._ Come with me, Strafford! You'll not fear, at least!
+
+  _Strafford._ Balfour, say nothing to the world of this!
+  I charge you, as a dying man, forget
+  You gazed upon this agony of one ...
+  Of one ... or if ... why you may say, Balfour,
+  The King was sorry: 'tis no shame in him:
+  Yes, you may say he even wept, Balfour,
+  And that I walked the lighter to the block
+  Because of it. I shall walk lightly, sir!
+  Earth fades, heaven breaks on me: I shall stand next
+  Before God's throne: the moment's close at hand
+  When man the first, last time, has leave to lay
+  His whole heart bare before its Maker, leave
+  To clear up the long error of a life
+  And choose one happiness for evermore.
+  With all mortality about me, Charles,
+  The sudden wreck, the dregs of violent death--
+  What if, despite the opening angel-song,
+  There penetrate one prayer for you? Be saved
+  Through me! Bear witness, no one could prevent
+  My death! Lead on! ere he awake--best, now!
+  All must be ready: did you say, Balfour,
+  The crowd began to murmur? They'll be kept
+  Too late for sermon at St. Antholin's!
+  Now! But tread softly--children are at play
+  In the next room. Precede! I follow--
+
+_Enter +Lady+ CARLISLE with many +Attendants+._
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                      Me!
+  Follow me, Strafford, and be saved! The King?
+  [_To the KING._] Well--as you ordered, they are ranged without,
+  The convoy.... [_seeing the KING'S state._]
+  [_To STRAFFORD._] You know all, then! Why I thought
+  It looked best that the King should save you,--Charles
+  Alone; 'tis a shame that you should owe me aught.
+  Or no, not shame! Strafford, you'll not feel shame
+  At being saved by me?
+
+  _Hollis._             All true! Oh Strafford,
+  She saves you! all her deed! this lady's deed!
+  And is the boat in readiness? You, friend,
+  Are Billingsley, no doubt. Speak to her, Strafford!
+  See how she trembles, waiting for your voice!
+  The world's to learn its bravest story yet.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Talk afterward! Long nights in France enough,
+  To sit beneath the vines and talk of home.
+
+  _Strafford._ You love me, child? Ah, Strafford can be loved
+  As well as Vane! I could escape, then?
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._                       Haste!
+  Advance the torches, Bryan!
+
+  _Strafford._                I will die.
+  They call me proud: but England had no right,
+  When she encountered me--her strength to mine--
+  To find the chosen foe a craven. Girl,
+  I fought her to the utterance, I fell,
+  I am hers now, and I will die. Beside,
+  The lookers-on! Eliot is all about
+  This place, with his most uncomplaining brow.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                I think if you could know how much
+  I love you, you would be repaid, my friend!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Then, for my sake!
+
+  _Strafford._                        Even for your sweet sake,
+  I stay.
+
+  _Hollis._ For _their_ sake!
+
+  _Strafford._                To bequeath a stain?
+  Leave me! Girl, humor me and let me die!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Bid him escape--wake, King! Bid him escape!
+
+  _Strafford._ True, I will go! Die, and forsake the King?
+  I'll not draw back from the last service.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._                And, after all, what is disgrace to me?
+  Let us come, child! That it should end this way!
+  Lead them! but I feel strangely: it was not
+  To end this way.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ Lean--lean on me!
+
+  _Strafford._                       My King!
+  Oh, had he trusted me--his friend of friends!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ I can support him, Hollis!
+
+  _Strafford._                                Not this way!
+  This gate--I dreamed of it, this very gate.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ It opens on the river: our good boat
+  Is moored below, our friends are there.
+
+  _Strafford._                            The same:
+  Only with something ominous and dark,
+  Fatal, inevitable.
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._   Strafford! Strafford!
+
+  _Strafford._ Not by this gate! I feel what will be there!
+  I dreamed of it, I tell you: touch it not!
+
+  _Lady Carlisle._ To save the King,--Strafford, to save the King!
+
+[_As STRAFFORD opens the door, PYM is discovered with HAMPDEN, VANE,
+etc. STRAFFORD falls back; PYM follows slowly and confronts him._
+
+  _Pym._ Have I done well? Speak, England! Whose sole sake
+  I still have labored for, with disregard
+  To my own heart,--for whom my youth was made
+  Barren, my manhood waste, to offer up
+  Her sacrifice--this friend, this Wentworth here--
+  Who walked in youth with me, loved me, it may be,
+  And whom, for his forsaking England's cause,
+  I hunted by all means (trusting that she
+  Would sanctify all means) even to the block
+  Which waits for him. And saying this, I feel
+  No bitterer pang than first I felt, the hour
+  I swore that Wentworth might leave us, but I
+  Would never leave him: I do leave him now.
+  I render up my charge (be witness, God!)
+  To England who imposed it. I have done
+  Her bidding--poorly, wrongly,--it may be,
+  With ill effects--for I am weak, a man:
+  Still, I have done my best, my human best,
+  Not faltering for a moment. It is done.
+  And this said, if I say ... yes, I will say
+  I never loved but one man--David not
+  More Jonathan! Even thus, I love him now:
+  And look for my chief portion in that world
+  Where great hearts led astray are turned again,
+  (Soon it may be, and, certes, will be soon:
+  My mission over, I shall not live long,)--
+  Ay, here I know I talk--I dare and must,
+  Of England, and her great reward, as all
+  I look for there; but in my inmost heart,
+  Believe, I think of stealing quite away
+  To walk once more with Wentworth--my youth's friend
+  Purged from all error, gloriously renewed,
+  And Eliot shall not blame us. Then indeed....
+  This is no meeting, Wentworth! Tears increase
+  Too hot. A thin mist--is it blood?--enwraps
+  The face I loved once. Then, the meeting be!
+
+  _Strafford._ I have loved England too; we'll meet then, Pym.
+  As well die now! Youth is the only time
+  To think and to decide on a great course:
+  Manhood with action follows; but 'tis dreary,
+  To have to alter our whole life in age--
+  The time past, the strength gone! As well die now.
+  When we meet, Pym, I'd be set right--not now!
+  Best die. Then if there's any fault, fault too
+  Dies, smothered up. Poor grey old little Laud
+  May dream his dream out, of a perfect Church,
+  In some blind corner. And there's no one left.
+  I trust the King now wholly to you, Pym!
+  And yet, I know not: I shall not be there:
+  Friends fail--if he have any. And he's weak,
+  And loves the Queen, and.... Oh, my fate is nothing--
+  Nothing! But not that awful head--not that!
+
+  _Pym._ If England shall declare such will to me....
+
+  _Strafford._ Pym, you help England! I, that am to die,
+  What I must see! 'tis here--all here! My God,
+  Let me but gasp out, in one word of fire,
+  How thou wilt plague him, satiating hell!
+  What? England that you help, become through you
+  A green and putrefying charnel, left
+  Our children ... some of us have children, Pym--
+  Some who, without that, still must ever wear
+  A darkened brow, an over-serious look,
+  And never properly be young! No word?
+  What if I curse you? Send a strong curse forth
+  Clothed from my heart, lapped round with horror till
+  She's fit with her white face to walk the world
+  Scaring kind natures from your cause and you--
+  Then to sit down with you at the board-head,
+  The gathering for prayer.... O speak, but speak!
+  ... Creep up, and quietly follow each one home,
+  You, you, you, be a nestling care for each
+  To sleep with,--hardly moaning in his dreams.
+  She gnaws so quietly,--till, lo he starts,
+  Gets off with half a heart eaten away!
+  Oh, shall you 'scape with less if she's my child?
+  You will not say a word--to me--to Him?
+
+  _Pym._ If England shall declare such will to me....
+
+  _Strafford._ No, not for England now, not for Heaven now,--
+  See, Pym, for my sake, mine who kneel to you!
+  There, I will thank you for the death, my friend!
+  This is the meeting: let me love you well!
+
+  _Pym._ England,--I am thine own! Dost thou exact
+  That service? I obey thee to the end.
+
+  _Strafford._ O God, I shall die first--I shall die first!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A lively picture of Cavalier sentiment is given in the "Cavalier
+Tunes"--which ought to furnish conclusive proof that Browning does not
+always put himself into his work. They may be compared with the words
+set to Avison's march given in the last chapter which presents just as
+sympathetically "Roundhead" sentiment.
+
+
+    I. MARCHING ALONG
+
+    I
+
+    Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
+    Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing:
+    And, pressing a troop unable to stoop
+    And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,
+    Marched them along, fifty-score strong,
+    Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.
+
+[Illustration: The Tower: Traitors' Gate]
+
+    II
+
+    God for King Charles! Pym and such carles
+    To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous parles!
+    Cavaliers, up! Lips from the cup,
+    Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup
+    Till you're--
+
+      CHORUS.--_Marching along, fifty-score strong,
+                Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song._
+
+    III
+
+    Hampden to hell, and his obsequies' knell
+    Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well!
+    England, good cheer! Rupert is near!
+    Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here
+
+      CHORUS.--_Marching along, fifty-score strong,
+                Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song?_
+
+    IV
+
+    Then, God for King Charles! Pym and his snarls
+    To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles!
+    Hold by the right, you double your might;
+    So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight,
+
+      CHORUS.--_March we along, fifty-score strong,
+                Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!_
+
+
+    II. GIVE A ROUSE
+
+    I
+
+    King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
+    King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
+    Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
+    King Charles!
+
+    II
+
+    Who gave me the goods that went since?
+    Who raised me the house that sank once?
+    Who helped me to gold I spent since?
+    Who found me in wine you drank once?
+
+      CHORUS.--_King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
+                King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
+                Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
+                King Charles!_
+
+    III
+
+    To whom used my boy George quaff else,
+    By the old fool's side that begot him?
+    For whom did he cheer and laugh else,
+    While Noll's damned troopers shot him?
+
+      CHORUS.--_King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
+                King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
+                Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
+                King Charles!_
+
+
+    III. BOOT AND SADDLE
+
+    I
+
+    Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!
+    Rescue my castle before the hot day
+    Brightens to blue from its silvery grey,
+
+      CHORUS.--"_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_"
+
+    II
+
+    Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say;
+    Many's the friend there, will listen and pray
+    "God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay--"
+
+      CHORUS.--"_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_"
+
+    III
+
+    Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay,
+    Flouts Castle Brancepeth the Roundheads' array:
+    Who laughs, "Good fellows ere this, by my fay,"
+
+      CHORUS.--"_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_"
+
+    IV
+
+    Who? My wife Gertrude; that, honest and gay,
+    Laughs when you talk of surrendering, "Nay!
+    I've better counsellors; what counsel they?"
+
+      CHORUS.--"_Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!_"
+
+Though not illustrative of the subject in hand, "Martin Relph" is
+included here on account of the glimpse it gives of an episode,
+interesting in English History, though devoid of serious consequences,
+since it marked the final abortive struggle of a dying cause.
+
+An imaginary incident of the rebellion in the time of George II., forms
+the background of "Martin Relph," the point of the story being the
+life-long agony of reproach suffered by Martin who let his envy and
+jealousy conquer him at a crucial moment. The history of the attempt of
+Charles Edward to get back the crown of England, supported by a few
+thousand Highlanders, of his final defeat at the Battle of Culloden, and
+of the decay henceforth of Jacobitism, needs no telling. The treatment
+of spies as herein shown is a common-place of war-times, but that a
+reprieve exonerating the accused should be prevented from reaching its
+destination in time through the jealousy of the only person who saw it
+coming gives the episode a tragic touch lifting it into an atmosphere of
+peculiar individual pathos.
+
+
+    MARTIN RELPH
+
+    _My grandfather says he remembers he saw, when a youngster long ago,
+    On a bright May day, a strange old man, with a beard as white as snow,
+    Stand on the hill outside our town like a monument of woe,
+    And, striking his bare bald head the while, sob out the reason--so!_
+
+    If I last as long at Methuselah I shall never forgive myself:
+    But--God forgive me, that I pray, unhappy Martin Relph,
+    As coward, coward I call him--him, yes, him! Away from me!
+    Get you behind the man I am now, you man that I used to be!
+
+    What can have sewed my mouth up, set me a-stare, all eyes, no tongue?
+    People have urged "You visit a scare too hard on a lad so young!
+    You were taken aback, poor boy," they urge, "no time to regain
+          your wits:
+    Besides it had maybe cost you life." Ay, there is the cap which fits!
+
+    So, cap me, the coward,--thus! No fear! A cuff on the brow does good:
+    The feel of it hinders a worm inside which bores at the brain
+          for food.
+    See now, there certainly seems excuse: for a moment, I trust, dear
+          friends,
+    The fault was but folly, no fault of mine, or if mine, I have made
+          amends!
+
+    For, every day that is first of May, on the hill-top, here stand I,
+    Martin Relph, and I strike my brow, and publish the reason why,
+    When there gathers a crowd to mock the fool. No fool, friends,
+          since the bite
+    Of a worm inside is worse to bear: pray God I have balked him quite!
+
+    I'll tell you. Certainly much excuse! It came of the way they cooped
+    Us peasantry up in a ring just here, close huddling because
+          tight-hooped
+    By the red-coats round us villagers all: they meant we should see
+          the sight
+    And take the example,--see, not speak, for speech was the Captain's
+          right.
+
+    "You clowns on the slope, beware!" cried he: "This woman about to die
+    Gives by her fate fair warning to such acquaintance as play the spy.
+    Henceforth who meddle with matters of state above them perhaps will
+          learn
+    That peasants should stick to their plough-tail, leave to the King
+          the King's concern.
+
+    "Here's a quarrel that sets the land on fire, between King George
+          and his foes:
+    What call has a man of your kind--much less, a woman--to interpose?
+    Yet you needs must be meddling, folk like you, not foes--so much
+          the worse!
+    The many and loyal should keep themselves unmixed with the few
+          perverse.
+
+    "Is the counsel hard to follow? I gave it you plainly a month ago,
+    And where was the good? The rebels have learned just all that they
+          need to know.
+    Not a month since in we quietly marched: a week, and they had the
+          news,
+    From a list complete of our rank and file to a note of our caps and
+          shoes.
+
+    "All about all we did and all we were doing and like to do!
+    Only, I catch a letter by luck, and capture who wrote it, too.
+    Some of you men look black enough, but the milk-white face demure
+    Betokens the finger foul with ink: 'tis a woman who writes, be sure!
+
+    "Is it 'Dearie, how much I miss your mouth!'--good natural stuff,
+          she pens?
+    Some sprinkle of that, for a blind, of course: with talk about
+          cocks and hens,
+    How 'robin has built on the apple-tree, and our creeper which came
+          to grief
+    Through the frost, we feared, is twining afresh round casement in
+          famous leaf.'
+
+    "But all for a blind! She soon glides frank into 'Horrid the place
+          is grown
+    With Officers here and Privates there, no nook we may call our own:
+    And Farmer Giles has a tribe to house, and lodging will be to seek
+    For the second Company sure to come ('tis whispered) on Monday week.'
+
+    "And so to the end of the chapter! There! The murder you see, was out:
+    Easy to guess how the change of mind in the rebels was brought about!
+    Safe in the trap would they now lie snug, had treachery made no sign:
+    But treachery meets a just reward, no matter if fools malign!
+
+    "That traitors had played us false, was proved--sent news which fell
+          so pat:
+    And the murder was out--this letter of love, the sender of this sent
+          that!
+    'Tis an ugly job, though, all the same--a hateful, to have to deal
+    With a case of the kind, when a woman's in fault: we soldiers need
+          nerves of steel!
+
+    "So, I gave her a chance, despatched post-haste a message to
+          Vincent Parkes
+    Whom she wrote to; easy to find he was, since one of the King's
+          own clerks,
+    Ay, kept by the King's own gold in the town close by where the
+          rebels camp:
+    A sort of a lawyer, just the man to betray our sort--the scamp!
+
+    "'If her writing is simple and honest and only the lover-like stuff
+          it looks,
+    And if you yourself are a loyalist, nor down in the rebels' books,
+    Come quick,' said I, 'and in person prove you are each of you clear
+          of crime,
+    Or martial law must take its course: this day next week's the time!'
+
+    "Next week is now: does he come? Not he! Clean gone, our clerk, in
+          a trice!
+    He has left his sweetheart here in the lurch: no need of a warning
+          twice!
+    His own neck free, but his partner's fast in the noose still, here
+          she stands
+    To pay for her fault. 'Tis an ugly job: but soldiers obey commands.
+
+    "And hearken wherefore I make a speech! Should any acquaintance share
+    The folly that led to the fault that is now to be punished, let fools
+          beware!
+    Look black, if you please, but keep hands white: and, above all else,
+          keep wives--
+    Or sweethearts or what they may be--from ink! Not a word now, on your
+          lives!"
+
+    Black? but the Pit's own pitch was white to the Captain's face--the
+          brute
+    With the bloated cheeks and the bulgy nose and the bloodshot eyes
+          to suit!
+    He was muddled with wine, they say: more like, he was out of his
+          wits with fear;
+    He had but a handful of men, that's true,--a riot might cost him
+          dear.
+
+    And all that time stood Rosamund Page, with pinioned arms and face
+    Bandaged about, on the turf marked out for the party's firing-place.
+    I hope she was wholly with God: I hope 'twas His angel stretched
+          a hand
+    To steady her so, like the shape of stone you see in our
+          church-aisle stand.
+
+    I hope there was no vain fancy pierced the bandage to vex her eyes,
+    No face within which she missed without, no questions and no replies--
+    "Why did you leave me to die?"--"Because...." Oh, fiends, too soon
+          you grin
+    At merely a moment of hell, like that--such heaven as hell ended in!
+
+    Let mine end too! He gave the word, up went the guns in a line.
+    Those heaped on the hill were blind as dumb,--for, of all eyes,
+          only mine
+    Looked over the heads of the foremost rank. Some fell on their knees
+          in prayer,
+    Some sank to the earth, but all shut eyes, with a sole exception
+          there.
+
+    That was myself, who had stolen up last, had sidled behind the group:
+    I am highest of all on the hill-top, there stand fixed while the
+          others stoop!
+    From head to foot in a serpent's twine am I tightened: _I_ touch
+          ground?
+    No more than a gibbet's rigid corpse which the fetters rust around!
+
+    Can I speak, can I breathe, can I burst--aught else but see, see,
+          only see?
+    And see I do--for there comes in sight--a man, it sure must be!--
+    Who staggeringly, stumblingly rises, falls, rises, at random flings
+          his weight
+    On and on, anyhow onward--a man that's mad he arrives too late!
+
+    Else why does he wave a something white high-flourished above his
+          head?
+    Why does not he call, cry,--curse the fool!--why throw up his arms
+          instead?
+    O take his fist in your own face, fool! Why does not yourself shout
+          "Stay!
+    Here's a man comes rushing, might and main, with something he's mad
+          to say?"
+
+    And a minute, only a moment, to have hell-fire boil up in your brain,
+    And ere you can judge things right, choose heaven,--time's over,
+          repentance vain!
+    They level: a volley, a smoke and the clearing of smoke: I see no more
+    Of the man smoke hid, nor his frantic arms, nor the something white
+          he bore.
+
+    But stretched on the field, some half-mile off, is an object. Surely
+          dumb,
+    Deaf, blind were we struck, that nobody heard, not one of us saw him
+          come!
+    Has he fainted through fright? One may well believe! What is it he
+          holds so fast?
+    Turn him over, examine the face! Heyday! What, Vincent Parkes at last?
+
+    Dead! dead as she, by the self-same shot: one bullet has ended both,
+    Her in the body and him in the soul. They laugh at our plighted troth.
+    "Till death us do part?" Till death us do join past parting--that
+          sounds like
+    Betrothal indeed! O Vincent Parkes, what need has my fist to strike?
+
+    I helped you: thus were you dead and wed: one bound, and your soul
+          reached hers!
+    There is clenched in your hand the thing, signed, sealed, the paper
+          which plain avers
+    She is innocent, innocent, plain as print, with the King's Arms
+          broad engraved:
+    No one can hear, but if any one high on the hill can see, she's saved!
+
+    And torn his garb and bloody his lips with heart-break--plain it grew
+    How the week's delay had been brought about: each guess at the end
+          proved true.
+    It was hard to get at the folk in power: such waste of time! and
+          then
+    Such pleading and praying, with, all the while, his lamb in the
+          lion's den!
+
+    And at length when he wrung their pardon out, no end to the stupid
+          forms--
+    The license and leave: I make no doubt--what wonder if passion warms
+    The pulse in a man if you play with his heart?--he was something
+          hasty in speech;
+    Anyhow, none would quicken the work: he had to beseech, beseech!
+
+    And the thing once signed, sealed, safe in his grasp,--what followed
+          but fresh delays?
+    For the floods were out, he was forced to take such a roundabout of
+          ways!
+    And 'twas "Halt there!" at every turn of the road, since he had to
+          cross the thick
+    Of the red-coats: what did they care for him and his "Quick, for
+          God's sake, quick!"
+
+    Horse? but he had one: had it how long? till the first knave smirked
+          "You brag
+    Yourself a friend of the King's? then lend to a King's friend here
+          your nag!"
+    Money to buy another? Why, piece by piece they plundered him still,
+    With their "Wait you must;--no help: if aught can help you, a guinea
+          will!"
+
+    And a borough there was--I forget the name--whose Mayor must have
+          the bench
+    Of Justices ranged to clear a doubt: for "Vincent," thinks he,
+          sounds French!
+    It well may have driven him daft, God knows! all man can certainly
+          know
+    Is--rushing and falling and rising, at last he arrived in a
+          horror--so!
+
+    When a word, cry, gasp, would have rescued both! Ay bite me! The
+          worm begins
+    At his work once more. Had cowardice proved--that only--my sin of
+          sins!
+    Friends, look you here! Suppose ... suppose.... But mad I am, needs
+          must be!
+    Judas the Damned would never have dared such a sin as I dream! For,
+          see!
+
+    Suppose I had sneakingly loved her myself, my wretched self, and
+          dreamed
+    In the heart of me "She were better dead than happy and his!"--while
+          gleamed
+    A light from hell as I spied the pair in a perfectest embrace,
+    He the savior and she the saved,--bliss born of the very murder-place!
+
+    No! Say I was scared, friends! Call me fool and coward, but nothing
+          worse!
+    Jeer at the fool and gibe at the coward! 'Twas ever the coward's
+          curse
+    That fear breeds fancies in such: such take their shadow for
+          substance still,
+    --A fiend at their back. I liked poor Parkes,--loved Vincent, if
+          you will!
+
+    And her--why, I said "Good morrow" to her, "Good even," and nothing
+          more:
+    The neighborly way! She was just to me as fifty had been before.
+    So, coward it is and coward shall be! There's a friend, now!
+          Thanks! A drink
+    Of water I wanted: and now I can walk, get home by myself, I think.
+
+This poem, on an incident in Clive's life, is also included on account
+of its English historical setting.
+
+The remarkable career of Robert Clive cannot be gone into here. Suffice
+it to refresh one's memory with a few principal events of his life. He
+was born in Shopshire in 1725. He entered the service of the East India
+Company at eighteen and was sent to Madras. Here, on account of his
+falling into debt, and being in danger of losing his situation, he twice
+tried to shoot himself. The pistol failed to go off, however, and he
+became impressed with the idea that some great destiny was awaiting him.
+His feeling was fully realized as his subsequent career in India shows.
+At twenty-seven, when he returned to England he had made the English the
+first military power in India. On his return to India (1755-59) he took
+a further step and secured for the English a political supremacy.
+Finally, on his last visit, he crowned his earlier exploits by putting
+the English dominance on a sounder basis of integrity than it had before
+been.
+
+The incident related in the poem by the old man, Browning heard from
+Mrs. Jameson, who had shortly before heard it from Macaulay at Lansdowne
+House. Macaulay mentions it in his essay: "Of his personal courage he
+had, while still a writer [clerk] given signal proof by a desperate duel
+with a military bully who was the terror of Fort St. David."
+
+The old gentleman in the poem evidently mixed up his dates slightly, for
+he says this incident occurred when Clive was twenty-one, and he
+represents him as committing suicide twenty-five years afterwards. Clive
+was actually forty-nine when he took his own life.
+
+
+    CLIVE
+
+    I and Clive were friends--and why not? Friends! I think you laugh,
+          my lad.
+    Clive it was gave England India, while your father gives--egad,
+    England nothing but the graceless boy who lures him on to speak--
+    "Well, Sir, you and Clive were comrades--" with a tongue thrust in
+          your cheek!
+    Very true: in my eyes, your eyes, all the world's eyes, Clive was man,
+    I was, am and ever shall be--mouse, nay, mouse of all its clan
+    Sorriest sample, if you take the kitchen's estimate for fame;
+    While the man Clive--he fought Plassy, spoiled the clever foreign
+          game,
+    Conquered and annexed and Englished!
+                              Never mind! As o'er my punch
+    (You away) I sit of evenings,--silence, save for biscuit-crunch,
+    Black, unbroken,--thought grows busy, thrids each pathway of old
+          years,
+    Notes this forthright, that meander, till the long-past life appears
+    Like an outspread map of country plodded through, each mile and rood,
+    Once, and well remembered still: I'm startled in my solitude
+    Ever and anon by--what's the sudden mocking light that breaks
+    On me as I slap the table till no rummer-glass but shakes
+    While I ask--aloud, I do believe, God help me!--"Was it thus?
+    Can it be that so I faltered, stopped when just one step for us--"
+    (Us,--you were not born, I grant, but surely some day born would be)
+    "--One bold step had gained a province" (figurative talk, you see)
+    "Got no end of wealth and honor,--yet I stood stock still no less?"
+    --"For I was not Clive," you comment: but it needs no Clive to guess
+    Wealth were handy, honor ticklish, did no writing on the wall
+    Warn me "Trespasser, 'ware man-traps!" Him who braves that
+          notice--call
+    Hero! none of such heroics suit myself who read plain words,
+    Doff my hat, and leap no barrier. Scripture says the land's the
+          Lord's:
+    Louts them--what avail the thousand, noisy in a smock-frocked ring,
+    All-agog to have me trespass, clear the fence, be Clive their king?
+    Higher warrant must you show me ere I set one foot before
+    T'other in that dark direction, though I stand for evermore
+    Poor as Job and meek as Moses. Evermore? No! By-and-by
+    Job grows rich and Moses valiant, Clive turns out less wise than I.
+    Don't object "Why call him friend, then?" Power is power, my boy,
+          and still
+    Marks a man,--God's gift magnific, exercised for good or ill.
+    You've your boot now on my hearth-rug, tread what was a tiger's skin:
+    Rarely such a royal monster as I lodged the bullet in!
+    True, he murdered half a village, so his own death came to pass;
+    Still, for size and beauty, cunning, courage--ah, the brute he was!
+    Why, that Clive,--that youth, that greenhorn, that quill-driving
+          clerk, in fine,--
+    He sustained a siege in Arcot.... But the world knows! Pass the wine.
+
+    Where did I break off at? How bring Clive in? Oh, you mentioned
+          "fear"!
+    Just so: and, said I, that minds me of a story you shall hear.
+
+    We were friends then, Clive and I: so, when the clouds, about the orb
+    Late supreme, encroaching slowly, surely, threatened to absorb
+    Ray by ray its noontide brilliance,--friendship might, with
+          steadier eye
+    Drawing near, bear what had burned else, now no blaze--all majesty.
+    Too much bee's-wing floats my figure? Well, suppose a castle's new:
+    None presume to climb its ramparts, none find foothold sure for shoe
+    'Twixt those squares and squares of granite plating the impervious
+          pile
+    As his scale-mail's warty iron cuirasses a crocodile.
+    Reels that castle thunder-smitten, storm-dismantled? From without
+    Scrambling up by crack and crevice, every cockney prates about
+    Towers--the heap he kicks now! turrets--just the measure of his cane!
+    Will that do? Observe moreover--(same similitude again)--
+    Such a castle seldom crumbles by sheer stress of cannonade:
+    'Tis when foes are foiled and fighting's finished that vile rains
+          invade,
+    Grass o'ergrows, o'ergrows till night-birds congregating find no holes
+    Fit to build in like the topmost sockets made for banner-poles.
+    So Clive crumbled slow in London--crashed at last.
+
+                                                      A week before,
+    Dining with him,--after trying churchyard-chat of days of yore,--
+    Both of us stopped, tired as tombstones, head-piece, foot-piece,
+          when they lean
+    Each to other, drowsed in fog-smoke, o'er a coffined Past between.
+    As I saw his head sink heavy, guessed the soul's extinguishment
+    By the glazing eyeball, noticed how the furtive fingers went
+    Where a drug-box skulked behind the honest liquor,--"One more throw
+    Try for Clive!" thought I: "Let's venture some good rattling
+          question!" So--
+    "Come, Clive, tell us"--out I blurted--"what to tell in turn,
+          years hence,
+    When my boy--suppose I have one--asks me on what evidence
+    I maintain my friend of Plassy proved a warrior every whit
+    Worth your Alexanders, Caesars, Marlboroughs and--what said Pitt?--
+    Frederick the Fierce himself! Clive told me once"--I want to say--
+    "Which feat out of all those famous doings bore the bell away
+    --In his own calm estimation, mark you, not the mob's rough guess--
+    Which stood foremost as evincing what Clive called courageousness!
+    Come! what moment of the minute, what speck-center in the wide
+    Circle of the action saw your mortal fairly deified?
+    (Let alone that filthy sleep-stuff, swallow bold this wholesome Port!)
+    If a friend has leave to question,--when were you most brave, in
+          short?"
+
+    Up he arched his brows o' the instant--formidably Clive again.
+    "When was I most brave? I'd answer, were the instance half as plain
+    As another instance that's a brain-lodged crystal--curse it!--here
+    Freezing when my memory touches--ugh!--the time I felt most fear.
+    Ugh! I cannot say for certain if I showed fear--anyhow,
+    Fear I felt, and, very likely, shuddered, since I shiver now."
+
+    "Fear!" smiled I. "Well, that's the rarer: that's a specimen to seek,
+    Ticket up in one's museum, _Mind-Freaks_, _Lord Clive's Fear_,
+          _Unique_!"
+
+    Down his brows dropped. On the table painfully he pored as though
+    Tracing, in the stains and streaks there, thoughts encrusted long ago.
+    When he spoke 'twas like a lawyer reading word by word some will,
+    Some blind jungle of a statement,--beating on and on until
+    Out there leaps fierce life to fight with.
+
+                                        "This fell in my factor-days.
+    Desk-drudge, slaving at St. David's, one must game, or drink, or
+          craze.
+    I chose gaming: and,--because your high-flown gamesters hardly take
+    Umbrage at a factor's elbow if the factor pays his stake,--
+    I was winked at in a circle where the company was choice,
+    Captain This and Major That, men high of color, loud of voice,
+    Yet indulgent, condescending to the modest juvenile
+    Who not merely risked but lost his hard-earned guineas with a smile.
+
+    "Down I sat to cards, one evening,--had for my antagonist
+    Somebody whose name's a secret--you'll know why--so, if you list,
+    Call him Cock o' the Walk, my scarlet son of Mars from head to heel!
+    Play commenced: and, whether Cocky fancied that a clerk must feel
+    Quite sufficient honor came of bending over one green baize,
+    I the scribe with him the warrior,--guessed no penman dared to raise
+    Shadow of objection should the honor stay but playing end
+    More or less abruptly,--whether disinclined he grew to spend
+    Practice strictly scientific on a booby born to stare
+    At--not ask of--lace-and-ruffles if the hand they hide plays fair,--
+    Anyhow, I marked a movement when he bade me 'Cut!'
+
+                                                      "I rose.
+    'Such the new manoeuvre, Captain? I'm a novice: knowledge grows.
+    What, you force a card, you cheat, Sir?'
+
+                                            "Never did a thunder-clap
+    Cause emotion, startle Thyrsis locked with Chloe in his lap,
+    As my word and gesture (down I flung my cards to join the pack)
+    Fired the man of arms, whose visage, simply red before, turned black.
+
+    "When he found his voice, he stammered 'That expression once again!'
+
+    "'Well, you forced a card and cheated!'
+
+                                            "'Possibly a factor's brain,
+    Busied with his all-important balance of accounts, may deem
+    Weighing words superfluous trouble: _cheat_ to clerkly ears may seem
+    Just the joke for friends to venture: but we are not friends, you see!
+    When a gentleman is joked with,--if he's good at repartee,
+    He rejoins, as do I--Sirrah, on your knees, withdraw in full!
+    Beg my pardon, or be sure a kindly bullet through your skull
+    Lets in light and teaches manners to what brain it finds! Choose
+          quick--
+    Have your life snuffed out or, kneeling, pray me trim yon
+          candle-wick!'
+
+    "'Well, you cheated!'
+
+                          "Then outbroke a howl from all the friends
+          around.
+    To his feet sprang each in fury, fists were clenched and teeth were
+          ground.
+    'End it! no time like the present! Captain, yours were our disgrace!
+    No delay, begin and finish! Stand back, leave the pair a space!
+    Let civilians be instructed: henceforth simply ply the pen,
+    Fly the sword! This clerk's no swordsman? Suit him with a pistol,
+          then!
+    Even odds! A dozen paces 'twixt the most and least expert
+    Make a dwarf a giant's equal: nay, the dwarf, if he's alert,
+    Likelier hits the broader target!'
+
+                                        "Up we stood accordingly.
+    As they handed me the weapon, such was my soul's thirst to try
+    Then and there conclusions with this bully, tread on and stamp out
+    Every spark of his existence, that,--crept close to, curled about
+    By that toying tempting teasing fool-fore-finger's middle joint,--
+    Don't you guess?--the trigger yielded. Gone my chance! and at the
+          point
+    Of such prime success moreover: scarce an inch above his head
+    Went my ball to hit the wainscot. He was living, I was dead.
+
+    "Up he marched in flaming triumph--'twas his right, mind!--up, within
+    Just an arm's length. 'Now, my clerkling,' chuckled Cocky with a grin
+    As the levelled piece quite touched me, 'Now, Sir Counting-House,
+          repeat
+    That expression which I told you proved bad manners! Did I cheat?'
+
+    "'Cheat you did, you knew you cheated, and, this moment, know as well.
+    As for me, my homely breeding bids you--fire and go to Hell!'
+
+    "Twice the muzzle touched my forehead. Heavy barrel, flurried wrist,
+    Either spoils a steady lifting. Thrice: then, 'Laugh at Hell who list,
+    I can't! God's no fable either. Did this boy's eye wink once? No!
+    There's no standing him and Hell and God all three against me,--so,
+    I did cheat!'
+
+                  "And down he threw the pistol, out rushed--by the door
+    Possibly, but, as for knowledge if by chimney, roof or floor,
+    He effected disappearance--I'll engage no glance was sent
+    That way by a single starer, such a blank astonishment
+    Swallowed up their senses: as for speaking--mute they stood as mice.
+
+    "Mute not long, though! Such reaction, such a hubbub in a trice!
+    'Rogue and rascal! Who'd have thought it? What's to be expected next,
+    When His Majesty's Commission serves a sharper as pretext
+    For.... But where's the need of wasting time now? Nought requires
+          delay:
+    Punishment the Service cries for: let disgrace be wiped away
+    Publicly, in good broad daylight! Resignation? No, indeed
+    Drum and fife must play the Rogue's March, rank and file be free to
+          speed
+    Tardy marching on the rogue's part by appliance in the rear
+    --Kicks administered shall right this wronged civilian,--never fear,
+    Mister Clive, for--though a clerk--you bore yourself--suppose we say--
+    Just as would beseem a soldier!'
+
+                                      "'Gentlemen, attention--pray!
+    First, one word!'
+
+                      "I passed each speaker severally in review.
+    When I had precise their number, names and styles, and fully knew
+    Over whom my supervision thenceforth must extend,--why, then----
+
+    "'Some five minutes since, my life lay--as you all saw, gentlemen--
+    At the mercy of your friend there. Not a single voice was raised
+    In arrest of judgment, not one tongue--before my powder blazed--
+    Ventured "Can it be the youngster blundered, really seemed to mark
+    Some irregular proceeding? We conjecture in the dark,
+    Guess at random,--still, for sake of fair play--what if for a freak,
+    In a fit of absence,--such things have been!--if our friend proved
+          weak
+    --What's the phrase?--corrected fortune! Look into the case, at
+          least!"
+    Who dared interpose between the altar's victim and the priest?
+    Yet he spared me! You eleven! Whosoever, all or each,
+    To the disadvantage of the man who spared me, utters speech
+    --To his face, behind his back,--that speaker has to do with me:
+    Me who promise, if positions change and mine the chance should be,
+    Not to imitate your friend and waive advantage!'
+
+                                                    "Twenty-five
+    Years ago this matter happened: and 'tis certain," added Clive,
+    "Never, to my knowledge, did Sir Cocky have a single breath
+    Breathed against him: lips were closed throughout his life, or
+          since his death,
+    For if he be dead or living I can tell no more than you.
+    All I know is--Cocky had one chance more; how he used it,--grew
+    Out of such unlucky habits, or relapsed, and back again
+    Brought the late-ejected devil with a score more in his train,--
+    That's for you to judge. Reprieval I procured, at any rate.
+    Ugh--the memory of that minute's fear makes gooseflesh rise! Why prate
+    Longer? You've my story, there's your instance: fear I did, you see!"
+
+    "Well"--I hardly kept from laughing--"if I see it, thanks must be
+    Wholly to your Lordship's candor. Not that--in a common case--
+    When a bully caught at cheating thrusts a pistol in one's face,
+    I should underrate, believe me, such a trial to the nerve!
+    'Tis no joke, at one-and-twenty, for a youth to stand nor swerve.
+    Fear I naturally look for--unless, of all men alive,
+    I am forced to make exception when I come to Robert Clive.
+    Since at Arcot, Plassy, elsewhere, he and death--the whole world
+          knows--
+    Came to somewhat closer quarters."
+                                      Quarters? Had we come to blows,
+    Clive and I, you had not wondered--up he sprang so, out he rapped
+    Such a round of oaths--no matter! I'll endeavor to adapt
+    To our modern usage words he--well, 'twas friendly license--flung
+    At me like so many fire-balls, fast as he could wag his tongue.
+
+    "You--a soldier? You--at Plassy? Yours the faculty to nick
+    Instantaneously occasion when your foe, if lightning-quick,
+    --At his mercy, at his malice,--has you, through some stupid inch
+    Undefended in your bulwark? Thus laid open,--not to flinch
+    --That needs courage, you'll concede me. Then, look here! Suppose
+          the man,
+    Checking his advance, his weapon still extended, not a span
+    Distant from my temple,--curse him!--quietly had bade me 'There!
+    Keep your life, calumniator!--worthless life I freely spare:
+    Mine you freely would have taken--murdered me and my good fame
+    Both at once--and all the better! Go, and thank your own bad aim
+    Which permits me to forgive you!' What if, with such words as these,
+    He had cast away his weapon? How should I have borne me, please?
+    Nay, I'll spare you pains and tell you. This, and only this,
+          remained--
+    Pick his weapon up and use it on myself. I so had gained
+    Sleep the earlier, leaving England probably to pay on still
+    Rent and taxes for half India, tenant at the Frenchman's will."
+
+    "Such the turn," said I, "the matter takes with you? Then I abate
+    --No, by not one jot nor tittle,--of your act my estimate.
+    Fear--I wish I could detect there: courage fronts me, plain enough--
+    Call it desperation, madness--never mind! for here's in rough
+    Why, had mine been such a trial, fear had overcome disgrace.
+    True, disgrace were hard to bear: but such a rush against God's face
+    --None of that for me, Lord Plassy, since I go to church at times,
+    Say the creed my mother taught me! Many years in foreign climes
+    Rub some marks away--not all, though! We poor sinners reach life's
+          brink,
+    Overlook what rolls beneath it, recklessly enough, but think
+    There's advantage in what's left us--ground to stand on, time to call
+    'Lord, have mercy!' ere we topple over--do not leap, that's all!"
+
+    Oh, he made no answer,--re-absorbed into his cloud. I caught
+    Something like "Yes--courage: only fools will call it fear."
+                                                                If aught
+    Comfort you, my great unhappy hero Clive, in that I heard,
+    Next week, how your own hand dealt you doom, and uttered just the word
+    "Fearfully courageous!"--this, be sure, and nothing else I groaned.
+    I'm no Clive, nor parson either: Clive's worst deed--we'll hope
+          condoned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+SOCIAL ASPECTS OF ENGLISH LIFE
+
+
+Browning's poetry presents no such complete panorama of phases of social
+life in England as it does of those in Italy, perhaps, because there is
+a poise and solidity about the English character which does not lend
+itself to so great a variety of mood as one may find in the peculiarly
+artistic temperament of the Italians, especially those of the
+Renaissance period. Even such irregular proceedings as murders have
+their philosophical after-claps which show their usefulness in the
+divine scheme of things, while unfortunate love affairs work such
+beneficent results in character that they are shorn of much of their
+tragedy of sorrow. There is quite a group of love-lyrics with no
+definite setting that might be put down as English in temper. It does
+not require much imagination to think of the lover who sings so lofty a
+strain in "One Way of Love" as English:--
+
+    I
+
+    All June I bound the rose in sheaves.
+    Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves
+    And strew them where Pauline may pass.
+    She will not turn aside? Alas!
+    Let them lie. Suppose they die?
+    The chance was they might take her eye.
+
+    II
+
+    How many a month I strove to suit
+    These stubborn fingers to the lute!
+    To-day I venture all I know.
+    She will not hear my music? So!
+    Break the string; fold music's wing:
+    Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!
+
+    III
+
+    My whole life long I learned to love.
+    This hour my utmost art I prove
+    And speak my passion--heaven or hell?
+    She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!
+    Lose who may--I still can say,
+    Those who win heaven, blest are they!
+
+And is not this treatment of a "pretty woman" more English than not?
+
+
+    A PRETTY WOMAN
+
+    I
+
+    That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers,
+        And the blue eye
+        Dear and dewy,
+    And that infantine fresh air of hers!
+
+    II
+
+    To think men cannot take you, Sweet,
+        And enfold you,
+        Ay, and hold you,
+    And so keep you what they make you, Sweet!
+
+    III
+
+    You like us for a glance, you know--
+        For a word's sake
+        Or a sword's sake,
+    All's the same, whate'er the chance, you know.
+
+    IV
+
+    And in turn we make you ours, we say--
+        You and youth too,
+        Eyes and mouth too,
+    All the face composed of flowers, we say.
+
+    V
+
+    All's our own, to make the most of, Sweet--
+        Sing and say for,
+        Watch and pray for,
+    Keep a secret or go boast of, Sweet!
+
+    VI
+
+    But for loving, why, you would not, Sweet,
+        Though we prayed you,
+        Paid you, brayed you
+    In a mortar--for you could not, Sweet!
+
+    VII
+
+    So, we leave the sweet face fondly there:
+        Be its beauty
+        Its sole duty!
+    Let all hope of grace beyond, lie there!
+
+    VIII
+
+    And while the face lies quiet there,
+        Who shall wonder
+        That I ponder
+    A conclusion? I will try it there.
+
+    IX
+
+    As,--why must one, for the love foregone,
+        Scout mere liking?
+        Thunder-striking
+    Earth,--the heaven, we looked above for, gone!
+
+    X
+
+    Why, with beauty, needs there money be,
+        Love with liking?
+        Crush the fly-king
+    In his gauze, because no honey-bee?
+
+    XI
+
+    May not liking be so simple-sweet,
+        If love grew there
+        'Twould undo there
+    All that breaks the cheek to dimples sweet?
+
+    XII
+
+    Is the creature too imperfect, say?
+        Would you mend it
+        And so end it?
+    Since not all addition perfects aye!
+
+    XIII
+
+    Or is it of its kind, perhaps,
+        Just perfection--
+        Whence, rejection
+    Of a grace not to its mind, perhaps?
+
+    XIV
+
+    Shall we burn up, tread that face at once
+        Into tinder,
+        And so hinder
+    Sparks from kindling all the place at once?
+
+    XV
+
+    Or else kiss away one's soul on her?
+        Your love-fancies!
+        --A sick man sees
+    Truer, when his hot eyes roll on her!
+
+    XVI
+
+    Thus the craftsman thinks to grace the rose,--
+        Plucks a mould-flower
+        For his gold flower,
+    Uses fine things that efface the rose:
+
+    XVII
+
+    Rosy rubies make its cup more rose,
+        Precious metals
+        Ape the petals,--
+    Last, some old king locks it up, morose!
+
+    XVIII
+
+    Then how grace a rose? I know a way!
+        Leave it, rather.
+        Must you gather?
+    Smell, kiss, wear it--at last, throw away!
+
+"The Last Ride Together" may be cited as another example of the
+philosophy which an Englishman, or at any rate a Browning, can evolve
+from a more or less painful episode.
+
+
+    THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER
+
+    I
+
+    I said--Then, dearest, since 'tis so,
+    Since now at length my fate I know,
+    Since nothing all my love avails,
+    Since all my life seemed meant for, fails,
+      Since this was written and needs must be--
+    My whole heart rises up to bless
+    Your name in pride and thankfulness!
+    Take back the hope you gave,--I claim
+    Only a memory of the same,
+    --And this beside, if you will not blame,
+      Your leave for one more last ride with me.
+
+    II
+
+    My mistress bent that brow of hers;
+    Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs
+    When pity would be softening through,
+    Fixed me a breathing-while or two
+      With life or death in the balance: right!
+    The blood replenished me again;
+    My last thought was at least not vain:
+    I and my mistress, side by side
+    Shall be together, breathe and ride,
+    So, one day more am I deified.
+      Who knows but the world may end to-night?
+
+    III
+
+    Hush! if you saw some western cloud
+    All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed
+    By many benedictions--sun's--
+    And moon's and evening-star's at once--
+      And so, you, looking and loving best,
+    Conscious grew, your passion drew
+    Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too,
+    Down on you, near and yet more near,
+    Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!--
+    Thus leant she and lingered--joy and fear!
+      Thus lay she a moment on my breast.
+
+    IV
+
+    Then we began to ride. My soul
+    Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll
+    Freshening and fluttering in the wind.
+    Past hopes already lay behind.
+      What need to strive with a life awry?
+    Had I said that, had I done this,
+    So might I gain, so might I miss.
+    Might she have loved me? just as well
+    She might have hated, who can tell!
+    Where had I been now if the worst befell?
+      And here we are riding, she and I.
+
+    V
+
+    Fail I alone, in words and deeds?
+    Why, all men strive and who succeeds?
+    We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,
+    Saw other regions, cities new,
+      As the world rushed by on either side.
+    I thought,--All labor, yet no less
+    Bear up beneath their unsuccess.
+    Look at the end of work, contrast
+    The petty done, the undone vast,
+    This present of theirs with the hopeful past!
+      I hoped she would love me; here we ride.
+
+    VI
+
+    What hand and brain went ever paired?
+    What heart alike conceived and dared?
+    What act proved all its thought had been?
+    What will but felt the fleshly screen?
+      We ride and I see her bosom heave.
+    There's many a crown for who can reach.
+    Ten lines, a stateman's life in each!
+    The flag stuck on a heap of bones,
+    A soldier's doing! what atones?
+    They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones.
+      My riding is better, by their leave.
+
+    VII
+
+    What does it all mean, poet? Well,
+    Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell
+    What we felt only; you expressed
+    You hold things beautiful the best,
+      And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.
+    'Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then,
+    Have you yourself what's best for men?
+    Are you--poor, sick, old ere your time--
+    Nearer one whit your own sublime
+    Than we who never have turned a rhyme?
+      Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride.
+
+    VIII
+
+    And you, great sculptor--so, you gave
+    A score of years to Art, her slave,
+    And that's your Venus, whence we turn
+    To yonder girl that fords the burn!
+      You acquiesce, and shall I repine?
+    What, man of music, you grown grey
+    With notes and nothing else to say,
+    Is this your sole praise from a friend,
+    "Greatly his opera's strains intend,
+    But in music we know how fashions end!"
+      I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.
+
+    IX
+
+    Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate
+    Proposed bliss here should sublimate
+    My being--had I signed the bond--
+    Still one must lead some life beyond,
+      Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.
+    This foot once planted on the goal,
+    This glory-garland round my soul,
+    Could I descry such? Try and test!
+    I sink back shuddering from the quest.
+    Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?
+      Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride.
+
+    X
+
+    And yet--she has not spoke so long!
+    What if heaven be that, fair and strong
+    At life's best, with our eyes upturned
+    Whither life's flower is first discerned,
+      We, fixed so, ever should so abide?
+    What if we still ride on, we two
+    With life for ever old yet new,
+    Changed not in kind but in degree,
+    The instant made eternity,--
+    And heaven just prove that I and she
+      Ride, ride together, for ever ride?
+
+"James Lee's Wife" is also English in temper as the English name
+indicates sufficiently, though the scene is laid out of England. This
+wife has her agony over the faithless husband, but she plans vengeance
+against neither him nor the other women who attract him. She realizes
+that his nature is not a deep and serious one like her own, and in her
+highest reach she sees that her own nature has been lifted up by means
+of her true and loyal feeling, that this gain to herself is her reward,
+or will be in some future state. The stanzas giving this thought are
+among the most beautiful in the poem.
+
+
+    AMONG THE ROCKS
+
+    I
+
+    Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth,
+    This autumn morning! How he sets his bones
+    To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet
+    For the ripple to run over in its mirth;
+      Listening the while, where on the heap of stones
+    The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.
+
+    II
+
+    That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true;
+      Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows.
+    If you loved only what were worth your love,
+    Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you:
+      Make the low nature better by your throes!
+    Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!
+
+Two of the longer poems have distinctly English settings: "A Blot in the
+Scutcheon" and "The Inn Album;" while, of the shorter ones, "Ned Bratts"
+has an English theme, and "Halbert and Hob" though not founded upon an
+English story has been given an English _mis en scene_ by Browning.
+
+In the "Blot," we get a glimpse of Eighteenth Century aristocratic
+England. The estate over which Lord Tresham presided was one of those
+typical country kingdoms, which have for centuries been so conspicuous a
+feature of English life, and which through the assemblies of the great,
+often gathered within their walls, wielded potent influences upon
+political life. The play opens with the talk of a group of retainers,
+such as formed the household of these lordly establishments. It was not
+a rare thing for the servants of the great to be admitted into intimacy
+with the family, as was the case with Gerard. They were often people of
+a superior grade, hardly to be classed with servants in the sense
+unfortunately given to that word to-day.
+
+Besides the house and the park which figure in the play, such an estate
+had many acres of land devoted to agriculture--some of it, called the
+demesne, which was cultivated for the benefit of the owner, and some
+land held in villeinage which the unfree tenants, called villeins, were
+allowed to till for themselves. All this land might be in one large
+tract, or the demesne might be separate from the other. Mertoun speaks
+of their demesnes touching each other. Over the villeins presided the
+Bailiff, who kept strict watch to see that they performed their work
+punctually. His duties were numerous, for he directed the ploughing,
+sowing and reaping, gave out the seed, watched the harvest, gathered and
+looked after the stock and horses. A church, a mill and an inn were
+often included in such an estate.
+
+[Illustration: An English Manor House]
+
+Pride in their ancient lineage was, of course, common to noble families,
+though probably few of them could boast as Tresham did that there was no
+blot in their escutcheon. Some writers have even declared that most of
+the nobles are descended from tradesmen. According to one of these "The
+great bulk of our peerage is comparatively modern, so far as the titles
+go; but it is not the less noble that it has been recruited to so large
+an extent from the ranks of honorable industry. In olden times, the
+wealth and commerce of London, conducted as it was by energetic and
+enterprising men was a prolific source of peerages. Thus, the earldom
+of Cornwallis was founded by Thomas Cornwallis, the Cheapside merchant;
+that of Essex by William Capel, the draper; and that of Craven by
+William Craven, the merchant tailor. The modern Earl of Warwick is not
+descended from 'the King-maker,' but from William Greville, the
+woolstapler; whilst the modern Dukes of Northumberland find their head,
+not in the Percies, but in Hugh Smithson, a respectable London
+apothecary. The founders of the families of Dartmouth, Radnor, Ducie,
+and Pomfret were respectively a skinner, a silk manufacturer, a merchant
+tailor, and a Calais merchant; whilst the founders of the peerages of
+Tankerville, Dormer, and Coventry were mercers. The ancestors of Earl
+Romney, and Lord Dudley and Ward, were goldsmiths and jewelers; and Lord
+Dacres was a banker in the reign of Charles I., as Lord Overstone is in
+that of Queen Victoria. Edward Osborne, the founder of the dukedom of
+Leeds, was apprentice to William Hewet, a rich cloth worker on London
+Bridge, whose only daughter he courageously rescued from drowning, by
+leaping into the Thames after her, and eventually married. Among other
+peerages founded by trade are those of Fitzwilliam, Leigh, Petre,
+Cowper, Darnley, Hill, and Carrington."
+
+Perhaps the imaginary house of Tresham may be said to find its closest
+counterpart in the Sidney family, for many generations owners of
+Penshurst, and with a traditional character according to which the men
+were all brave and the women were all pure. Sir Philip Sidney was
+himself the type of all the virtues of the family, while his father's
+care for his proper bringing up was not unlike Tresham's for Mildred. In
+the words of a recent writer: "The most famous scion of this Kentish
+house was above all things, the moral and intellectual product of
+Penshurst Place. In the park may still be seen an avenue of trees, under
+which the father, in his afternoon walks with the boy, tested his
+recollection of the morning's lessons conned with the tutor. There, too,
+it was that he impressed on the lad those maxims for the conduct of
+life, afterwards emphasized in the correspondence still extant among the
+Penshurst archives.
+
+"Philip was to begin every day with lifting up his mind to the Almighty
+in hearty prayer, as well as feelingly digesting all he prayed for. He
+was also, early or late, to be obedient to others, so that in due time
+others might obey him. The secret of all success lay in a moderate diet
+with rare use of wine. A gloomy brow was, however, to be avoided.
+Rather should the youth give himself to be merry, so as not to
+degenerate from his father. Above all things should he keep his wit from
+biting words, or indeed from too much talk of any kind. Had not nature
+ramparted up the tongue with teeth and the lips with hair as reins and
+bridles against the tongue's loose use. Heeding this, he must be sure to
+tell no untruth even in trifles; for that was a naughty custom, nor
+could there be a greater reproach to a gentleman than to be accounted a
+liar. _Noblesse oblige_ formed the keynote of the oral and written
+precepts with which the future Sir Philip Sidney was paternally
+supplied. By his mother, too, Lady Mary Dudley, the boy must remember
+himself to be of noble blood. Let him beware, therefore, through sloth
+and vice, of being accounted a blemish on his race."
+
+Furthermore, the brotherly and sisterly relations of Tresham and Mildred
+are not unlike those of Sir Philip Sidney and his sister Mary. They
+studied and worked together in great sympathy, broken into only by the
+tragic fate of Sir Philip. Although the education of women in those days
+was chiefly domestic, with a smattering of accomplishments, yet there
+were exceptional girls who aspired to learning and who became brilliant
+women. Mildred under her brother's tutelage bid fare to be one of this
+sort.
+
+The ideals of the Sidneys, it is true, were sixteenth-century ideals.
+Eighteenth-century ideals were proverbially low. England, then, had not
+recovered from the frivolities inaugurated after the Restoration. The
+slackness and unbelief among the clergy, and the looseness of morals in
+society were notorious, but this degeneration could not have been
+universal. There are always a few Noahs and their families left to
+repeople the world with righteousness after a deluge of degeneracy, and
+Browning is quite right in his portrayal of an eighteenth-century knight
+_sans peur et sans reproche_ who defends the honor of his house with his
+sword, because of his high moral ideals. Besides, the Methodist revival
+led by the Wesleys gained constantly in power. It affected not only the
+people of the middle and lower classes, rescuing them from brutality of
+mind and manners, but it affected the established church for the better,
+and made its mark upon the upper classes. "Religion, long despised and
+contemned by the titled and the great" writes Withrow, "began to receive
+recognition and support by men high in the councils of the nation. Many
+ladies of high rank became devout Christians. A new element of
+restraint, compelling at least some outward respect for the decencies of
+life and observances of religion, was felt at court, where too long
+corruption and back-stair influence had sway."
+
+Like all of his kind, no matter what the century, Tresham is more than
+delighted at the thought of an alliance between his house and the noble
+house to which Mertoun belonged. The youth of Mildred was no obstacle,
+for marriages were frequently contracted in those days between young
+boys and girls. The writer's English grand-father and mother were married
+at the respective ages of sixteen and fifteen within the boundaries of
+the nineteenth century.
+
+The first two scenes of the play present episodes thoroughly
+illustrative of the life lived by the "quality."
+
+
+ACT I
+
+SCENE I.--_The interior of a lodge in LORD TRESHAM'S park. Many
+Retainers crowded at the window, supposed to command a view of the
+entrance to his mansion._
+
+_GERARD, the warrener, his back to a table on which are flagons, etc._
+
+  _1st Retainer._ Ye, do! push, friends, and then you'll push down me!
+  --What for? Does any hear a runner's foot
+  Or a steed's trample or a coach-wheel's cry?
+  Is the Earl come or his least poursuivant?
+  But there's no breeding in a man of you
+  Save Gerard yonder: here's a half-place yet,
+  Old Gerard!
+
+  _Gerard._ Save your courtesies, my friend.
+  Here is my place.
+
+  _2nd Retainer._ Now, Gerard, out with it!
+  What makes you sullen, this of all the days
+  I' the year? To-day that young rich bountiful
+  Handsome Earl Mertoun, whom alone they match
+  With our Lord Tresham through the country side,
+  Is coming here in utmost bravery
+  To ask our master's sister's hand?
+
+  _Gerard._                           What then?
+
+  _2nd Retainer._ What then? Why, you, she speaks to if she meets
+  Your worship, smiles on as you hold apart
+  The boughs to let her through her forest walks
+  You, always favorite for your no deserts
+  You've heard, these three days, how Earl Mertoun sues
+  To lay his heart and house and broad lands too
+  At Lady Mildred's feet: and while we squeeze
+  Ourselves into a mousehole lest we miss
+  One congee of the least page in his train,
+  You sit o' one side--"there's the Earl," say I--
+  "What then," say you!
+
+  _3rd Retainer._          I'll wager he has let
+  Both swans be tamed for Lady Mildred swim
+  Over the falls and gain the river!
+
+  _Gerard._                           Ralph!
+  Is not to-morrow my inspecting day
+  For you and for your hawks?
+
+  _4th Retainer._             Let Gerard be!
+  He's coarse-grained, like his carved black cross-bow stock.
+  Ha, look now, while we squabble with him, look!
+  Well done, now--is not this beginning, now,
+  To purpose?
+
+  _1st Retainer._ Our retainers look as fine--
+  That's comfort. Lord, how Richard holds himself
+  With his white staff! Will not a knave behind
+  Prick him upright?
+
+  _4th Retainer._ He's only bowing, fool!
+  The Earl's man bent us lower by this much.
+
+  _1st Retainer._ That's comfort. Here's a very cavalcade!
+
+  _3rd Retainer._ I don't see wherefore Richard, and his troop
+  Of silk and silver varlets there, should find
+  Their perfumed selves so indispensable
+  On high days, holidays! Would it so disgrace
+  Our family, if I, for instance, stood--
+  In my right hand a cast of Swedish hawks,
+  A leash of greyhounds in my left?--
+
+  _Gerard._                             --With Hugh
+  The logman for supporter, in his right
+  The bill-hook, in his left the brushwood-shears!
+
+  _3rd Retainer._ Out on you, crab! What next, what next?
+  The Earl!
+
+  _1st Retainer._ Oh Walter, groom, our horses, do they match
+  The Earl's? Alas, that first pair of the six--
+  They paw the ground--Ah Walter! and that brute
+  Just on his haunches by the wheel!
+
+  _6th Retainer._                     Ay--ay!
+  You, Philip, are a special hand, I hear,
+  At soups and sauces: what's a horse to you?
+  D'ye mark that beast they've slid into the midst
+  So cunningly?--then, Philip, mark this further;
+  No leg has he to stand on!
+
+  _1st Retainer._             No? That's comfort.
+
+  _2nd Retainer._ Peace, Cook! The Earl descends. Well, Gerard, see
+  The Earl at least! Come, there's a proper man,
+  I hope! Why, Ralph, no falcon, Pole or Swede,
+  Has got a starrier eye.
+
+  _3rd Retainer._         His eyes are blue:
+  But leave my hawks alone!
+
+  _4th Retainer._           So young, and yet
+  So tall and shapely!
+
+  _5th Retainer._     Here's Lord Tresham's self!
+  There now--there's what a nobleman should be!
+  He's older, graver, loftier, he's more like
+  A House's head.
+
+  _2nd Retainer._ But you'd not have a boy
+  --And what's the Earl beside?--possess too soon
+  That stateliness?
+
+  _1st Retainer._  Our master takes his hand--
+  Richard and his white staff are on the move--
+  Back fall our people--(tsh!--there's Timothy
+  Sure to get tangled in his ribbon-ties,
+  And Peter's cursed rosette's a-coming off!)
+  --At last I see our lord's back and his friend's;
+  And the whole beautiful bright company
+  Close round them--in they go!
+
+[_Jumping down from the window-bench, and making for the table and its
+jugs._]
+
+                               Good health, long life
+  Great joy to our Lord Tresham and his House!
+
+  _6th Retainer._ My father drove his father first to court,
+  After his marriage-day--ay, did he!
+
+  _2nd Retainer._                     God bless
+  Lord Tresham, Lady Mildred, and the Earl!
+  Here, Gerard, reach your beaker!
+
+  _Gerard._                         Drink, my boys!
+  Don't mind me--all's not right about me--drink!
+
+  _2nd Retainer_ [_aside_]. He's vexed, now, that he let the show escape!
+  [_To GERARD._] Remember that the Earl returns this way.
+
+  _Gerard._ That way?
+
+  _2nd Retainer._     Just so.
+
+  _Gerard._                    Then my way's here.
+
+[_Goes._
+
+  _2nd Retainer._                                  Old Gerard
+  Will die soon--mind, I said it! He was used
+  To care about the pitifullest thing
+  That touched the House's honor, not an eye
+  But his could see wherein: and on a cause
+  Of scarce a quarter this importance, Gerard
+  Fairly had fretted flesh and bone away
+  In cares that this was right, nor that was wrong,
+  Such point decorous, and such square by rule--
+  He knew such niceties, no herald more:
+  And now--you see his humor: die he will!
+
+  _2nd Retainer._ God help him! Who's for the great servant's hall
+  To hear what's going on inside? They'd follow
+  Lord Tresham into the saloon.
+
+  _3rd Retainer._                 I!--
+
+  _4th Retainer._                       I!--
+  Leave Frank alone for catching, at the door,
+  Some hint of how the parley goes inside!
+  Prosperity to the great House once more!
+  Here's the last drop!
+
+  _1st Retainer._       Have at you! Boys, hurrah!
+
+
+SCENE II.--_A Saloon in the Mansion._
+
+_Enter LORD THESHAM, LORD MERTOUN, AUSTIN, and GUENDOLEN._
+
+  _Tresham._ I welcome you, Lord Mertoun, yet once more,
+  To this ancestral roof of mine. Your name
+  --Noble among the noblest in itself,
+  Yet taking in your person, fame avers,
+  New price and lustre,--(as that gem you wear,
+  Transmitted from a hundred knightly breasts,
+  Fresh chased and set and fixed by its last lord,
+  Seems to re-kindle at the core)--your name
+  Would win you welcome!--
+
+  _Mertoun._                Thanks!
+
+  _Tresham._                        --But add to that,
+  The worthiness and grace and dignity
+  Of your proposal for uniting both
+  Our Houses even closer than respect
+  Unites them now--add these, and you must grant
+  One favor more, nor that the least,--to think
+  The welcome I should give;--'tis given! My lord,
+  My only brother, Austin: he's the king's.
+  Our cousin, Lady Guendolen--betrothed
+  To Austin: all are yours.
+
+  _Mertoun._ I thank you--less
+  For the expressed commendings which your seal,
+  And only that, authenticates--forbids
+  My putting from me ... to my heart I take
+  Your praise ... but praise less claims my gratitude,
+  Than the indulgent insight it implies
+  Of what must needs be uppermost with one
+  Who comes, like me, with the bare leave to ask,
+  In weighed and measured unimpassioned words,
+  A gift, which, if as calmly 'tis denied,
+  He must withdraw, content upon his cheek,
+  Despair within his soul. That I dare ask
+  Firmly, near boldly, near with confidence
+  That gift, I have to thank you. Yes, Lord Tresham,
+  I love your sister--as you'd have one love
+  That lady ... oh more, more I love her! Wealth,
+  Rank, all the world thinks me, they're yours, you know,
+  To hold or part with, at your choice--but grant
+  My true self, me without a rood of land,
+  A piece of gold, a name of yesterday,
+  Grant me that lady, and you ... Death or life?
+
+  _Guendolen_ [_apart to AUSTIN_]. Why, this is loving, Austin!
+
+  _Austin._                       He's so young!
+
+  _Guendolen._ Young? Old enough, I think, to half surmise
+  He never had obtained an entrance here,
+  Were all this fear and trembling needed.
+
+  _Austin._                                Hush!
+  He reddens.
+
+  _Guendolen._ Mark him, Austin; that's true love!
+  Ours must begin again.
+
+  _Tresham._              We'll sit, my lord.
+  Ever with best desert goes diffidence.
+  I may speak plainly nor be misconceived.
+  That I am wholly satisfied with you
+  On this occasion, when a falcon's eye
+  Were dull compared with mine to search out faults,
+  Is somewhat. Mildred's hand is hers to give
+  Or to refuse.
+
+  _Mertoun._    But you, you grant my suit?
+  I have your word if hers?
+
+  _Tresham._                My best of words
+  If hers encourage you. I trust it will.
+  Have you seen Lady Mildred, by the way?
+
+  _Mertoun._ I ... I ... our two demesnes, remember, touch;
+  I have been used to wander carelessly
+  After my stricken game: the heron roused
+  Deep in my woods, has trailed its broken wing
+  Thro' thicks and glades a mile in yours,--or else
+  Some eyass ill-reclaimed has taken flight
+  And lured me after her from tree to tree,
+  I marked not whither. I have come upon
+  The lady's wondrous beauty unaware,
+  And--and then ... I have seen her.
+
+  _Guendolen_ [_aside to AUSTIN_]. Note that mode
+  Of faltering out that, when a lady passed,
+  He, having eyes, did see her! You had said--
+  "On such a day I scanned her, head to foot;
+  Observed a red, where red should not have been,
+  Outside her elbow; but was pleased enough
+  Upon the whole." Let such irreverent talk
+  Be lessoned for the future!
+
+  _Tresham._                  What's to say
+  May be said briefly. She has never known
+  A mother's care; I stand for father too.
+  Her beauty is not strange to you, it seems--
+  You cannot know the good and tender heart,
+  Its girl's trust and its woman's constancy,
+  How pure yet passionate, how calm yet kind,
+  How grave yet joyous, how reserved yet free
+  As light where friends are--how imbued with lore
+  The world most prizes, yet the simplest, yet
+  The ... one might know I talked of Mildred--thus
+  We brothers talk!
+
+  _Mertoun._        I thank you.
+
+  _Tresham._                      In a word,
+  Control's not for this lady; but her wish
+  To please me outstrips in its subtlety
+  My power of being pleased: herself creates
+  The want she means to satisfy. My heart
+  Prefers your suit to her as 'twere its own.
+  Can I say more?
+
+  _Mertoun._      No more--thanks, thanks--no more!
+
+  _Tresham._ This matter then discussed....
+
+  _Mertoun._                          --We'll waste no breath
+  On aught less precious. I'm beneath the roof
+  Which holds her: while I thought of that, my speech
+  To you would wander--as it must not do,
+  Since as you favor me I stand or fall.
+  I pray you suffer that I take my leave!
+
+  _Tresham._ With less regret 't is suffered, that again
+  We meet, I hope, so shortly.
+
+  _Mertoun._                    We? again?--
+  Ah yes, forgive me--when shall ... you will crown
+  Your goodness by forthwith apprising me
+  When ... if ... the lady will appoint a day
+  For me to wait on you--and her.
+
+  _Tresham._                      So soon
+  As I am made acquainted with her thoughts
+  On your proposal--howsoe'er they lean--
+  A messenger shall bring you the result.
+
+  _Mertoun._ You cannot bind me more to you, my lord.
+  Farewell till we renew ... I trust, renew
+  A converse ne'er to disunite again.
+
+  _Tresham._ So may it prove!
+
+  _Mertoun._                  You, lady, you, sir, take
+  My humble salutation!
+
+  _Guendolen and Austin._ Thanks!
+
+  _Tresham._                      Within there!
+
+[_+Servants+ enter. TRESHAM conducts MERTOUN to the door. Meantime
+AUSTIN remarks_,
+
+  Here I have an advantage of the Earl,
+  Confess now! I'd not think that all was safe
+  Because my lady's brother stood my friend!
+  Why, he makes sure of her--"do you say, yes"--
+  "She'll not say, no,"--what comes it to beside?
+  I should have prayed the brother, "speak this speech,
+  For Heaven's sake urge this on her--put in this--
+  Forget not, as you'd save me, t'other thing,--
+  Then set down what she says, and how she looks,
+  And if she smiles, and" (in an under breath)
+  "Only let her accept me, and do you
+  And all the world refuse me, if you dare!"
+
+  _Guendolen._ That way you'd take, friend Austin? What a shame
+  I was your cousin, tamely from the first
+  Your bride, and all this fervor's run to waste!
+  Do you know you speak sensibly to-day?
+  The Earl's a fool.
+
+  _Austin._           Here's Thorold. Tell him so!
+
+  _Tresham_ [_returning_]. Now, voices, voices! 'St! the lady's first!
+  How seems he?--seems he not ... come, faith give fraud
+  The mercy-stroke whenever they engage!
+  Down with fraud, up with faith! How seems the Earl?
+  A name! a blazon! if you knew their worth,
+  As you will never! come--the Earl?
+
+  _Guendolen._                        He's young.
+
+  _Tresham._ What's she? an infant save in heart and brain.
+  Young! Mildred is fourteen, remark! And you ...
+  Austin, how old is she?
+
+  _Guendolen._            There's tact for you!
+  I meant that being young was good excuse
+  If one should tax him....
+
+  _Tresham._                Well?
+
+  _Guendolen._                    --With lacking wit.
+
+  _Tresham._ He lacked wit? Where might he lack wit, so please you?
+
+  _Guendolen._ In standing straighter than the steward's rod
+  And making you the tiresomest harangue,
+  Instead of slipping over to my side
+  And softly whispering in my ear, "Sweet lady,
+  Your cousin there will do me detriment
+  He little dreams of: he's absorbed, I see,
+  In my old name and fame--be sure he'll leave
+  My Mildred, when his best account of me
+  Is ended, in full confidence I wear
+  My grandsire's periwig down either cheek.
+  I'm lost unless your gentleness vouchsafes"....
+
+  _Tresham._ ... "To give a best of best accounts, yourself,
+  Of me and my demerits." You are right!
+  He should have said what now I say for him.
+  Yon golden creature, will you help us all?
+  Here's Austin means to vouch for much, but you
+  --You are ... what Austin only knows! Come up,
+  All three of us: she's in the library
+  No doubt, for the day's wearing fast. Precede!
+
+  _Guendolen._ Austin, how we must--!
+
+  _Tresham._                          Must what? Must speak truth,
+  Malignant tongue! Detect one fault in him!
+  I challenge you!
+
+  _Guendolen._   Witchcraft's a fault in him,
+  For you're bewitched.
+
+  _Tresham._              What's urgent we obtain
+  Is, that she soon receive him--say, to-morrow--
+  Next day at furthest.
+
+  _Guendolen._            Ne'er instruct me!
+
+  _Tresham._                                 Come!
+  --He's out of your good graces, since forsooth,
+  He stood not as he'd carry us by storm
+  With his perfections! You're for the composed
+  Manly assured becoming confidence!
+  --Get her to say, "to-morrow," and I'll give you ...
+  I'll give you black Urganda, to be spoiled
+  With petting and snail-paces. Will you? Come!
+
+The story of the love of Mildred and Mertoun is the universally human
+one, and belongs to no one country or no one period of civilization more
+than another, but the attitude of all the actors in the tragedy belongs
+distinctively to the phase of moral culture which we saw illustrated in
+the youth of Sir Philip Sidney, and is characteristic of English ways of
+thinking whenever their moral force comes uppermost, as for example in
+the Puritan thought of the Cromwellian era.
+
+The play is in a sense a problem play, though to most modern readers the
+tragedy of its ending is all too horrible a consequence of the sin.
+Dramatically and psychically, however, the tragedy is much more
+inevitable than that of Romeo and Juliet, whose love one naturally
+thinks of in the same connection. The catastrophe in the Shakespeare
+play is almost mechanically pushed to its conclusion through mere
+external blundering, easily to have been prevented. Juliet saw clearly
+where Mildred does not, that loyalty to a deep and true love should
+triumph over all minor considerations, so that in her case the tragedy
+is, in no sense, due to her blindness of vision. In the "Blot," lack of
+perception of the true values in life makes it impossible for Mildred or
+Tresham to act otherwise than they did. But having worked out their
+problem according to their lights, a new light of a more glorious day
+dawns upon them.
+
+The ideal by which Tresham lives and moves and has his being is that of
+pride of birth, with honor and chastity as its watchwords. At the same
+time the idol of his life is his sister Mildred, over whom he has
+watched with a father's and mother's care. When the blow to his ideal
+comes at the hands of this much cherished sister, it is not to be
+wondered at that his reason almost deserts him. The greatest agony
+possible to the human soul is to have its ideals, the very food which
+has been the sustenance of its being, utterly ruined. The ideal may be a
+wrong one, or an impartial one, and through the wrack and ruin may dawn
+larger vision, but, unless the nature be a marvelously developed one the
+storm that breaks when an ideal is shattered is overwhelming.
+
+It would be equally true of Mildred that, nurtured as she had been and
+as young English girls usually are, in great purity, even ignorance of
+all things pertaining to life, the sense of her sin would be so
+overwhelming as to blind her to any possible means of expiation except
+the most extreme. And indeed may it not be said that only those who can
+see as Mertoun and Guendolen did that genuine and loyal love is no less
+love because, in a conventional sense, it has sinned,--only those would
+acknowledge, as Tresham, indeed, does after he has murdered Mertoun, how
+perfect the love of Mildred and Mertoun was. Sin flourishes only when
+insincerity tricks itself out in the garb of love, and on the whole it
+is well that human beings should have an abiding sense of their own and
+others insincerity, and test themselves by their willingness to
+acknowledge their love before God and man. There are many Mildreds but
+few Mertouns. It is little wonder that Dickens wrote with such
+enthusiasm of this play that he knew no love like that of Mildred and
+Mertoun, no passion like it.
+
+[Illustration: An English Park]
+
+One does not need to discuss whether murders were possible in English
+social life. They are possible in all life at all times as long as men
+and women allow their passions to overthrow their reason. The last act,
+however, illustrates the English poise already referred to; Tresham
+regains his equilibrium with enlarged vision, his salvation is
+accomplished, his soul awakened.
+
+
+ACT III
+
+SCENE I.--_The end of the Yew-tree Avenue under MILDRED'S window. A
+light seen through a central red pane._
+
+_Enter TRESHAM through the trees._
+
+  Again here! But I cannot lose myself.
+  The heath--the orchard--I have traversed glades
+  And dells and bosky paths which used to lead
+  Into green wild-wood depths, bewildering
+  My boy's adventurous step. And now they tend
+  Hither or soon or late; the blackest shade
+  Breaks up, the thronged trunks of the trees ope wide,
+  And the dim turret I have fled from, fronts
+  Again my step: the very river put
+  Its arm about me and conducted me
+  To this detested spot. Why then, I'll shun
+  Their will no longer: do your will with me!
+  Oh, bitter! To have reared a towering scheme
+  Of happiness, and to behold it razed,
+  Were nothing: all men hope, and see their hopes
+  Frustrate, and grieve awhile, and hope anew.
+  But I ... to hope that from a line like ours
+  No horrid prodigy like this would spring,
+  Were just as though I hoped that from these old
+  Confederates against the sovereign day,
+  Children of older and yet older sires,
+  Whose living coral berries dropped, as now
+  On me, on many a baron's surcoat once,
+  On many a beauty's wimple--would proceed
+  No poison-tree, to thrust, from hell its root,
+  Hither and thither its strange snaky arms.
+  Why came I here? What must I do? [_A bell strikes._] A bell?
+  Midnight! and 'tis at midnight.... Ah, I catch
+  --Woods, river, plains, I catch your meaning now,
+  And I obey you! Hist! This tree will serve.
+
+[_He retires behind one of the trees. After a pause, enter MERTOUN
+cloaked as before._
+
+  _Mertoun._ Not time! Beat out thy last voluptuous beat
+  Of hope and fear, my heart! I thought the clock
+  I' the chapel struck as I was pushing through
+  The ferns. And so I shall no more see rise
+  My love-star! Oh, no matter for the past!
+  So much the more delicious task to watch
+  Mildred revive: to pluck out, thorn by thorn,
+  All traces of the rough forbidden path
+  My rash love lured her to! Each day must see
+  Some fear of hers effaced, some hope renewed:
+  Then there will be surprises, unforeseen
+  Delights in store. I'll not regret the past.
+
+[_The light is placed above in the purple pane._
+
+  And see, my signal rises, Mildred's star!
+  I never saw it lovelier than now
+  It rises for the last time. If it sets,
+  'Tis that the re-assuring sun may dawn.
+
+[_As he prepares to ascend the last tree of the avenue, TRESHAM arrests
+his arm._
+
+  Unhand me--peasant, by your grasp! Here's gold.
+  'Twas a mad freak of mine. I said I'd pluck
+  A branch from the white-blossomed shrub beneath
+  The casement there. Take this, and hold your peace.
+
+  _Tresham._ Into the moonlight yonder, come with me!
+  Out of the shadow!
+
+  _Mertoun._         I am armed, fool!
+
+  _Tresham._                           Yes,
+  Or no? You'll come into the light, or no?
+  My hand is on your throat--refuse!--
+
+  _Mertoun._                           That voice!
+  Where have I heard ... no--that was mild and slow.
+  I'll come with you.
+
+[_They advance._
+
+  _Tresham._          You're armed: that's well. Declare
+  Your name: who are you?
+
+  _Mertoun._              (Tresham!--she is lost!)
+
+  _Tresham._ Oh, silent? Do you know, you bear yourself
+  Exactly as, in curious dreams I've had
+  How felons, this wild earth is full of, look
+  When they're detected, still your kind has looked!
+  The bravo holds an assured countenance,
+  The thief is voluble and plausible,
+  But silently the slave of lust has crouched
+  When I have fancied it before a man.
+  Your name!
+
+  _Mertoun._ I do conjure Lord Tresham--ay,
+  Kissing his foot, if so I might prevail--
+  That he for his own sake forbear to ask
+  My name! As heaven's above, his future weal
+  Or woe depends upon my silence! Vain!
+  I read your white inexorable face.
+  Know me, Lord Tresham!
+
+[_He throws off his disguises._
+
+  _Tresham._             Mertoun!
+           [_After a pause._] Draw now!
+
+  _Mertoun._                            Hear me
+  But speak first!
+
+  _Tresham._       Not one least word on your life!
+  Be sure that I will strangle in your throat
+  The least word that informs me how you live
+  And yet seem what you seem! No doubt 'twas you
+  Taught Mildred still to keep that face and sin.
+  We should join hands in frantic sympathy
+  If you once taught me the unteachable,
+  Explained how you can live so, and so lie.
+  With God's help I retain, despite my sense,
+  The old belief--a life like yours is still
+  Impossible. Now draw!
+
+  _Mertoun._            Not for my sake,
+  Do I entreat a hearing--for your sake,
+  And most, for her sake!
+
+  _Tresham._              Ha ha, what should I
+  Know of your ways? A miscreant like yourself,
+  How must one rouse his ire? A blow?--that's pride
+  No doubt, to him! One spurns him, does one not?
+  Or sets the foot upon his mouth, or spits
+  Into his face! Come! Which, or all of these?
+
+  _Mertoun._ 'Twixt him and me and Mildred, Heaven be judge!
+  Can I avoid this? Have your will, my lord!
+
+[_He draws and, after a few passes, falls._
+
+  _Tresham._ You are not hurt?
+
+  _Mertoun._                   You'll hear me now!
+
+  _Tresham._                                       But rise!
+
+  _Mertoun._ Ah, Tresham, say I not "you'll hear me now!"
+  And what procures a man the right to speak
+  In his defense before his fellow man,
+  But--I suppose--the thought that presently
+  He may have leave to speak before his God
+  His whole defense?
+
+  _Tresham._         Not hurt? It cannot be!
+  You made no effort to resist me. Where
+  Did my sword reach you? Why not have returned
+  My thrusts? Hurt where?
+
+  _Mertoun._              My lord--
+
+  _Tresham._                        How young he is!
+
+  _Mertoun._ Lord Tresham, I am very young, and yet
+  I have entangled other lives with mine.
+  Do let me speak, and do believe my speech!
+  That when I die before you presently,--
+
+  _Tresham._ Can you stay here till I return with help?
+
+  _Mertoun._ Oh, stay by me! When I was less than boy
+  I did you grievous wrong and knew it not--
+  Upon my honor, knew it not! Once known,
+  I could not find what seemed a better way
+  To right you than I took: my life--you feel
+  How less than nothing were the giving you
+  The life you've taken! But I thought my way
+  The better--only for your sake and hers:
+  And as you have decided otherwise,
+  Would I had an infinity of lives
+  To offer you! Now say--instruct me--think!
+  Can you, from the brief minutes I have left,
+  Eke out my reparation? Oh think--think!
+  For I must wring a partial--dare I say,
+  Forgiveness from you, ere I die?
+
+  _Tresham._                       I do
+  Forgive you.
+
+  _Mertoun._   Wait and ponder that great word!
+  Because, if you forgive me, I shall hope
+  To speak to you of--Mildred!
+
+  _Tresham._                   Mertoun, haste
+  And anger have undone us. 'Tis not you
+  Should tell me for a novelty you're young,
+  Thoughtless, unable to recall the past.
+  Be but your pardon ample as my own!
+
+  _Mertoun._ Ah, Tresham, that a sword-stroke and a drop
+  Of blood or two, should bring all this about!
+  Why, 'twas my very fear of you, my love
+  Of you--(what passion like a boy's for one
+  Like you?)--that ruined me! I dreamed of you--
+  You, all accomplished, courted everywhere,
+  The scholar and the gentleman. I burned
+  To knit myself to you: but I was young,
+  And your surpassing reputation kept me
+  So far aloof! Oh, wherefore all that love?
+  With less of love, my glorious yesterday
+  Of praise and gentlest words and kindest looks,
+  Had taken place perchance six months ago.
+  Even now, how happy we had been! And yet
+  I know the thought of this escaped you, Tresham!
+  Let me look up into your face; I feel
+  'Tis changed above me: yet my eyes are glazed.
+  Where? where?
+
+[_As he endeavors to raise himself, his eye catches the lamp._
+
+                Ah, Mildred! What will Mildred do?
+  Tresham, her life is bound up in the life
+  That's bleeding fast away! I'll live--must live,
+  There, if you'll only turn me I shall live
+  And save her! Tresham--oh, had you but heard!
+  Had you but heard! What right was yours to set
+  The thoughtless foot upon her life and mine,
+  And then say, as we perish, "Had I thought,
+  All had gone otherwise?" We've sinned and die:
+  Never you sin, Lord Tresham! for you'll die,
+  And God will judge you.
+
+  _Tresham._              Yes, be satisfied!
+  That process is begun.
+
+  _Mertoun._             And she sits there
+  Waiting for me! Now, say you this to her--
+  You, not another--say, I saw him die
+  As he breathed this, "I love her"--you don't know
+  What those three small words mean! Say, loving her
+  Lowers me down the bloody slope to death
+  With memories ... I speak to her, not you,
+  Who had no pity, will have no remorse,
+  Perchance intend her.... Die along with me,
+  Dear Mildred! 'tis so easy, and you'll 'scape
+  So much unkindness! Can I lie at rest,
+  With rude speech spoken to you, ruder deeds
+  Done to you?--heartless men shall have my heart,
+  And I tied down with grave-clothes and the worm,
+  Aware, perhaps, of every blow--oh God!--
+  Upon those lips--yet of no power to tear
+  The felon stripe by stripe! Die, Mildred! Leave
+  Their honorable world to them! For God
+  We're good enough, though the world casts us out.
+
+[_A whistle is heard._
+
+  _Tresham._ Ho, Gerard!
+
+_Enter GERARD, AUSTIN and GUENDOLEN, with lights._
+
+                        No one speak! You see what's done.
+  I cannot bear another voice.
+
+  _Mertoun._                   There's light--
+  Light all about me, and I move to it.
+  Tresham, did I not tell you--did you not
+  Just promise to deliver words of mine
+  To Mildred?
+
+  _Tresham._ I will bear these words to her.
+
+  _Mertoun._ Now?
+
+  _Tresham._      Now. Lift you the body, and leave me
+  The head.
+
+[_As they half raise MERTOUN, he turns suddenly._
+
+  _Mertoun._ I knew they turned me: turn me not from her!
+  There! stay you! there!
+
+[_Dies._
+
+  _Guendolen_ [_after a pause_]. Austin, remain you here
+  With Thorold until Gerard comes with help:
+  Then lead him to his chamber. I must go
+  To Mildred.
+
+  _Tresham._ Guendolen, I hear each word
+  You utter. Did you hear him bid me give
+  His message? Did you hear my promise? I,
+  And only I, see Mildred.
+
+  _Guendolen._             She will die.
+
+  _Tresham._ Oh no, she will not die! I dare not hope
+  She'll die. What ground have you to think she'll die?
+  Why, Austin's with you!
+
+  _Austin._               Had we but arrived
+  Before you fought!
+
+  _Tresham._         There was no fight at all.
+  He let me slaughter him--the boy! I'll trust
+  The body there to you and Gerard--thus!
+  Now bear him on before me.
+
+  _Austin._                  Whither bear him?
+
+  _Tresham._ Oh, to my chamber! When we meet there next,
+  We shall be friends.
+
+[_They bear out the body of MERTOUN._
+
+                       Will she die, Guendolen?
+
+  _Guendolen._ Where are you taking me?
+
+  _Tresham._                            He fell just here.
+  Now answer me. Shall you in your whole life
+  --You who have nought to do with Mertoun's fate,
+  Now you have seen his breast upon the turf,
+  Shall you e'er walk this way if you can help?
+  When you and Austin wander arm-in-arm
+  Through our ancestral grounds, will not a shade
+  Be ever on the meadow and the waste--
+  Another kind of shade than when the night
+  Shuts the woodside with all its whispers up?
+  But will you ever so forget his breast
+  As carelessly to cross this bloody turf
+  Under the black yew avenue? That's well!
+  You turn your head: and I then?--
+
+  _Guendolen._                      What is done
+  Is done. My care is for the living. Thorold,
+  Bear up against this burden: more remains
+  To set the neck to!
+
+  _Tresham._          Dear and ancient trees
+  My fathers planted, and I loved so well!
+  What have I done that, like some fabled crime
+  Of yore, lets loose a Fury leading thus
+  Her miserable dance amidst you all?
+  Oh, never more for me shall winds intone
+  With all your tops a vast antiphony,
+  Demanding and responding in God's praise!
+  Hers ye are now, not mine! Farewell--farewell!
+
+
+SCENE II.--_MILDRED'S chamber._
+
+_MILDRED alone._
+
+  He comes not! I have heard of those who seemed
+  Resourceless in prosperity,--you thought
+  Sorrow might slay them when she listed; yet
+  Did they so gather up their diffused strength
+  At her first menace, that they bade her strike,
+  And stood and laughed her subtlest skill to scorn.
+  Oh, 'tis not so with me! The first woe fell,
+  And the rest fall upon it, not on me:
+  Else should I bear that Henry comes not?--fails
+  Just this first night out of so many nights?
+  Loving is done with. Were he sitting now,
+  As so few hours since, on that seat, we'd love
+  No more--contrive no thousand happy ways
+  To hide love from the loveless, any more.
+  I think I might have urged some little point
+  In my defense, to Thorold; he was breathless
+  For the least hint of a defense: but no,
+  The first shame over, all that would might fall.
+  No Henry! Yet I merely sit and think
+  The morn's deed o'er and o'er. I must have crept
+  Out of myself. A Mildred that has lost
+  Her lover--oh, I dare not look upon
+  Such woe! I crouch away from it! 'Tis she,
+  Mildred, will break her heart, not I! The world
+  Forsakes me: only Henry's left me--left?
+  When I have lost him, for he does not come,
+  And I sit stupidly.... Oh Heaven, break up
+  This worse than anguish, this mad apathy,
+  By any means or any messenger!
+
+  _Tresham_ [_without_]. Mildred!
+
+  _Mildred._                      Come in! Heaven hears me!
+  [_Enter TRESHAM._] You? alone?
+  Oh, no more cursing!
+
+  _Tresham._           Mildred, I must sit.
+  There--you sit!
+
+  _Mildred._      Say it, Thorold--do not look
+  The curse! deliver all you come to say!
+  What must become of me? Oh, speak that thought
+  Which makes your brow and cheeks so pale!
+
+  _Tresham._                                My thought?
+
+  _Mildred._ All of it!
+
+  _Tresham._            How we waded--years ago--
+  After those water-lilies, till the plash,
+  I know not how, surprised us; and you dared
+  Neither advance nor turn back: so, we stood
+  Laughing and crying until Gerard came--
+  Once safe upon the turf, the loudest too,
+  For once more reaching the relinquished prize!
+  How idle thoughts are, some men's, dying men's!
+  Mildred,--
+
+  _Mildred._ You call me kindlier by my name
+  Than even yesterday: what is in that?
+
+  _Tresham._ It weighs so much upon my mind that I
+  This morning took an office not my own!
+  I might ... of course, I must be glad or grieved,
+  Content or not, at every little thing
+  That touches you. I may with a wrung heart
+  Even reprove you, Mildred; I did more:
+  Will you forgive me?
+
+  _Mildred._           Thorold? do you mock?
+  Or no ... and yet you bid me ... say that word!
+
+  _Tresham._ Forgive me, Mildred!--are you silent, Sweet?
+
+  _Mildred_ [_starting up_]. Why does not Henry Mertoun come to-night?
+  Are you, too, silent?
+
+[_Dashing his mantle aside, and pointing to his scabbard, which is
+empty._
+
+                         Ah, this speaks for you!
+  You've murdered Henry Mertoun! Now proceed!
+  What is it I must pardon? This and all?
+  Well, I do pardon you--I think I do.
+  Thorold, how very wretched you must be!
+
+  _Tresham._ He bade me tell you....
+
+  _Mildred._                         What I do forbid
+  Your utterance of! So much that you may tell
+  And will not--how you murdered him ... but, no!
+  You'll tell me that he loved me, never more
+  Than bleeding out his life there: must I say
+  "Indeed," to that? Enough! I pardon you.
+
+  _Tresham._ You cannot, Mildred! for the harsh words, yes:
+  Of this last deed Another's judge: whose doom
+  I wait in doubt, despondency and fear.
+
+  _Mildred._ Oh, true! There's nought for me to pardon! True!
+  You loose my soul of all its cares at once.
+  Death makes me sure of him for ever! You
+  Tell me his last words? He shall tell me them,
+  And take my answer--not in words, but reading
+  Himself the heart I had to read him late,
+  Which death....
+
+  _Tresham._      Death? You are dying too? Well said
+  Of Guendolen! I dared not hope you'd die:
+  But she was sure of it.
+
+  _Mildred._              Tell Guendolen
+  I loved her, and tell Austin....
+
+  _Tresham._                        Him you loved:
+  And me?
+
+  _Mildred._ Ah, Thorold! Was't not rashly done
+  To quench that blood, on fire with youth and hope
+  And love of me--whom you loved too, and yet
+  Suffered to sit here waiting his approach
+  While you were slaying him? Oh, doubtlessly
+  You let him speak his poor boy's speech
+  --Do his poor utmost to disarm your wrath
+  And respite me!--you let him try to give
+  The story of our love and ignorance,
+  And the brief madness and the long despair--
+  You let him plead all this, because your code
+  Of honor bids you hear before you strike:
+  But at the end, as he looked up for life
+  Into your eyes--you struck him down!
+
+  _Tresham._                          No! No!
+  Had I but heard him--had I let him speak
+  Half the truth--less--had I looked long on him
+  I had desisted! Why, as he lay there,
+  The moon on his flushed cheek, I gathered all
+  The story ere he told it: I saw through
+  The troubled surface of his crime and yours
+  A depth of purity immovable,
+  Had I but glanced, where all seemed turbidest
+  Had gleamed some inlet to the calm beneath;
+  I would not glance: my punishment's at hand.
+  There, Mildred, is the truth! and you--say on--
+  You curse me?
+
+  _Mildred._    As I dare approach that Heaven
+  Which has not bade a living thing despair,
+  Which needs no code to keep its grace from stain,
+  But bids the vilest worm that turns on it
+  Desist and be forgiven,--I--forgive not,
+  But bless you, Thorold, from my soul of souls!
+
+[_Falls on his neck._
+
+  There! Do not think too much upon the past!
+  The cloud that's broke was all the same a cloud
+  While it stood up between my friend and you;
+  You hurt him 'neath its shadow: but is that
+  So past retrieve? I have his heart, you know;
+  I may dispose of it: I give it you!
+  It loves you as mine loves! Confirm me, Henry!
+
+[_Dies._
+
+  _Tresham._ I wish thee joy, Beloved! I am glad
+  In thy full gladness!
+
+  _Guendolen_ [_without_]. Mildred! Tresham!
+          [_Entering with AUSTIN._] Thorold,
+  I could desist no longer. Ah, she swoons!
+  That's well.
+
+  _Tresham._ Oh, better far than that!
+
+  _Guendolen._                          She's dead!
+  Let me unlock her arms!
+
+  _Tresham._              She threw them thus
+  About my neck, and blessed me, and then died:
+  You'll let them stay now, Guendolen!
+
+  _Austin._                            Leave her
+  And look to him! What ails you, Thorold?
+
+  _Guendolen._                             White
+  As she, and whiter! Austin! quick--this side!
+
+  _Austin._ A froth is oozing through his clenched teeth;
+  Both lips, where they're not bitten through, are black:
+  Speak, dearest Thorold!
+
+  _Tresham._              Something does weigh down
+  My neck beside her weight: thanks: I should fall
+  But for you, Austin, I believe!--there, there,
+  'Twill pass away soon!--ah,--I had forgotten:
+  I am dying.
+
+  _Guendolen._ Thorold--Thorold--why was this?
+
+  _Tresham._ I said, just as I drank the poison off,
+  The earth would be no longer earth to me,
+  The life out of all life was gone from me.
+  There are blind ways provided, the foredone
+  Heart-weary player in this pageant-world
+  Drops out by, letting the main masque defile
+  By the conspicuous portal: I am through--
+  Just through!
+
+  _Guendolen._ Don't leave him, Austin! Death is close.
+
+  _Tresham._ Already Mildred's face is peacefuller.
+  I see you, Austin--feel you: here's my hand,
+  Put yours in it--you, Guendolen, yours too!
+  You're lord and lady now--you're Treshams; name
+  And fame are yours: you hold our 'scutcheon up.
+  Austin, no blot on it! You see how blood
+  Must wash one blot away: the first blot came
+  And the first blood came. To the vain world's eye
+  All's gules again: no care to the vain world,
+  From whence the red was drawn!
+
+  _Austin._                     No blot shall come!
+
+  _Tresham._ I said that: yet it did come. Should it come,
+  Vengeance is God's, not man's. Remember me!
+
+[_Dies._
+
+  _Guendolen_ [_letting fall the pulseless arm_].
+          Ah, Thorold, we can but--remember you!
+
+In "Ned Bratts," Browning has given a striking picture of the influence
+exerted by Bunyan upon some of his wicked contemporaries. The poet took
+his hints for the story from Bunyan himself, who tells it as follows in
+the "Life and Death of Mr. Badman."
+
+"At a summer assizes holden at Hertford, while the judge was sitting
+upon the bench, comes this old Tod into the Court, clothed in a green
+suit, with his leathern girdle in his hand, his bosom open, and all on a
+dung sweat, as if he had run for his life; and being come in, he spake
+aloud, as follows: 'My lord,' said he, 'here is the veriest rogue that
+breathes upon the face of the earth. I have been a thief from a child:
+when I was but a little one, I gave myself to rob orchards and to do
+other such like wicked things, and I have continued a thief ever since.
+My lord, there has not been a robbery committed these many years, within
+so many miles of this place, but I have either been at it, or privy to
+it.' The judge thought the fellow was mad, but after some conference
+with some of the justices, they agreed to indict him; and so they did of
+several felonious actions; to all of which he heartily confessed guilty,
+and so was hanged, with his wife at the same time."
+
+Browning had the happy thought of placing this episode in Bedford amid
+the scenes of Bunyan's labors and imprisonment. Bunyan, himself, was
+tried at the Bedford Assizes upon the charge of preaching things he
+should not, or according to some accounts for preaching without having
+been ordained, and was sentenced to twelve years' imprisonment in the
+Bedford Jail. At one time it was thought that he wrote "Pilgrim's
+Progress" during this imprisonment, but Dr. Brown, in his biography of
+Bunyan conjectured that this book was not begun until a later and
+shorter imprisonment of 1675-76, in the town prison and toll-house on
+Bedford Bridge. Dr. Brown supposes that the portion of the book written
+in prison closes where Christian and Hopeful part from the shepherds on
+the Delectable Mountains. "At that point a break in the narrative is
+indicated--'So I awoke from my dream;' it is resumed with the
+words--'And I slept and dreamed again, and saw the same two pilgrims
+going down the mountains along the highway towards the city.' Already
+from the top of an high hill called 'Clear,' the Celestial City was in
+view; dangers there were still to be encountered; but to have reached
+that high hill and to have seen something like a gate, and some of the
+glory of the place, was an attainment and an incentive." There Bunyan
+could pause. Several years later the pilgrimage of Christiana was
+written.
+
+Browning, however, adopts the tradition that the book was written during
+the twelve years' imprisonment, and makes use of the story of Bunyan's
+having supported himself during this time by making tagged shoe-laces.
+He brings in, also, the little blind daughter to whom Bunyan was said to
+be devoted. The Poet was evidently under the impression also that the
+assizes were held in a courthouse, but there is good authority for
+thinking that at that time they were held in the chapel of Herne.
+Nothing remains of this building now, but it was situated at the
+southwest corner of the churchyard of St. Paul, and was spoken of
+sometimes as the School-house chapel.
+
+Ned Bratts and his wife did not know, of course, that they actually
+lived in the land of the "Pilgrim's Progress." This has been pointed out
+only recently in a fascinating little book by A. J. Foster of Wootton
+Vicarage, Bedfordshire. He has been a pilgrim from Elstow, the village
+where Bunyan was born near Bedford, through all the surrounding country,
+and has fixed upon many spots beautiful and otherwise which he believes
+were transmuted in Bunyan's imagination into the House Beautiful, The
+Delectable Mountains, Vanity Fair and so on through nearly all the
+scenes of Christian's journey.
+
+The House Beautiful he identifies with Houghton House in the manor of
+Dame Ellen's Bury. This is one of the most interesting of the country
+houses of England, because of its connection with Sir Philip Sidney's
+sister, Mary Sidney. After the death of her husband, Lord Pembroke,
+James I. presented her with the royal manor of Dame Ellen's Bury, and
+under the guidance of Inigo Jones, it is generally supposed, Houghton
+House was built. It is in ruins now and covered with ivy. Trees have
+grown within the ruins themselves. Still it is one of the most beautiful
+spots in Bedfordshire. "In Bunyan's time," Mr. Foster writes, "we may
+suppose the northern slope of Houghton Park was a series of terraces
+rising one above another, and laid out in the stiff garden fashion of
+the time. A flight of steps, or maybe a steep path, would lead from one
+terrace to the next, and gradually the view over the plain of Bedford
+would reveal itself to the traveler as he mounted higher and higher."
+
+From Houghton House there is a view of the Chiltern Hills. Mr. Foster is
+of the opinion that Bunyan had this view in mind when he described
+Christian as looking from the roof of the House Beautiful southwards
+towards the Delectable Mountains. He writes, "One of the main roads to
+London from Bedford, and the one, moreover, which passes through Elstow,
+crosses the hills only a little more than a mile east of Houghton House,
+and Bunyan, in his frequent journeys to London, no doubt often passed
+along this road. All in this direction was, therefore, to him familiar
+ground. Many a pleasant walk or ride came back to him through memory, as
+he took pen in hand to describe Hill Difficulty with its steep path and
+its arbor, and the House Beautiful with its guest-chamber, its large
+upper room looking eastward, its study and its armory.
+
+"Many a time did Bunyan, as he journeyed, look southwards to the blue
+Chilterns, and when the time came he placed together all that he had
+seen, as the frame in which he should set his way-faring pilgrim."
+
+Pleasant as it would be to follow with Mr. Foster his journey through
+the real scenes of the "Pilgrim's Progress," our main interest at
+present is to observe how Browning's facile imagination has presented
+the conversion, through the impression made upon them by Bunyan's book,
+of Ned and his wife.
+
+
+    NED BRATTS
+
+    'T was Bedford Special Assize, one daft Midsummer's Day:
+    A broiling blasting June,--was never its like, men say.
+    Corn stood sheaf-ripe already, and trees looked yellow as that;
+    Ponds drained dust-dry, the cattle lay foaming around each flat.
+    Inside town, dogs went mad, and folk kept bibbing beer
+    While the parsons prayed for rain. 'T was horrible, yes--but queer:
+    Queer--for the sun laughed gay, yet nobody moved a hand
+    To work one stroke at his trade: as given to understand
+    That all was come to a stop, work and such worldly ways,
+    And the world's old self about to end in a merry blaze.
+    Midsummer's Day moreover was the first of Bedford Fair,
+    With Bedford Town's tag-rag and bobtail a-bowsing there.
+
+    But the Court House, Quality crammed: through doors ope, windows wide,
+    High on the Bench you saw sit Lordships side by side.
+    There frowned Chief Justice Jukes, fumed learned Brother Small,
+    And fretted their fellow Judge: like threshers, one and all,
+    Of a reek with laying down the law in a furnace. Why?
+    Because their lungs breathed flame--the regular crowd forbye--
+    From gentry pouring in--quite a nosegay, to be sure!
+    How else could they pass the time, six mortal hours endure
+    Till night should extinguish day, when matters might haply mend?
+    Meanwhile no bad resource was--watching begin and end
+    Some trial for life and death, in a brisk five minutes' space,
+    And betting which knave would 'scape, which hang, from his sort
+          of face.
+
+    So, their Lordships toiled and moiled, and a deal of work was done
+    (I warrant) to justify the mirth of the crazy sun
+    As this and t'other lout, struck dumb at the sudden show
+    Of red robes and white wigs, boggled nor answered "Boh!"
+    When asked why he, Tom Styles, should not--because Jack Nokes
+    Had stolen the horse--be hanged: for Judges must have their jokes,
+    And louts must make allowance--let's say, for some blue fly
+    Which punctured a dewy scalp where the frizzles stuck awry--
+    Else Tom had fleered scot-free, so nearly over and done
+    Was the main of the job. Full-measure, the gentles enjoyed their fun,
+    As a twenty-five were tried, rank puritans caught at prayer
+    In a cow-house and laid by the heels,--have at 'em, devil may care!--
+    And ten were prescribed the whip, and ten a brand on the cheek,
+    And five a slit of the nose--just leaving enough to tweak.
+
+    Well, things at jolly high-tide, amusement steeped in fire,
+    While noon smote fierce the roof's red tiles to heart's desire,
+    The Court a-simmer with smoke, one ferment of oozy flesh,
+    One spirituous humming musk mount-mounting until its mesh
+    Entoiled all heads in a fluster, and Serjeant Postlethwayte
+    --Dashing the wig oblique as he mopped his oily pate--
+    Cried "Silence, or I grow grease! No loophole lets in air?
+    Jurymen,--Guilty, Death! Gainsay me if you dare!"
+    --Things at this pitch, I say,--what hubbub without the doors?
+    What laughs, shrieks, hoots and yells, what rudest of uproars?
+
+    Bounce through the barrier throng a bulk comes rolling vast!
+    Thumps, kicks,--no manner of use!--spite of them rolls at last
+    Into the midst a ball which, bursting, brings to view
+    Publican Black Ned Bratts and Tabby his big wife too:
+    Both in a muck-sweat, both ... were never such eyes uplift
+    At the sight of yawning hell, such nostrils--snouts that sniffed
+    Sulphur, such mouths a-gape ready to swallow flame!
+    Horrified, hideous, frank fiend-faces! yet, all the same,
+    Mixed with a certain ... eh? how shall I dare style--mirth
+    The desperate grin of the guest that, could they break from earth,
+    Heaven was above, and hell might rage in impotence
+    Below the saved, the saved!
+
+                              "Confound you! (no offence!)
+    Out of our way,--push, wife! Yonder their Worships be!"
+    Ned Bratts has reached the bar, and "Hey, my Lords," roars he,
+    "A Jury of life and death, Judges the prime of the land,
+    Constables, javelineers,--all met, if I understand,
+    To decide so knotty a point as whether 't was Jack or Joan
+    Robbed the henroost, pinched the pig, hit the King's Arms with
+          a stone,
+    Dropped the baby down the well, left the tithesman in the lurch,
+    Or, three whole Sundays running, not once attended church!
+    What a pother--do these deserve the parish-stocks or whip,
+    More or less brow to brand, much or little nose to snip,--
+    When, in our Public, plain stand we--that's we stand here,
+    I and my Tab, brass-bold, brick-built of beef and beer,
+    --Do not we, slut? Step forth and show your beauty, jade!
+    Wife of my bosom--that's the word now! What a trade
+    We drove! None said us nay: nobody loved his life
+    So little as wag a tongue against us,--did they, wife?
+    Yet they knew us all the while, in their hearts, for what we are
+    --Worst couple, rogue and quean, unhanged--search near and far!
+    Eh, Tab? The pedler, now--o'er his noggin--who warned a mate
+    To cut and run, nor risk his pack where its loss of weight
+    Was the least to dread,--aha, how we two laughed a-good
+    As, stealing round the midden, he came on where I stood
+    With billet poised and raised,--you, ready with the rope,--
+    Ah, but that's past, that's sin repented of, we hope!
+    Men knew us for that same, yet safe and sound stood we!
+    The lily-livered knaves knew too (I've balked a d----)
+    Our keeping the 'Pied Bull' was just a mere pretence:
+    Too slow the pounds make food, drink, lodging, from out the pence!
+    There's not a stoppage to travel has chanced, this ten long year,
+    No break into hall or grange, no lifting of nag or steer,
+    Not a single roguery, from the clipping of a purse
+    To the cutting of a throat, but paid us toll. Od's curse!
+    When Gipsy Smouch made bold to cheat us of our due,
+    --Eh, Tab? the Squire's strong-box we helped the rascal to--
+    I think he pulled a face, next Sessions' swinging-time!
+    He danced the jig that needs no floor,--and, here's the prime,
+    'T was Scroggs that houghed the mare! Ay, those were busy days!
+
+    "Well, there we flourished brave, like scripture-trees called bays,
+    Faring high, drinking hard, in money up to head
+    --Not to say, boots and shoes, when ... Zounds, I nearly said--
+    Lord, to unlearn one's language! How shall we labor, wife?
+    Have you, fast hold, the Book? Grasp, grip it, for your life!
+    See, sirs, here's life, salvation! Here's--hold but out my breath--
+    When did I speak so long without once swearing? 'Sdeath,
+    No, nor unhelped by ale since man and boy! And yet
+    All yesterday I had to keep my whistle wet
+    While reading Tab this Book: book? don't say 'book'--they're plays,
+    Songs, ballads and the like: here's no such strawy blaze,
+    But sky wide ope, sun, moon, and seven stars out full-flare!
+    Tab, help and tell! I'm hoarse. A mug! or--no, a prayer!
+    Dip for one out of the Book! Who wrote it in the Jail
+    --He plied his pen unhelped by beer, sirs, I'll be bail!
+
+    "I've got my second wind. In trundles she--that's Tab.
+    'Why, Gammer, what's come now, that--bobbing like a crab
+    On Yule-tide bowl--your head's a-work and both your eyes
+    Break loose? Afeard, you fool? As if the dead can rise!
+    Say--Bagman Dick was found last May with fuddling-cap
+    Stuffed in his mouth: to choke's a natural mishap!'
+    'Gaffer, be--blessed,' cries she, 'and Bagman Dick as well!
+    I, you, and he are damned: this Public is our hell:
+    We live in fire: live coals don't feel!--once quenched, they learn--
+    Cinders do, to what dust they moulder while they burn!'
+
+    "'If you don't speak straight out,' says I--belike I swore--
+    'A knobstick, well you know the taste of, shall, once more,
+    Teach you to talk, my maid!' She ups with such a face,
+    Heart sunk inside me. 'Well, pad on, my prate-apace!'
+
+    "'I've been about those laces we need for ... never mind!
+    If henceforth they tie hands, 't is mine they'll have to bind.
+    You know who makes them best--the Tinker in our cage,
+    Pulled-up for gospelling, twelve years ago: no age
+    To try another trade,--yet, so he scorned to take
+    Money he did not earn, he taught himself the make
+    Of laces, tagged and tough--Dick Bagman found them so!
+    Good customers were we! Well, last week, you must know
+    His girl,--the blind young chit, who hawks about his wares,--
+    She takes it in her head to come no more--such airs
+    These hussies have! Yet, since we need a stoutish lace,--
+    "I'll to the jail-bird father, abuse her to his face!"
+    So, first I filled a jug to give me heart, and then,
+    Primed to the proper pitch, I posted to their den--
+    _Patmore_--they style their prison! I tip the turnkey, catch
+    My heart up, fix my face, and fearless lift the latch--
+    Both arms a-kimbo, in bounce with a good round oath
+    Ready for rapping out: no "Lawks" nor "By my troth!"
+
+    "'There sat my man, the father. He looked up: what one feels
+    When heart that leapt to mouth drops down again to heels!
+    He raised his hand.... Hast seen, when drinking out the night,
+    And in the day, earth grow another something quite
+    Under the sun's first stare? I stood a very stone.
+
+    "'"Woman!" (a fiery tear he put in every tone),
+    "How should my child frequent your house where lust is sport,
+    Violence--trade? Too true! I trust no vague report.
+    Her angel's hand, which stops the sight of sin, leaves clear
+    The other gate of sense, lets outrage through the ear.
+    What has she heard!--which, heard shall never be again.
+    Better lack food than feast, a Dives in the--wain
+    Or reign or train--of Charles!" (His language was not ours:
+    'T is my belief, God spoke: no tinker has such powers.)
+    "Bread, only bread they bring--my laces: if we broke
+    Your lump of leavened sin, the loaf's first crumb would choke!"
+
+    "'Down on my marrow-bones! Then all at once rose he:
+    His brown hair burst a-spread, his eyes were suns to see:
+    Up went his hands: "Through flesh, I reach, I read thy soul!
+    So may some stricken tree look blasted, bough and bole,
+    Champed by the fire-tooth, charred without, and yet, thrice-bound
+    With dreriment about, within may life be found,
+    A prisoned power to branch and blossom as before,
+    Could but the gardener cleave the cloister, reach the core,
+    Loosen the vital sap: yet where shall help be found?
+    Who says 'How save it?'--nor 'Why cumbers it the ground?'
+    Woman, that tree art thou! All sloughed about with scurf,
+    Thy stag-horns fright the sky, thy snake-roots sting the turf!
+    Drunkenness, wantonness, theft, murder gnash and gnarl
+    Thine outward, case thy soul with coating like the marle
+    Satan stamps flat upon each head beneath his hoof!
+    And how deliver such? The strong men keep aloof,
+    Lover and friend stand far, the mocking ones pass by,
+    Tophet gapes wide for prey: lost soul, despair and die!
+    What then? 'Look unto me and be ye saved!' saith God:
+    'I strike the rock, outstreats the life-stream at my rod!
+    Be your sins scarlet, wool shall they seem like,--although
+    As crimson red, yet turn white as the driven snow!'"
+
+    "'There, there, there! All I seem to somehow understand
+    Is--that, if I reached home, 't was through the guiding hand
+    Of his blind girl which led and led me through the streets
+    And out of town and up to door again. What greets
+    First thing my eye, as limbs recover from their swoon?
+    A book--this Book she gave at parting. "Father's boon--
+    The Book he wrote: it reads as if he spoke himself:
+    He cannot preach in bonds, so,--take it down from shelf
+    When you want counsel,--think you hear his very voice!"
+
+    "'Wicked dear Husband, first despair and then rejoice!
+    Dear wicked Husband, waste no tick of moment more,
+    Be saved like me, bald trunk! There's greenness yet at core,
+    Sap under slough! Read, read!'
+
+                                  "Let me take breath, my lords!
+    I'd like to know, are these--hers, mine, or Bunyan's words?
+    I'm 'wildered--scarce with drink,--nowise with drink alone!
+    You'll say, with heat: but heat's no stuff to split a stone
+    Like this black boulder--this flint heart of mine: the Book--
+    That dealt the crashing blow! Sirs, here's the fist that shook
+    His beard till Wrestler Jem howled like a just-lugged bear!
+    You had brained me with a feather: at once I grew aware
+    Christmas was meant for me. A burden at your back,
+    Good Master Christmas? Nay,--yours was that Joseph's sack,
+    --Or whose it was,--which held the cup,--compared with mine!
+    Robbery loads my loins, perjury cracks my chine,
+    Adultery ... nay, Tab, you pitched me as I flung!
+    One word, I'll up with fist.... No, sweet spouse, hold your tongue!
+
+    "I'm hasting to the end. The Book, sirs--take and read!
+    You have my history in a nutshell,--ay, indeed!
+    It must off, my burden! See,--slack straps and into pit,
+    Roll, reach, the bottom, rest, rot there--a plague on it!
+    For a mountain's sure to fall and bury Bedford Town,
+    'Destruction'--that's the name, and fire shall burn it down!
+    O 'scape the wrath in time! Time's now, if not too late.
+    How can I pilgrimage up to the wicket-gate?
+    Next comes Despond the slough: not that I fear to pull
+    Through mud, and dry my clothes at brave House Beautiful--
+    But it's late in the day, I reckon: had I left years ago
+    Town, wife, and children dear.... Well, Christmas did, you know!--
+    Soon I had met in the valley and tried my cudgel's strength
+    On the enemy horned and winged, a-straddle across its length!
+    Have at his horns, thwick--thwack: they snap, see! Hoof and hoof--
+    Bang, break the fetlock-bones! For love's sake, keep aloof
+    Angels! I'm man and match,--this cudgel for my flail,--
+    To thresh him, hoofs and horns, bat's wing and serpent's tail!
+    A chance gone by! But then, what else does Hopeful ding
+    Into the deafest ear except--hope, hope's the thing?
+    Too late i' the day for me to thrid the windings: but
+    There's still a way to win the race by death's short cut!
+    Did Master Faithful need climb the Delightful Mounts?
+    No, straight to Vanity Fair,--a fair, by all accounts,
+    Such as is held outside,--lords, ladies, grand and gay,--
+    Says he in the face of them, just what you hear me say.
+    And the Judges brought him in guilty, and brought him out
+    To die in the market-place--St. Peter's Green's about
+    The same thing: there they flogged, flayed, buffeted, lanced with
+          knives,
+    Pricked him with swords,--I'll swear, he'd full a cat's nine lives,--
+    So to his end at last came Faithful,--ha, ha, he!
+    Who holds the highest card? for there stands hid, you see,
+    Behind the rabble-rout, a chariot, pair and all:
+    He's in, he's off, he's up, through clouds, at trumpet-call,
+    Carried the nearest way to Heaven-gate! Odds my life--
+    Has nobody a sword to spare? not even a knife?
+    Then hang me, draw and quarter! Tab--do the same by her!
+    O Master Worldly-Wiseman ... that's Master Interpreter,
+    Take the will, not the deed! Our gibbet's handy close:
+    Forestall Last Judgment-Day! Be kindly, not morose!
+    There wants no earthly judge-and-jurying: here we stand--
+    Sentence our guilty selves: so, hang us out of hand!
+    Make haste for pity's sake! A single moment's loss
+    Means--Satan's lord once more: his whisper shoots across
+    All singing in my heart, all praying in my brain,
+    'It comes of heat and beer!'--hark how he guffaws plain!
+    'To-morrow you'll wake bright, and, in a safe skin, hug
+    Your sound selves, Tab and you, over a foaming jug!
+    You've had such qualms before, time out of mind!' He's right!
+    Did not we kick and cuff and curse away, that night,
+    When home we blindly reeled, and left poor humpback Joe
+    I' the lurch to pay for what ... somebody did, you know!
+    Both of us maundered then 'Lame humpback,--never more
+    Will he come limping, drain his tankard at our door!
+    He'll swing, while--somebody....' Says Tab, 'No, for I'll peach!'
+    'I'm for you, Tab,' cries I, 'there's rope enough for each!'
+    So blubbered we, and bussed, and went to bed upon
+    The grace of Tab's good thought: by morning, all was gone!
+    We laughed--'What's life to him, a cripple of no account?'
+    Oh, waves increase around--I feel them mount and mount!
+    Hang us! To-morrow brings Tom Bearward with his bears:
+    One new black-muzzled brute beats Sackerson, he swears:
+    (Sackerson, for my money!) And, baiting o'er, the Brawl
+    They lead on Turner's Patch,--lads, lasses, up tails all,--
+    I'm i' the thick o' the throng! That means the Iron Cage,
+    --Means the Lost Man inside! Where's hope for such as wage
+    War against light? Light's left, light's here, I hold light still,
+    So does Tab--make but haste to hang us both! You will?"
+
+    I promise, when he stopped you might have heard a mouse
+    Squeak, such a death-like hush sealed up the old Mote House.
+    But when the mass of man sank meek upon his knees,
+    While Tab, alongside, wheezed a hoarse "Do hang us, please!"
+    Why, then the waters rose, no eye but ran with tears,
+    Hearts heaved, heads thumped, until, paying all past arrears
+    Of pity and sorrow, at last a regular scream outbroke
+    Of triumph, joy and praise.
+
+                                      My Lord Chief Justice spoke,
+    First mopping brow and cheek, where still, for one that budged,
+    Another bead broke fresh: "What Judge, that ever judged
+    Since first the world began, judged such a case as this?
+    Why, Master Bratts, long since, folk smelt you out, I wis!
+    I had my doubts, i' faith, each time you played the fox
+    Convicting geese of crime in yonder witness-box--
+    Yea, much did I misdoubt, the thief that stole her eggs
+    Was hardly goosey's self at Reynard's game, i' feggs!
+    Yet thus much was to praise--you spoke to point, direct--
+    Swore you heard, saw the theft: no jury could suspect--
+    Dared to suspect,--I'll say,--a spot in white so clear:
+    Goosey was throttled, true: but thereof godly fear
+    Came of example set, much as our laws intend;
+    And, though a fox confessed, you proved the Judge's friend.
+    What if I had my doubts? Suppose I gave them breath,
+    Brought you to bar: what work to do, ere 'Guilty, Death,'--
+    Had paid our pains! What heaps of witnesses to drag
+    From holes and corners, paid from out the County's bag!
+    Trial three dog-days long! _Amicus Curiae_--that's
+    Your title, no dispute--truth-telling Master Bratts!
+    Thank you, too, Mistress Tab! Why doubt one word you say?
+    Hanging you both deserve, hanged both shall be this day!
+    The tinker needs must be a proper man. I've heard
+    He lies in Jail long since: if Quality's good word
+    Warrants me letting loose,--some householder, I mean--
+    Freeholder, better still,--I don't say but--between
+    Now and next Sessions.... Well! Consider of his case,
+    I promise to, at least: we owe him so much grace.
+    Not that--no, God forbid!--I lean to think, as you,
+    The grace that such repent is any jail-bird's due:
+    I rather see the fruit of twelve years' pious reign--
+    Astraea Redux, Charles restored his rights again!
+    --Of which, another time! I somehow feel a peace
+    Stealing across the world. May deeds like this increase!
+    So, Master Sheriff, stay that sentence I pronounced
+    On those two dozen odd: deserving to be trounced
+    Soundly, and yet ... well, well, at all events despatch
+    This pair of--shall I say, sinner-saints?--ere we catch
+    Their jail-distemper too. Stop tears, or I'll indite
+    All weeping Bedfordshire for turning Bunyanite!"
+
+    So, forms were galloped through. If Justice, on the spur,
+    Proved somewhat expeditious, would Quality demur?
+    And happily hanged were they,--why lengthen out my tale?--
+    Where Bunyan's Statue stands facing where stood his Jail.
+
+The effect which "Pilgrim's Progress" had on these two miserable beings,
+may be taken as typical of the enormous influence wielded by Bunyan in
+his own time. The most innocent among us had overwhelming qualms in
+regard to our sins, as children when we listened to our mothers read the
+book. I remember having confessed some childish peccadillo that was
+weighing on my small mind as the first result of my thoroughly aroused
+sense of guilt. In these early years of the Twentieth Century, such a
+feeling seems almost as far removed as the days of Bunyan. A sense of
+guilt is not a distinguishing characteristic of the child of the present
+day, and it may also be doubted whether such reprobates as Ned and his
+wife would to-day be affected much if at all by the "Pilgrim's
+Progress." There was probably great personal magnetism in Bunyan
+himself. We are told that after his discharge from prison, his
+popularity as a preacher widened rapidly. Such vast crowds of people
+flocked to hear him that his place of worship had to be enlarged. He
+went frequently to London on week days to deliver addresses in the large
+chapel in Southwark which was invariably thronged with eager worshipers.
+
+Browning's picture of Bunyan shows the instant effect of his personality
+upon Tab.
+
+    "There sat the man, the father. He looked up: what one feels
+    When heart that leapt to mouth drops down again to heels!
+    He raised his hand.... Hast seen, when drinking out the night,
+    And in the day, earth grow another something quite
+    Under the sun's first stare? I stood a very stone."
+
+And again
+
+                                    "Then all at once rose he:
+    His brown hair burst a-spread, his eyes were suns to see:
+    Up went his hands."
+
+It is like a clever bit of stage business to make Ned and Tab use the
+shoe laces to tie up the hands of their victims, and to bring on by this
+means the meeting between Tab and Bunyan. Of course, the blind
+daughter's part is imaginary, but yet it seems to bring very vividly
+before us this well loved child. Another touch, quite in keeping with
+the time, is the decision of the Judge that the remarkable change of
+heart in Ned and Tab was due to the piety of King Charles. Like every
+one else, however, he was impressed by what he heard of the Tinker, and
+inclined to see what he could do to give him his freedom. It seems that
+Bunyan's life in jail was a good deal lightened by the favor he always
+inspired. The story goes that from the first he was in favor with the
+jailor, who nearly lost his place for permitting him on one occasion to
+go as far as London. After this he was more strictly confined, but at
+last he was often allowed to visit his family, and remain with them all
+night. One night, however, when he was allowed this liberty Bunyan felt
+resistlessly impressed with the propriety of returning to the prison. He
+arrived after the keeper had shut up for the night, much to the
+official's surprise. But his impatience at being untimely disturbed was
+changed to thankfulness, when a little after a messenger came from a
+neighboring clerical magistrate to see that the prisoner was safe. "You
+may go now when you will" said the jailer; "for you know better than I
+can tell you when to come in again."
+
+[Illustration: John Bunyan
+
+Statue by J. E. Boehm]
+
+Though Bunyan is not primarily the subject of this poem, it is an
+appreciative tribute to his genius and to his force of character,
+only to be paralleled by Dowden's sympathetic critique in his "Puritan
+and Anglican Studies." What Browning makes Ned and Tab see through
+suddenly aroused feeling--namely that it is no book but
+
+                                                      "plays,
+    Songs, ballads and the like: here's no such strawy blaze,
+    But sky wide ope, sun, moon, and seven stars out full-flare,"
+
+Dowden puts in the colder language of criticism.
+
+"The 'Pilgrim's Progress' is a gallery of portraits, admirably
+discriminated, and as convincing in their self-verification as those of
+Holbein. His personages live for us as few figures outside the drama of
+Shakespeare live.... All his powers cooperated harmoniously in creating
+this book--his religious ardor, his human tenderness, his sense of
+beauty, nourished by the Scriptures, his strong common sense, even his
+gift of humor. Through his deep seriousness play the lighter faculties.
+The whole man presses into this small volume."
+
+"Halbert and Hob" belongs here merely for its wild North of England
+setting. We may imagine, if we choose, that this wild father and son
+dwelt in the beautiful country of Northumberland, in the North of
+England, but descriptions of the scenery could add nothing to the
+atmosphere of the poem, for Northumberland is surpassingly lovely.
+Doubtless, human beings of this type have existed in all parts of the
+globe. At any rate, these particular human beings were transported by
+Browning from Aristotle's "Ethics" to the North of England. The incident
+is told by Aristotle in illustration of the contention that anger and
+asperity are more natural than excessive and unnecessary desires. "Thus
+one who was accused of striking his father said, as an apology for it,
+that his own father, and even his grandfather, had struck his; 'and he
+also (pointing to his child) will strike me, when he becomes a man; for
+it runs in our family.' A certain person, also, being dragged by his
+son, bid him stop at the door, for he himself had dragged his father as
+far as that." The dryness of "Aristotle's cheeks" is as usual so
+enlivened by Browning that the fate of Halbert and Hob grows pathetic
+and comes close to our sympathies.
+
+
+    HALBERT AND HOB
+
+    Here is a thing that happened. Like wild beasts whelped, for den,
+    In a wild part of North England, there lived once two wild men
+    Inhabiting one homestead, neither a hovel nor hut,
+    Time out of mind their birthright: father and son, these--but--
+    Such a son, such a father! Most wildness by degrees
+    Softens away: yet, last of their line, the wildest and worst were
+          these.
+
+    Criminals, then? Why, no: they did not murder and rob;
+    But, give them a word, they returned a blow--old Halbert as young Hob:
+    Harsh and fierce of word, rough and savage of deed,
+    Hated or feared the more--who knows?--the genuine wild-beast breed.
+
+    Thus were they found by the few sparse folk of the countryside;
+    But how fared each with other? E'en beasts couch, hide by hide,
+    In a growling, grudged agreement: so, father and son aye curled
+    The closelier up in their den because the last of their kind in the
+          world.
+
+    Still, beast irks beast on occasion. One Christmas night of snow,
+    Came father and son to words--such words! more cruel because the blow
+    To crown each word was wanting, while taunt matched gibe, and curse
+    Completed with oath in wager, like pastime in hell,--nay, worse:
+    For pastime turned to earnest, as up there sprang at last
+    The son at the throat of the father, seized him and held him fast.
+
+    "Out of this house you go!"--(there followed a hideous oath)--
+    "This oven where now we bake, too hot to hold us both!
+    If there's snow outside, there's coolness: out with you, bide a spell
+    In the drift and save the sexton the charge of a parish shell!"
+
+    Now, the old trunk was tough, was solid as stump of oak
+    Untouched at the core by a thousand years: much less had its
+          seventy broke
+    One whipcord nerve in the muscly mass from neck to shoulder-blade
+    Of the mountainous man, whereon his child's rash hand like a
+          feather weighed.
+
+    Nevertheless at once did the mammoth shut his eyes,
+    Drop chin to breast, drop hands to sides, stand stiffened--arms
+          and thighs
+    All of a piece--struck mute, much as a sentry stands,
+    Patient to take the enemy's fire: his captain so commands.
+
+    Whereat the son's wrath flew to fury at such sheer scorn
+    Of his puny strength by the giant eld thus acting the babe new-born:
+    And "Neither will this turn serve!" yelled he. "Out with you!
+          Trundle, log!
+    If you cannot tramp and trudge like a man, try all-fours like a dog!"
+
+    Still the old man stood mute. So, logwise,--down to floor
+    Pulled from his fireside place, dragged on from hearth to door,--
+    Was he pushed, a very log, staircase along, until
+    A certain turn in the steps was reached, a yard from the
+          house-door-sill.
+
+    Then the father opened eyes--each spark of their rage extinct,--
+    Temples, late black, dead-blanched,--right-hand with left-hand
+          linked,--
+    He faced his son submissive; when slow the accents came,
+    They were strangely mild though his son's rash hand on his neck
+          lay all the same.
+
+    "Hob, on just such a night of a Christmas long ago,
+    For such a cause, with such a gesture, did I drag--so--
+    My father down thus far: but, softening here, I heard
+    A voice in my heart, and stopped: you wait for an outer word.
+
+    "For your own sake, not mine, soften you too! Untrod
+    Leave this last step we reach, nor brave the finger of God!
+    I dared not pass its lifting: I did well. I nor blame
+    Nor praise you. I stopped here: and, Hob, do you the same!"
+
+    Straightway the son relaxed his hold of the father's throat.
+    They mounted, side by side, to the room again: no note
+    Took either of each, no sign made each to either: last
+    As first, in absolute silence, their Christmas-night they passed.
+
+    At dawn, the father sate on, dead, in the self-same place,
+    With an outburst blackening still the old bad fighting-face:
+    But the son crouched all a-tremble like any lamb new-yeaned.
+
+    When he went to the burial, someone's staff he borrowed--tottered
+          and leaned.
+    But his lips were loose, not locked,--kept muttering, mumbling.
+          "There!
+    At his cursing and swearing!" the youngsters cried: but the elders
+          thought "In prayer."
+    A boy threw stones: he picked them up and stored them in his vest.
+
+    So tottered, muttered, mumbled he, till he died, perhaps found rest.
+    "Is there a reason in nature for these hard hearts?" O Lear,
+    That a reason out of nature must turn them soft, seems clear!
+
+In the "Inn Album," a degenerate type of Nineteenth-Century Englishman
+is dissected with the keen knife of a surgeon, which Browning knows so
+well how to wield. The villain of this poem was a real personage, a Lord
+de Ros, a friend of the Duke of Wellington. The story belongs to the
+annals of crime and is necessarily unpleasant, but in order to see how
+Browning has worked up the episode it is interesting to know the bare
+facts as Furnivall gives them in "Notes and Queries" March 25, 1876. He
+says "that the gambling lord showed the portrait of the lady he had
+seduced and abandoned and offered his dupe an introduction to her, as a
+bribe to induce him to wait for payment of the money he had won; that
+the young gambler eagerly accepted the offer; and that the lady
+committed suicide on hearing of the bargain between them." Dr. Furnivall
+heard the story from some one who well remembered the sensation it had
+made in London years ago. In his management of the story, Browning has
+intensified the villainy of the Lord at the same time that he has shown
+a possible streak of goodness in him. The young man, on the other hand,
+he has made to be of very good stuff, indeed, notwithstanding his year
+of tutelage from the older man. He makes one radical change in the story
+as well as several minor ones. In the poem the younger man had been in
+love with the girl whom the older man had dishonorably treated, and had
+never ceased to love her. Of course, the two men do not know this. By
+the advice of the elder man, the younger one has decided to settle down
+and marry his cousin, a charming young girl, who is also brought upon
+the scene. The other girl is represented as having married an old
+country parson, who sought a wife simply as a helpmeet in his work. By
+thus complicating the situations, room has been given for subtle psychic
+development. The action is all concentrated into one morning in the
+parlor of the old inn, reminding one much of the method of Ibsen in his
+plays of grouping his action about a final catastrophe. At the inn one
+is introduced first to the two gamblers in talk, the young man having
+won his ten thousand pounds from the older man, who had intended to
+fleece him. The inn album plays an important part in the action,
+innocent as its first appearance upon the scene seems to be. The
+description of this and the inn parlor opens the poem.
+
+
+    THE INN ALBUM
+
+    I
+
+    "That oblong book's the Album; hand it here!
+    Exactly! page on page of gratitude
+    For breakfast, dinner, supper, and the view!
+    I praise these poets: they leave margin-space;
+    Each stanza seems to gather skirts around,
+    And primly, trimly, keep the foot's confine,
+    Modest and maidlike; lubber prose o'er-sprawls
+    And straddling stops the path from left to right.
+    Since I want space to do my cipher-work,
+    Which poem spares a corner? What comes first?
+    '_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!_'
+    (Open the window, we burn daylight, boy!)
+    Or see--succincter beauty, brief and bold--
+    '_If a fellow can dine On rumpsteaks and port wine,
+    He needs not despair Of dining well here_--'
+    '_Here!_' I myself could find a better rhyme!
+    That bard's a Browning; he neglects the form:
+    But ah, the sense, ye gods, the weighty sense!
+    Still, I prefer this classic. Ay, throw wide!
+    I'll quench the bits of candle yet unburnt.
+    A minute's fresh air, then to cipher-work!
+    Three little columns hold the whole account:
+    _Ecarte_, after which Blind Hookey, then
+    Cutting-the-Pack, five hundred pounds the cut.
+    'Tis easy reckoning: I have lost, I think."
+
+    Two personages occupy this room
+    Shabby-genteel, that's parlor to the inn
+    Perched on a view-commanding eminence;
+    --Inn which may be a veritable house
+    Where somebody once lived and pleased good taste
+    Till tourists found his coign of vantage out,
+    And fingered blunt the individual mark
+    And vulgarized things comfortably smooth.
+    On a sprig-pattern-papered wall there brays
+    Complaint to sky Sir Edwin's dripping stag;
+    His couchant coast-guard creature corresponds;
+    They face the Huguenot and Light o' the World.
+    Grim o'er the mirror on the mantlepiece,
+    Varnished and coffined, _Salmo ferox_ glares
+    --Possibly at the List of Wines which, framed
+    And glazed, hangs somewhat prominent on peg.
+
+    So much describes the stuffy little room--
+    Vulgar flat smooth respectability:
+    Not so the burst of landscape surging in,
+    Sunrise and all, as he who of the pair
+    Is, plain enough, the younger personage
+    Draws sharp the shrieking curtain, sends aloft
+    The sash, spreads wide and fastens back to wall
+    Shutter and shutter, shows you England's best.
+    He leans into a living glory-bath
+    Of air and light where seems to float and move
+    The wooded watered country, hill and dale
+    And steel-bright thread of stream, a-smoke with mist,
+    A-sparkle with May morning, diamond drift
+    O' the sun-touched dew. Except the red-roofed patch
+    Of half a dozen dwellings that, crept close
+    For hill-side shelter, make the village-clump
+    This inn is perched above to dominate--
+    Except such sign of human neighborhood,
+    (And this surmised rather than sensible)
+    There's nothing to disturb absolute peace,
+    The reign of English nature--which mean art
+    And civilized existence. Wildness' self
+    Is just the cultured triumph. Presently
+    Deep solitude, be sure, reveals a Place
+    That knows the right way to defend itself:
+    Silence hems round a burning spot of life.
+    Now, where a Place burns, must a village brood,
+    And where a village broods, an inn should boast--
+    Close and convenient: here you have them both.
+    This inn, the Something-arms--the family's--
+    (Don't trouble Guillim; heralds leave our half!)
+    Is dear to lovers of the picturesque,
+    And epics have been planned here; but who plan
+    Take holy orders and find work to do.
+    Painters are more productive, stop a week,
+    Declare the prospect quite a Corot,--ay,
+    For tender sentiment,--themselves incline
+    Rather to handsweep large and liberal;
+    Then go, but not without success achieved
+    --Haply some pencil-drawing, oak or beech,
+    Ferns at the base and ivies up the bole,
+    On this a slug, on that a butterfly.
+    Nay, he who hooked the _salmo_ pendent here,
+    Also exhibited, this same May-month,
+    '_Foxgloves: a study_'--so inspires the scene,
+    The air, which now the younger personage
+    Inflates him with till lungs o'erfraught are fain
+    Sigh forth a satisfaction might bestir
+    Even those tufts of tree-tops to the South
+    I' the distance where the green dies off to grey,
+    Which, easy of conjecture, front the Place;
+    He eyes them, elbows wide, each hand to cheek.
+    His fellow, the much older--either say
+    A youngish-old man or man oldish-young--
+    Sits at the table: wicks are noisome-deep
+    In wax, to detriment of plated ware;
+    Above--piled, strewn--is store of playing-cards,
+    Counters and all that's proper for a game.
+
+Circumstantial as the description of this parlor and the situation of
+the inn is, it is impossible to say which out of the many English inns
+Browning had in mind. Inns date back to the days of the Romans, who had
+ale-houses along the roads, the most interesting feature of which was
+the ivy garland or wreath of vine-leaves in honor of Bacchus, wreathed
+around a hoop at the end of a long pole to point out the way where good
+drink could be had. A curious survival of this in early English times
+was the "ale-stake," a tavern so called because it had a long pole
+projecting from the house front wreathed like the old Roman poles with
+furze, a garland of flowers or an ivy wreath. This decoration was called
+the "bush," and in time the London taverners so vied with each other in
+their attempt to attract attention by very long poles and very prominent
+bushes that in 1375 a law was passed according to which all taverners
+in the city of London owning ale-stakes projecting or extending over the
+King's highway more than seven feet in length, at the utmost, should be
+fined forty pence, and compelled to remove the sign. Here is the origin,
+too, of the proverb, "good wine needs no bush." In the later development
+of the inn the signs lost their Bacchic character and became most
+elaborate, often being painted by artists.
+
+The poet says this inn was the "Something-arms," and had perhaps once
+been a house. Many inns were the "Something (?) arms" and certainly many
+inns had been houses. One such is the Pounds Bridge Inn on a secluded
+road between Speldhurst and Penshurst in Kent. It was built by the
+rector of Penshurst, William Darkenoll, who lived in it only three
+years, when it became an inn. The inn of the poem might have been a
+combination in Browning's memory of this and the "White Horse" at
+Woolstone, which is described as a queerly pretty little inn with a
+front distantly resembling a Chippendale bureau-bookcase. "It is tucked
+away under the mighty sides of White Horse Hill, Berkshire, and
+additionally overhung with trees and encircled with shrubberies and
+under-woods, and is finally situated on a narrow road that presently
+leads, as it would seem, to the end of the known world." So writes the
+enthusiastic lover of inns, Charles Harper. Or, perhaps, since there is
+a river to be seen from the inn of the poem the "Swan" at Sandleford
+Water, where a foot bridge and a water splash on the river Enborne mark
+the boundaries of Hampshire and Berkshire. Here "You have the place
+wholly to yourself, or share it only with the squirrels and the birds of
+the overarching trees." The illustration given of the Black Bear Inn,
+Tewksbury, is a quite typical example of inn architecture, and may have
+helped the picture in Browning's mind, though its situation is not so
+rural as that described in the poem.
+
+Inns have, from time immemorial, been the scenes of romances and
+tragedies and crimes. There have been inns like the "Castle" where the
+"quality" loved to congregate. The "inn album" of this establishment had
+inscribed in it almost every eighteenth-century name of any distinction.
+There have been inns which were noted as the resort of the wits of the
+day. Ben Jonson loved to take "mine ease in mine inn," and Dr. Johnson
+declared that a seat in a tavern chair was the height of human felicity.
+"He was thinking," as it has been pertinently put, "not only of a
+comfortable sanded parlor, a roaring fire, and plenty of good cheer and
+good company, but also of the circle of humbly appreciative auditors who
+gathered round an accepted wit, hung upon his words, offered themselves
+as butts for his ironic or satiric humor, and--stood treat." Or there
+was the inn of sinister aspect where highwaymen might congregate, or
+inns with hosts who let their guests down through trap-doors in the
+middle of the night to rob and murder them--or is this only a vague
+remembrance of a fanciful inn of Dickens? Then there was the pilgrim's
+inn in the days when Chaucerian folks loved to go on pilgrimages, and in
+the last century the cyclists inn, and to-day the inn of the
+automobilist. The particular inn in the poem belongs to the class, rural
+inn, and in spite of its pictures by noted masters was "stuffy" as to
+the atmosphere.
+
+[Illustration: An English Inn]
+
+The "inn album" or visitors' book is a feature of inns. In this country
+we simply sign our names in the visitors' book, but the "album" feature
+of the visitors' book of an English inn is its glory and too often its
+shame, for as Mr. Harper says, "Bathos, ineptitude, and lines that
+refuse to scan are the stigmata of visitors' book verse. There is no
+worse poetry on earth than that which lurks between those covers, or in
+the pages of young ladies' albums." He declares that "The interesting
+pages of visitors' books are generally those that are not there, as an
+Irishman might say; for the world is populated very densely with those
+appreciative people who, whether from a love of literature, or with an
+instinct for collecting autographs that may have a realizable value,
+remove the signatures of distinguished men, and with them anything
+original they may have written."
+
+Browning pokes fun at the poetry of his inn album, but at the same time
+uses it as an important part of the machinery in the action. His English
+"Iago" writes in it the final damnation of his own character--the threat
+by means of which he hopes to ruin his victims, but which, instead,
+causes the lady to take poison and the young man to murder "Iago."
+
+The presence of the two men at this particular inn is explained in the
+following bit of conversation between them.
+
+    "You wrong your poor disciple. Oh, no airs!
+    Because you happen to be twice my age
+    And twenty times my master, must perforce
+    No blink of daylight struggle through the web
+    There's no unwinding? You entoil my legs,
+    And welcome, for I like it: blind me,--no!
+    A very pretty piece of shuttle-work
+    Was that--your mere chance question at the club--
+    '_Do you go anywhere this Whitsuntide?
+    I'm off for Paris, there's the Opera--there's
+    The Salon, there's a china-sale,--beside
+    Chantilly; and, for good companionship,
+    There's Such-and-such and So-and-so. Suppose
+    We start together?_' '_No such holiday!_'
+    I told you: '_Paris and the rest be hanged!
+    Why plague me who am pledged to home-delights?
+    I'm the engaged now; through whose fault but yours?
+    On duty. As you well know. Don't I drowse
+    The week away down with the Aunt and Niece?
+    No help: it's leisure, loneliness and love.
+    Wish I could take you; but fame travels fast,--
+    A man of much newspaper-paragraph,
+    You scare domestic circles; and beside
+    Would not you like your lot, that second taste
+    Of nature and approval of the grounds!
+    You might walk early or lie late, so shirk
+    Week-day devotions: but stay Sunday o'er,
+    And morning church is obligatory:
+    No mundane garb permissible, or dread
+    The butler's privileged monition! No!
+    Pack off to Paris, nor wipe tear away!_'
+    Whereon how artlessly the happy flash
+    Followed, by inspiration! '_Tell you what--
+    Let's turn their flank, try things on t'other side!
+    Inns for my money! Liberty's the life!
+    We'll lie in hiding: there's the crow-nest nook,
+    The tourist's joy, the Inn they rave about,
+    Inn that's out--out of sight and out of mind
+    And out of mischief to all four of us--
+    Aunt and niece, you and me. At night arrive;
+    At morn, find time for just a Pisgah-view
+    Of my friend's Land of Promise; then depart.
+    And while I'm whizzing onward by first train,
+    Bound for our own place (since my Brother sulks
+    And says I shun him like the plague) yourself--
+    Why, you have stepped thence, start from platform, gay
+    Despite the sleepless journey,--love lends wings,--
+    Hug aunt and niece who, none the wiser, wait
+    The faithful advent! Eh?_' '_With all my heart_,'
+    Said I to you; said I to mine own self:
+    '_Does he believe I fail to comprehend
+    He wants just one more final friendly snack
+    At friend's exchequer ere friend runs to earth,
+    Marries, renounces yielding friends such sport?_'
+    And did I spoil sport, pull face grim,--nay, grave?
+    Your pupil does you better credit! No!
+    I parleyed with my pass-book,--rubbed my pair
+    At the big balance in my banker's hands,--
+    Folded a cheque cigar-case-shape,--just wants
+    Filling and signing,--and took train, resolved
+    To execute myself with decency
+    And let you win--if not Ten thousand quite,
+    Something by way of wind-up-farewell burst
+    Of firework-nosegay! Where's your fortune fled?
+    Or is not fortune constant after all?
+    You lose ten thousand pounds: had I lost half
+    Or half that, I should bite my lips, I think.
+    You man of marble! Strut and stretch my best
+    On tiptoe, I shall never reach your height.
+    How does the loss feel! Just one lesson more!"
+
+    The more refined man smiles a frown away.
+
+On the way to the station where the older man is to take the train they
+have another talk, in which each tells the other of his experience, but
+they do not find out yet that they have both loved the same woman.
+
+                                      "Stop, my boy!
+    Don't think I'm stingy of experience! Life
+    --It's like this wood we leave. Should you and I
+    Go wandering about there, though the gaps
+    We went in and came out by were opposed
+    As the two poles, still, somehow, all the same,
+    By nightfall we should probably have chanced
+    On much the same main points of interest--
+    Both of us measured girth of mossy trunk,
+    Stript ivy from its strangled prey, clapped hands
+    At squirrel, sent a fir-cone after crow,
+    And so forth,--never mind what time betwixt.
+    So in our lives; allow I entered mine
+    Another way than you: 't is possible
+    I ended just by knocking head against
+    That plaguy low-hung branch yourself began
+    By getting bump from; as at last you too
+    May stumble o'er that stump which first of all
+    Bade me walk circumspectly. Head and feet
+    Are vulnerable both, and I, foot-sure,
+    Forgot that ducking down saves brow from bruise.
+    I, early old, played young man four years since
+    And failed confoundedly: so, hate alike
+    Failure and who caused failure,--curse her cant!"
+
+    "Oh, I see! You, though somewhat past the prime,
+    Were taken with a rosebud beauty! Ah--
+    But how should chits distinguish? She admired
+    Your marvel of a mind, I'll undertake!
+    But as to body ... nay, I mean ... that is,
+    When years have told on face and figure...."
+
+                                               "Thanks,
+    Mister _Sufficiently-Instructed_! Such
+    No doubt was bound to be the consequence
+    To suit your self-complacency: she liked
+    My head enough, but loved some heart beneath
+    Some head with plenty of brown hair a-top
+    After my young friend's fashion! What becomes
+    Of that fine speech you made a minute since
+    About the man of middle age you found
+    A formidable peer at twenty-one?
+    So much for your mock-modesty! and yet
+    I back your first against this second sprout
+    Of observation, insight, what you please.
+    My middle age, Sir, had too much success!
+    It's odd: my case occurred four years ago--
+    I finished just while you commenced that turn
+    I' the wood of life that takes us to the wealth
+    Of honeysuckle, heaped for who can reach.
+    Now, I don't boast: it's bad style, and beside,
+    The feat proves easier than it looks: I plucked
+    Full many a flower unnamed in that bouquet
+    (Mostly of peonies and poppies, though!)
+    Good nature sticks into my button-hole.
+    Therefore it was with nose in want of snuff
+    Rather than Ess or Psidium, that I chanced
+    On what--so far from '_rosebud beauty_'.... Well--
+    She's dead: at least you never heard her name;
+    She was no courtly creature, had nor birth
+    Nor breeding--mere fine-lady-breeding; but
+    Oh, such a wonder of a woman! Grand
+    As a Greek statue! Stick fine clothes on that,
+    Style that a Duchess or a Queen,--you know,
+    Artists would make an outcry: all the more,
+    That she had just a statue's sleepy grace
+    Which broods o'er its own beauty. Nay, her fault
+    (Don't laugh!) was just perfection: for suppose
+    Only the little flaw, and I had peeped
+    Inside it, learned what soul inside was like.
+    At Rome some tourist raised the grit beneath
+    A Venus' forehead with his whittling-knife--
+    I wish,--now,--I had played that brute, brought blood
+    To surface from the depths I fancied chalk!
+    As it was, her mere face surprised so much
+    That I stopped short there, struck on heap, as stares
+    The cockney stranger at a certain bust
+    With drooped eyes,--she's the thing I have in mind,--
+    Down at my Brother's. All sufficient prize--
+    Such outside! Now,--confound me for a prig!--
+    Who cares? I'll make a clean breast once for all!
+    Beside, you've heard the gossip. My life long
+    I've been a woman-liker,--liking means
+    Loving and so on. There's a lengthy list
+    By this time I shall have to answer for--
+    So say the good folk: and they don't guess half--
+    For the worst is, let once collecting-itch
+    Possess you, and, with perspicacity,
+    Keeps growing such a greediness that theft
+    Follows at no long distance,--there's the fact!
+    I knew that on my Leporello-list
+    Might figure this, that, and the other name
+    Of feminine desirability,
+    But if I happened to desire inscribe,
+    Along with these, the only Beautiful--
+    Here was the unique specimen to snatch
+    Or now or never. 'Beautiful' I said--
+    'Beautiful' say in cold blood,--boiling then
+    To tune of '_Haste, secure whate'er the cost
+    This rarity, die in the act, be damned,
+    So you complete collection, crown your list!_'
+    It seemed as though the whole world, once aroused
+    By the first notice of such wonder's birth,
+    Would break bounds to contest my prize with me
+    The first discoverer, should she but emerge
+    From that safe den of darkness where she dozed
+    Till I stole in, that country-parsonage
+    Where, country-parson's daughter, motherless,
+    Brotherless, sisterless, for eighteen years
+    She had been vegetating lily-like.
+    Her father was my brother's tutor, got
+    The living that way: him I chanced to see--
+    Her I saw--her the world would grow one eye
+    To see, I felt no sort of doubt at all!
+    '_Secure her!_' cried the devil: '_afterward
+    Arrange for the disposal of the prize!_'
+    The devil's doing! yet I seem to think--
+    Now, when all's done,--think with '_a head reposed_'
+    In French phrase--hope I think I meant to do
+    All requisite for such a rarity
+    When I should be at leisure, have due time
+    To learn requirement. But in evil day--
+    Bless me, at week's end, long as any year,
+    The father must begin '_Young Somebody,
+    Much recommended--for I break a rule--
+    Comes here to read, next Long Vacation_.' '_Young!_'
+    That did it. Had the epithet been '_rich_,'
+    '_Noble_,' '_a genius_,' even '_handsome_,'--but
+    --'_Young!_'"
+
+                        "I say--just a word! I want to know--
+    You are not married?"
+                          "I?"
+
+                              "Nor ever were?"
+    "Never! Why?"
+                  "Oh, then--never mind! Go on!
+    I had a reason for the question."
+
+                                      "Come,--
+    You could not be the young man?"
+                                    "No, indeed!
+    Certainly--if you never married her!"
+
+    "That I did not: and there's the curse, you'll see!
+    Nay, all of it's one curse, my life's mistake
+    Which, nourished with manure that's warranted
+    To make the plant bear wisdom, blew out full
+    In folly beyond field-flower-foolishness!
+    The lies I used to tell my womankind,
+    Knowing they disbelieved me all the time
+    Though they required my lies, their decent due,
+    This woman--not so much believed, I'll say,
+    As just anticipated from my mouth:
+    Since being true, devoted, constant--she
+    Found constancy, devotion, truth, the plain
+    And easy commonplace of character.
+    No mock-heroics but seemed natural
+    To her who underneath the face, I knew
+    Was fairness' self, possessed a heart, I judged
+    Must correspond in folly just as far
+    Beyond the common,--and a mind to match,--
+    Not made to puzzle conjurers like me
+    Who, therein, proved the fool who fronts you, Sir,
+    And begs leave to cut short the ugly rest!
+    '_Trust me!_' I said: she trusted. '_Marry me!_'
+    Or rather, '_We are married: when, the rite?_'
+    That brought on the collector's next-day qualm
+    At counting acquisition's cost. There lay
+    My marvel, there my purse more light by much
+    Because of its late lie-expenditure:
+    Ill-judged such moment to make fresh demand--
+    To cage as well as catch my rarity!
+    So, I began explaining. At first word
+    Outbroke the horror. '_Then, my truths were lies!_'
+    I tell you, such an outbreak, such new strange
+    All-unsuspected revelation--soul
+    As supernaturally grand as face
+    Was fair beyond example--that at once
+    Either I lost--or, if it please you, found
+    My senses,--stammered somehow--'_Jest! and now,
+    Earnest! Forget all else but--heart has loved,
+    Does love, shall love you ever! take the hand!_'
+    Not she! no marriage for superb disdain,
+    Contempt incarnate!"
+
+                        "Yes, it's different,--
+    It's only like in being four years since.
+    I see now!"
+
+                "Well, what did disdain do next,
+    Think you?"
+
+                "That's past me: did not marry you!--
+    That's the main thing I care for, I suppose.
+    Turned nun, or what?"
+
+                          "Why, married in a month
+    Some parson, some smug crop-haired smooth-chinned sort
+    Of curate-creature, I suspect,--dived down,
+    Down, deeper still, and came up somewhere else--
+    I don't know where--I've not tried much to know,--
+    In short, she's happy: what the clodpoles call
+    'Countrified' with a vengeance! leads the life
+    Respectable and all that drives you mad:
+    Still--where, I don't know, and that's best for both."
+
+    "Well, that she did not like you, I conceive.
+    But why should you hate her, I want to know?"
+
+    "My good young friend,--because or her or else
+    Malicious Providence I have to hate.
+    For, what I tell you proved the turning-point
+    Of my whole life and fortune toward success
+    Or failure. If I drown, I lay the fault
+    Much on myself who caught at reed not rope,
+    But more on reed which, with a packthread's pith,
+    Had buoyed me till the minute's cramp could thaw
+    And I strike out afresh and so be saved.
+    It's easy saying--I had sunk before,
+    Disqualified myself by idle days
+    And busy nights, long since, from holding hard
+    On cable, even, had fate cast me such!
+    You boys don't know how many times men fail
+    Perforce o' the little to succeed i' the large,
+    Husband their strength, let slip the petty prey,
+    Collect the whole power for the final pounce.
+    My fault was the mistaking man's main prize
+    For intermediate boy's diversion; clap
+    Of boyish hands here frightened game away
+    Which, once gone, goes forever. Oh, at first
+    I took the anger easily, nor much
+    Minded the anguish--having learned that storms
+    Subside, and teapot-tempests are akin.
+    Time would arrange things, mend whate'er might be
+    Somewhat amiss; precipitation, eh?
+    Reason and rhyme prompt--reparation! Tiffs
+    End properly in marriage and a dance!
+    I said 'We'll marry, make the past a blank'--
+    And never was such damnable mistake!
+    That interview, that laying bare my soul,
+    As it was first, so was it last chance--one
+    And only. Did I write? Back letter came
+    Unopened as it went. Inexorable
+    She fled, I don't know where, consoled herself
+    With the smug curate-creature: chop and change!
+    Sure am I, when she told her shaveling all
+    His Magdalen's adventure, tears were shed,
+    Forgiveness evangelically shown,
+    'Loose hair and lifted eye,'--as some one says.
+    And now, he's worshipped for his pains, the sneak!"
+
+    "Well, but your turning-point of life,--what's here
+    To hinder you contesting Finsbury
+    With Orton, next election? I don't see...."
+
+    "Not you! But _I_ see. Slowly, surely, creeps
+    Day by day o'er me the conviction--here
+    Was life's prize grasped at, gained, and then let go!
+    --That with her--may be, for her--I had felt
+    Ice in me melt, grow steam, drive to effect
+    Any or all the fancies sluggish here
+    I' the head that needs the hand she would not take
+    And I shall never lift now. Lo, your wood--
+    Its turnings which I likened life to! Well,--
+    There she stands, ending every avenue,
+    Her visionary presence on each goal
+    I might have gained had we kept side by side!
+    Still string nerve and strike foot? Her frown forbids:
+    The steam congeals once more: I'm old again!
+    Therefore I hate myself--but how much worse
+    Do not I hate who would not understand,
+    Let me repair things--no, but sent a-slide
+    My folly falteringly, stumblingly
+    Down, down and deeper down until I drop
+    Upon--the need of your ten thousand pounds
+    And consequently loss of mine! I lose
+    Character, cash, nay, common-sense itself
+    Recounting such a lengthy cock-and-bull
+    Adventure--lose my temper in the act...."
+
+    "And lose beside,--if I may supplement
+    The list of losses,--train and ten-o'clock!
+    Hark, pant and puff, there travels the swart sign!
+    So much the better! You're my captive now!
+    I'm glad you trust a fellow: friends grow thick
+    This way--that's twice said; we were thickish, though,
+    Even last night, and, ere night comes again,
+    I prophesy good luck to both of us!
+    For see now!--back to '_balmy eminence_'
+    Or '_calm acclivity_,' or what's the word!
+    Bestow you there an hour, concoct at ease
+    A sonnet for the Album, while I put
+    Bold face on, best foot forward, make for house,
+    March in to aunt and niece, and tell the truth--
+    (Even white-lying goes against my taste
+    After your little story). Oh, the niece
+    Is rationality itself! The aunt--
+    If she's amenable to reason too--
+    Why, you stooped short to pay her due respect,
+    And let the Duke wait (I'll work well the Duke).
+    If she grows gracious, I return for you;
+    If thunder's in the air, why--bear your doom,
+    Dine on rump-steaks and port, and shake the dust
+    Of aunty from your shoes as off you go
+    By evening-train, nor give the thing a thought
+    How you shall pay me--that's as sure as fate,
+    Old fellow! Off with you, face left about!
+    Yonder's the path I have to pad. You see,
+    I'm in good spirits, God knows why! Perhaps
+    Because the woman did not marry you
+    --Who look so hard at me,--and have the right,
+    One must be fair and own."
+
+                              The two stand still
+    Under an oak.
+
+                  "Look here!" resumes the youth.
+    "I never quite knew how I came to like
+    You--so much--whom I ought not court at all;
+    Nor how you had a leaning just to me
+    Who am assuredly not worth your pains.
+    For there must needs be plenty such as you
+    Somewhere about,--although I can't say where,--
+    Able and willing to teach all you know;
+    While--how can you have missed a score like me
+    With money and no wit, precisely each
+    A pupil for your purpose, were it--ease
+    Fool's poke of tutor's _honorarium_-fee?
+    And yet, howe'er it came about, I felt
+    At once my master: you as prompt descried
+    Your man, I warrant, so was bargain struck.
+    Now, these same lines of liking, loving, run
+    Sometimes so close together they converge--
+    Life's great adventures--you know what I mean--
+    In people. Do you know, as you advanced,
+    It got to be uncommonly like fact
+    We two had fallen in with--liked and loved
+    Just the same woman in our different ways?
+    I began life--poor groundling as I prove--
+    Winged and ambitious to fly high: why not?
+    There's something in 'Don Quixote' to the point,
+    My shrewd old father used to quote and praise--
+    '_Am I born man?_' asks Sancho: '_being man,
+    By possibility I may be Pope!_'
+    So, Pope I meant to make myself, by step
+    And step, whereof the first should be to find
+    A perfect woman; and I tell you this--
+    If what I fixed on, in the order due
+    Of undertakings, as next step, had first
+    Of all disposed itself to suit my tread,
+    And I had been, the day I came of age,
+    Returned at head of poll for Westminster
+    --Nay, and moreover summoned by the Queen
+    At week's end, when my maiden-speech bore fruit,
+    To form and head a Tory ministry--
+    It would not have seemed stranger, no, nor been
+    More strange to me, as now I estimate,
+    Than what did happen--sober truth, no dream.
+    I saw my wonder of a woman,--laugh,
+    I'm past that!--in Commemoration-week.
+    A plenty have I seen since, fair and foul,--
+    With eyes, too, helped by your sagacious wink;
+    But one to match that marvel--no least trace,
+    Least touch of kinship and community!
+    The end was--I did somehow state the fact,
+    Did, with no matter what imperfect words,
+    One way or other give to understand
+    That woman, soul and body were her slave
+    Would she but take, but try them--any test
+    Of will, and some poor test of power beside:
+    So did the strings within my brain grow tense
+    And capable of ... hang similitudes!
+    She answered kindly but beyond appeal.
+    '_No sort of hope for me, who came too late.
+    She was another's. Love went--mine to her,
+    Hers just as loyally to some one else._'
+    Of course! I might expect it! Nature's law--
+    Given the peerless woman, certainly
+    Somewhere shall be the peerless man to match!
+    I acquiesced at once, submitted me
+    In something of a stupor, went my way.
+    I fancy there had been some talk before
+    Of somebody--her father or the like--
+    To coach me in the holidays,--that's how
+    I came to get the sight and speech of her,--
+    But I had sense enough to break off sharp,
+    Save both of us the pain."
+
+                              "Quite right there!"
+                                                    "Eh?
+    Quite wrong, it happens! Now comes worst of all!
+    Yes, I did sulk aloof and let alone
+    The lovers--_I_ disturb the angel-mates?"
+
+    "Seraph paired off with cherub!"
+
+                                    "Thank you! While
+    I never plucked up courage to inquire
+    Who he was, even,--certain-sure of this,
+    That nobody I knew of had blue wings
+    And wore a star-crown as he needs must do,--
+    Some little lady,--plainish, pock-marked girl,--
+    Finds out my secret in my woful face,
+    Comes up to me at the Apollo Ball,
+    And pityingly pours her wine and oil
+    This way into the wound: '_Dear f-f-friend,
+    Why waste affection thus on--must I say,
+    A somewhat worthless object? Who's her choice--
+    Irrevocable as deliberate--
+    Out of the wide world? I shall name no names--
+    But there's a person in society,
+    Who, blessed with rank and talent, has grown gray
+    In idleness and sin of every sort
+    Except hypocrisy: he's thrice her age,
+    A by-word for "successes with the sex"
+    As the French say--and, as we ought to say,
+    Consummately a liar and a rogue,
+    Since--show me where's the woman won without
+    The help of this one lie which she believes--
+    That--never mind how things have come to pass,
+    And let who loves have loved a thousand times--
+    All the same he now loves her only, loves
+    Her ever! if by "won" you just mean "sold,"
+    That's quite another compact. Well, this scamp,
+    Continuing descent from bad to worse,
+    Must leave his fine and fashionable prey
+    (Who--fathered, brothered, husbanded,--are hedged
+    About with thorny danger) and apply
+    His arts to this poor country ignorance
+    Who sees forthwith in the first rag of man
+    Her model hero! Why continue waste
+    On such a woman treasures of a heart
+    Would yet find solace,--yes, my f-f-friend--
+    In some congenial_--fiddle-diddle-dee?'"
+
+    "Pray, is the pleasant gentleman described
+    Exact the portrait which my '_f-f-friends_'
+    Recognize as so like? 'T is evident
+    You half surmised the sweet original
+    Could be no other than myself, just now!
+    Your stop and start were flattering!"
+
+                                          "Of course
+    Caricature's allowed for in a sketch!
+    The longish nose becomes a foot in length,
+    The swarthy cheek gets copper-colored,--still,
+    Prominent beak and dark-hued skin are facts:
+    And '_parson's daughter_'--'_young man coachable_'--
+    '_Elderly party_'--'_four years since_'--were facts
+    To fasten on, a moment! Marriage, though--
+    That made the difference, I hope."
+
+                                      "All right!
+    I never married; wish I had--and then
+    Unwish it: people kill their wives, sometimes!
+    I hate my mistress, but I'm murder-free.
+    In your case, where's the grievance? You came last,
+    The earlier bird picked up the worm. Suppose
+    You, in the glory of your twenty-one,
+    Had happened to precede myself! 't is odds
+    But this gigantic juvenility,
+    This offering of a big arm's bony hand--
+    I'd rather shake than feel shake me, I know--
+    Had moved _my_ dainty mistress to admire
+    An altogether new Ideal--deem
+    Idolatry less due to life's decline
+    Productive of experience, powers mature
+    By dint of usage, the made man--no boy
+    That's all to make! I was the earlier bird--
+    And what I found, I let fall: what you missed
+    Who is the fool that blames you for?"
+
+They become so deeply interested in this talk that the train is missed,
+and, in the meantime, the lady who now lives in the neighborhood as the
+wife of the hard-working country parson meets the young girl at the inn.
+They are great friends and have come there, at the girl's invitation, to
+talk over her prospective husband. She desires her friend to come to her
+home and meet her fiance, but the lady, who is in constant fear of
+meeting "Iago," never goes anywhere, and proposes a meeting with him at
+the inn. While she waits, "Iago" comes in upon her. There is a terrible
+scene of recrimination between these two, the man again daring to prefer
+his love. The lady scorns him. Horror is added to horror when the young
+man appears at the door, and recognizes the woman he really loves. His
+faith in her and his love are shaken for a moment, but return
+immediately and he stands her true friend and lover. The complete
+despicableness of "Iago's" nature finally reveals itself in the lines he
+writes in the album and gives to the lady to read. The poem is too long
+to quote in full. The closing scene, however, will give the reader a
+good idea of the poet's handling of this nineteenth-century tragedy.
+
+The true nobility of soul of the younger man links him with Mertoun
+among Browning's heroes and represents the Englishman or the man of any
+country for that matter at his highest. Whether redemption for the older
+man would have been possible had the lady believed him in the inn parlor
+is doubtful. Such natures are like Ibsen's "Peer Gynt." They need to be
+put into a button mould and moulded over again.
+
+                                  "Here's the lady back!
+    So, Madam, you have conned the Album-page
+    And come to thank its last contributor?
+    How kind and condescending! I retire
+    A moment, lest I spoil the interview,
+    And mar my own endeavor to make friends--
+    You with him, him with you, and both with me!
+    If I succeed--permit me to inquire
+    Five minutes hence! Friends bid good-by, you know."
+    And out he goes.
+
+    VII
+
+                    She, face, form, bearing, one
+    Superb composure--
+
+                      "He has told you all?
+    Yes, he has told you all, your silence says--
+    What gives him, as he thinks the mastery
+    Over my body and my soul!--has told
+    That instance, even, of their servitude
+    He now exacts of me? A silent blush!
+    That's well, though better would white ignorance
+    Beseem your brow, undesecrate before--
+    Ay, when I left you! I too learn at last
+    --Hideously learned as I seemed so late--
+    What sin may swell to. Yes,--I needed learn
+    That, when my prophet's rod became the snake
+    I fled from, it would, one day, swallow up
+    --Incorporate whatever serpentine
+    Falsehood and treason and unmanliness
+    Beslime earth's pavement: such the power of Hell,
+    And so beginning, ends no otherwise
+    The Adversary! I was ignorant,
+    Blameworthy--if you will; but blame I take
+    Nowise upon me as I ask myself
+    --_You_--how can you, whose soul I seemed to read
+    The limpid eyes through, have declined so deep
+    Even with him for consort? I revolve
+    Much memory, pry into the looks and words
+    Of that day's walk beneath the College wall,
+    And nowhere can distinguish, in what gleams
+    Only pure marble through my dusky past,
+    A dubious cranny where such poison-seed
+    Might harbor, nourish what should yield to-day
+    This dread ingredient for the cup I drink.
+    Do not I recognize and honor truth
+    In seeming?--take your truth and for return,
+    Give you my truth, a no less precious gift?
+    You loved me: I believed you. I replied
+    --How could I other? '_I was not my own_,'
+    --No longer had the eyes to see, the ears
+    To hear, the mind to judge, since heart and soul
+    Now were another's. My own right in me,
+    For well or ill, consigned away--my face
+    Fronted the honest path, deflection whence
+    Had shamed me in the furtive backward look
+    At the late bargain--fit such chapman's phrase!--
+    As though--less hasty and more provident--
+    Waiting had brought advantage. Not for me
+    The chapman's chance! Yet while thus much was true,
+    I spared you--as I knew you then--one more
+    Concluding word which, truth no less, seemed best
+    Buried away forever. Take it now
+    Its power to pain is past! Four years--that day--
+    Those lines that make the College avenue!
+    I would that--friend and foe--by miracle,
+    I had, that moment, seen into the heart
+    Of either, as I now am taught to see!
+    I do believe I should have straight assumed
+    My proper function, and sustained a soul,
+    Nor aimed at being just sustained myself
+    By some man's soul--the weaker woman's-want!
+    So had I missed the momentary thrill
+    Of finding me in presence of a god,
+    But gained the god's own feeling when he gives
+    Such thrill to what turns life from death before.
+    '_Gods many and Lords many_,' says the Book:
+    You would have yielded up your soul to me
+    --Not to the false god who has burned its clay
+    In his own image. I had shed my love
+    Like Spring dew on the clod all flowery thence,
+    Not sent up a wild vapor to the sun
+    that drinks and then disperses. Both of us
+    Blameworthy,--I first meet my punishment--
+    And not so hard to bear. I breathe again!
+    Forth from those arms' enwinding leprosy
+    At last I struggle--uncontaminate:
+    Why must I leave _you_ pressing to the breast
+    That's all one plague-spot? Did you love me once?
+    Then take love's last and best return! I think,
+    Womanliness means only motherhood;
+    All love begins and ends there,--roams enough,
+    But, having run the circle, rests at home.
+    Why is your expiation yet to make?
+    Pull shame with your own hands from your own head
+    Now,--never wait the slow envelopment
+    Submitted to by unelastic age!
+    One fierce throe frees the sapling: flake on flake
+    Lull till they leave the oak snow-stupefied.
+    Your heart retains its vital warmth--or why
+    That blushing reassurance? Blush, young blood!
+    Break from beneath this icy premature
+    Captivity of wickedness--I warn
+    Back, in God's name! No fresh encroachment here!
+    This May breaks all to bud--No Winter now!
+    Friend, we are both forgiven! Sin no more!
+    I am past sin now, so shall you become!
+    Meanwhile I testify that, lying once,
+    My foe lied ever, most lied last of all.
+    He, waking, whispered to your sense asleep
+    The wicked counsel,--and assent might seem;
+    But, roused, your healthy indignation breaks
+    The idle dream-pact. You would die--not dare
+    Confirm your dream-resolve,--nay, find the word
+    That fits the deed to bear the light of day!
+    Say I have justly judged you! then farewell
+    To blushing--nay, it ends in smiles, not tears!
+    Why tears now? I have justly judged, thank God!"
+
+    He does blush boy-like, but the man speaks out,
+    --Makes the due effort to surmount himself.
+
+    "I don't know what he wrote--how should I? Nor
+    How he could read my purpose which, it seems,
+    He chose to somehow write--mistakenly
+    Or else for mischief's sake. I scarce believe
+    My purpose put before you fair and plain
+    Would need annoy so much; but there's my luck--
+    From first to last I blunder. Still, one more
+    Turn at the target, try to speak my thought!
+    Since he could guess my purpose, won't you read
+    Right what he set down wrong? He said--let's think!
+    Ay, so!--he did begin by telling heaps
+    Of tales about you. Now, you see--suppose
+    Any one told me--my own mother died
+    Before I knew her--told me--to his cost!--
+    Such tales about my own dead mother: why,
+    You would not wonder surely if I knew,
+    By nothing but my own heart's help, he lied,
+    Would you? No reason's wanted in the case.
+    So with you! In they burnt on me, his tales,
+    Much as when madhouse-inmates crowd around,
+    Make captive any visitor and scream
+    All sorts of stories of their keeper--he's
+    Both dwarf and giant, vulture, wolf, dog, cat,
+    Serpent and scorpion, yet man all the same;
+    Sane people soon see through the gibberish!
+    I just made out, you somehow lived somewhere
+    A life of shame--I can't distinguish more--
+    Married or single--how, don't matter much:
+    Shame which himself had caused--that point was clear,
+    That fact confessed--that thing to hold and keep.
+    Oh, and he added some absurdity
+    --That you were here to make me--ha, ha, ha!--
+    Still love you, still of mind to die for you,
+    Ha, ha--as if that needed mighty pains!
+    Now, foolish as ... but never mind myself
+    --What I am, what I am not, in the eye
+    Of the world, is what I never cared for much.
+    Fool then or no fool, not one single word
+    In the whole string of lies did I believe,
+    But this--this only--if I choke, who cares?--
+    I believe somehow in your purity
+    Perfect as ever! Else what use is God?
+    He is God, and work miracles He can!
+    Then, what shall I do? Quite as clear, my course!
+    They've got a thing they call their Labyrinth
+    I' the garden yonder: and my cousin played
+    A pretty trick once, led and lost me deep
+    Inside the briery maze of hedge round hedge;
+    And there might I be staying now, stock-still,
+    But that I laughing bade eyes follow nose
+    And so straight pushed my path through let and stop
+    And soon was out in the open, face all scratched,
+    But well behind my back the prison-bars
+    In sorry plight enough, I promise you!
+    So here: I won my way to truth through lies--
+    Said, as I saw light,--if her shame be shame
+    I'll rescue and redeem her,--shame's no shame?
+    Then, I'll avenge, protect--redeem myself
+    The stupidest of sinners! Here I stand!
+    Dear,--let me once dare call you so,--you said
+    Thus ought you to have done, four years ago,
+    Such things and such! Ay, dear, and what ought I?
+    You were revealed to me: where's gratitude,
+    Where's memory even, where the gain of you
+    Discernible in my low after-life
+    Of fancied consolation? why, no horse
+    Once fed on corn, will, missing corn, go munch
+    Mere thistles like a donkey! I missed you,
+    And in your place found--him, made him my love,
+    Ay, did I,--by this token, that he taught
+    So much beast-nature that I meant ... God knows
+    Whether I bow me to the dust enough!...
+    To marry--yes, my cousin here! I hope
+    That was a master-stroke! Take heart of hers,
+    And give her hand of mine with no more heart
+    Than now you see upon this brow I strike!
+    What atom of a heart do I retain
+    Not all yours? Dear, you know it! Easily
+    May she accord me pardon when I place
+    My brow beneath her foot, if foot so deign,
+    Since uttermost indignity is spared--
+    Mere marriage and no love! And all this time
+    Not one word to the purpose! Are you free?
+    Only wait! only let me serve--deserve
+    Where you appoint and how you see the good!
+    I have the will--perhaps the power--at least
+    Means that have power against the world. For time--
+    Take my whole life for your experiment!
+    If you are bound--in marriage, say--why, still,
+    Still, sure, there's something for a friend to do,
+    Outside? A mere well-wisher, understand!
+    I'll sit, my life long, at your gate, you know,
+    Swing it wide open to let you and him
+    Pass freely,--and you need not look, much less
+    Fling me a '_Thank you--are you there, old friend_?'
+    Don't say that even: I should drop like shot!
+    So I feel now at least: some day, who knows?
+    After no end of weeks and months and years
+    You might smile '_I believe you did your best_!'
+    And that shall make my heart leap--leap such leap
+    As lands the feet in Heaven to wait you there!
+    Ah, there's just one thing more! How pale you look!
+    Why? Are you angry? If there's, after all,
+    Worst come to worst--if still there somehow be
+    The shame--I said was no shame,--none! I swear!--
+    In that case, if my hand and what it holds,--
+    My name,--might be your safeguard now--at once--
+    Why, here's the hand--you have the heart! Of course--
+    No cheat, no binding you, because I'm bound,
+    To let me off probation by one day,
+    Week, month, year, lifetime! Prove as you propose!
+    Here's the hand with the name to take or leave!
+    That's all--and no great piece of news, I hope!"
+
+    "Give me the hand, then!" she cries hastily.
+    "Quick, now! I hear his footstep!"
+                                      Hand in hand
+    The couple face him as he enters, stops
+    Short, stands surprised a moment, laughs away
+    Surprise, resumes the much-experienced man.
+
+    "So, you accept him?"
+                          "Till us death do part!"
+
+    "No longer? Come, that's right and rational!
+    I fancied there was power in common sense,
+    But did not know it worked thus promptly. Well--
+    At last each understands the other, then?
+    Each drops disguise, then? So, at supper-time
+    These masquerading people doff their gear,
+    Grand Turk his pompous turban, Quakeress
+    Her stiff-starched bib and tucker,--make-believe
+    That only bothers when, ball-business done,
+    Nature demands champagne and _mayonnaise_.
+    Just so has each of us sage three abjured
+    His and her moral pet particular
+    Pretension to superiority,
+    And, cheek by jowl, we henceforth munch and joke!
+    Go, happy pair, paternally dismissed
+    To live and die together--for a month,
+    Discretion can award no more! Depart
+    From whatsoe'er the calm sweet solitude
+    Selected--Paris not improbably--
+    At month's end, when the honeycomb's left wax,
+    --You, daughter, with a pocketful of gold
+    Enough to find your village boys and girls
+    In duffel cloaks and hobnailed shoes from May
+    To--what's the phrase?--Christmas-come-never-mas!
+    You, son and heir of mine, shall re-appear
+    Ere Spring-time, that's the ring-time, lose one leaf,
+    And--not without regretful smack of lip
+    The while you wipe it free of honey-smear--
+    Marry the cousin, play the magistrate,
+    Stand for the country, prove perfection's pink--
+    Master of hounds, gay-coated dine--nor die
+    Sooner than needs of gout, obesity,
+    And sons at Christ Church! As for me,--ah me,
+    I abdicate--retire on my success,
+    Four years well occupied in teaching youth
+    --My son and daughter the exemplary!
+    Time for me to retire now, having placed
+    Proud on their pedestal the pair: in turn,
+    Let them do homage to their master! You,--
+    Well, your flushed cheek and flashing eye proclaim
+    Sufficiently your gratitude: you paid
+    The _honorarium_, the ten thousand pounds
+    To purpose, did you not? I told you so!
+    And you, but, bless me, why so pale--so faint
+    At influx of good fortune? Certainly,
+    No matter how or why or whose the fault,
+    I save your life--save it, nor less nor more!
+    You blindly were resolved to welcome death
+    In that black boor-and-bumpkin-haunted hole
+    Of his, the prig with all the preachments! _You_
+    Installed as nurse and matron to the crones
+    And wenches, while there lay a world outside
+    Like Paris (which again I recommend)
+    In company and guidance of--first, this,
+    Then--all in good time--some new friend as fit--
+    What if I were to say, some fresh myself,
+    As I once figured? Each dog has his day,
+    And mine's at sunset: what should old dog do
+    But eye young litters' frisky puppyhood?
+    Oh I shall watch this beauty and this youth
+    Frisk it in brilliance! But don't fear! Discreet,
+    I shall pretend to no more recognize
+    My quondam pupils than the doctor nods
+    When certain old acquaintances may cross
+    His path in Park, or sit down prim beside
+    His plate at dinner-table: tip nor wink
+    Scares patients he has put, for reason good,
+    Under restriction,--maybe, talked sometimes
+    Of douche or horsewhip to,--for why? because
+    The gentleman would crazily declare
+    His best friend was--Iago! Ay, and worse--
+    The lady, all at once grown lunatic,
+    In suicidal monomania vowed,
+    To save her soul, she needs must starve herself!
+    They're cured now, both, and I tell nobody.
+    Why don't you speak? Nay, speechless, each of you
+    Can spare,--without unclasping plighted troth,--
+    At least one hand to shake! Left-hands will do--
+    Yours first, my daughter! Ah, it guards--it gripes
+    The precious Album fast--and prudently!
+    As well obliterate the record there
+    On page the last: allow me tear the leaf!
+    Pray, now! And afterward, to make amends,
+    What if all three of us contribute each
+    A line to that prelusive fragment,--help
+    The embarrassed bard who broke out to break down
+    Dumbfoundered at such unforeseen success?
+    '_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot_'
+    You begin--_place aux dames_! I'll prompt you then!
+    '_Here do I take the good the gods allot!_'
+    Next you, Sir! What, still sulky? Sing, O Muse!
+    '_Here does my lord in full discharge his shot!_'
+    Now for the crowning flourish! mine shall be...."
+
+    "Nothing to match your first effusion, mar
+    What was, is, shall remain your masterpiece!
+    Authorship has the alteration-itch!
+    No, I protest against erasure. Read,
+    My friend!" (she gasps out). "Read and quickly read
+    '_Before us death do part_,' what made you mine
+    And made me yours--the marriage-license here!
+    Decide if he is like to mend the same!"
+    And so the lady, white to ghastliness,
+    Manages somehow to display the page
+    With left-hand only, while the right retains
+    The other hand, the young man's,--dreaming-drunk
+    He, with this drench of stupefying stuff,
+    Eyes wide, mouth open,--half the idiot's stare
+    And half the prophet's insight,--holding tight,
+    All the same, by his one fact in the world--
+    The lady's right-hand: he but seems to read--
+    Does not, for certain; yet, how understand
+    Unless he reads?
+
+                    So, understand he does,
+    For certain. Slowly, word by word, _she_ reads
+    Aloud that license--or that warrant, say.
+
+    "'_One against two--and two that urge their odds
+    To uttermost--I needs must try resource!
+    Madam, I laid me prostrate, bade you spurn
+    Body and soul: you spurned and safely spurned
+    So you had spared me the superfluous taunt
+    "Prostration means no power to stand erect,
+    Stand, trampling on who trampled--prostrate now!"
+    So, with my other fool-foe: I was fain
+    Let the boy touch me with the buttoned foil,
+    And him the infection gains, he too must needs
+    Catch up the butcher's cleaver. Be it so!
+    Since play turns earnest, here's my serious fence.
+    He loves you; he demands your love: both know
+    What love means in my language. Love him then!
+    Pursuant to a pact, love pays my debt:
+    Therefore, deliver me from him, thereby
+    Likewise delivering from me yourself!
+    For, hesitate--much more, refuse consent--
+    I tell the whole truth to your husband. Flat
+    Cards lie on table, in our gamester-phrase!
+    Consent--you stop my mouth, the only way._'
+
+    "I did well, trusting instinct: knew your hand
+    Had never joined with his in fellowship
+    Over this pact of infamy. You known--
+    As he was known through every nerve of me.
+    Therefore I '_stopped his mouth the only way_'
+    But _my_ way! none was left for you, my friend--
+    The loyal--near, the loved one! No--no--no!
+    Threaten? Chastise? The coward would but quail.
+    Conquer who can, the cunning of the snake!
+    Stamp out his slimy strength from tail to head,
+    And still you leave vibration of the tongue.
+    His malice had redoubled--not on me
+    Who, myself, choose my own refining fire--
+    But on poor unsuspicious innocence;
+    And,--victim,--to turn executioner
+    Also--that feat effected, forky tongue
+    Had done indeed its office! One snake's 'mouth'
+    Thus '_open_'--how could mortal '_stop it_'?
+
+                                                "So!"
+    A tiger-flash--yell, spring, and scream: halloo!
+    Death's out and on him, has and holds him--ugh!
+    But _ne trucidet coram populo
+    Juvenis senem_! Right the Horatian rule!
+    There, see how soon a quiet comes to pass!
+
+    The youth is somehow by the lady's side.
+    His right-hand grasps her right-hand once again.
+    Both gaze on the dead body. Hers the word.
+    "And that was good but useless. Had I lived
+    The danger was to dread: but, dying now--
+    Himself would hardly become talkative,
+    Since talk no more means torture. Fools--what fools
+    These wicked men are! Had I borne four years,
+    Four years of weeks and months and days and nights,
+    Inured me to the consciousness of life
+    Coiled round by his life, with the tongue to ply,--
+    But that I bore about me, for prompt use
+    At urgent need, the thing that '_stops the mouth_'
+    And stays the venom? Since such need was now
+    Or never,--how should use not follow need?
+    Bear witness for me, I withdraw from life
+    By virtue of the license--warrant, say,
+    That blackens yet this Album--white again,
+    Thanks still to my one friend who tears the page!
+    Now, let me write the line of supplement,
+    As counselled by my foe there: '_each a line_!'"
+
+    And she does falteringly write to end.
+
+    "_I die now through the villain who lies dead,
+    Righteously slain. He would have outraged me,
+    So, my defender slew him. God protect
+    The right! Where wrong lay, I bear witness now.
+    Let man believe me, whose last breath is spent
+    In blessing my defender from my soul!_"
+
+    And so ends the Inn Album.
+
+                              As she dies,
+    Begins outside a voice that sounds like song,
+    And is indeed half song though meant for speech
+    Muttered in time to motion--stir of heart
+    That unsubduably must bubble forth
+    To match the fawn-step as it mounts the stair.
+
+    "All's ended and all's over! Verdict found
+    '_Not guilty_'--prisoner forthwith set free,
+    Mid cheers the Court pretends to disregard!
+    Now Portia, now for Daniel, late severe,
+    At last appeased, benignant! '_This young man--
+    Hem--has the young man's foibles but no fault.
+    He's virgin soil--a friend must cultivate.
+    I think no plant called "love" grows wild--a friend
+    May introduce, and name the bloom, the fruit!_'
+    Here somebody dares wave a handkerchief--
+    She'll want to hide her face with presently!
+    Good-by then! '_Cigno fedel, cigno fedel,
+    Addio!_' Now, was ever such mistake--
+    Ever such foolish ugly omen? Pshaw!
+    Wagner, beside! '_Amo te solo, te
+    Solo amai!_' That's worth fifty such!
+    But, mum, the grave face at the opened door!"
+
+    And so the good gay girl, with eyes and cheeks
+    Diamond and damask,--cheeks so white erewhile
+    Because of a vague fancy, idle fear
+    Chased on reflection!--pausing, taps discreet;
+    And then, to give herself a countenance,
+    Before she comes upon the pair inside,
+    Loud--the oft-quoted, long-laughed-over line--
+    "'_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!_'
+    Open the door!"
+
+                    No: let the curtain fall!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+In "Bishop Blougram's Apology" and "Christmas-Eve and Easter Day,"
+Browning has covered the main tendencies in religious thought of the
+nineteenth century in England; and possibly "Caliban" might be included
+as representative of Calvinistic survivals of the century.
+
+The two most strongly marked of these tendencies have been shown in the
+Tractarian Movement which took Anglican in the direction of High
+Churchism and Catholicism, and in the Scientific Movement which led in
+the direction of Agnosticism.
+
+The battle between the Church of Rome and the Church of England was
+waged the latter part of the first half of the century, and the greater
+battle between science and religion came on in its full strength the
+middle of the century when the influence of Spencer, Darwin, Tyndall,
+Huxley and other men of science began to make itself felt, as well as
+that of such critics of historical Christianity as Strauss in Germany
+and Renan in France. The influence of the dissenting bodies,--the
+Presbyterians and the Methodists--also became a power during the
+century. Broadly speaking, it may be said that the development has been
+in the direction of the utmost freedom of conscience in the matter of
+religion, though the struggles of humanity to arrive there even during
+this century are distressing to look back upon; and occasionally one is
+held up even in America to-day by the ghost of religious persecution.
+
+It is an open secret that in Bishop Blougram, Browning meant to portray
+Cardinal Wiseman, whose connection with the Tractarian Movement is of
+great interest in the history of this movement. Browning enjoyed hugely
+the joke that Cardinal Wiseman himself reviewed the poem. The Cardinal
+praised it as a poem, though he did not consider the attitude of a
+priest of Rome to be properly interpreted. A comparison of the poem with
+opinions expressed by the Cardinal as well as a glimpse into his
+activities will show how far Browning has done him justice.
+
+It is well to remember at the outset that the poet's own view is neither
+that of Blougram nor of the literary man Gigadibs, with whom Blougram
+talks over his wine. Gigadibs is an agnostic and cannot understand how a
+man of Blougram's fine intellectual and artistic perceptions is able so
+implicitly to believe in Catholic doctrine. Blougram's apology for
+himself amounts to this,--that he does not believe with absolute
+certainty any more than does Gigadibs; but, on the other hand, Gigadibs
+does not disbelieve with absolute certainty, so Blougram's state is one
+of belief shaken occasionally by doubt, while Gigadibs is one of
+unbelief shaken by fits of belief.
+
+
+    BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+      Now come, let's backward to the starting place.
+    See my way: we're two college friends, suppose.
+    Prepare together for our voyage, then;
+    Each note and check the other in his work,--
+    There's mine, a bishop's outfit; criticize!
+    What's wrong? why won't you be a bishop too?
+
+      What first, you don't believe, you don't, and can't,
+    (Not statedly, that is, and fixedly
+    And absolutely and exclusively)
+    In any revelation called divine.
+    No dogmas nail your faith; and what remains
+    But say so, like the honest man you are?
+    First, therefore, overhaul theology!
+    Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think,
+    Must find believing every whit as hard:
+    And if I do not frankly say as much,
+    The ugly consequence is clear enough.
+
+      Now wait, my friend: well, I do not believe--
+    If you'll accept no faith that is not fixed,
+    Absolute and exclusive, as you say.
+    You're wrong--I mean to prove it in due time.
+    Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie
+    I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall,
+    So give up hope accordingly to solve--
+    (To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then
+    With both of us, though in unlike degree,
+    Missing full credence--overboard with them!
+    I mean to meet you on your own premise:
+    Good, there go mine in company with yours!
+
+      And now what are we? unbelievers both,
+    Calm and complete, determinately fixed
+    To-day, to-morrow and forever, pray?
+    You'll guarantee me that? Not so, I think!
+    In no wise! all we've gained is, that belief.
+    As unbelief before, shakes us by fits,
+    Confounds us like its predecessor. Where's
+    The gain? how can we guard our unbelief,
+    Make it bear fruit to us?--the problem here.
+    Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch,
+    A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
+    A chorus-ending from Euripides,--
+    And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
+    As old and new at once as nature's self,
+    To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
+    Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,
+    Round the ancient idol, on his base again,--
+    The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly.
+    There the old misgivings, crooked questions are--
+    This good God,--what he could do, if he would,
+    Would, if he could--then must have done long since:
+    If so, when, where and how? some way must be,--
+    Once feel about, and soon or late you hit
+    Some sense, in which it might be, after all.
+    Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life?"
+
+The advantage of making belief instead of unbelief the starting point
+is, Blougram contends, that he lives by what he finds the most to his
+taste; giving him as it does, power, distinction and beauty in life as
+well as hope in the life to come.
+
+      Well, now, there's one great form of Christian faith
+    I happened to be born in--which to teach
+    Was given me as I grew up, on all hands,
+    As best and readiest means of living by;
+    The same on examination being proved
+    The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise
+    And absolute form of faith in the whole world--
+    Accordingly, most potent of all forms
+    For working on the world. Observe, my friend!
+    Such as you know me, I am free to say,
+    In these hard latter days which hamper one,
+    Myself--by no immoderate exercise
+    Of intellect and learning, but the tact
+    To let external forces work for me,
+    --Bid the street's stones be bread and they are bread;
+    Bid Peter's creed, or rather, Hildebrand's,
+    Exalt me o'er my fellows in the world
+    And make my life an ease and joy and pride;
+    It does so,--which for me's a great point gained,
+    Who have a soul and body that exact
+    A comfortable care in many ways.
+    There's power in me and will to dominate
+    Which I must exercise, they hurt me else:
+    In many ways I need mankind's respect,
+    Obedience, and the love that's born of fear:
+    While at the same time, there's a taste I have,
+    A toy of soul, a titillating thing,
+    Refuses to digest these dainties crude.
+    The naked life is gross till clothed upon:
+    I must take what men offer, with a grace
+    As though I would not, could I help it, take!
+    An uniform I wear though over-rich--
+    Something imposed on me, no choice of mine;
+    No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake
+    And despicable therefore! now folk kneel
+    And kiss my hand--of course the Church's hand.
+    Thus I am made, thus life is best for me,
+    And thus that it should be I have procured;
+    And thus it could not be another way,
+    I venture to imagine.
+
+                          You'll reply,
+    So far my choice, no doubt, is a success;
+    But were I made of better elements,
+    with nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you,
+    I hardly would account the thing success
+    Though it did all for me I say.
+
+                                    But, friend,
+    We speak of what is; not of what might be,
+    And how 'twere better if 'twere otherwise.
+    I am the man you see here plain enough:
+    Grant I'm a beast, why, beasts must lead beasts' lives!
+    Suppose I own at once to tail and claws;
+    The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed
+    I'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes
+    To dock their stump and dress their haunches up.
+    My business is not to remake myself,
+    But make the absolute best of what God made.
+
+      But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fast
+    I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes
+    Enumerated so complacently,
+    On the mere ground that you forsooth can find
+    In this particular life I choose to lead
+    No fit provision for them. Can you not?
+    Say you, my fault is I address myself
+    To grosser estimators than should judge?
+    And that's no way of holding up the soul,
+    Which, nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knows
+    One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools'--
+    Would like the two, but, forced to choose, takes that.
+    I pine among my million imbeciles
+    (You think) aware some dozen men of sense
+    Eye me and know me, whether I believe
+    In the last winking Virgin, as I vow,
+    And am a fool, or disbelieve in her
+    And am a knave,--approve in neither case,
+    Withhold their voices though I look their way:
+    Like Verdi when, at his worst opera's end
+    (The thing they gave at Florence,--what's its name?)
+    While the mad houseful's plaudits near outbang
+    His orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones,
+    He looks through all the roaring and the wreaths
+    Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.
+
+      Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here--
+    That even your prime men who appraise their kind
+    Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel,
+    See more in a truth than the truth's simple self,
+    Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street
+    Sixty the minute; what's to note in that?
+    You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack;
+    Him you must watch--he's sure to fall, yet stands!
+    Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.
+    The honest thief, the tender murderer,
+    The superstitious atheist, demirep
+    That loves and saves her soul in new French books--
+    We watch while these in equilibrium keep
+    The giddy line midway: one step aside,
+    They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line
+    Before your sages,--just the men to shrink
+    From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad
+    You offer their refinement. Fool or knave?
+    Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave
+    When there's a thousand diamond weights between?
+    So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you'll find,
+    Profess themselves indignant, scandalized
+    At thus being held unable to explain
+    How a superior man who disbelieves
+    May not believe as well: that's Schelling's way!
+    It's through my coming in the tail of time,
+    Nicking the minute with a happy tact.
+    Had I been born three hundred years ago
+    They'd say, "what's strange? Blougram of course believes;"
+    And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course."
+    But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yet
+    How can he?" All eyes turn with interest.
+    Whereas, step off the line on either side--
+    You, for example, clever to a fault,
+    The rough and ready man who write apace,
+    Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less--
+    You disbelieve! Who wonders and who cares?
+    Lord So-and-so--his coat bedropped with wax,
+    All Peter's chains about his waist, his back
+    Brave with the needlework of Noodledom--
+    Believes! Again, who wonders and who cares?
+    But I, the man of sense and learning too,
+    The able to think yet act, the this, the that,
+    I, to believe at this late time of day!
+    Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt.
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+      "Ay, but since really you lack faith," you cry,
+    "You run the same risk really on all sides,
+    In cool indifference as bold unbelief.
+    As well be Strauss as swing 'twixt Paul and him.
+    It's not worth having, such imperfect faith,
+    No more available to do faith's work
+    Than unbelief like mine. Whole faith, or none!"
+
+      Softly, my friend! I must dispute that point.
+    Once own the use of faith, I'll find you faith.
+    We're back on Christian ground. You call for faith:
+    I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.
+    The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,
+    If faith o'ercomes doubt. How I know it does?
+    By life and man's free will, God gave for that!
+    To mould life as we choose it, shows our choice:
+    That's our one act, the previous work's his own.
+    You criticize the soul? it reared this tree--
+    This broad life and whatever fruit it bears!
+    What matter though I doubt at every pore,
+    Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my finger's ends,
+    Doubts in the trivial work of every day,
+    Doubts at the very bases of my soul
+    In the grand moments when she probes herself--
+    If finally I have a life to show,
+    The thing I did, brought out in evidence
+    Against the thing done to me underground
+    By hell and all its brood, for aught I know?
+    I say, whence sprang this? shows it faith or doubt?
+    All's doubt in me; where's break of faith in this?
+    It is the idea, the feeling and the love,
+    God means mankind should strive for and show forth
+    Whatever be the process to that end,--
+    And not historic knowledge, logic sound,
+    And metaphysical acumen, sure!
+    "What think ye of Christ," friend? when all's done and said,
+    Like you this Christianity or not?
+    It may be false, but will you wish it true?
+    Has it your vote to be so if it can?
+    Trust you an instinct silenced long ago
+    That will break silence and enjoin you love
+    What mortified philosophy is hoarse,
+    And all in vain, with bidding you despise?
+    If you desire faith--then you've faith enough:
+    What else seeks God--nay, what else seek ourselves?
+    You form a notion of me, we'll suppose,
+    On hearsay; it's a favourable one:
+    "But still" (you add), "there was no such good man,
+    Because of contradiction in the facts.
+    One proves, for instance, he was born in Rome,
+    This Blougram; yet throughout the tales of him
+    I see he figures as an Englishman."
+    Well, the two things are reconcilable.
+    But would I rather you discovered that,
+    Subjoining--"Still, what matter though they be?
+    Blougram concerns me nought, born here or there."
+
+      Pure faith indeed--you know not what you ask!
+    Naked belief in God the Omnipotent,
+    Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much
+    The sense of conscious creatures to be borne.
+    It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare.
+    Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth:
+    I say it's meant to hide him all it can,
+    And that's what all the blessed evil's for.
+    Its use in Time is to environ us,
+    Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough
+    Against that sight till we can bear its stress.
+    Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain
+    And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart
+    Less certainly would wither up at once
+    Than mind, confronted with the truth of him.
+    But time and earth case-harden us to live;
+    The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child
+    Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place,
+    Plays on and grows to be a man like us.
+    With me, faith means perpetual unbelief
+    Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot
+    Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+              The sum of all is--yes, my doubt is great,
+    My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough.
+    I have read much, thought much, experienced much,
+    Yet would die rather than avow my fear
+    The Naples' liquefaction may be false,
+    When set to happen by the palace-clock
+    According to the clouds or dinner-time.
+    I hear you recommend, I might at least
+    Eliminate, decrassify my faith
+    Since I adopt it; keeping what I must
+    And leaving what I can--such points as this.
+    I won't--that is, I can't throw one away.
+    Supposing there's no truth in what I hold
+    About the need of trial to man's faith,
+    Still, when you bid me purify the same,
+    To such a process I discern no end.
+    Clearing off one excrescence to see two,
+    There's ever a next in size, now grown as big,
+    That meets the knife: I cut and cut again!
+    First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last
+    But Fichte's clever cut at God himself?
+    Experimentalize on sacred things!
+    I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain
+    To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike.
+    The first step, I am master not to take.
+
+      You'd find the cutting-process to your taste
+    As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned,
+    Nor see more danger in it,--you retort.
+    Your taste's worth mine; but my taste proves more wise
+    When we consider that the steadfast hold
+    On the extreme end of the chain of faith
+    Gives all the advantage, makes the difference
+    With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule:
+    We are their lords, or they are free of us,
+    Just as we tighten or relax our hold.
+    So, other matters equal, we'll revert
+    To the first problem--which, if solved my way
+    And thrown into the balance, turns the scale--
+    How we may lead a comfortable life,
+    How suit our luggage to the cabin's size.
+
+      Of course you are remarking all this time
+    How narrowly and grossly I view life,
+    Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule
+    The masses, and regard complacently
+    "The cabin," in our old phrase. Well, I do.
+    I act for, talk for, live for this world now,
+    As this world prizes action, life and talk:
+    No prejudice to what next world may prove,
+    Whose new laws and requirements, my best pledge
+    To observe then, is that I observe these now,
+    Shall do hereafter what I do meanwhile.
+    Let us concede (gratuitously though)
+    Next life relieves the soul of body, yields
+    Pure spiritual enjoyment: well, my friend,
+    Why lose this life i' the meantime, since its use
+    May be to make the next life more intense?
+
+      Do you know, I have often had a dream
+    (Work it up in your next month's article)
+    Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still
+    Losing true life for ever and a day
+    Through ever trying to be and ever being--
+    In the evolution of successive spheres--
+    _Before_ its actual sphere and place of life,
+    Halfway into the next, which having reached,
+    It shoots with corresponding foolery
+    Halfway into the next still, on and off!
+    As when a traveller, bound from North to South,
+    Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France?
+    In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain?
+    In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!
+    Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,
+    A superfluity at Timbuctoo.
+    When, through his journey, was the fool at ease?
+    I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world,
+    I take and like its way of life; I think
+    My brothers, who administer the means,
+    Live better for my comfort--that's good too;
+    And God, if he pronounce upon such life,
+    Approves my service, which is better still.
+    If he keep silence,--why, for you or me
+    Or that brute beast pulled-up in to-day's "Times,"
+    What odds is't, save to ourselves, what life we lead?
+
+Turning to the life of Cardinal Wiseman, it is of especial interest in
+connection with Browning's portrayal of him to observe his earlier
+years. He was born in Spain, having a Spanish father of English descent
+and an English mother, all Catholics, as Blougram says, "There's one
+great form of Christian faith I happened to be born in." His mother took
+him as an infant, and laid him upon the altar of the Cathedral of
+Seville, and consecrated him to the service of the Church.
+
+[Illustration: Cardinal Wiseman]
+
+His father having died when he was a tiny boy, his mother took him and
+his brother to England where he was trained at the Catholic college of
+Ushaw. From there he went to Rome to study at the English Catholic
+College there. Later he became Rector of this College. The sketch of
+Wiseman at this period given by his biographer, Wilfred Ward, is most
+attractive. "Scattered through his 'Recollections' are interesting
+impressions left by his student life. While mastering the regular course
+of scholastic philosophy and theology sufficiently to take his degree
+with credit, his tastes were not primarily in this direction. The study
+of Roman antiquities, Christian and Pagan, was congenial to him, as was
+also the study of Italian art--in which he ultimately became
+proficient--and of music: and he early devoted himself to the Syriac and
+Arabic languages. In all these pursuits the enthusiasm and eminence of
+men living in Rome itself at this era of renaissance was a potent
+stimulus to work. The hours he set aside for reading were many more than
+the rule demanded. But the daily walk and the occasional expedition to
+places of historic interest outside of Rome helped also to store his
+mind and to fire his imagination." Wiseman writes, himself, of this
+period, "The life of the student in Rome should be one of unblended
+enjoyment. His very relaxations become at once subsidiary to his work
+and yet most delightfully recreative. His daily walks may be through the
+field of art ... his wanderings along the stream of time ... a thousand
+memories, a thousand associations accompany him." From this letter and
+from accounts of him he would seem to have been possessed of a highly
+imaginative temperament, possibly more artistic than religious.
+Scholars, linguists, or historians, artists or antiquarians interested
+him far more than thinkers or theologians. In noting the effects on
+Wiseman's character of the thoughts and sights of Rome, "it must be
+observed," writes Ward, "that even the action of directly religious
+influences brought out his excessive impressionableness. His own inner
+life was as vivid a pageant to him as the history of the Church. He was
+liable at this time to the periods of spiritual exaltation--matched, as
+we shall see later on, by fits of intense despondency--which marked him
+through life."
+
+This remarkable intellectual activity brought with it doubts of
+religious truth. "The imaginative delight in Rome as a living witness to
+the faith entirely left him, and at the same time he was attacked by
+mental disturbances and doubts of the truth of Christianity. There are
+contemporary indications, and still plainer accounts in the letters of
+his later life, of acute suffering from these trials. The study of
+Biblical criticism, even in the early stages it had then reached, seems
+immediately to have occasioned them; and the suffering they caused him
+was aggravated into intense and almost alarming depression by the
+feebleness of his bodily health." He says, speaking of this phase in his
+life, "Many and many an hour have I passed, alone, in bitter tears, on
+the _loggia_ of the English College, when every one was reposing in the
+afternoon, and I was fighting with subtle thoughts and venomous
+suggestions of a fiendlike infidelity which I durst not confide to any
+one, for there was no one that could have sympathized with me. This
+lasted for years; but it made me study and think, to conquer the
+plague--for I can hardly call it danger--both for myself and for others.
+But during the actual struggle the simple submission of faith is the
+only remedy. Thoughts against faith must be treated at the time like
+temptations against any other virtue--put away; though in cooler moments
+they may be safely analyzed and unraveled." Again he wrote of these
+years as, "Years of solitude, of desolation, years of shattered nerves,
+dread often of instant insanity, consumptive weakness, of sleepless
+nights and weary days, and hours of tears which no one witnessed."
+
+"Of the effect of these years of desolation on his character he speaks
+as being simply invaluable. It completed what Ushaw had begun, the
+training in patience, self-reliance, and concentration in spite of
+mental depression. It was amid these trials, he adds, 'that I wrote my
+"Horae Syriacae" and collected my notes for the lectures on the
+"Connection between Science and Revealed Religion" and the "Eucharist."
+Without this training I should not have thrown myself into the Puseyite
+controversy at a later period.' Any usefulness which discovered itself
+in later years he considers the 'result of self-discipline' during his
+inner conflict. The struggle so absorbed his energies that his early
+life was passed almost wholly free from the special trials to which that
+period is liable. He speaks of his youth as in that respect 'almost
+temptationless.'" This state of mind seemed to last about five years and
+then he writes in a letter:
+
+"I have felt myself for some months gradually passing into a new state
+of mind and heart which I can hardly describe, but which I trust is the
+last stage of mental progress, in which I hope I may much improve, but
+out of which I trust I may never pass. I could hardly express the calm
+mild frame of mind in which I have lived; company and society I have
+almost entirely shunned, or have moved through it as a stranger; hardly
+a disturbing thought, hardly a grating sensation has crossed my being,
+of which a great feeling of love seems to have been the principle.
+Whither, I am inclined to ask myself, does all this tend? Whence does it
+proceed? I think I could make an interesting history of my mind's
+religious progress, if I may use a word shockingly perverted by modern
+fanatics, from the hard dry struggles I used to have when first I
+commenced to study on my own account, to the settling down into a state
+of stern conviction, and so after some years to the nobler and more
+soothing evidences furnished by the grand harmonies and beautiful
+features of religion, whether considered in contact with lower objects
+or viewed in her own crystal mirror. I find it curious, too, and
+interesting to trace the workings of those varied feelings upon my
+relations to the outward world. I remember how for years I lost all
+relish for the glorious ceremonies of the Church. I heeded not its
+venerable monuments and sacred records scattered over the city; or I
+studied them all with the dry eye of an antiquarian, looking in them for
+proofs, not for sensations, being ever actively alive to the collection
+of evidences and demonstrations of religious truth. But now that the
+time of my probation as I hope it was, is past, I feel as though the
+freshness of childhood's thoughts had once more returned to me, my
+heart expands with renewed delight and delicious feelings every time I
+see the holy objects and practices around me, and I might almost say
+that I am leading a life of spiritual epicureanism, opening all my
+senses to a rich draught of religious sensations."
+
+From these glimpses it would appear that Wiseman was a much more sincere
+man in his religious feeling than he is given credit for by Browning.
+His belief is with him not a matter of cold, hard calculation as to the
+attitude which will be, so to speak, the most politic from both a
+worldly and a spiritual point of view. The beautiful passage beginning
+"Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch" etc., comes nearer to
+the genuine enthusiasm of a Wiseman than any other in the poem. There is
+an essential difference between the minds of the poet and the man he
+portrays, which perhaps made it impossible for Browning fully to
+interpret Wiseman's attitude. Both have religious fervor, but Browning's
+is born of a consciousness of God revealed directly to himself, while
+Wiseman's consciousness of God comes to him primarily through the
+authority of the Church, that is through generations of authoritative
+believers the first of whom experienced the actuality of Revelation.
+Hundreds and thousands of people have minds of this caliber. They cannot
+see a truth direct for themselves, they must be told by some person
+clothed in authority that this or that is true or false. To Wiseman the
+beauty of his own form of religion with its special dogmas made so
+strong an appeal, that, since he could only believe through authority,
+under any circumstances, it was natural to him to adopt the particular
+form that gave him the most satisfaction. Proofs detrimental to belief
+do not worry long with doubts such a mind, because the authority they
+depend on is not the authority of knowledge, but the authority of
+belief. This comes out clearly enough in one of Wiseman's letters in
+which after enumerating a number of proofs brought forward by various
+scholars tending to cast discredit on the dogmas of the Church, he
+triumphantly exclaims, "And yet, who that has an understanding to judge,
+is driven for a moment from the holdings of faith by such comparisons as
+these!"
+
+[Illustration: Sacred Heart _F. Utenbach_]
+
+Upon looking through his writings there will always be found in his
+expression of belief, I think, that ring of true sincerity as well as
+what I should call an intense artistic delight in the essential beauty
+of his religion.
+
+As to Blougram's argument that he believed in living in the world while
+he was in it, Wiseman's life was certainly not that of a worldling
+alone, though he is described by one person as being "a genuine priest,
+very good looking and able bodied, and with much apparent practice in
+the world." He was far too much of a student and worker to be altogether
+so worldly-minded as Browning represents him.
+
+His chief interest for Englishmen is his connection with the Tractarian
+Movement. The wish of his soul was to aid the Catholic Revival in
+England, and with that end in view he visited England in 1835. Two years
+before, the movement at Oxford, known as the Tractarian Movement had
+begun. The opinions of the men in this movement were, as every one
+knows, printed in a series of ninety tracts of which Newman wrote
+twenty-four. It was an outgrowth of the conditions of the time. To sum
+up in the words of Withrow,[3] "The Church of England had distinctly
+lost ground as a directing and controlling force in the nation. The most
+thoughtful and earnest minds in the Church felt the need of a great
+religious awakening and an aggressive movement to regain its lost
+influence." As Dean Church describes them, the two characteristic forms
+of Christianity in the Church of England were the High Church, and the
+Evangelicals, or Low Church." Of the former he says: "Its better
+members were highly cultivated, benevolent men, intolerant of
+irregularities both of doctrine and life, whose lives were governed by
+an unostentatious but solid and unfaltering piety, ready to burst forth
+on occasion into fervid devotion. Its worse members were jobbers and
+hunters after preferment, pluralists who built fortunes and endowed
+families out of the Church, or country gentlemen in orders, who rode to
+hounds and shot and danced and farmed, and often did worse things."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] Religious Progress of the Century.
+
+But at Oxford was a group of men of intense moral earnestness including
+Newman, Pusey, Keble, Arnold, Maurice, Kingsley, and others, who began
+an active propaganda of the new or revised doctrines of the Oxford
+Movement.
+
+"The success of the Tracts," says Molesworth, "was much greater, and the
+outcry against them far louder and fiercer, than their authors had
+expected. The Tracts were at first small and simple, but became large
+and learned theological treatises. Changes, too, came over the views of
+some of the writers. Doctrines which probably would have shocked them at
+first were put forward with a recklessness which success had increased.
+Alarm was excited, remonstrances stronger and stronger were addressed to
+them. They were attacked as Romanizing in their tendency."
+
+"The effect of such writing was two-fold[4]--the public were dismayed
+and certain members of the Tractarian party avowed their intention of
+becoming Romanists. So decided was the setting of the tide towards Rome
+that Newman made a vigorous effort to turn it by his famous Tract No.
+90. In this he endeavored to show that it was possible to interpret the
+Thirty-nine Articles in the interest of Roman Catholicism. This tract
+aroused a storm of indignation. The violent controversy which it
+occasioned led to the discontinuance of the series."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] See Withrow.
+
+Such in little was this remarkable movement. When Tract No. 90 appeared
+Wiseman had been in England for some time, and had been a strong
+influence in taking many thinking men in the direction of Rome. His
+lectures and discourses upon his first visit to England had attracted
+remarkable attention. The account runs by one who attended his lectures
+to Catholics and Protestants: "Society in this country was impressed,
+and listened almost against its will, and listened not displeased. Here
+was a young Roman priest, fresh from the center of Catholicism, who
+showed himself master, not only of the intricacies of polemical
+discussion but of the amenities of civilized life. The spacious church
+of Moorfields was thronged on every evening of Dr. Wiseman's appearance.
+Many persons of position and education were converted, and all departed
+with abated prejudice, and with very different notions about Catholicism
+from those with which they had been prepossessed by their education."
+Wiseman, himself, wrote, "I had the consolation of witnessing the
+patient and edifying attention of a crowded audience, many of whom stood
+for two hours without any symptom of impatience."
+
+The great triumph for Wiseman, however, was when, shortly after Tract
+90, Newman, "a man," described "in many ways, the most remarkable that
+England has seen during the century, perhaps the most remarkable whom
+the English Church has produced in any century," went over to the Church
+of Rome and was confirmed by Wiseman. Others followed his example and by
+1853 as many as four hundred clergymen and laity had become Roman
+Catholics.
+
+The controversies and discussions of that time, it must be remembered,
+were more upon the dogmas of the church than upon what we should call
+to-day the essential truths of religion. Yet, to a certain order of mind
+dogmas seem important truths. There are those whose religious attitude
+cannot be preserved without belief in dogmas, and the advantage of the
+Catholic Church is that it holds firmly to its dogmas, come what may. It
+was expected, however, that this Romeward Movement would arouse intense
+antipathy. "The arguments by which it was justified were considered, in
+many cases, disingenuous, if not Jesuitical."
+
+In opposition of this sort we come nearer to Browning's attitude of
+mind. Because such arguments as Wiseman and the Tractarians used could
+not convince him, he takes the ordinary ground of the opposition, that
+in using such arguments they must be insincere, and they must be
+perfectly conscious of their insincerity. Still, in spite of the fact
+that Browning's mind could not get inside of Blougram's, he shows that
+he has some sympathy for the Bishop in the close of the poem where he
+says, "He said true things but called them by wrong names." Raise
+Blougram's philosophy to the plane of the mysticism of a Browning, and
+the arguments for belief would be much the same but the _counters_ in
+the arguments would become symbols instead of dogmas.
+
+In "Christmas-Eve and Easter Day," Browning becomes the true critic of
+the nineteenth-century religious movements. He passes in review in a
+series of dramatic pictures the three most diverse modes of religious
+thought of the century. The dissenter's view is symbolized by a scene in
+a very humble chapel in England, the Catholic view by a vision of high
+mass at St. Peter's and the Agnostic view by a vision of a lecture by a
+learned German professor,--while the view of the modern mystic who
+remains religious in the face of all destructive criticism is shown in
+the speaker of the poem. The intuitional, aspiring side of his nature is
+symbolized by the vision of Christ that appears to him, while the
+intensity of its power fluctuates as he either holds fast or lets go the
+garment of Christ. Opposed to his intuitional side is his reasoning
+side.
+
+Possibly the picture of the dissenting chapel is exaggeratedly humble,
+though if we suppose it to be a Methodist Chapel, it may be true to
+life, as Methodism was the form of religion which made its appeal to the
+lowest classes. Indeed, at the time of its first successes, it was the
+saving grace of England. "But for the moral antiseptic," writes Withrow,
+"furnished by Methodism, and the revival of religion in all the churches
+which it produced, the history of England would have been far other than
+it was. It would probably have been swept into the maelstrom of
+revolution and shared the political and religious convulsions of the
+neighboring nation," that is the French Revolution.
+
+"But Methodism had greatly changed the condition of the people. It had
+rescued vast multitudes from ignorance and barbarism, and raised them
+from almost the degradation of beasts to the condition of men and the
+fellowship of saints. The habits of thrift and industry which it
+fostered led to the accumulation, if not of wealth, at least to that of
+a substantial competence; and built up that safeguard of the
+Commonwealth, a great, intelligent, industrious, religious Middle-Class
+in the community."
+
+After the death of Wesley came various divisions in the Methodist
+Church; it has so flexible a system that it may be adapted to very
+varied needs of humanity, and in that has consisted its great power.
+The mission of the church was originally to the poor and lowly, but "It
+has won for itself in spite of scorn and persecution," says Dr. Schoell,
+"a place of power in the State and church of Great Britain."
+
+[Illustration: The Nativity _Fra Lippo Lippi_]
+
+A scornful attitude is vividly brought before us in the opening of this
+poem, to be succeeded later by a more charitable point of view.
+
+
+    CHRISTMAS-EVE
+
+    I
+
+    Out of the little chapel I burst
+      Into the fresh night-air again.
+    Five minutes full, I waited first
+      In the doorway, to escape the rain
+    That drove in gusts down the common's centre
+      At the edge of which the chapel stands,
+    Before I plucked up heart to enter.
+      Heaven knows how many sorts of hands
+    Reached past me, groping for the latch
+    Of the inner door that hung on catch
+    More obstinate the more they fumbled,
+      Till, giving way at last with a scold
+    Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled
+      One sheep more to the rest in fold,
+    And left me irresolute, standing sentry
+    In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry,
+    Six feet long by three feet wide,
+    Partitioned off from the vast inside--
+      I blocked up half of it at least.
+    No remedy; the rain kept driving.
+      They eyed me much as some wild beast,
+    That congregation, still arriving,
+    Some of them by the main road, white
+    A long way past me into the night,
+    Skirting the common, then diverging;
+    Not a few suddenly emerging
+    From the common's self thro' the paling-gaps,
+    --They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,
+    Where the road stops short with its safeguard border
+    Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;--
+    But the most turned in yet more abruptly
+      From a certain squalid knot of alleys,
+    Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly,
+      Which now the little chapel rallies
+    And leads into day again,--its priestliness
+    Lending itself to hide their beastliness
+    So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),
+    And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on
+    Those neophytes too much in lack of it,
+      That, where you cross the common as I did,
+      And meet the party thus presided,
+    "Mount Zion" with Love-lane at the back of it,
+    They front you as little disconcerted
+    As, bound for the hills, her fate averted,
+    And her wicked people made to mind him,
+    Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him.
+
+    II
+
+    Well, from the road, the lanes or the common
+    In came the flock: the fat weary woman,
+    Panting and bewildered, down-clapping
+      Her umbrella with a mighty report,
+    Grounded it by me, wry and flapping,
+      A wreck of whalebones; then, with a snort,
+    Like a startled horse, at the interloper
+    (Who humbly knew himself improper,
+    But could not shrink up small enough)
+    --Round to the door, and in,--the gruff
+    Hinge's invariable scold
+    Making my very blood run cold.
+    Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered
+    On broken clogs, the many-tattered
+    Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother
+    Of the sickly babe she tried to smother
+    Somehow up, with its spotted face,
+    From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place;
+    She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry
+    Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby
+    Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping
+    Already from my own clothes' dropping,
+    Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on:
+      Then, stooping down to take off her pattens,
+    She bore them defiantly, in each hand one,
+    Planted together before her breast
+    And its babe, as good as a lance in rest.
+      Close on her heels, the dingy satins
+    Of a female something, past me flitted,
+      With lips as much too white, as a streak
+      Lay far too red on each hollow cheek;
+    And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied
+    All that was left of a woman once,
+    Holding at least its tongue for the nonce.
+    Then a tall yellow man, like the _Penitent Thief_,
+    With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief,
+    And eyelids screwed together tight,
+    Led himself in by some inner light.
+    And, except from him, from each that entered,
+      I got the same interrogation--
+    "What, you the alien, you have ventured
+      To take with us, the elect, your station?
+    A carer for none of it, a _Gallio_!"--
+      Thus, plain as print, I read the glance
+    At a common prey, in each countenance
+      As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho.
+    And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder,
+      The draught, it always sent in shutting,
+    Made the flame of the single tallow candle
+    In the cracked square lantern I stood under,
+      Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting
+    As it were, the luckless cause of scandal:
+    I verily fancied the zealous light
+    (In the chapel's secret, too!) for spite
+    Would shudder itself clean off the wick,
+    With the airs of a Saint John's Candlestick.
+    There was no standing it much longer.
+    "Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew stronger,
+    "This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor
+    When the weather sends you a chance visitor?
+    You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you,
+      And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you!
+    But still, despite the pretty perfection
+      To which you carry your trick of exclusiveness,
+    And, taking God's word under wise protection,
+      Correct its tendency to diffusiveness,
+    And bid one reach it over hot plough-shares,--
+      Still, as I say, though you've found salvation,
+    If should choose to cry, as now, 'Shares!'--
+      See if the best of you bars me my ration!
+    I prefer, if you please, for my expounder
+    Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder;
+    Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest
+      Supposing I don the marriage vestiment:
+      So, shut your mouth and open your Testament,
+    And carve me my portion at your quickliest!"
+    Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad
+      With wizened face in want of soap,
+      And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope,
+    (After stopping outside, for his cough was bad,
+    To get the fit over, poor gentle creature,
+    And so avoid disturbing the preacher)
+    --Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise
+    At the shutting door, and entered likewise,
+    Received the hinge's accustomed greeting,
+      And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle,
+      And found myself in full conventicle,
+    --To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting,
+    On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine,
+      Which, calling its flock to their special clover,
+      Found all assembled and one sheep over,
+    Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine.
+
+    III
+
+    I very soon had enough of it.
+      The hot smell and the human noises,
+    And my neighbor's coat, the greasy cuff of it,
+      Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises,
+    Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure
+      Of the preaching man's immense stupidity,
+    As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure,
+      To meet his audience's avidity.
+    You needed not the wit of the Sibyl
+      To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling:
+      No sooner our friend had got an inkling
+    Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible,
+    (Whene'er 'twas the thought first struck him,
+    How death, at unawares, might duck him
+    Deeper than the grave, and quench
+    The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench)
+    Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence,
+      As to hug the book of books to pieces:
+    And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance,
+      Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases,
+    Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,--
+    So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures.
+    And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt:
+      Nay, had but a single face of my neighbors
+      Appeared to suspect that the preacher's labors
+    Were help which the world could be saved without,
+    'Tis odds but I might have borne in quiet
+    A qualm or two at my spiritual diet,
+    Or (who can tell?) perchance even mustered
+      Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon:
+    But the flock sat on, divinely flustered,
+      Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon
+    With such content in every snuffle,
+    As the devil inside us loves to ruffle.
+    My old fat woman purred with pleasure,
+      And thumb round thumb went twirling faster,
+    While she, to his periods keeping measure,
+      Maternally devoured the pastor.
+    The man with the handkerchief untied it,
+    Showed us a horrible wen inside it,
+    Gave his eyelids yet another screwing,
+    And rocked himself as the woman was doing.
+    The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking,
+    Kept down his cough. 'Twas too provoking!
+    My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it;
+      So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple,
+      "I wanted a taste, and now there's enough of it,"
+    I flung out of the little chapel.
+
+    IV
+
+    There was a lull in the rain, a lull
+      In the wind too; the moon was risen,
+    And would have shone out pure and full,
+      But for the ramparted cloud-prison,
+    Block on block built up in the West,
+    For what purpose the wind knows best,
+    Who changes his mind continually.
+    And the empty other half of the sky
+    Seemed in its silence as if it knew
+    What, any moment, might look through
+    A chance gap in that fortress massy:--
+      Through its fissures you got hints
+      Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints,
+    Now, a dull lion-color, now, brassy
+    Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow,
+    Like furnace-smoke just ere flames bellow,
+    All a-simmer with intense strain
+    To let her through,--then blank again,
+    At the hope of her appearance failing.
+    Just by the chapel, a break in the railing
+    Shows a narrow path directly across;
+    'Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss--
+    Besides, you go gently all the way uphill.
+      I stooped under and soon felt better;
+    My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple,
+      As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter.
+    My mind was full of the scene I had left,
+      That placid flock, that pastor vociferant,
+      --How this outside was pure and different!
+    The sermon, now--what a mingled weft
+    Of good and ill! Were either less,
+      Its fellow had colored the whole distinctly;
+    But alas for the excellent earnestness,
+      And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly,
+    But as surely false, in their quaint presentment,
+    However to pastor and flock's contentment!
+    Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes,
+      With his provings and parallels twisted and twined,
+    Till how could you know them, grown double their size
+      In the natural fog of the good man's mind,
+    Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps,
+    Haloed about with the common's damps?
+    Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover;
+      The zeal was good, and the aspiration;
+    And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over,
+      Pharaoh received no demonstration,
+    By his Baker's dream of Baskets Three,
+    Of the doctrine of the Trinity,--
+    Although, as our preacher thus embellished it,
+    Apparently his hearers relished it
+    With so unfeigned a gust--who knows if
+    They did not prefer our friend to Joseph?
+    But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them!
+      These people have really felt, no doubt,
+    A something, the motion they style the _Call_ of them;
+      And this is their method of bringing about,
+    By a mechanism of words and tones,
+    (So many texts in so many groans)
+    A sort of reviving and reproducing,
+      More or less perfectly, (who can tell?)
+    The mood itself, which strengthens by using;
+      And how that happens, I understand well.
+    A tune was born in my head last week,
+    Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek
+      Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester;
+    And when, next week, I take it back again.
+    My head will sing to the engine's clack again,
+      While it only makes my neighbor's haunches stir,
+    --Finding no dormant musical sprout
+    In him, as in me, to be jolted out.
+    'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching;
+    He gets no more from the railway's preaching
+      Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I:
+    Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on.
+    Still, why paint over their door "Mount Zion,"
+      To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy?
+
+The reasoning which follows upon this is characteristic of Browning.
+Perceiving everywhere in the world transcendent power, and knowing love
+in little, from that transcendent love may be deduced. His reasoning
+finally brings him to a state of vision. His subjective intuitions
+become palpable objective symbols, a not infrequent occurrence in highly
+wrought and sensitive minds.
+
+    V
+
+    But wherefore be harsh on a single case?
+      After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve,
+    Does the self-same weary thing take place?
+      The same endeavor to make you believe,
+    And with much the same effect, no more:
+      Each method abundantly convincing,
+    As I say, to those convinced before,
+      But scarce to be swallowed without wincing
+    By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me,
+    I have my own church equally:
+    And in this church my faith sprang first!
+      (I said, as I reached the rising ground,
+    And the wind began again, with a burst
+      Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound
+    From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,
+    I entered his church-door, nature leading me)
+    --In youth I looked to these very skies,
+    And probing their immensities,
+    I found God there, his visible power;
+      Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense
+      Of the power, an equal evidence
+    That his love, there too, was the nobler dower.
+    For the loving worm within its clod,
+    Were diviner than a loveless god
+    Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.
+      You know what I mean: God's all, man's nought:
+      But also, God, whose pleasure brought
+    Man into being, stands away
+      As it were a handbreadth off, to give
+    Room for the newly-made to live,
+    And look at him from a place apart,
+    And use his gifts of brain and heart,
+    Given, indeed, but to keep for ever.
+    Who speaks of man, then, must not sever
+    Man's very elements from man,
+    Saying, "But all is God's"--whose plan
+    Was to create man and then leave him
+    Able, his own word saith, to grieve him,
+    But able to glorify him too,
+    As a mere machine could never do,
+    That prayed or praised, all unaware
+    Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer,
+    Made perfect as a thing of course.
+    Man, therefore, stands on his own stock
+    Of love and power as a pin-point rock:
+    And, looking to God who ordained divorce
+    Of the rock from his boundless continent,
+    Sees, in his power made evident,
+    Only excess by a million-fold
+    O'er the power God gave man in the mould.
+    For, note: man's hand, first formed to carry
+    A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry
+    Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain,
+      --Advancing in power by one degree;
+      And why count steps through eternity?
+    But love is the ever-springing fountain:
+    Man may enlarge or narrow his bed
+    For the water's play, but the water-head--
+    How can he multiply or reduce it?
+      As easy create it, as cause it to cease;
+    He may profit by it, or abuse it,
+      But 'tis not a thing to bear increase
+    As power does: be love less or more
+      In the heart of man, he keeps it shut
+      Or opes it wide, as he pleases, but
+    Love's sum remains what it was before.
+    So, gazing up, in my youth, at love
+    As seen through power, ever above
+    All modes which make it manifest,
+    My soul brought all to a single test--
+    That he, the Eternal First and Last,
+    Who, in his power, had so surpassed
+    All man conceives of what is might,--
+    Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,
+    --Would prove as infinitely good;
+    Would never, (my soul understood,)
+    With power to work all love desires,
+    Bestow e'en less than man requires;
+    That he who endlessly was teaching,
+    Above my spirit's utmost reaching,
+    What love can do in the leaf or stone,
+    (So that to master this alone,
+    This done in the stone or leaf for me,
+    I must go on learning endlessly)
+    Would never need that I, in turn,
+      Should point him out defect unheeded,
+    And show that God had yet to learn
+      What the meanest human creature needed,
+    --Not life, to wit, for a few short years,
+    Tracking his way through doubts and fears,
+    While the stupid earth on which I stay
+      Suffers no change, but passive adds
+      Its myriad years to myriads,
+    Though I, he gave it to, decay,
+    Seeing death come and choose about me,
+    And my dearest ones depart without me.
+    No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,
+      Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,
+    The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it,
+      Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it.
+    And I shall behold thee, face to face,
+    O God, and in thy light retrace
+    How in all I loved here, still wast thou!
+    Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now,
+    I shall find as able to satiate
+      The love, thy gift, as my spirit's wonder
+    Thou art able to quicken and sublimate,
+      With this sky of thine, that I now walk under,
+    And glory in thee for, as I gaze
+    Thus, thus! Oh, let men keep their ways
+    Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine--
+    Be this my way! And this is mine!
+
+    VI
+
+    For lo, what think you? suddenly
+    The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky
+    Received at once the full fruition
+    Of the moon's consummate apparition.
+    The black cloud-barricade was riven,
+    Ruined beneath her feet, and driven
+    Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless,
+      North and South and East lay ready
+    For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless,
+      Sprang across them and stood steady.
+    'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,
+    From heaven to heaven extending, perfect
+    As the mother-moon's self, full in face.
+    It rose, distinctly at the base
+      With its seven proper colors chorded,
+    Which still, in the rising, were compressed,
+    Until at last they coalesced,
+      And supreme the spectral creature lorded
+    In a triumph of whitest white,--
+    Above which intervened the night.
+    But above night too, like only the next,
+      The second of a wondrous sequence,
+      Reaching in rare and rarer frequence,
+    Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed,
+    Another rainbow rose, a mightier,
+    Fainter, flushier and flightier,--
+    Rapture dying along its verge.
+    Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,
+    Whose, from the straining topmost dark,
+    On to the keystone of that arc?
+
+    VII
+
+    This sight was shown me, there and then,--
+    Me, one out of a world of men,
+    Singled forth, as the chance might hap
+    To another if, in a thunderclap
+    Where I heard noise and you saw flame,
+    Some one man knew God called his name.
+    For me, I think I said, "Appear!
+    Good were it to be ever here.
+    If thou wilt, let me build to thee
+    Service-tabernacles three,
+    Where, forever in thy presence,
+    In ecstatic acquiescence,
+    Far alike from thriftless learning
+    And ignorance's undiscerning,
+    I may worship and remain!"
+      Thus at the show above me, gazing
+    With upturned eyes, I felt my brain
+      Glutted with the glory, blazing
+    Throughout its whole mass, over and under
+    Until at length it burst asunder
+    And out of it bodily there streamed,
+    The too-much glory, as it seemed,
+    Passing from out me to the ground,
+    Then palely serpentining round
+    Into the dark with mazy error.
+
+    VIII
+
+    All at once I looked up with terror.
+    He was there.
+    He himself with his human air.
+    On the narrow pathway, just before.
+    I saw the back of him, no more--
+    He had left the chapel, then, as I.
+    I forgot all about the sky.
+    No face: only the sight
+    Of a sweepy garment, vast and white,
+    With a hem that I could recognize.
+    I felt terror, no surprise;
+    My mind filled with the cataract,
+    At one bound of the mighty fact.
+    "I remember, he did say
+      Doubtless that, to this world's end,
+    Where two or three should meet and pray,
+      He would be in the midst, their friend;
+    Certainly he was there with them!"
+      And my pulses leaped for joy
+      Of the golden thought without alloy,
+    That I saw his very vesture's hem.
+    Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear,
+    With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear;
+    And I hastened, cried out while I pressed
+    To the salvation of the vest,
+    "But not so, Lord! It cannot be
+    That thou, indeed, art leaving me--
+    Me, that have despised thy friends!
+    Did my heart make no amends?
+    Thou art the love _of God_--above
+    His power, didst hear me place his love,
+    And that was leaving the world for thee.
+    Therefore thou must not turn from me
+    As I had chosen the other part!
+    Folly and pride o'ercame my heart.
+    Our best is bad, nor bears thy test;
+    Still, it should be our very best.
+    I thought it best that thou, the spirit,
+      Be worshipped in spirit and in truth,
+    And in beauty, as even we require it--
+      Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth,
+    I left but now, as scarcely fitted
+    For thee: I knew not what I pitied.
+    But, all I felt there, right or wrong,
+      What is it to thee, who curest sinning?
+    Am I not weak as thou art strong?
+      I have looked to thee from the beginning,
+    Straight up to thee through all the world
+    Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled
+    To nothingness on either side:
+    And since the time thou wast descried,
+    Spite of the weak heart, so have I
+    Lived ever, and so fain would die,
+    Living and dying, thee before!
+    But if thou leavest me----"
+
+    IX
+
+                                Less or more,
+    I suppose that I spoke thus.
+    When,--have mercy, Lord, on us!
+    The whole face turned upon me full.
+      And I spread myself beneath it,
+      As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it
+    In the cleansing sun, his wool,--
+    Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness
+      Some defiled, discolored web--
+    So lay I, saturate with brightness.
+      And when the flood appeared to ebb,
+    Lo, I was walking, light and swift,
+      With my senses settling fast and steadying,
+    But my body caught up in the whirl and drift
+      Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying
+    On, just before me, still to be followed,
+      As it carried me after with its motion:
+    What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed
+      And a man went weltering through the ocean,
+    Sucked along in the flying wake
+    Of the luminous water-snake.
+    Darkness and cold were cloven, as through
+    I passed, upborne yet walking too.
+    And I turned to myself at intervals,--
+    "So he said, so it befalls.
+    God who registers the cup
+      Of mere cold water, for his sake
+    To a disciple rendered up,
+      Disdains not his own thirst to slake
+    At the poorest love was ever offered:
+    And because my heart I proffered,
+    With true love trembling at the brim,
+    He suffers me to follow him
+    For ever, my own way,--dispensed
+    From seeking to be influenced
+    By all the less immediate ways
+      That earth, in worships manifold,
+    Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise,
+      The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold!"
+
+The vision of high mass at St. Peters in Rome is the antipode of the
+little Methodist Chapel. The Catholic Church is the church of all others
+which has gathered about itself the marvels of art in sculpture,
+painting and music. As the chapel depressed with its ugliness, the great
+cathedral entrances with its beauty.
+
+[Illustration: The Transfiguration _Fra Angelico_]
+
+    X
+
+    And so we crossed the world and stopped.
+      For where am I, in city or plain,
+      Since I am 'ware of the world again?
+    And what is this that rises propped
+    With pillars of prodigious girth?
+    Is it really on the earth,
+    This miraculous Dome of God?
+    Has the angel's measuring-rod
+    Which numbered cubits, gem from gem,
+    'Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem,
+    Meted it out,--and what he meted,
+    Have the sons of men completed?
+    --Binding, ever as he bade,
+    Columns in the colonnade
+    With arms wide open to embrace
+    The entry of the human race
+    To the breast of ... what is it, yon building,
+    Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding,
+    With marble for brick, and stones of price
+    For garniture of the edifice?
+    Now I see; it is no dream;
+    It stands there and it does not seem;
+    For ever, in pictures, thus it looks,
+    And thus I have read of it in books
+    Often in England, leagues away,
+    And wondered how these fountains play,
+    Growing up eternally
+    Each to a musical water-tree,
+    Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon,
+    Before my eyes, in the light of the moon,
+    To the granite lavers underneath.
+    Liar and dreamer in your teeth!
+    I, the sinner that speak to you,
+    Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew
+    Both this and more. For see, for see,
+    The dark is rent, mine eye is free
+    To pierce the crust of the outer wall,
+    And I view inside, and all there, all,
+    As the swarming hollow of a hive,
+    The whole Basilica alive!
+    Men in the chancel, body and nave,
+    Men on the pillars' architrave,
+    Men on the statues, men on the tombs
+    With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs,
+    All famishing in expectation
+    Of the main-altar's consummation.
+    For see, for see, the rapturous moment
+    Approaches, and earth's best endowment
+    Blends with heaven's; the taper-fires
+    Pant up, the winding brazen spires
+    Heave loftier yet the baldachin;
+    The incense-gaspings, long kept in,
+    Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant
+    Holds his breath and grovels latent,
+    As if God's hushing finger grazed him,
+    (Like Behemoth when he praised him)
+    At the silver bell's shrill tinkling,
+    Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling
+    On the sudden pavement strewed
+    With faces of the multitude.
+    Earth breaks up, time drops away,
+    In flows heaven, with its new day
+    Of endless life, when He who trod,
+    Very man and very God,
+    This earth in weakness, shame and pain,
+    Dying the death whose signs remain
+    Up yonder on the accursed tree,--
+    Shall come again, no more to be
+    Of captivity the thrall,
+    But the one God, All in all,
+    King of kings, Lord of lords,
+    As His servant John received the words,
+    "I died, and live for evermore!"
+
+    XI
+
+    Yet I was left outside the door.
+    "Why sit I here on the threshold-stone
+    Left till He return, alone
+    Save for the garment's extreme fold
+    Abandoned still to bless my hold?"
+    My reason, to my doubt, replied,
+    As if a book were opened wide,
+    And at a certain page I traced
+    Every record undefaced,
+    Added by successive years,--
+    The harvestings of truth's stray ears
+    Singly gleaned, and in one sheaf
+    Bound together for belief.
+    Yes, I said--that he will go
+    And sit with these in turn, I know.
+    Their faith's heart beats, though her head swims
+    Too giddily to guide her limbs,
+    Disabled by their palsy-stroke
+    From propping mine. Though Rome's gross yoke
+    Drops off, no more to be endured,
+    Her teaching is not so obscured
+    By errors and perversities,
+    That no truth shines athwart the lies:
+    And he, whose eye detects a spark
+    Even where, to man's the whole seems dark,
+    May well see flame where each beholder
+    Acknowledges the embers smoulder.
+    But I, a mere man, fear to quit
+    The clue God gave me as most fit
+    To guide my footsteps through life's maze,
+    Because himself discerns all ways
+    Open to reach him: I, a man
+    Able to mark where faith began
+    To swerve aside, till from its summit
+    Judgment drops her damning plummet,
+    Pronouncing such a fatal space
+    Departed from the founder's base:
+    He will not bid me enter too,
+    But rather sit, as now I do,
+    Awaiting his return outside.
+    --'Twas thus my reason straight replied
+    And joyously I turned, and pressed
+    The garment's skirt upon my breast,
+    Until, afresh its light suffusing me,
+    My heart cried--What has been abusing me
+    That I should wait here lonely and coldly,
+    Instead of rising, entering boldly,
+    Baring truth's face, and letting drift
+    Her veils of lies as they choose to shift?
+    Do these men praise him? I will raise
+    My voice up to their point of praise!
+    I see the error; but above
+    The scope of error, see the love.--
+    Oh, love of those first Christian days!
+    --Fanned so soon into a blaze,
+    From the spark preserved by the trampled sect,
+    That the antique sovereign Intellect
+    Which then sat ruling in the world,
+    Like a change in dreams, was hurled
+    From the throne he reigned upon:
+    You looked up and he was gone.
+    Gone, his glory of the pen!
+    --Love, with Greece and Rome in ken,
+    Bade her scribes abhor the trick
+    Of poetry and rhetoric,
+    And exult with hearts set free,
+    In blessed imbecility
+    Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet
+    Leaving Sallust incomplete.
+    Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter!
+    --Love, while able to acquaint her
+    While the thousand statues yet
+    Fresh from chisel, pictures wet
+    From brush, she saw on every side,
+    Chose rather with an infant's pride
+    To frame those portents which impart
+    Such unction to true Christian Art.
+    Gone, music too! The air was stirred
+    By happy wings: Terpander's bird
+    (That, when the cold came, fled away)
+    Would tarry not the wintry day,--
+    As more-enduring sculpture must,
+    Till filthy saints rebuked the gust
+    With which they chanced to get a sight
+    Of some dear naked Aphrodite
+    They glanced a thought above the toes of,
+    By breaking zealously her nose off.
+    Love, surely, from that music's lingering,
+    Might have filched her organ-fingering,
+    Nor chosen rather to set prayings
+    To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings.
+    Love was the startling thing, the new:
+    Love was the all-sufficient too;
+    And seeing that, you see the rest:
+    As a babe can find its mother's breast
+    As well in darkness as in light,
+    Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right.
+    True, the world's eyes are open now:
+    --Less need for me to disallow
+    Some few that keep Love's zone unbuckled,
+    Peevish as ever to be suckled,
+    Lulled by the same old baby-prattle
+    With intermixture of the rattle,
+    When she would have them creep, stand steady
+    Upon their feet, or walk already,
+    Not to speak of trying to climb.
+    I will be wise another time,
+    And not desire a wall between us,
+      When next I see a church-roof cover
+    So many species of one genus,
+      All with foreheads bearing _lover_
+    Written above the earnest eyes of them;
+      All with breasts that beat for beauty,
+    Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them,
+      In noble daring, steadfast duty,
+    The heroic in passion, or in action,--
+    Or, lowered for sense's satisfaction,
+    To the mere outside of human creatures,
+    Mere perfect form and faultless features.
+    What? with all Rome here, whence to levy
+      Such contributions to their appetite,
+    With women and men in a gorgeous bevy,
+      They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tight
+    On their southern eyes, restrained from feeding
+    On the glories of their ancient reading,
+    On the beauties of their modern singing,
+    On the wonders of the builder's bringing,
+    On the majesties of Art around them,--
+      And, all these loves, late struggling incessant,
+    When faith has at last united and bound them,
+      They offer up to God for a present?
+    Why, I will, on the whole, be rather proud of it,--
+      And, only taking the act in reference
+    To the other recipients who might have allowed it,
+      I will rejoice that God had the preference.
+
+    XII
+
+    So I summed up my new resolves:
+      Too much love there can never be.
+    And where the intellect devolves
+      Its function on love exclusively,
+    I, a man who possesses both,
+    Will accept the provision, nothing loth,
+    --Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere,
+    That my intellect may find its share.
+
+In his next experience the speaker learns what the effect of scientific
+criticism has been upon historical Christianity.
+
+The warfare between science and religion forms one of the most
+fascinating and terrible chapters in the annals of the development of
+the human mind. About the middle of the nineteenth century the war
+became general. It was no longer a question of a skirmish over this
+or that particular discovery in science which would cause some
+long-cherished dogma to totter; it was a full battle all along the line,
+and now that the smoke has cleared away, it is safe to say that science
+sees, on the one hand, it cannot conquer religion, and religion sees, on
+the other, it cannot conquer science. What each has done is to strip the
+other of its untruths, leaving its truths to grow by the light each
+holds up for the other. Together they advance toward the knowledge of
+the Most High.
+
+    XIII
+
+    No sooner said than out in the night!
+    My heart beat lighter and more light:
+    And still, as before, I was walking swift,
+      With my senses settling fast and steadying,
+    But my body caught up in the whirl and drift
+      Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying
+    On just before me, still to be followed,
+      As it carried me after with its motion,
+    --What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed,
+      And a man went weltering through the ocean,
+    Sucked along in the flying wake
+    Of the luminous water-snake.
+
+    XIV
+
+    Alone! I am left alone once more--
+      (Save for the garment's extreme fold
+      Abandoned still to bless my hold)
+    Alone, beside the entrance-door
+    Of a sort of temple,--perhaps a college,
+    --Like nothing I ever saw before
+    At home in England, to my knowledge.
+    The tall old quaint irregular town!
+      It may be ... though which, I can't affirm ... any
+      Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany;
+    And this flight of stairs where I sit down,
+    Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort
+    Or Goettingen, I have to thank for 't?
+    It may be Goettingen,--most likely.
+    Through the open door I catch obliquely
+    Glimpses of a lecture-hall;
+      And not a bad assembly neither,
+    Ranged decent and symmetrical
+      On benches, waiting what's to see there;
+    Which, holding still by the vesture's hem,
+    I also resolve to see with them,
+    Cautious this time how I suffer to slip
+    The chance of joining in fellowship
+    With any that call themselves his friends;
+      As these folk do, I have a notion.
+      But hist--a buzzing and emotion!
+    All settle themselves, the while ascends
+    By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk,
+      Step by step, deliberate
+      Because of his cranium's over-freight,
+    Three parts sublime to one grotesque,
+    If I have proved an accurate guesser,
+    The hawk-nosed high-cheek-boned Professor.
+    I felt at once as if there ran
+    A shoot of love from my heart to the man--
+    That sallow virgin-minded studious
+      Martyr to mild enthusiasm,
+    As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious
+      That woke my sympathetic spasm,
+    (Beside some spitting that made me sorry)
+    And stood, surveying his auditory
+    With a wan pure look, well nigh celestial,--
+      Those blue eyes had survived so much!
+      While, under the foot they could not smutch,
+    Lay all the fleshly and the bestial.
+    Over he bowed, and arranged his notes,
+    Till the auditory's clearing of throats
+    Was done with, died into a silence;
+      And, when each glance was upward sent,
+      Each bearded mouth composed intent,
+    And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence,--
+    He pushed back higher his spectacles,
+    Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells,
+    And giving his head of hair--a hake
+      Of undressed tow, for color and quantity--
+    One rapid and impatient shake,
+      (As our own Young England adjusts a jaunty tie
+    When about to impart, on mature digestion,
+    Some thrilling view of the surplice-question)
+    --The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse,
+    Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse.
+
+    XV
+
+    And he began it by observing
+      How reason dictated that men
+    Should rectify the natural swerving,
+      By a reversion, now and then,
+    To the well-heads of knowledge, few
+    And far away, whence rolling grew
+    The life-stream wide whereat we drink,
+    Commingled, as we needs must think,
+    With waters alien to the source;
+    To do which, aimed this eve's discourse;
+    Since, where could be a fitter time
+    For tracing backward to its prime
+    This Christianity, this lake,
+    This reservoir, whereat we slake,
+    From one or other bank, our thirst?
+    So, he proposed inquiring first
+    Into the various sources whence
+      This Myth of Christ is derivable;
+    Demanding from the evidence,
+      (Since plainly no such life was liveable)
+    How these phenomena should class?
+    Whether 'twere best opine Christ was,
+    Or never was at all, or whether
+    He was and was not, both together--
+    It matters little for the name,
+    So the idea be left the same.
+    Only, for practical purpose's sake,
+    'Twas obviously as well to take
+    The popular story,--understanding
+      How the ineptitude of the time,
+    And the penman's prejudice, expanding
+      Fact into fable fit for the clime,
+    Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it
+      Into this myth, this Individuum,--
+    Which, when reason had strained and abated it
+      Of foreign matter, left, for residuum,
+    A man!--a right true man, however,
+    Whose work was worthy a man's endeavor:
+    Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient
+      To his disciples, for rather believing
+    He was just omnipotent and omniscient,
+      As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving
+    His word, their tradition,--which, though it meant
+    Something entirely different
+    From all that those who only heard it,
+    In their simplicity thought and averred it,
+    Had yet a meaning quite as respectable:
+    For, among other doctrines delectable,
+    Was he not surely the first to insist on
+      The natural sovereignty of our race?--
+      Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place.
+    And while his cough, like a drouthy piston,
+    Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him,
+    I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him,
+    The vesture still within my hand.
+
+    XVI
+
+    I could interpret its command.
+    This time he would not bid me enter
+    The exhausted air-bell of the Critic.
+    Truth's atmosphere may grow mephitic
+    When Papist struggles with Dissenter,
+    Impregnating its pristine clarity,
+    --One, by his daily fare's vulgarity,
+      Its gust of broken meat and garlic;
+    --One, by his soul's too-much presuming
+    To turn the frankincense's fuming
+      And vapors of the candle starlike
+    Into the cloud her wings she buoys on.
+      Each, that thus sets the pure air seething,
+      May poison it for healthy breathing--
+    But the Critic leaves no air to poison;
+    Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity
+    Atom by atom, and leaves you--vacuity.
+    Thus much of Christ does he reject?
+    And what retain? His intellect?
+    What is it I must reverence duly?
+    Poor intellect for worship, truly,
+    Which tells me simply what was told
+      (If mere morality, bereft
+      Of the God in Christ, be all that's left)
+    Elsewhere by voices manifold;
+    With this advantage, that the stater
+      Made nowise the important stumble
+      Of adding, he, the sage and humble,
+    Was also one with the Creator.
+    You urge Christ's followers' simplicity:
+      But how does shifting blame, evade it?
+    Have wisdom's words no more felicity?
+      The stumbling-block, his speech--who laid it?
+    How comes it that for one found able
+    To sift the truth of it from fable,
+    Millions believe it to the letter?
+    Christ's goodness, then--does that fare better?
+    Strange goodness, which upon the score
+      Of being goodness, the mere due
+    Of man to fellow-man, much more
+      To God,--should take another view
+    Of its possessor's privilege,
+    And bid him rule his race! You pledge
+    Your fealty to such rule? What, all--
+    From heavenly John and Attic Paul,
+    And that brave weather-battered Peter,
+    Whose stout faith only stood completer
+    For buffets, sinning to be pardoned,
+    As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened,--
+    All, down to you, the man of men,
+    Professing here at Goettingen,
+    Compose Christ's flock! They, you and I,
+    Are sheep of a good man! And why?
+    The goodness,--how did he acquire it?
+    Was it self-gained, did God inspire it?
+    Choose which; then tell me, on what ground
+    Should its possessor dare propound
+    His claim to rise o'er us an inch?
+      Were goodness all some man's invention,
+      Who arbitrarily made mention
+    What we should follow, and whence flinch,--
+    What qualities might take the style
+      Of right and wrong,--and had such guessing
+      Met with as general acquiescing
+    As graced the alphabet erewhile,
+    When A got leave an Ox to be,
+    No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G,
+    For thus inventing thing and title
+    Worship were that man's fit requital.
+    But if the common conscience must
+    Be ultimately judge, adjust
+    Its apt name to each quality
+    Already known,--I would decree
+    Worship for such mere demonstration
+      And simple work of nomenclature,
+      Only the day I praised, not nature,
+      But Harvey, for the circulation.
+    I would praise such a Christ, with pride
+    And joy, that he, as none beside,
+    Had taught us how to keep the mind
+    God gave him, as God gave his kind,
+    Freer than they from fleshly taint:
+    I would call such a Christ our Saint,
+    As I declare our Poet, him
+    Whose insight makes all others dim:
+    A thousand poets pried at life,
+    And only one amid the strife
+    Rose to be Shakespeare: each shall take
+    His crown, I'd say, for the world's sake--
+    Though some objected--"Had we seen
+    The heart and head of each, what screen
+    Was broken there to give them light,
+    While in ourselves it shuts the sight,
+    We should no more admire, perchance,
+    That these found truth out at a glance,
+    Than marvel how the bat discerns
+    Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns,
+    Led by a finer tact, a gift
+    He boasts, which other birds must shift
+    Without, and grope as best they can."
+    No, freely I would praise the man,--
+    Nor one whit more, if he contended
+    That gift of his, from God descended.
+    Ah friend, what gift of man's does not?
+    No nearer something, by a jot,
+    Rise an infinity of nothings
+      Than one: take Euclid for your teacher:
+    Distinguish kinds: do crownings, clothings,
+      Make that creator which was creature?
+    Multiply gifts upon man's head,
+    And what, when all's done, shall be said
+    But--the more gifted he, I ween!
+      That one's made Christ, this other, Pilate,
+    And this might be all that has been,--
+      So what is there to frown or smile at?
+    What is left for us, save, in growth
+    Of soul, to rise up, far past both,
+    From the gift looking to the giver,
+    And from the cistern to the river,
+    And from the finite to infinity,
+    And from man's dust to God's divinity?
+
+    XVII
+
+    Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast
+    Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed:
+    Though he is so bright and we so dim,
+    We are made in his image to witness him:
+    And were no eye in us to tell,
+      Instructed by no inner sense,
+    The light of heaven from the dark of hell,
+      That light would want its evidence,--
+    Though justice, good and truth were still
+    Divine, if, by some demon's will,
+    Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed
+    Law through the worlds, and right misnamed.
+    No mere exposition of morality
+    Made or in part or in totality,
+    Should win you to give it worship, therefore:
+    And, if no better proof you will care for,
+    --Whom do you count the worst man upon earth?
+      Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more
+    Of what right is, than arrives at birth
+      In the best man's acts that we bow before:
+    This last knows better--true, but my fact is,
+    'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.
+    And thence conclude that the real God-function
+    Is to furnish a motive and injunction
+      For practising what we know already.
+    And such an injunction and such a motive
+      As the God in Christ, do you waive, and "heady,
+    High-minded," hang your tablet-votive
+    Outside the fane on a finger-post?
+    Morality to the uttermost,
+    Supreme in Christ as we all confess,
+      Why need we prove would avail no jot
+      To make him God, if God he were not?
+    What is the point where himself lays stress?
+    Does the precept run "Believe in good,
+    In justice, truth, now understand
+    For the first time?"--or, "Believe in me,
+    Who lived and died, yet essentially
+    Am Lord of Life?" Whoever can take
+    The same to his heart and for mere love's sake
+    Conceive of the love,--that man obtains
+    A new truth; no conviction gains
+    Of an old one only, made intense
+    By a fresh appeal to his faded sense.
+
+    XVIII
+
+    Can it be that he stays inside?
+      Is the vesture left me to commune with?
+      Could my soul find aught to sing in tune with
+    Even at this lecture, if she tried?
+    Oh, let me at lowest sympathize
+    With the lurking drop of blood that lies
+    In the desiccated brain's white roots
+    Without throb for Christ's attributes,
+    As the lecturer makes his special boast!
+    If love's dead there, it has left a ghost.
+    Admire we, how from heart to brain
+      (Though to say so strike the doctors dumb)
+    One instinct rises and falls again,
+      Restoring the equilibrium.
+    And how when the Critic had done his best,
+    And the pearl of price, at reason's test,
+    Lay dust and ashes levigable
+    On the Professor's lecture-table,--
+    When we looked for the inference and monition
+    That our faith, reduced to such condition,
+    Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole,--
+      He bids us, when we least expect it,
+    Take back our faith,--if it be not just whole,
+      Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it,
+    Which fact pays damage done rewardingly,
+    So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly!
+    "Go home and venerate the myth
+    I thus have experimented with--
+    This man, continue to adore him
+    Rather than all who went before him,
+    And all who ever followed after!"--
+      Surely for this I may praise you, my brother!
+    Will you take the praise in tears or laughter?
+      That's one point gained: can I compass another?
+    Unlearned love was safe from spurning--
+    Can't we respect your loveless learning?
+    Let us at least give learning honor!
+    What laurels had we showered upon her,
+    Girding her loins up to perturb
+    Our theory of the Middle Verb;
+    Or Turk-like brandishing a scimitar
+    O'er anapaests in comic-trimeter;
+    Or curing the halt and maimed 'Iketides,'
+    While we lounged on at our indebted ease:
+    Instead of which, a tricksy demon
+    Sets her at Titus or Philemon!
+    When ignorance wags his ears of leather
+    And hates God's word, 'tis altogether;
+    Nor leaves he his congenial thistles
+    To go and browse on Paul's Epistles.
+    --And you, the audience, who might ravage
+    The world wide, enviably savage,
+    Nor heed the cry of the retriever,
+    More than Herr Heine (before his fever),--
+    I do not tell a lie so arrant
+      As say my passion's wings are furled up,
+    And, without plainest heavenly warrant,
+      I were ready and glad to give the world up--
+    But still, when you rub brow meticulous,
+      And ponder the profit of turning holy
+      If not for God's, for your own sake solely,
+    --God forbid I should find you ridiculous!
+    Deduce from this lecture all that eases you,
+    Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you,
+    "Christians,"--abhor the deist's pravity,--
+    Go on, you shall no more move my gravity
+    Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse,
+      I find it in my heart to embarrass them
+    By hinting that their stick's a mock horse,
+    And they really carry what they say carries them.
+
+    XIX
+
+    So sat I talking with my mind.
+      I did not long to leave the door
+      And find a new church, as before,
+    But rather was quiet and inclined
+    To prolong and enjoy the gentle resting
+    From further tracking and trying and testing.
+    "This tolerance is a genial mood!"
+    (Said I, and a little pause ensued).
+    "One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf,
+      And sees, each side, the good effects of it,
+    A value for religion's self,
+      A carelessness about the sects of it.
+    Let me enjoy my own conviction,
+      Not watch my neighbor's faith with fretfulness,
+    Still spying there some dereliction
+      Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness!
+    Better a mild indifferentism,
+      Teaching that both our faiths (though duller
+    His shine through a dull spirit's prism)
+      Originally had one color!
+    Better pursue a pilgrimage
+      Through ancient and through modern times
+      To many peoples, various climes,
+    Where I may see saint, savage, sage
+    Fuse their respective creeds in one
+    Before the general Father's throne!"
+
+    XX
+
+    --'Twas the horrible storm began afresh!
+    The black night caught me in his mesh,
+    Whirled me up, and flung me prone.
+    I was left on the college-step alone.
+    I looked, and far there, ever fleeting
+    Far, far away, the receding gesture,
+    And looming of the lessening vesture!--
+    Swept forward from my stupid hand,
+    While I watched my foolish heart expand
+    In the lazy glow of benevolence,
+      O'er the various modes of man's belief.
+    I sprang up with fear's vehemence.
+      Needs must there be one way, our chief
+    Best way of worship: let me strive
+    To find it, and when found, contrive
+    My fellows also take their share!
+    This constitutes my earthly care:
+    God's is above it and distinct.
+    For I, a man, with men am linked
+    And not a brute with brutes; no gain
+    That I experience, must remain
+    Unshared: but should my best endeavor
+    To share it, fail--subsisteth ever
+    God's care above, and I exult
+    That God, by God's own ways occult,
+    May--doth, I will believe--bring back
+    All wanderers to a single track.
+    Meantime, I can but testify
+    God's care for me--no more, can I--
+    It is but for myself I know;
+      The world rolls witnessing around me
+      Only to leave me as it found me;
+    Men cry there, but my ear is slow:
+    Their races flourish or decay
+    --What boots it, while yon lucid way
+    Loaded with stars divides the vault?
+    But soon my soul repairs its fault
+    When, sharpening sense's hebetude,
+    She turns on my own life! So viewed,
+    No mere mote's-breadth but teems immense
+    With witnessings of providence:
+    And woe to me if when I look
+    Upon that record, the sole book
+    Unsealed to me, I take no heed
+    Of any warning that I read!
+    Have I been sure, this Christmas-Eve,
+    God's own hand did the rainbow weave,
+    Whereby the truth from heaven slid
+    Into my soul? I cannot bid
+    The world admit he stooped to heal
+    My soul, as if in a thunder-peal
+    Where one heard noise, and one saw flame,
+    I only knew he named my name:
+    But what is the world to me, for sorrow
+    Or joy in its censure, when to-morrow
+    It drops the remark, with just-turned head
+    Then, on again, "That man is dead"?
+    Yes, but for me--my name called,--drawn
+    As a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn,
+    He has dipt into on a battle-dawn:
+    Bid out of life by a nod, a glance,--
+    Stumbling, mute-mazed, at nature's chance,--
+    With a rapid finger circled round,
+    Fixed to the first poor inch of ground
+    To fight from, where his foot was found;
+    Whose ear but a minute since lay free
+    To the wide camp's buzz and gossipry--
+    Summoned, a solitary man
+    To end his life where his life began,
+    From the safe glad rear, to the dreadful van!
+    Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held
+      By the hem of the vesture!--
+
+    XXI
+
+                                    And I caught
+    At the flying robe, and unrepelled
+      Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught
+    With warmth and wonder and delight,
+    God's mercy being infinite.
+    For scarce had the words escaped my tongue,
+    When, at a passionate bound, I sprung,
+    Out of the wandering world of rain,
+    Into the little chapel again.
+
+He finds himself back in the chapel, all that has occurred having been a
+vision. His conclusions have that broadness of view which belongs only
+to those most advanced in thought. He has learned that not only must
+there be the essential truth behind every sincere effort to reach it,
+but that even his own vision of the truth is not necessarily the final
+way of truth but is merely the way which is true for him. The jump from
+the attitude of mind that persecutes those who do not believe according
+to one established rule to such absolute toleration of all forms because
+of their symbolizing an eternal truth gives the measure of growth in
+religious thought from the days of Wesley to Browning. The Wesleys and
+their fellow-helpers were stoned and mobbed, and some died of their
+wounds in the latter part of the eighteenth century, while in 1850, when
+"Christmas-Eve" was written, an Englishman could express a height of
+toleration and sympathy for religions not his own, as well as taking a
+religious stand for himself so exalted that it is difficult to imagine a
+further step in these directions. Perhaps we are suffering to-day from
+over-toleration, that is, we tolerate not only those whose aspiration
+takes a different form, but those whose ideals lead to degeneracy. It
+seems as though all virtues must finally develop their shadows. What,
+however, is a shadow but the darkness occasioned by the approach of some
+greater light.
+
+    XXII
+
+    How else was I found there, bolt upright
+      On my bench, as if I had never left it?
+    --Never flung out on the common at night,
+      Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it,
+    Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor,
+    Or the laboratory of the Professor!
+    For the Vision, that was true, I wist,
+    True as that heaven and earth exist.
+    There sat my friend, the yellow and tall,
+      With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place;
+    Yet my nearest neighbor's cheek showed gall.
+      She had slid away a contemptuous space:
+    And the old fat woman, late so placable,
+    Eyed me with symptoms, hardly mistakable,
+    Of her milk of kindness turning rancid.
+    In short, a spectator might have fancied
+    That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber,
+      Yet kept my seat, a warning ghastly,
+    Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number,
+      And woke up now at the tenth and lastly.
+    But again, could such disgrace have happened?
+      Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it;
+    And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end?
+      Unless I heard it, could I have judged it?
+    Could I report as I do at the close,
+    First, the preacher speaks through his nose:
+    Second, his gesture is too emphatic:
+      Thirdly, to waive what's pedagogic,
+      The subject-matter itself lacks logic:
+    Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic.
+    Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal,
+    Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call
+    Of making square to a finite eye
+    The circle of infinity,
+    And find so all-but-just-succeeding!
+    Great news! the sermon proves no reading
+    Where bee-like in the flowers I bury me,
+    Like Taylor's the immortal Jeremy!
+    And now that I know the very worst of him,
+    What was it I thought to obtain at first of him?
+    Ha! Is God mocked, as he asks?
+    Shall I take on me to change his tasks,
+    And dare, despatched to a river-head
+      For a simple draught of the element,
+    Neglect the thing for which he sent,
+      And return with another thing instead?--
+    Saying, "Because the water found
+    Welling up from underground,
+    Is mingled with the taints of earth,
+    While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth,
+    And couldst, at wink or word, convulse
+    The world with the leap of a river-pulse,--
+    Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy,
+      And bring thee a chalice I found, instead:
+    See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy!
+      One would suppose that the marble bled.
+    What matters the water? A hope I have nursed:
+    The waterless cup will quench my thirst."
+    --Better have knelt at the poorest stream
+    That trickles in pain from the straitest rift!
+    For the less or the more is all God's gift,
+      Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam.
+    And here, is there water or not, to drink?
+      I then, in ignorance and weakness,
+    Taking God's help, have attained to think
+      My heart does best to receive in meekness
+    That mode of worship, as most to his mind,
+    Where earthly aids being cast behind,
+    His All in All appears serene
+    With the thinnest human veil between,
+    Letting the mystic lamps, the seven,
+      The many motions of his spirit,
+    Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven.
+      For the preacher's merit or demerit,
+    It were to be wished the flaws were fewer
+      In the earthen vessel, holding treasure
+    Which lies as safe in a golden ewer;
+      But the main thing is, does it hold good measure?
+    Heaven soon sets right all other matters!--
+      Ask, else, these ruins of humanity,
+    This flesh worn out to rags and tatters,
+      This soul at struggle with insanity,
+    Who thence take comfort--can I doubt?--
+    Which an empire gained, were a loss without.
+    May it be mine! And let us hope
+    That no worse blessing befall the Pope,
+    Turned sick at last of to-day's buffoonery,
+      Of posturings and petticoatings,
+      Beside his Bourbon bully's gloatings
+    In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery!
+    Nor may the Professor forego its peace
+      At Goettingen presently, when, in the dusk
+    Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase,
+      Prophesied of by that horrible husk--
+    When thicker and thicker the darkness fills
+    The world through his misty spectacles,
+    And he gropes for something more substantial
+      Than a fable, myth or personification,--
+    May Christ do for him what no mere man shall,
+      And stand confessed as the God of salvation!
+    Meantime, in the still recurring fear
+      Lest myself, at unawares, be found,
+      While attacking the choice of my neighbors round,
+    With none of my own made--I choose here!
+    The giving out of the hymn reclaims me;
+    I have done: and if any blames me,
+    Thinking that merely to touch in brevity
+      The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,--
+    Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity,
+      On the bounds of the holy and the awful,--
+    I praise the heart, and pity the head of him,
+    And refer myself to THEE, instead of him,
+    Who head and heart alike discernest,
+      Looking below light speech we utter,
+      When frothy spume and frequent sputter
+    Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest!
+    May truth shine out, stand ever before us!
+    I put up pencil and join chorus
+    To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology,
+      The last five verses of the third section
+      Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's Collection,
+    To conclude with the doxology.
+
+In "Easter-Day" the interest is purely personal. It is a long and
+somewhat intricate discussion between two friends upon the basis of
+belief and gives no glimpses of the historical progress of belief. In
+brief, the poem discusses the relation of the finite life to the
+infinite life. The first speaker is not satisfied with the different
+points of view suggested by the second speaker. First, that one would be
+willing to suffer martyrdom in this life if only one could truly believe
+it would bring eternal joy. Or perhaps doubt is God's way of telling who
+are his friends, who are his foes. Or perhaps God is revealed in the law
+of the universe, or in the shows of nature, or in the emotions of the
+human heart. The first speaker takes the ground that the only
+possibility satisfying modern demands is an assurance that this world's
+gain is in its imperfectness surety for true gain in another world. An
+imaginatively pictured experience of his own soul is next presented,
+wherein he represents himself at the Judgment Day as choosing the finite
+life instead of the infinite life. As a result, he learns there is
+nothing in finite life except as related to infinite life. The way
+opened out toward the infinite through love is that which gives the
+light of life to all the good things of earth which he desired--all
+beauties, that of nature and art, and the joy of intellectual activity.
+
+
+    EASTER-DAY
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+    XV
+
+                              And as I said
+    This nonsense, throwing back my head
+    With light complacent laugh, I found
+    Suddenly all the midnight round
+    One fire. The dome of heaven had stood
+    As made up of a multitude
+    Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack
+    Of ripples infinite and black,
+    From sky to sky. Sudden there went,
+    Like horror and astonishment,
+    A fierce vindictive scribble of red
+    Quick flame across, as if one said
+    (The angry scribe of Judgment) "There--
+    Burn it!" And straight I was aware
+    That the whole ribwork round, minute
+    Cloud touching cloud beyond compute,
+    Was tinted, each with its own spot
+    Of burning at the core, till clot
+    Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire
+    Over all heaven, which 'gan suspire
+    As fanned to measure equable,--
+    Just so great conflagrations kill
+    Night overhead, and rise and sink,
+    Reflected. Now the fire would shrink
+    And wither off the blasted face
+    Of heaven, and I distinct might trace
+    The sharp black ridgy outlines left
+    Unburned like network--then, each cleft
+    The fire had been sucked back into,
+    Regorged, and out it surging flew
+    Furiously, and night writhed inflamed,
+    Till, tolerating to be tamed
+    No longer, certain rays world-wide
+    Shot downwardly. On every side
+    Caught past escape, the earth was lit;
+    As if a dragon's nostril split
+    And all his famished ire o'erflowed;
+    Then, as he winced at his lord's goad,
+    Back he inhaled: whereat I found
+    The clouds into vast pillars bound,
+    Based on the corners of the earth,
+    Propping the skies at top: a dearth
+    Of fire i' the violet intervals,
+    Leaving exposed the utmost walls
+    Of time, about to tumble in
+    And end the world.
+
+    XVI
+
+                      I felt begin
+    The Judgment-Day: to retrocede
+    Was too late now. "In very deed,"
+    (I uttered to myself) "that Day!"
+    The intuition burned away
+    All darkness from my spirit too:
+    There, stood I, found and fixed, I knew,
+    Choosing the world. The choice was made;
+    And naked and disguiseless stayed,
+    And unevadable, the fact.
+    My brain held all the same compact
+    Its senses, nor my heart declined
+    Its office; rather, both combined
+    To help me in this juncture. I
+    Lost not a second,--agony
+    Gave boldness: since my life had end
+    And my choice with it--best defend,
+    Applaud both! I resolved to say,
+    "So was I framed by thee, such way
+    I put to use thy senses here!
+    It was so beautiful, so near,
+    Thy world,--what could I then but choose
+    My part there? Nor did I refuse
+    To look above the transient boon
+    Of time; but it was hard so soon
+    As in a short life, to give up
+    Such beauty: I could put the cup
+    Undrained of half its fulness, by;
+    But, to renounce it utterly,
+    --That was too hard! Nor did the cry
+    Which bade renounce it, touch my brain
+    Authentically deep and plain
+    Enough to make my lips let go.
+    But Thou, who knowest all, dost know
+    Whether I was not, life's brief while,
+    Endeavoring to reconcile
+    Those lips (too tardily, alas!)
+    To letting the dear remnant pass,
+    One day,--some drops of earthly good
+    Untasted! Is it for this mood,
+    That Thou, whose earth delights so well,
+    Hast made its complement a hell?"
+
+    XVII
+
+    A final belch of fire like blood,
+    Overbroke all heaven in one flood
+    Of doom. Then fire was sky, and sky
+    Fire, and both, one brief ecstasy,
+    Then ashes. But I heard no noise
+    (Whatever was) because a voice
+    Beside me spoke thus, "Life is done,
+    Time ends, Eternity's begun,
+    And thou art judged for evermore."
+
+    XVIII
+
+    I looked up; all seemed as before;
+    Of that cloud-Tophet overhead
+    No trace was left: I saw instead
+    The common round me, and the sky
+    Above, stretched drear and emptily
+    Of life. 'Twas the last watch of night,
+    Except what brings the morning quite;
+    When the armed angel, conscience-clear,
+    His task nigh done, leans o'er his spear
+    And gazes on the earth he guards,
+    Safe one night more through all its wards,
+    Till God relieve him at his post.
+    "A dream--a waking dream at most!"
+    (I spoke out quick, that I might shake
+    The horrid nightmare off, and wake.)
+    "The world gone, yet the world is here?
+    Are not all things as they appear?
+    Is Judgment past for me alone?
+    --And where had place the great white throne?
+    The rising of the quick and dead?
+    Where stood they, small and great? Who read
+    The sentence from the opened book?"
+    So, by degrees, the blood forsook
+    My heart, and let it beat afresh;
+    I knew I should break through the mesh
+    Of horror, and breathe presently:
+    When, lo, again, the voice by me!
+
+    XIX
+
+    I saw.... Oh brother, 'mid far sands
+    The palm-tree-cinctured city stands,
+    Bright-white beneath, as heaven, bright-blue,
+    Leans o'er it, while the years pursue
+    Their course, unable to abate
+    Its paradisal laugh at fate!
+    One morn,--the Arab staggers blind
+    O'er a new tract of death, calcined
+    To ashes, silence, nothingness,--
+    And strives, with dizzy wits, to guess
+    Whence fell the blow. What if, 'twixt skies
+    And prostrate earth, he should surprise
+    The imaged vapor, head to foot,
+    Surveying, motionless and mute,
+    Its work, ere, in a whirlwind rapt
+    It vanished up again?--So hapt
+    My chance. HE stood there. Like the smoke
+    Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke,--
+    I saw Him. One magnific pall
+    Mantled in massive fold and fall
+    His head, and coiled in snaky swathes
+    About His feet: night's black, that bathes
+    All else, broke, grizzled with despair,
+    Against the soul of blackness there.
+    A gesture told the mood within--
+    That wrapped right hand which based the chin,
+    That intense meditation fixed
+    On His procedure,--pity mixed
+    With the fulfilment of decree.
+    Motionless, thus, He spoke to me,
+    Who fell before His feet, a mass,
+    No man now.
+
+    XX
+
+                  "All is come to pass.
+    Such shows are over for each soul
+    They had respect to. In the roll
+    Of judgment which convinced mankind
+    Of sin, stood many, bold and blind,
+    Terror must burn the truth into:
+    Their fate for them!--thou hadst to do
+    With absolute omnipotence,
+    Able its judgments to dispense
+    To the whole race, as every one
+    Were its sole object. Judgment done,
+    God is, thou art,--the rest is hurled
+    To nothingness for thee. This world,
+    This finite life, thou hast preferred,
+    In disbelief of God's plain word,
+    To heaven and to infinity.
+    Here the probation was for thee,
+    To show thy soul the earthly mixed
+    With heavenly, it must choose betwixt.
+    The earthly joys lay palpable,--
+    A taint, in each, distinct as well;
+    The heavenly flitted, faint and rare,
+    Above them, but as truly were
+    Taintless, so, in their nature, best.
+    Thy choice was earth: thou didst attest
+    'Twas fitter spirit should subserve
+    The flesh, than flesh refine to nerve
+    Beneath the spirit's play. Advance
+    No claim to their inheritance
+    Who chose the spirit's fugitive
+    Brief gleams, and yearned, 'This were to live
+    Indeed, if rays, completely pure
+    From flesh that dulls them, could endure,--
+    Not shoot in meteor-light athwart
+    Our earth, to show how cold and swart
+    It lies beneath their fire, but stand
+    As stars do, destined to expand,
+    Prove veritable worlds, our home!'
+    Thou saidst,--'Let spirit star the dome
+    Of sky, that flesh may miss no peak,
+    No nook of earth,--I shall not seek
+    Its service further!' Thou art shut
+    Out of the heaven of spirit; glut
+    Thy sense upon the world: 'tis thine
+    For ever--take it!"
+
+    XXI
+
+                          "How? Is mine,
+    The world?" (I cried, while my soul broke
+    Out in a transport.) "Hast Thou spoke
+    Plainly in that? Earth's exquisite
+    Treasures of wonder and delight,
+    For me?"
+
+    XXII
+
+              The austere voice returned,--
+    "So soon made happy? Hadst thou learned
+    What God accounteth happiness,
+    Thou wouldst not find it hard to guess
+    What hell may be his punishment
+    For those who doubt if God invent
+    Better than they. Let such men rest
+    Content with what they judged the best.
+    Let the unjust usurp at will:
+    The filthy shall be filthy still:
+    Miser, there waits the gold for thee!
+    Hater, indulge thine enmity!
+    And thou, whose heaven self-ordained
+    Was, to enjoy earth unrestrained,
+    Do it! Take all the ancient show!
+    The woods shall wave, the rivers flow,
+    And men apparently pursue
+    Their works, as they were wont to do,
+    While living in probation yet.
+    I promise not thou shalt forget
+    The past, now gone to its account;
+    But leave thee with the old amount
+    Of faculties, nor less nor more,
+    Unvisited, as heretofore,
+    By God's free spirit, that makes an end.
+    So, once more, take thy world! Expend
+    Eternity upon its shows,
+    Flung thee as freely as one rose
+    Out of a summer's opulence,
+    Over the Eden-barrier whence
+    Thou art excluded. Knock in vain!"
+
+    XXIII
+
+    I sat up. All was still again.
+    I breathed free: to my heart, back fled
+    The warmth. "But, all the world!"--I said.
+    I stooped and picked a leaf of fern,
+    And recollected I might learn
+    From books, how many myriad sorts
+    Of fern exist, to trust reports,
+    Each as distinct and beautiful
+    As this, the very first I cull.
+    Think, from the first leaf to the last!
+    Conceive, then, earth's resources! Vast
+    Exhaustless beauty, endless change
+    Of wonder! And this foot shall range
+    Alps, Andes,--and this eye devour
+    The bee-bird and the aloe-flower?
+
+    XXIV
+
+    Then the voice, "Welcome so to rate
+    The arras-folds that variegate
+    The earth, God's antechamber, well!
+    The wise, who waited there, could tell
+    By these, what royalties in store
+    Lay one step past the entrance-door.
+    For whom, was reckoned, not so much,
+    This life's munificence? For such
+    As thou,--a race, whereof scarce one
+    Was able, in a million,
+    To feel that any marvel lay
+    In objects round his feet all day;
+    Scarce one, in many millions more,
+    Willing, if able, to explore
+    The secreter, minuter charm!
+    --Brave souls, a fern-leaf could disarm
+    Of power to cope with God's intent,--
+    Or scared if the south firmament
+    With north-fire did its wings refledge!
+    All partial beauty was a pledge
+    Of beauty in its plenitude:
+    But since the pledge sufficed thy mood,
+    Retain it! plenitude be theirs
+    Who looked above!"
+
+    XXV
+
+                          Though sharp despairs
+    Shot through me, I held up, bore on.
+    "What matter though my trust were gone
+    From natural things? Henceforth my part
+    Be less with nature than with art!
+    For art supplants, gives mainly worth
+    To nature; 'tis man stamps the earth--
+    And I will seek his impress, seek
+    The statuary of the Greek,
+    Italy's painting--there my choice
+    Shall fix!"
+
+    XXVI
+
+                "Obtain it!" said the voice,
+    "--The one form with its single act,
+    Which sculptors labored to abstract,
+    The one face, painters tried to draw,
+    With its one look, from throngs they saw.
+    And that perfection in their soul,
+    These only hinted at? The whole,
+    They were but parts of? What each laid
+    His claim to glory on?--afraid
+    His fellow-men should give him rank
+    By mere tentatives which he shrank
+    Smitten at heart from, all the more,
+    That gazers pressed in to adore!
+    'Shall I be judged by only these?'
+    If such his soul's capacities,
+    Even while he trod the earth,--think, now,
+    What pomp in Buonarroti's brow,
+    With its new palace-brain where dwells
+    Superb the soul, unvexed by cells
+    That crumbled with the transient clay!
+    What visions will his right hand's sway
+    Still turn to forms, as still they burst
+    Upon him? How will he quench thirst,
+    Titanically infantine,
+    Laid at the breast of the Divine?
+    Does it confound thee,--this first page
+    Emblazoning man's heritage?--
+    Can this alone absorb thy sight,
+    As pages were not infinite,--
+    Like the omnipotence which tasks
+    Itself to furnish all that asks
+    The soul it means to satiate?
+    What was the world, the starry state
+    Of the broad skies,--what, all displays
+    Of power and beauty intermixed,
+    Which now thy soul is chained betwixt,--
+    What else than needful furniture
+    For life's first stage? God's work, be sure,
+    No more spreads wasted, than falls scant!
+    He filled, did not exceed, man's want
+    Of beauty in this life. But through
+    Life pierce,--and what has earth to do,
+    Its utmost beauty's appanage,
+    With the requirement of next stage?
+    Did God pronounce earth 'very good'?
+    Needs must it be, while understood
+    For man's preparatory state;
+    Nought here to heighten nor abate;
+    Transfer the same completeness here,
+    To serve a new state's use,--and drear
+    Deficiency gapes every side!
+    The good, tried once, were bad, retried.
+    See the enwrapping rocky niche,
+    Sufficient for the sleep in which
+    The lizard breathes for ages safe:
+    Split the mould--and as light would chafe
+    The creature's new world-widened sense,
+    Dazzled to death at evidence
+    Of all the sounds and sights that broke
+    Innumerous at the chisel's stroke,--
+    So, in God's eye, the earth's first stuff
+    Was, neither more nor less, enough
+    To house man's soul, man's need fulfil.
+    Man reckoned it immeasurable?
+    So thinks the lizard of his vault!
+    Could God be taken in default,
+    Short of contrivances, by you,--
+    Or reached, ere ready to pursue
+    His progress through eternity?
+    That chambered rock, the lizard's world,
+    Your easy mallet's blow has hurled
+    To nothingness for ever; so,
+    Has God abolished at a blow
+    This world, wherein his saints were pent,--
+    Who, though found grateful and content,
+    With the provision there, as thou,
+    Yet knew he would not disallow
+    Their spirit's hunger, felt as well,--
+    Unsated,--not unsatable,
+    As paradise gives proof. Deride
+    Their choice now, thou who sit'st outside!"
+
+    XXVII
+
+    I cried in anguish, "Mind, the mind,
+    So miserably cast behind,
+    To gain what had been wisely lost!
+    Oh, let me strive to make the most
+    Of the poor stinted soul, I nipped
+    Of budding wings, else now equipped
+    For voyage from summer isle to isle!
+    And though she needs must reconcile
+    Ambition to the life on ground,
+    Still, I can profit by late found
+    But precious knowledge. Mind is best--
+    I will seize mind, forego the rest,
+    And try how far my tethered strength
+    May crawl in this poor breadth and length.
+    Let me, since I can fly no more,
+    At least spin dervish-like about
+    (Till giddy rapture almost doubt
+    I fly) through circling sciences,
+    Philosophies and histories
+    Should the whirl slacken there, then verse,
+    Fining to music, shall asperse
+    Fresh and fresh fire-dew, till I strain
+    Intoxicate, half-break my chain!
+    Not joyless, though more favored feet
+    Stand calm, where I want wings to beat
+    The floor. At least earth's bond is broke!"
+
+    XXVIII
+
+    Then, (sickening even while I spoke)
+    "Let me alone! No answer, pray,
+    To this! I know what Thou wilt say!
+    All still is earth's,--to know, as much
+    As feel its truths, which if we touch
+    With sense, or apprehend in soul,
+    What matter? I have reached the goal--
+    'Whereto does knowledge serve!' will burn
+    My eyes, too sure, at every turn!
+    I cannot look back now, nor stake
+    Bliss on the race, for running's sake.
+    The goal's a ruin like the rest!--
+    And so much worse thy latter quest,"
+    (Added the voice) "that even on earth--
+    Whenever, in man's soul, had birth
+    Those intuitions, grasps of guess,
+    Which pull the more into the less,
+    Making the finite comprehend
+    Infinity,--the bard would spend
+    Such praise alone, upon his craft,
+    As, when wind-lyres obey the waft,
+    Goes to the craftsman who arranged
+    The seven strings, changed them and rechanged--
+    Knowing it was the South that harped.
+    He felt his song, in singing, warped;
+    Distinguished his and God's part: whence
+    A world of spirit as of sense
+    Was plain to him, yet not too plain,
+    Which he could traverse, not remain
+    A guest in:--else were permanent
+    Heaven on the earth its gleams were meant
+    To sting with hunger for full light,--
+    Made visible in verse, despite
+    The veiling weakness,--truth by means
+    Of fable, showing while it screens,--
+    Since highest truth, man e'er supplied,
+    Was ever fable on outside.
+    Such gleams made bright the earth an age;
+    Now the whole sun's his heritage!
+    Take up thy world, it is allowed,
+    Thou who hast entered in the cloud!"
+
+    XXIX
+
+    Then I--"Behold, my spirit bleeds,
+    Catches no more at broken reeds,--
+    But lilies flower those reeds above:
+    I let the world go, and take love!
+    Love survives in me, albeit those
+    I love be henceforth masks and shows,
+    Not living men and women: still
+    I mind how love repaired all ill,
+    Cured wrong, soothed grief, made earth amends
+    With parents, brothers, children, friends!
+    Some semblance of a woman yet
+    With eyes to help me to forget,
+    Shall look on me; and I will match
+    Departed love with love, attach
+    Old memories to new dreams, nor scorn
+    The poorest of the grains of corn
+    I save from shipwreck on this isle,
+    Trusting its barrenness may smile
+    With happy foodful green one day,
+    More precious for the pains. I pray,--
+    Leave to love, only!"
+
+    XXX
+
+                          At the word,
+    The form, I looked to have been stirred
+    With pity and approval, rose
+    O'er me, as when the headsman throws
+    Axe over shoulder to make end--
+    I fell prone, letting Him expend
+    His wrath, while thus the inflicting voice
+    Smote me. "Is this thy final choice?
+    Love is the best? 'Tis somewhat late!
+    And all thou dost enumerate
+    Of power and beauty in the world,
+    The mightiness of love was curled
+    Inextricably round about.
+    Love lay within it and without,
+    To clasp thee,--but in vain! Thy soul
+    Still shrunk from Him who made the whole,
+    Still set deliberate aside
+    His love!--Now take love! Well betide
+    Thy tardy conscience! Haste to take
+    The show of love for the name's sake,
+    Remembering every moment Who,
+    Beside creating thee unto
+    These ends, and these for thee, was said
+    To undergo death in thy stead
+    In flesh like thine: so ran the tale.
+    What doubt in thee could countervail
+    Belief in it? Upon the ground
+    'That in the story had been found
+    Too much love! How could God love so?'
+    He who in all his works below
+    Adapted to the needs of man,
+    Made love the basis of the plan,--
+    Did love, as was demonstrated:
+    While man, who was so fit instead
+    To hate, as every day gave proof,--
+    Man thought man, for his kind's behoof,
+    Both could and did invent that scheme
+    Of perfect love: 'twould well beseem
+    Cain's nature thou wast wont to praise,
+    Not tally with God's usual ways!"
+
+    XXXI
+
+    And I cowered deprecatingly--
+    "Thou Love of God! Or let me die,
+    Or grant what shall seem heaven almost!
+    Let me not know that all is lost,
+    Though lost it be--leave me not tied
+    To this despair, this corpse-like bride!
+    Let that old life seem mine--no more--
+    With limitation as before,
+    With darkness, hunger, toil, distress:
+    Be all the earth a wilderness!
+    Only let me go on, go on,
+    Still hoping ever and anon
+    To reach one eve the Better Land!"
+
+    XXXII
+
+    Then did the form expand, expand--
+    I knew Him through the dread disguise
+    As the whole God within His eyes
+    Embraced me.
+
+    XXXIII
+
+                  When I lived again,
+    The day was breaking,--the grey plain
+    I rose from, silvered thick with dew.
+    Was this a vision? False or true?
+    Since then, three varied years are spent,
+    And commonly my mind is bent
+    To think it was a dream--be sure
+    A mere dream and distemperature--
+    The last day's watching: then the night,--
+    The shock of that strange Northern Light
+    Set my head swimming, bred in me
+    A dream. And so I live, you see,
+    Go through the world, try, prove, reject,
+    Prefer, still struggling to effect
+    My warfare; happy that I can
+    Be crossed and thwarted as a man,
+    Not left in God's contempt apart,
+    With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart,
+    Tame in earth's paddock as her prize.
+    Thank God, she still each method tries
+    To catch me, who may yet escape,
+    She knows,--the fiend in angel's shape!
+    Thank God, no paradise stands barred
+    To entry, and I find it hard
+    To be a Christian, as I said!
+    Still every now and then my head
+    Raised glad, sinks mournful--all grows drear
+    Spite of the sunshine, while I fear
+    And think, "How dreadful to be grudged
+    No ease henceforth, as one that's judged.
+    Condemned to earth for ever, shut
+    From heaven!"
+                    But Easter-Day breaks! But
+    Christ rises! Mercy every way
+    Is infinite,--and who can say?
+
+This poem has often been cited as a proof of Browning's own belief in
+historical Christianity. It can hardly be said to be more than a
+doubtful proof, for it depends upon a subjective vision of which the
+speaker, himself, doubts the truth. The speaker in this poem belongs in
+the same category with Bishop Blougram. A belief in infinite Love can
+come to him only through the dogma of the incarnation, he therefore
+holds to that, no matter how tossed about by doubts. The failure of all
+human effort to attain the Absolute and, as a consequence, the belief in
+an Absolute beyond this life is a dominant note in Browning's own
+philosophy. The nature of that Absolute he further evolves from the
+intellectual observation of power that transcends human comprehension,
+and the even more deep-rooted sense of love in the human heart.
+
+Much of his thought resembles that of the English scientist, Herbert
+Spencer. The relativity of knowledge and the relativity of good and evil
+are cardinal doctrines with both of them. Herbert Spencer's mystery
+behind all phenomena and Browning's failure of human knowledge are
+identical--the negative proof of the absolute,--but where Spencer
+contents himself with the statement that though we cannot know the
+Absolute, yet it must transcend all that the human mind has conceived
+of perfection, Browning, as we have already seen, declares that we _can_
+know something of the nature of that Absolute through the love which we
+know in the human heart as well as the power we see displayed in Nature.
+
+In connection with this subject, which for lack of space can merely be
+touched on in the present volume, it will be instructive to round out
+Browning's presentations of his own contributions to nineteenth-century
+thought with two quotations, one from "The Parleyings:" "With Bernard de
+Mandeville," and one from a poem in his last volume "Reverie." In the
+first, human love is symbolized as the image made by a lens of the sun,
+which latter symbolizes Divine Love.
+
+
+    BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+    IX
+
+    Boundingly up through Night's wall dense and dark,
+    Embattled crags and clouds, outbroke the Sun
+    Above the conscious earth, and one by one
+    Her heights and depths absorbed to the last spark
+    His fluid glory, from the far fine ridge
+    Of mountain-granite which, transformed to gold,
+    Laughed first the thanks back, to the vale's dusk fold
+    On fold of vapor-swathing, like a bridge
+    Shattered beneath some giant's stamp. Night wist
+    Her work done and betook herself in mist
+    To marsh and hollow there to bide her time
+    Blindly in acquiescence. Everywhere
+    Did earth acknowledge Sun's embrace sublime
+    Thrilling her to the heart of things: since there
+    No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew,
+    No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew
+    Glad through the inrush--glad nor more nor less
+    Than, 'neath his gaze, forest and wilderness,
+    Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread,
+    The universal world of creatures bred
+    By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise--
+    All creatures but one only: gaze for gaze,
+    Joyless and thankless, who--all scowling can--
+    Protests against the innumerous praises? Man,
+    Sullen and silent.
+
+                      Stand thou forth then, state
+    Thy wrong, thou sole aggrieved--disconsolate--
+    While every beast, bird, reptile, insect, gay
+    And glad acknowledges the bounteous day!
+
+    X
+
+    Man speaks now:--"What avails Sun's earth-felt thrill
+    To me? Sun penetrates the ore, the plant--
+    They feel and grow: perchance with subtler skill
+    He interfuses fly, worm, brute, until
+    Each favored object pays life's ministrant
+    By pressing, in obedience to his will,
+    Up to completion of the task prescribed,
+    So stands and stays a type. Myself imbibed
+    Such influence also, stood and stand complete--
+    The perfect Man,--head, body, hands and feet,
+    True to the pattern: but does that suffice?
+    How of my superadded mind which needs
+    --Not to be, simply, but to do, and pleads
+    For--more than knowledge that by some device
+    Sun quickens matter: mind is nobly fain
+    To realize the marvel, make--for sense
+    As mind--the unseen visible, condense
+    --Myself--Sun's all-pervading influence
+    So as to serve the needs of mind, explain
+    What now perplexes. Let the oak increase
+    His corrugated strength on strength, the palm
+    Lift joint by joint her fan-fruit, ball and balm,--
+    Let the coiled serpent bask in bloated peace,--
+    The eagle, like some skyey derelict,
+    Drift in the blue, suspended glorying,--
+    The lion lord it by the desert-spring,--
+    What know or care they of the power which pricked
+    Nothingness to perfection? I, instead,
+    When all-developed still am found a thing
+    All-incomplete: for what though flesh had force
+    Transcending theirs--hands able to unring
+    The tightened snake's coil, eyes that could outcourse
+    The eagle's soaring, voice whereat the king
+    Of carnage couched discrowned? Mind seeks to see,
+    Touch, understand, by mind inside of me,
+    The outside mind--whose quickening I attain
+    To recognize--I only. All in vain
+    Would mind address itself to render plain
+    The nature of the essence. Drag what lurks
+    Behind the operation--that which works
+    Latently everywhere by outward proof--
+    Drag that mind forth to face mine? No! aloof
+    I solely crave that one of all the beams
+    Which do Sun's work in darkness, at my will
+    Should operate--myself for once have skill
+    To realize the energy which streams
+    Flooding the universe. Above, around,
+    Beneath--why mocks that mind my own thus found
+    Simply of service, when the world grows dark,
+    To half-surmise--were Sun's use understood,
+    I might demonstrate him supplying food,
+    Warmth, life, no less the while? To grant one spark
+    Myself may deal with--make it thaw my blood
+    And prompt my steps, were truer to the mark
+    Of mind's requirement than a half-surmise
+    That somehow secretly is operant
+    A power all matter feels, mind only tries
+    To comprehend! Once more--no idle vaunt
+    'Man comprehends the Sun's self!' Mysteries
+    At source why probe into? Enough: display,
+    Make demonstrable, how, by night as day,
+    Earth's centre and sky's outspan, all's informed
+    Equally by Sun's efflux!--source from whence
+    If just one spark I drew, full evidence
+    Were mine of fire ineffably enthroned--
+    Sun's self made palpable to Man!"
+
+    XI
+
+                                      Thus moaned
+    Man till Prometheus helped him,--as we learn,--
+    Offered an artifice whereby he drew
+    Sun's rays into a focus,--plain and true,
+    The very Sun in little: made fire burn
+    And henceforth do Man service--glass-conglobed
+    Though to a pin-point circle--all the same
+    Comprising the Sun's self, but Sun disrobed
+    Of that else-unconceived essential flame
+    Borne by no naked sight. Shall mind's eye strive
+    Achingly to companion as it may
+    The supersubtle effluence, and contrive
+    To follow beam and beam upon their way
+    Hand-breadth by hand-breadth, till sense faint--confessed
+    Frustrate, eluded by unknown unguessed
+    Infinitude of action? Idle quest!
+    Rather ask aid from optics. Sense, descry
+    The spectrum--mind, infer immensity!
+    Little? In little, light, warmth, life are blessed--
+    Which, in the large, who sees to bless? Not I
+    More than yourself: so, good my friend, keep still
+    Trustful with--me? with thee, sage Mandeville!
+
+The second "Reverie" has the effect of a triumphant swan song,
+especially the closing stanzas, the poem having been written very near
+the end of the poet's life.
+
+    "In a beginning God
+      Made heaven and earth." Forth flashed
+    Knowledge: from star to clod
+      Man knew things: doubt abashed
+    Closed its long period.
+
+    Knowledge obtained Power praise.
+      Had Good been manifest,
+    Broke out in cloudless blaze,
+      Unchequered as unrepressed,
+    In all things Good at best--
+
+    Then praise--all praise, no blame--
+      Had hailed the perfection. No!
+    As Power's display, the same
+      Be Good's--praise forth shall flow
+    Unisonous in acclaim!
+
+    Even as the world its life,
+      So have I lived my own--
+    Power seen with Love at strife,
+      That sure, this dimly shown,
+    --Good rare and evil rife.
+
+    Whereof the effect be--faith
+      That, some far day, were found
+    Ripeness in things now rathe,
+      Wrong righted, each chain unbound,
+    Renewal born out of scathe.
+
+    Why faith--but to lift the load,
+      To leaven the lump, where lies
+    Mind prostrate through knowledge owed
+      To the loveless Power it tries
+    To withstand, how vain! In flowed
+
+    Ever resistless fact:
+      No more than the passive clay
+    Disputes the potter's act,
+      Could the whelmed mind disobey
+    Knowledge the cataract.
+
+    But, perfect in every part,
+      Has the potter's moulded shape,
+    Leap of man's quickened heart,
+      Throe of his thought's escape,
+    Stings of his soul which dart
+
+    Through the barrier of flesh, till keen
+      She climbs from the calm and clear,
+    Through turbidity all between,
+      From the known to the unknown here,
+    Heaven's "Shall be," from Earth's "Has been"?
+
+    Then life is--to wake not sleep,
+      Rise and not rest, but press
+    From earth's level where blindly creep
+      Things perfected, more or less,
+    To the heaven's height, far and steep,
+
+    Where, amid what strifes and storms
+      May wait the adventurous quest,
+    Power is Love--transports, transforms
+      Who aspired from worst to best,
+    Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms'.
+
+    I have faith such end shall be:
+      From the first, Power was--I knew.
+    Life has made clear to me
+      That, strive but for closer view,
+    Love were as plain to see.
+
+    When see? When there dawns a day,
+      If not on the homely earth,
+    Then yonder, worlds away,
+      Where the strange and new have birth,
+    And Power comes full in play.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ART CRITICISM INSPIRED BY THE ENGLISH MUSICIAN, AVISON
+
+
+In the "Parleying" "With Charles Avison," Browning plunges into a
+discussion of the problem of the ephemeralness of musical expression.
+He hits upon Avison to have his colloquy with because a march by this
+musician came into his head, and the march came into his head for no
+better reason than that it was the month of March. Some interest
+would attach to Avison if it were only for the reason that he was
+organist of the Church of St. Nicholas in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In
+the earliest accounts St. Nicholas was styled simply, "The Church of
+Newcastle-upon-Tyne," but in 1785 it became a Cathedral. This was after
+Avison's death in 1770. All we know about the organ upon which Avison
+performed is found in a curious old history of Newcastle by Brand. "I
+have found," he writes, "no account of any organ in this church during
+the times of popery though it is very probable there has been one. About
+the year 1676, the corporation of Newcastle contributed L300 towards
+the erection of the present organ. They added a trumpet stop to it June
+22d, 1699."
+
+The year that Avison was born, 1710, it is recorded further that "the
+back front of this organ was finished which cost the said corporation
+L200 together with the expense of cleaning and repairing the whole
+instrument."
+
+June 26, 1749, the common council of Newcastle ordered a sweet stop to
+be added to the organ. This was after Avison became organist, his
+appointment to that post having been in 1736. So we know that he at
+least had a "trumpet stop" and a "sweet stop," with which to embellish
+his organ playing.
+
+The church is especially distinguished for the number and beauty of its
+chantries, and any who have a taste for examining armorial bearings will
+find two good-sized volumes devoted to a description of those in this
+church, by Richardson. Equal distinction attaches to the church owing to
+the beauty of its steeple, which has been called the pride and glory of
+the Northern Hemisphere. According to the enthusiastic Richardson it is
+justly esteemed on account of its peculiar excellency of design and
+delicacy of execution one of the finest specimens of architectural
+beauty in Europe. This steeple is as conspicuous a feature of Newcastle
+as the State House Dome is of Boston, situated, as it is, almost in the
+center of the town. Richardson gives the following minute description of
+this marvel. "It consists of a square tower forty feet in width, having
+great and small turrets with pinnacles at the angles and center of each
+front tower. From the four turrets at the angles spring two arches,
+which meet in an intersecting direction, and bear on their center an
+efficient perforated lanthorne, surmounted by a tall and beautiful
+spire: the angles of the lanthorne have pinnacles similar to those on
+the turrets, and the whole of the pinnacles, being twelve in number, and
+the spire, are ornamented with crockets and vanes."
+
+There is a stirring tradition in regard to this structure related by
+Bourne to the effect that in the time of the Civil Wars, when the Scots
+had besieged the town for several weeks, and were still as far as at
+first from taking it, the general sent a messenger to the mayor of the
+town, and demanded the keys, and the delivering up of the town, or he
+would immediately demolish the steeple of St. Nicholas. The mayor and
+aldermen upon hearing this, immediately ordered a certain number of the
+chiefest of the Scottish prisoners to be carried up to the top of the
+tower, the place below the lanthorne and there confined. After this,
+they returned the general an answer to this purpose,--that they would
+upon no terms deliver up the town, but would to the last moment defend
+it: that the steeple of St. Nicholas was indeed a beautiful and
+magnificent piece of architecture, and one of the great ornaments of the
+town; but yet should be blown into atoms before ransomed at such a rate:
+that, however, if it was to fall, it should not fall alone, that the
+same moment he destroyed the beautiful structure he should bathe his
+hands in the blood of his countrymen who were placed there on purpose
+either to preserve it from ruin or to die along with it. This message
+had the desired effect. The men were there kept prisoners during the
+whole time of the siege and not so much as one gun fired against it.
+
+Avison, however, had other claims to distinction, besides being organist
+of this ancient church. He was a composer, and was remembered by one of
+his airs, at least, into the nineteenth century, namely "Sound the Loud
+Timbrel." He appears not to be remembered, however, by his concertos, of
+which he published no less than five sets for a full band of stringed
+instruments, nor by his quartets and trios, and two sets of sonatas for
+the harpsichord and two violins. All we have to depend on now as to the
+quality of his music are the strictures of a certain Dr. Hayes, an
+Oxford Professor, who points out many errors against the rules of
+composition in the works of Avison, whence he infers that his skill in
+music is not very profound, and the somewhat more appreciative remarks
+of Hawkins who says "The music of Avison is light and elegant, but it
+wants originality, a necessary consequence of his too close attachment
+to the style of Geminiani which in a few particulars only he was able to
+imitate."
+
+Geminiani was a celebrated violin player and composer of the day, who
+had come to England from Italy. He is said to have held his pupil,
+Avison, in high esteem and to have paid him a visit at Newcastle in
+1760. Avison's early education was gained in Italy; and in addition to
+his musical attainments he was a scholar and a man of some literary
+acquirements. It is not surprising, considering all these educational
+advantages that he really made something of a stir upon the publication
+of his "small book," as Browning calls it, with, we may add, its "large
+title."
+
+  AN
+  ESSAY
+  ON
+  MUSICAL EXPRESSION
+  BY CHARLES AVISON
+  _Organist_ in NEWCASTLE
+  With ALTERATIONS and Large ADDITIONS
+
+  To which is added,
+  A LETTER to the AUTHOR
+  concerning the Music of the ANCIENTS
+  and some Passages in CLASSIC WRITERS
+  relating to the Subject.
+
+  LIKEWISE
+  Mr. AVISON'S REPLY to the Author of
+  _Remarks on the Essay on MUSICAL EXPRESSION_
+  In a Letter from Mr. _Avison_ to his Friend in _London_
+
+  THE THIRD EDITION
+  LONDON
+  Printed for LOCKYER DAVIS, in _Holborn_.
+  Printer to the ROYAL SOCIETY.
+  MDCCLXXV.
+
+The author of the "Remarks on the Essay on Musical Expression" was the
+aforementioned Dr. W. Hayes, and although the learned doctor's pamphlet
+seems to have died a natural death, some idea of its strictures may be
+gained from Avison's reply. The criticisms are rather too technical to
+be of interest to the general reader, but one is given here to show how
+gentlemanly a temper Mr. Avison possessed when he was under fire. His
+reply runs "His first critique, and, I think, his masterpiece, contains
+many circumstantial, but false and virulent remarks on the first allegro
+of these concertos, to which he supposes I would give the name of
+_fugue_. Be it just what he pleases to call it I shall not defend what
+the public is already in possession of, the public being the most proper
+judge. I shall only here observe, that our critic has wilfully, or
+ignorantly, confounded the terms _fugue_ and _imitation_, which latter
+is by no means subject to the same laws with the former.
+
+[Illustration: Handel]
+
+"Had I observed the method of answering the _accidental subjects_ in
+this _allegro_, as laid down by our critic in his remarks, they must
+have produced most shocking effects; which, though this mechanic in
+music, would, perhaps, have approved, yet better judges might, in
+reality, have imagined I had known no other art than that of the
+spruzzarino." There is a nice independence about this that would
+indicate Mr. Avison to be at least an aspirant in the right direction in
+musical composition. His criticism of Handel, too, at a time when the
+world was divided between enthusiasm for Handel and enthusiasm for
+Buononcini, shows a remarkably just and penetrating estimate of this
+great genius.
+
+"Mr. Handel is, in music, what his own Dryden was in poetry; nervous,
+exalted, and harmonious; but voluminous, and, consequently, not always
+correct. Their abilities equal to every thing; their execution
+frequently inferior. Born with genius capable of _soaring the boldest
+flights_; they have sometimes, to suit the vitiated taste of the age
+they lived in, _descended to the lowest_. Yet, as both their
+excellencies are infinitely more numerous than their deficiencies, so
+both their characters will devolve to latest posterity, not as models of
+perfection, yet glorious examples of those amazing powers that actuate
+the human soul."
+
+On the whole, Mr. Avison's "little book" on Musical Expression is
+eminently sensible as to the matter and very agreeable in style. He hits
+off well, for example, the difference between "musical expression" and
+imitation.
+
+"As dissonances and shocking sounds cannot be called Musical Expression,
+so neither do I think, can mere imitation of several other things be
+entitled to this name, which, however, among the generality of mankind
+hath often obtained it. Thus, the gradual rising or falling of the
+notes in a long succession is often used to denote ascent or descent;
+broken intervals, to denote an interrupted motion; a number of quick
+divisions, to describe swiftness or flying; sounds resembling laughter,
+to describe laughter; with a number of other contrivances of a parallel
+kind, which it is needless here to mention. Now all these I should chuse
+to style imitation, rather than expression; because it seems to me, that
+their tendency is rather to fix the hearer's attention on the similitude
+between the sounds and the things which they describe, and thereby to
+excite a reflex act of the understanding, than to affect the heart and
+raise the passions of the soul.
+
+"This distinction seems more worthy our notice at present, because some
+very eminent composers have attached themselves chiefly to the method
+here mentioned; and seem to think they have exhausted all the depths of
+expression, by a dextrous imitation of the meaning of a few particular
+words, that occur in the hymns or songs which they set to music. Thus,
+were one of these gentlemen to express the following words of _Milton_,
+
+                                  --Their songs
+    Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to heav'n:
+
+it is highly probable, that upon the word _divide_, he would run a
+_division_ of half a dozen bars; and on the subsequent part of the
+sentence, he would not think he had done the poet justice, or _risen_ to
+that _height_ of sublimity which he ought to express, till he had
+climbed up to the very top of his instrument, or at least as far as the
+human voice could follow him. And this would pass with a great part of
+mankind for musical expression; instead of that noble mixture of solemn
+airs and various harmony, which indeed elevates our thoughts, and gives
+that exquisite pleasure, which none but true lovers of harmony can
+feel." What Avison calls "musical expression," we call to-day "content."
+And thus Avison "tenders evidence that music in his day as much absorbed
+heart and soul then as Wagner's music now." It is not unlikely that this
+very passage may have started Browning off on his argumentative way
+concerning the question: how lasting and how fundamental are the powers
+of musical expression.
+
+The poet's memory goes back a hundred years only to reach "The bands-man
+Avison whose little book and large tune had led him the long way from
+to-day."
+
+
+    CHARLES AVISON
+
+        .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+    And to-day's music-manufacture,--Brahms,
+    Wagner, Dvorak, Liszt,--to where--trumpets, shawms,
+    Show yourselves joyful!--Handel reigns--supreme?
+    By no means! Buononcini's work is theme
+    For fit laudation of the impartial few:
+    (We stand in England, mind you!) Fashion too
+    Favors Geminiani--of those choice
+    Concertos: nor there wants a certain voice
+    Raised in thy favor likewise, famed Pepusch
+    Dear to our great-grandfathers! In a bush
+    Of Doctor's wig, they prized thee timing beats
+    While Greenway trilled "Alexis." Such were feats
+    Of music in thy day--dispute who list--
+    Avison, of Newcastle organist!
+
+    V
+
+    And here's your music all alive once more--
+    As once it was alive, at least: just so
+    The figured worthies of a waxwork-show
+    Attest--such people, years and years ago,
+    Looked thus when outside death had life below,
+    --Could say "We are now," not "We were of yore,"
+    --"Feel how our pulses leap!" and not "Explore--
+    Explain why quietude has settled o'er
+    Surface once all-awork!" Ay, such a "Suite"
+    Roused heart to rapture, such a "Fugue" would catch
+    Soul heavenwards up, when time was: why attach
+    Blame to exhausted faultlessness, no match
+    For fresh achievement? Feat once--ever feat!
+    How can completion grow still more complete?
+    Hear Avison! He tenders evidence
+    That music in his day as much absorbed
+    Heart and soul then as Wagner's music now.
+    Perfect from center to circumference--
+    Orbed to the full can be but fully orbed:
+    And yet--and yet--whence comes it that "O Thou"--
+    Sighed by the soul at eve to Hesperus--
+    Will not again take wing and fly away
+    (Since fatal Wagner fixed it fast for us)
+    In some unmodulated minor? Nay,
+    Even by Handel's help!
+
+Having stated the problem that confronts him, namely, the change of
+fashion in music, the poet boldly goes on to declare that there is no
+truer truth obtainable by man than comes of music, because it does give
+direct expression to the moods of the soul, yet there is a hitch that
+balks her of full triumph, namely the musical form in which these moods
+are expressed does not stay fixed. This statement is enriched by a
+digression upon the meaning of the soul.
+
+    VI
+
+                                    I state it thus:
+    There is no truer truth obtainable
+    By Man than comes of music. "Soul"--(accept
+    A word which vaguely names what no adept
+    In word-use fits and fixes so that still
+    Thing shall not slip word's fetter and remain
+    Innominate as first, yet, free again,
+    Is no less recognized the absolute
+    Fact underlying that same other fact
+    Concerning which no cavil can dispute
+    Our nomenclature when we call it "Mind"--
+    Something not Matter)--"Soul," who seeks shall find
+    Distinct beneath that something. You exact
+    An illustrative image? This may suit.
+
+    VII
+
+    We see a work: the worker works behind,
+    Invisible himself. Suppose his act
+    Be to o'erarch a gulf: he digs, transports,
+    Shapes and, through enginery--all sizes, sorts,
+    Lays stone by stone until a floor compact
+    Proves our bridged causeway. So works Mind--by stress
+    Of faculty, with loose facts, more or less,
+    Builds up our solid knowledge: all the same,
+    Underneath rolls what Mind may hide not tame,
+    An element which works beyond our guess,
+    Soul, the unsounded sea--whose lift of surge,
+    Spite of all superstructure, lets emerge,
+    In flower and foam, Feeling from out the deeps
+    Mind arrogates no mastery upon--
+    Distinct indisputably. Has there gone
+    To dig up, drag forth, render smooth from rough
+    Mind's flooring,--operosity enough?
+    Still the successive labor of each inch,
+    Who lists may learn: from the last turn of winch
+    That let the polished slab-stone find its place,
+    To the first prod of pick-axe at the base
+    Of the unquarried mountain,--what was all
+    Mind's varied process except natural,
+    Nay, easy, even, to descry, describe,
+    After our fashion? "So worked Mind: its tribe
+    Of senses ministrant above, below,
+    Far, near, or now or haply long ago
+    Brought to pass knowledge." But Soul's sea,--drawn whence,
+    Fed how, forced whither,--by what evidence
+    Of ebb and flow, that's felt beneath the tread,
+    Soul has its course 'neath Mind's work over-head,--
+    Who tells of, tracks to source the founts of Soul?
+    Yet wherefore heaving sway and restless roll
+    This side and that, except to emulate
+    Stability above? To match and mate
+    Feeling with knowledge,--make as manifest
+    Soul's work as Mind's work, turbulence as rest,
+    Hates, loves, joys, woes, hopes, fears, that rise and sink
+    Ceaselessly, passion's transient flit and wink,
+    A ripple's tinting or a spume-sheet's spread
+    Whitening the wave,--to strike all this life dead,
+    Run mercury into a mould like lead,
+    And henceforth have the plain result to show--
+    How we Feel, hard and fast as what we Know--
+    This were the prize and is the puzzle!--which
+    Music essays to solve: and here's the hitch
+    That balks her of full triumph else to boast.
+
+Then follows his explanation of the "hitch," which necessitates a
+comparison with the other arts. His contention is that art adds nothing
+to the _knowledge_ of the mind. It simply moulds into a fixed form
+elements already known which before lay loose and dissociated, it
+therefore does not really create. But there is one realm, that of
+feeling, to which the arts never succeed in giving permanent form
+though all try to do it. What is it they succeed in getting? The poet
+does not make the point very clear, but he seems to be groping after the
+idea that the arts present only the _phenomena_ of feeling or the image
+of feeling instead of the _reality_. Like all people who are
+appreciative of music, he realizes that music comes nearer to expressing
+the spiritual reality of feeling than the other arts, and yet music of
+all the arts is the least permanent in its appeal.
+
+    VIII
+
+    All Arts endeavor this, and she the most
+    Attains thereto, yet fails of touching: why?
+    Does Mind get Knowledge from Art's ministry?
+    What's known once is known ever: Arts arrange,
+    Dissociate, re-distribute, interchange
+    Part with part, lengthen, broaden, high or deep
+    Construct their bravest,--still such pains produce
+    Change, not creation: simply what lay loose
+    At first lies firmly after, what design
+    Was faintly traced in hesitating line
+    Once on a time, grows firmly resolute
+    Henceforth and evermore. Now, could we shoot
+    Liquidity into a mould,--some way
+    Arrest Soul's evanescent moods, and keep
+    Unalterably still the forms that leap
+    To life for once by help of Art!--which yearns
+    To save its capture: Poetry discerns,
+    Painting is 'ware of passion's rise and fall,
+    Bursting, subsidence, intermixture--all
+    A-seethe within the gulf. Each Art a-strain
+    Would stay the apparition,--nor in vain:
+    The Poet's word-mesh, Painter's sure and swift
+    Color-and-line-throw--proud the prize they lift!
+    Thus felt Man and thus looked Man,--passions caught
+    I' the midway swim of sea,--not much, if aught,
+    Of nether-brooding loves, hates, hopes and fears,
+    Enwombed past Art's disclosure. Fleet the years,
+    And still the Poet's page holds Helena
+    At gaze from topmost Troy--"But where are they,
+    My brothers, in the armament I name
+    Hero by hero? Can it be that shame
+    For their lost sister holds them from the war?"
+    --Knowing not they already slept afar
+    Each of them in his own dear native land.
+    Still on the Painter's fresco, from the hand
+    Of God takes Eve the life-spark whereunto
+    She trembles up from nothingness. Outdo
+    Both of them, Music! Dredging deeper yet,
+    Drag into day,--by sound, thy master-net,--
+    The abysmal bottom-growth, ambiguous thing
+    Unbroken of a branch, palpitating
+    With limbs' play and life's semblance! There it lies,
+    Marvel and mystery, of mysteries
+    And marvels, most to love and laud thee for!
+    Save it from chance and change we most abhor!
+    Give momentary feeling permanence,
+    So that thy capture hold, a century hence,
+    Truth's very heart of truth as, safe to-day,
+    The Painter's Eve, the Poet's Helena,
+    Still rapturously bend, afar still throw
+    The wistful gaze! Thanks, Homer, Angelo!
+    Could Music rescue thus from Soul's profound,
+    Give feeling immortality by sound,
+    Then were she queenliest of Arts! Alas--
+    As well expect the rainbow not to pass!
+    "Praise 'Radaminta'--love attains therein
+    To perfect utterance! Pity--what shall win
+    Thy secret like 'Rinaldo'?"--so men said:
+    Once all was perfume--now, the flower is dead--
+    They spied tints, sparks have left the spar! Love, hate,
+    Joy, fear, survive,--alike importunate
+    As ever to go walk the world again,
+    Nor ghost-like pant for outlet all in vain
+    Till Music loose them, fit each filmily
+    With form enough to know and name it by
+    For any recognizer sure of ken
+    And sharp of ear, no grosser denizen
+    Of earth than needs be. Nor to such appeal
+    Is Music long obdurate: off they steal--
+    How gently, dawn-doomed phantoms! back come they
+    Full-blooded with new crimson of broad day--
+    Passion made palpable once more. Ye look
+    Your last on Handel? Gaze your first on Gluck!
+    Why wistful search, O waning ones, the chart
+    Of stars for you while Haydn, while Mozart
+    Occupies heaven? These also, fanned to fire,
+    Flamboyant wholly,--so perfections tire,--
+    Whiten to wanness, till ... let others note
+    The ever-new invasion!
+
+The poet makes no attempt to give any reason why music should be so
+ephemeral in its appeal. He merely refers to the development of harmony
+and modulation, nor does it seem to enter his head that there can be any
+question about the appeal being ephemeral. He imagines the possibility
+of resuscitating dead and gone music with modern harmonies and novel
+modulations, but gives that up as an irreverent innovation. His next
+mood is a historical one; dead and gone music may have something for us
+in a historical sense, that is, if we bring our life to kindle theirs,
+we may sympathetically enter into the life of the time.
+
+    IX
+
+                                      I devote
+    Rather my modicum of parts to use
+    What power may yet avail to re-infuse
+    (In fancy, please you!) sleep that looks like death
+    With momentary liveliness, lend breath
+    To make the torpor half inhale. O Relfe,
+    An all-unworthy pupil, from the shelf
+    Of thy laboratory, dares unstop
+    Bottle, ope box, extract thence pinch and drop
+    Of dusts and dews a many thou didst shrine
+    Each in its right receptacle, assign
+    To each its proper office, letter large
+    Label and label, then with solemn charge,
+    Reviewing learnedly the list complete
+    Of chemical reactives, from thy feet
+    Push down the same to me, attent below,
+    Power in abundance: armed wherewith I go
+    To play the enlivener. Bring good antique stuff!
+    Was it alight once? Still lives spark enough
+    For breath to quicken, run the smouldering ash
+    Red right-through. What, "stone-dead" were fools so rash
+    As style my Avison, because he lacked
+    Modern appliance, spread out phrase unracked
+    By modulations fit to make each hair
+    Stiffen upon his wig? See there--and there!
+    I sprinkle my reactives, pitch broadcast
+    Discords and resolutions, turn aghast
+    Melody's easy-going, jostle law
+    With license, modulate (no Bach in awe),
+    Change enharmonically (Hudl to thank),
+    And lo, up-start the flamelets,--what was blank
+    Turns scarlet, purple, crimson! Straightway scanned
+    By eyes that like new lustre--Love once more
+    Yearns through the Largo, Hatred as before
+    Rages in the Rubato: e'en thy March,
+    My Avison, which, sooth to say--(ne'er arch
+    Eyebrows in anger!)--timed, in Georgian years
+    The step precise of British Grenadiers
+    To such a nicety,--if score I crowd,
+    If rhythm I break, if beats I vary,--tap
+    At bar's off-starting turns true thunder-clap,
+    Ever the pace augmented till--what's here?
+    Titanic striding toward Olympus!
+
+    X
+
+                                      Fear
+    No such irreverent innovation! Still
+    Glide on, go rolling, water-like, at will--
+    Nay, were thy melody in monotone,
+    The due three-parts dispensed with!
+
+    XI
+
+                                      This alone
+    Comes of my tiresome talking: Music's throne
+    Seats somebody whom somebody unseats,
+    And whom in turn--by who knows what new feats
+    Of strength,--shall somebody as sure push down,
+    Consign him dispossessed of sceptre, crown,
+    And orb imperial--whereto?--Never dream
+    That what once lived shall ever die! They seem
+    Dead--do they? lapsed things lost in limbo? Bring
+    Our life to kindle theirs, and straight each king
+    Starts, you shall see, stands up, from head to foot
+    No inch that is not Purcell! Wherefore? (Suit
+    Measure to subject, first--no marching on
+    Yet in thy bold C Major, Avison,
+    As suited step a minute since: no: wait--
+    Into the minor key first modulate--
+    Gently with A, now--in the Lesser Third!)
+
+The really serious conclusion of the poem amounts to a doctrine of
+relativity in art and not only in art but in ethics and religion. It is
+a statement in poetry of the prevalent thought of the nineteenth
+century, of which the most widely known exponent was Herbert Spencer.
+The form in which every truth manifests itself is partial and therefore
+will pass, but the underlying truth, the absolute which unfolds itself
+in form after form is eternal. Every manifestation in form, according to
+Browning, however, has also its infinite value in relation to the truth
+which is preserved through it.
+
+    XII
+
+    Of all the lamentable debts incurred
+    By Man through buying knowledge, this were worst:
+    That he should find his last gain prove his first
+    Was futile--merely nescience absolute,
+    Not knowledge in the bud which holds a fruit
+    Haply undreamed of in the soul's Spring-tide,
+    Pursed in the petals Summer opens wide,
+    And Autumn, withering, rounds to perfect ripe,--
+    Not this,--but ignorance, a blur to wipe
+    From human records, late it graced so much.
+    "Truth--this attainment? Ah, but such and such
+    Beliefs of yore seemed inexpugnable.
+
+    "When we attained them! E'en as they, so will
+    This their successor have the due morn, noon,
+    Evening and night--just as an old-world tune
+    Wears out and drops away, until who hears
+    Smilingly questions--'This it was brought tears
+    Once to all eyes,--this roused heart's rapture once?'
+    So will it be with truth that, for the nonce,
+    Styles itself truth perennial: 'ware its wile!
+    Knowledge turns nescience,--foremost on the file,
+    Simply proves first of our delusions."
+
+    XIII
+
+                                      Now--
+    Blare it forth, bold C Major! Lift thy brow,
+    Man, the immortal, that wast never fooled
+    With gifts no gifts at all, nor ridiculed--
+    Man knowing--he who nothing knew! As Hope,
+    Fear, Joy, and Grief,--though ampler stretch and scope
+    They seek and find in novel rhythm, fresh phrase,--
+    Were equally existent in far days
+    Of Music's dim beginning--even so,
+    Truth was at full within thee long ago,
+    Alive as now it takes what latest shape
+    May startle thee by strangeness. Truths escape
+    Time's insufficient garniture; they fade,
+    They fall--those sheathings now grown sere, whose aid
+    Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine
+    And free through March frost: May dews crystalline
+    Nourish truth merely,--does June boast the fruit
+    As--not new vesture merely but, to boot,
+    Novel creation? Soon shall fade and fall
+    Myth after myth--the husk-like lies I call
+    New truth's corolla-safeguard: Autumn comes,
+    So much the better!
+
+As to the questions why music does not give feeling immortality through
+sound, and why it should be so ephemeral in its appeal, there are
+various things to be said. It is just possible that it may soon come to
+be recognized that the psychic growth of humanity is more perfectly
+reflected in music than any where else. Ephemeralness may be predicated
+of culture-music more certainly than of folk-music, why? Because
+culture-music often has occupied itself more with the technique than
+with the content, while folk-music, being the spontaneous expression of
+feeling must have content. Folk-music, it is true, is simple, but if it
+be genuine in its feeling I doubt whether it ever loses its power to
+move. Therefore, in folk-music is possibly made permanent simple states
+of feeling. Now in culture-music, the development has constantly been
+in the direction of the expression of the ultimate spiritual reality of
+emotions. Music is now actually trying to accomplish what Browning
+demands of it:
+
+                            "Dredging deeper yet,
+    Drag into day,--by sound, thy master-net,--
+    The abysmal bottom-growth, ambiguous thing
+    Unbroken of a branch, palpitating
+    With limbs' play and life's semblance! There it lies,
+    Marvel and mystery, of mysteries
+    And marvels, most to love and laud thee for!
+    Save it from chance and change we most abhor."
+
+This is true no matter what the emotion may be. Hate may have its
+"eidolon" as well as love. Above all arts, music has the power of
+raising evil into a region of the artistically beautiful. Doubt,
+despair, passion, become blossoms plucked by the hand of God when
+transmuted in the alembic of the brain of genius--which is not saying
+that he need experience any of these passions himself. In fact, it is
+his power of perceiving the eidolon of beauty in modes of passion or
+emotion not his own that makes him the great genius.
+
+It is doubtless true that whenever in culture-music there has really
+been content aroused by feeling, no matter what the stage of technique
+reached, _that_ music retains its power to move. It is also highly
+probably that in the earlier objective phases of music, even the
+contemporary audiences were not moved in the sense that we should be
+moved to-day. The audiences were objective also and their enthusiasm may
+have been aroused by merely the imitative aspects of music as Avison
+called them. It is certainly a fact that content and form are more
+closely linked in music than in any other art. Suppose, however, we
+imagine the development of melody, counterpoint, harmony, modulation,
+etc., to be symbolized by a series of concrete materials like clay
+bricks, silver bricks, gold bricks, diamond bricks; a beautiful thought
+might take as exquisite a form in bricks of clay as it would in diamond
+bricks, or diamond bricks might be flung together without any informing
+thought so that they would attract only the thoughtless by their
+glitter. But it also follows that, with the increase in the kinds of
+bricks, there is an increase in the possibilities for subtleties in
+psychic expression, therefore music to-day is coming nearer and nearer
+to the spiritual reality of feeling. It requires the awakened soul that
+Maeterlinck talks about, that is, the soul alive to the spiritual
+essences of things to recognize this new realm which composers are
+bringing to us in music.
+
+There are always, at least three kinds of appreciators of music, those
+who can see beauty only in the masters of the past, those who can see
+beauty only in the last new composer, and those who ecstatically welcome
+beauty past, present and to come. These last are not only psychically
+developed themselves, but they are able to retain delight in simpler
+modes of feeling. They may be raised to a seventh heaven of delight by a
+Bach fugue played on a clavichord by Mr. Dolmetsch, feeling as if angels
+were ministering unto them, or to a still higher heaven of delight by a
+Tschaikowsky symphony or a string quartet of Grieg, feeling that here
+the seraphim continually do cry, or they may enter into the very
+presence of the most High through some subtly exquisite and psychic song
+of an American composer, for some of the younger American composers are
+indeed approaching "Truth's very heart of truth," in their music.
+
+On the whole, one gets rather the impression that the poet has here
+tackled a problem upon which he did not have great insight. He passes
+from one mood to another, none of which seem especially satisfactory to
+himself, and concludes with one of the half-truths of nineteenth-century
+thought. It is true as far as it goes that forms evolve, and it is a
+good truth to oppose to the martinets of settled standards in poetry,
+music and painting; it is also true that the form is a partial
+expression of a whole truth, but there is the further truth that, let a
+work of art be really a work of genius, and the form as well as the
+content touches the infinite; that is, we have as Browning says in a
+poem already quoted, "Bernard de Mandeville," the very sun in little, or
+as he makes Abt Vogler say of his music, the broken arc which goes to
+the formation of the perfect round, or to quote still another poem of
+Browning's, "Cleon," the perfect rhomb or trapezoid that has its own
+place in a mosaic pavement.
+
+[Illustration: Avison's March]
+
+The poem closes in a rolicking frame of mind, which is not remarkably
+consistent with the preceding thought, except that the poet seems
+determined to get all he can out of the music of the past by enlivening
+it with his own jolly mood. To this end he sets a patriotic poem to the
+tune of Avison's march, in honor of our old friend, Pym. It is a clever
+_tour de force_ for the words are made to match exactly in rhythm and
+quantity the notes of the march. Truth to say, the essential goodness of
+the tune comes out by means of these enlivening words.
+
+    XIV
+
+                            Therefore--bang the drums,
+    Blow the trumpets, Avison! March-motive? that's
+    Truth which endures resetting. Sharps and flats,
+    Lavish at need, shall dance athwart thy score
+    When ophicleide and bombardon's uproar
+    Mate the approaching trample, even now
+    Big in the distance--or my ears deceive--
+    Of federated England, fitly weave
+    March-music for the Future!
+
+    XV
+
+                            Or suppose
+    Back, and not forward, transformation goes?
+    Once more some sable-stoled procession--say,
+    From Little-ease to Tyburn--wends its way,
+    Out of the dungeon to the gallows-tree
+    Where heading, hacking, hanging is to be
+    Of half-a-dozen recusants--this day
+    Three hundred years ago! How duly drones
+    Elizabethan plain-song--dim antique
+    Grown clarion-clear the while I humbly wreak
+    A classic vengeance on thy March! It moans--
+    Larges and Longs and Breves displacing quite
+    Crotchet-and-quaver pertness--brushing bars
+    Aside and filling vacant sky with stars
+    Hidden till now that day returns to night.
+
+    XVI
+
+    Nor night nor day: one purpose move us both,
+    Be thy mood mine! As thou wast minded, Man's
+    The cause our music champions: I were loth
+    To think we cheered our troop to Preston Pans
+    Ignobly: back to times of England's best!
+    Parliament stands for privilege--life and limb
+    Guards Hollis, Haselrig, Strode, Hampden, Pym,
+    The famous Five. There's rumor of arrest.
+    Bring up the Train Bands, Southwark! They protest:
+    Shall we not all join chorus? Hark the hymn,
+    --Rough, rude, robustious--homely heart a-throb,
+    Harsh voises a-hallo, as beseems the mob!
+    How good is noise! what's silence but despair
+    Of making sound match gladness never there?
+    Give me some great glad "subject," glorious Bach,
+    Where cannon-roar not organ-peal we lack!
+    Join in, give voice robustious rude and rough,--
+    Avison helps--so heart lend noise enough!
+
+    Fife, trump, drum, sound! and singers then,
+    Marching, say "Pym, the man of men!"
+    Up, head's, your proudest--out, throats, your loudest--
+    "Somerset's Pym!"
+
+    Strafford from the block, Eliot from the den,
+    Foes, friends, shout "Pym, our citizen!"
+    Wail, the foes he quelled,--hail, the friends he held,
+    "Tavistock's Pym!"
+
+    Hearts prompt heads, hands that ply the pen
+    Teach babes unborn the where and when
+    --Tyrants, he braved them,--
+    Patriots, he saved them--
+    "Westminster's Pym."
+
+Another English musician, Arthur Chappell, was the inspiration of a
+graceful little sonnet written by the poet in an album which was
+presented to Mr. Chappell in recognition of his popular concerts in
+London. Browning was a constant attendant at these. It gives a true
+glimpse of the poet in a highly appreciative mood:
+
+
+    THE FOUNDER OF THE FEAST
+
+    1884
+
+    "Enter my palace," if a prince should say--
+      "Feast with the Painters! See, in bounteous row,
+      They range from Titian up to Angelo!"
+    Could we be silent at the rich survey?
+    A host so kindly, in as great a way
+      Invites to banquet, substitutes for show
+      Sound that's diviner still, and bids us know
+    Bach like Beethoven; are we thankless, pray?
+
+    Thanks, then, to Arthur Chappell,--thanks to him
+      Whose every guest henceforth not idly vaunts
+      "Sense has received the utmost Nature grants,
+    My cup was filled with rapture to the brim,
+      When, night by night,--ah, memory, how it haunts!--
+      Music was poured by perfect ministrants,
+    By Halle, Schumann, Piatti, Joachim."
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber Notes
+
+Typographical inconsistencies have been changed and are listed below.
+
+Archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation are preserved.
+
+Author's punctuation style is preserved, except where noted.
+
+Some illustrations moved to one page later.
+
+Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Passages in bold indicated by =equal signs=.
+
+Emphasized words within italics indicated by plus +emphasis+.
+
+
+Transcriber Changes
+
+The following changes were made to the original text:
+
+  Page 10: Removed extra quote after Keats (What porridge had John
+           =Keats?=)
+
+  Page 21: Was 'blurrs' (Stray-leaves, fragments, =blurs= and blottings)
+
+  Page 49: Paragraph continued, no quote needed (=Tibullus= gives
+           Virgil equal credit for having in his writings touched
+           with telling truth)
+
+  Page 53: Was 'Shakesspeare' (Jonson wrote for the First Folio edition
+           of =Shakespeare= printed in 1623)
+
+  Page 53: Was 'B. I.' (=B. J.=)
+
+  Page 53: Added single quotes (Shakespeare's talk in "At the
+           ='Mermaid'=" grows out of the supposition)
+
+  Page 69: Was 'Shakepeare's' (He thinks the opening Sonnets are to the
+           Earl of Southampton, known to be =Shakespeare's= patron)
+
+  Page 81: Added comma after Strafford (not Pym, the leader of the
+           people, but =Strafford,= the supporter of the King.)
+
+  Page 85: Added end quote (some half-dozen years of immunity to the
+           'fretted tenement' of Strafford's 'fiery =soul'=)
+
+  Page 91: Capitalized King (The =King=, upon his visit to Scotland,
+           had been shocked)
+
+  Page 100: Was 'Finnees' (Hampden, Hollis, the younger Vane, Rudyard,
+            =Fiennes= and many of the Presbyterian Party)
+
+  Page 136: Removed extra start quote ("Be my friend =Of= friends!"--My
+            King! I would have....)
+
+  Page 137: Was 'brillance' (The else imperial =brilliance= of your mind)
+
+  Page 137: Was 'you way' (If Pym is busy,--=you may= write of Pym.)
+
+  Page 140: Capitalized King (the =King=, therefore, summoned it to meet
+            on the third of November.)
+
+  Page 142: Matching the original: leaving it hyphenated (the greatest
+            in England would have stood =dis-covered=.')
+
+  Page 172: Was 'Partiot' (The =Patriot= Pym, or the Apostate Strafford!)
+
+  Page 174: Was 'perfers' (The King =prefers= to leave the door ajar)
+
+  Page 178: Was 'her's' (I am =hers= now, and I will die.)
+
+  Page 193: Was 'Bethrothal' (Till death us do join past parting--that
+            sounds like =Betrothal= indeed!)
+
+  Page 200: Was 'canonade' (Such a castle seldom crumbles by sheer
+            stress of =cannonade=: 'Tis when foes are foiled and
+            fighting's finished that vile rains invade)
+
+  Page 203: Inserted stanza (=Down= I sat to cards, one evening)
+
+  Page 203: Added starting quote (="When= he found his voice, he
+            stammered 'That expression once again!')
+
+  Page 204: Added starting quote (='End= it! no time like the present!)
+
+  Page 224: Changed comma to period (the morning's lessons conned with
+            the =tutor.= There, too, it was that he impressed on the lad
+            those maxims)
+
+  Page 236: Added end quote (Why, he makes sure of her--"do you say,
+            =yes"=-- "She'll not say, no,"--what comes it to beside?)
+
+  Page 265: Added stanza ("'=I've= been about those laces we need for
+            ... never mind!)
+
+  Page 266: Keeping original spelling (With =dreriment= about, within
+            may life be found)
+
+  Page 267: Added stanza ("'=Wicked= dear Husband, first despair and
+            then rejoice!)
+
+  Page 276: Was 'checks' (The dryness of "Aristotle's =cheeks=" is as
+            usual so enlivened by Browning that the fate of Halbert and
+            Hob grows)
+
+  Page 289: Added starting quote (="You= wrong your poor disciple.)
+
+  Page 290: Removed end quote (Wish I could take you; but fame travels
+            =fast=)
+
+  Page 291: Was 'aud' (Aunt =and= niece, you and me.)
+
+  Page 294: Was 'oustide' (Such =outside=! Now,--confound me for a prig!)
+
+  Page 299: Changed singe quote to double (="Not= you! But I see.)
+
+  Page 315: Was 'Descretion' (To live and die together--for a month,
+            =Discretion= can award no more!)
+
+  Page 329: Removed starting quote ("He may believe; and yet, and yet
+            =How= can he?" All eyes turn with interest.)
+
+  Page 344: Left in ending quote with unknown start (High Church, and
+            the Evangelicals, or Low =Church."=)
+
+  Page 370: Changed period to comma (Judgment drops her damning
+            =plummet,= Pronouncing such a fatal space)
+
+  Page 421: Removed starting quote (=About= the year 1676, the
+            corporation of Newcastle contributed)
+
+  Page 429: Added period (whose little book and large tune had led him
+            the long way from =to-day.=")
+
+  Page 437: Was 'irreverant' (gives that up as an =irreverent=
+            innovation.)
+
+  Page 440: Added beginning quote (="When= we attained them!)
+
+  Page 445: Added comma (we have as Browning says in a poem already
+            =quoted,= "Bernard de Mandeville,")
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Browning's England, by Helen Archibald Clarke
+
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