XII. , THE BOOK AND THE RING (the conclusion of the whole matter)

XII. , THE BOOK AND THE RING (the conclusion of the whole matter)

BOOK II., HALF ROME.--A great crowd had assembled at the church of St. Lorenzo-in-Lucina, hard by the Corso, to view the bodies of the murdered Comparini exposed to view before the altar. It was at this very church where Pompilia was baptised, brought by her pretended mother, who had purchased her to palm off on her husband in his dotage, and so cheat the heirs. To this very altar-step whereon the bodies lie did Violante, twelve years after, bring Pompilia to marry the Count clandestinely. It is four years since the marriage, and from dawn till dusk the multitude has crowded into the church, coming and going, pushing their way, and taking their turn to see the victims and talk over the tragedy. We have the story told by a partisan of the husband, who does not think he was so prodigiously to blame, he says. The Comparini (the wife's reputed parents) were of the modest middle class, born in that quarter of Rome, and citizens of good repute, childless and wealthy; possessed of house and land in Rome, and a suburban villa. But Pietro craved an heir, and seventeen years ago Violante announced that, spite of her age, an heir would soon be forthcoming. By a trick, Pompilia, the infant, was produced at the appropriate time--whereat Pietro rejoiced, poor fool! As Violante had caught one fish, she must try again, and find a husband for the girl. Count Guido was head of an old noble house, but not over-rich. He had come up to Rome to better his fortune, was friend and follower of a certain cardinal, and had a brother a priest, Paolo. Looking out for some petty post or other, he waited thirty years, till, as he was growing grey, he thought it time to go and be wise at home. At this moment Violante threw her bait, Pompilia. She thought it a great catch to find a noble husband for the child and the shelter of a palace for herself in her old age; and so old Pietro's daughter became Guido Franceschini's lady-wife. Pietro was not consulted till all was over, when he pretended to be very indignant. All went to Arezzo to enjoy the luxury of lord-and-lady-ship. They were soon undeceived. They discovered that they had exchanged their comfortable bourgeois home for a sepulchral old mansion, the street's disgrace, to pick garbage from a pewter plate and drink vinegar from a common mug. They sighed for their old home, their daily feast of good food and their festivals of better. Robbed, starved and frozen, they declared they would have justice. Guido's old lady-mother, Beatrice, was a dragon; Guido's brother, Girolamo, a bad licentious man. Four months of this purgatory was sufficient. Pietro made his complaints all over the town; Violante exposed the penurious housekeeping to every willing ear. Bidding Arezzo rot, they departed for home. Once more at Rome, Violante thought of availing herself of the Jubilee and making a full confession and restitution. She told the truth about Pompilia: how she had been purchased by her several months before birth from a disreputable laundry-woman, partly to please her husband, partly to defraud the rightful heirs. Was this due to contrition or revenge? Prove Pompilia not their child, there was no dowry to pay according to agreement. Guido would then be the biter bit. Guido took the view that all this was done to cheat him. He protested, and being left alone with his wife, revenged his wrongs on her. The case came before the Roman courts. Guido being absent, the Abate, his clerical brother, had to take his part. The courts refused to intervene. Appeals and counter-appeals followed. Pompilia's shame and her parents' disgrace were published to the world; and so it went on. Pompilia, left alone with her old husband, looked outside for life; and lo! Caponsacchi appeared--a priest, Apollos turned Apollo. He threw comfits to her at the theatre, at carnival time--no great harm--but he was, moreover, always hanging about the street where Guido's palace was. Pompilia observed him from her window. People began to talk, the husband to open his eyes. Things went on, till one April morning Guido awoke to find his wife flown. He had been drugged, he said. Caponsacchi, the handsome young priest, had brought a carriage for her: they had gone by the Roman road eight hours since. Guido started in pursuit, coming up with the fugitives just as they were in sight of Rome. Caponsacchi met the husband unabashed: "I interposed to save your wife from death, yourself from shame." Fingering his sword, he offered fight, or to stand on his defence at Rome. The police came up and secured the priest, and they went upstairs to arouse the wife. She overwhelmed her husband with invective, turning to her side even the very sbirri. "Take us to Rome," both prisoners demanded. Love letters and verses were produced, and husband and wife fought out their case before the lawyers. The accused declared that the letters were not written by them. The court found much to blame, but little to punish. The priest was sentenced to three years' exile at Civita Vecchia; the wife must go into a convent for a while. Guido was not satisfied: he claimed a divorce. Pompilia did the same. On account of her health a little liberty was allowed her, and she left the convent to reside with her pretended parents at their villa. Here she gave birth to a child. Guido was furious when he heard all this, and went to Rome to the villa with four confederates, pretending to be Caponsacchi. The door was opened, when he rushed in with his braves and killed them all; and so the two Comparini are lying in the church, and Pompilia is in the hospital dying of her wounds.

NOTES.--Line 84, Guido Reni, a painter of the Bolognese school, 1574-1642. The Crucifixion referred to is above the high altar. l. 126, "Molino's doctrine": a form of Quietism. l. 300, "tacked to the Church's tail": it was the custom in this age for gentlemen who desired the protection of the Church for their own purposes to take one of the minor orders, without any intention of going into the diaconate or priesthood. Count Guido was thus, in a sense, under the Church's protection. l. 490, "novercal type": pertaining to a step-mother; cater-cousin, or quater-cousin: a cousin within the first four degrees of kindred; sib: a blood relation (A.-S., sibb, alliance). l. 537, Papal Jubilee: this is observed every twenty-fifth year. ll. 892-3, "ears plugged," etc.: a good description of the effects of a strong dose of opium. l. 907, osteria: Italian name of an inn. l. 1044, Sbirri: Papal police. l. 1159, "Apage": away! begone! l. 1198, "Convertites": nuns who devote themselves to the rescue of fallen women. l. 1221, "as Ovid a like sufferer": Ovid was banished by Augustus to Tomus, on the Euxine Sea, either for some amour or imprudence; Pontus: a kingdom of Asia Minor, bounded on the north by the Euxine Sea. l. 1244, "Pontifex Maximus whipped vestals once": the high priest severely scourged the vestal virgins if they let the sacred fire go out. l. 1250, "Caponsacchi": in English "Head i' the Sack": this family is mentioned in Dante's Paradise, xvi.; in his time they lived at Florence, in the Mercato Vecchio, having removed from Fiesole; Fiesole, an ancient town near Florence. l. 1270, "Canidian hate": Canidia was a Neapolitan, beloved by Horace. When she deserted him he held her up to contempt as an old sorceress (Horace, Epodes, v. and xvii.). See Notes to "White Witchcraft." l. 1342, "domus pro carcere": a house for a prison. l. 1375, "hoard i' the heart o' the toad": Fenton says, "There is to be found in the heads of old and great toads a stone they call borax or stelon, which, being used as rings, give forewarning against venom." See also Brewer's Phrase and Fable, art. "Toads." l. 1487, "male-Grissel": Griselda was the patient lady in Chaucer's Clerk of Oxenford's Tale. She came forth victoriously from the repeated trials of her maternal and conjugal affections. l. 1495, "Rolando-stroke": Roland, the hero of Roncesvalles. His trusty sword was called Durandal:--

"Nor plated shield, nor tempered casque defends, When Durindana's trenchant edge descends." (ORLANDO FURIOSO, bk. x.)

l. 1496, clavicle: the collar-bone.

BOOK III., THE OTHER HALF ROME.--Little Pompilia lies dying in the hospital, stabbed through and through again. She had prayed that she might live long enough for confession and absolution. "Never before successful in a prayer," this had been answered. She has overplus of life to speak and right herself from first to last, to pardon her husband and make arrangements for the welfare of her child. The lawyers came and took her depositions; the priests, also, to shrive her soul. The other half Rome make excuses for Pietro and Violante. Their lives wanted completion in a child: Violante's fault was not an unnatural one. Her husband was acquiescent--natural too. Violante's confession was but right and proper; and if she wronged an heir, who was he? As for the wooing, it was all done by the Count: a wife was necessary alike for himself, his mother, and his palace; and so he dazzled the child Pompilia with a vision of greatness. The crowd said she might become a lady, but the bargain was but a poor one at best. Pompilia, aged thirteen years and five months, was secretly married to the Count one dim December day. Pietro was told when it was too late, and had to surrender all his property in favour of Guido, who was to support his wife's belongings. Four months' insolence and penury they had to endure at Arezzo, and then Pietro went back to beg help from his Roman friends, who laughed and said things had turned out just as they expected. Violante went to God, told her sin, and reaped the Jubilee's benefit. Restitution, however, said the Church, must be made: the sin must be published and amends forthcoming. Pompilia's husband must be told that his contract was null and void. Pietro's heart leaped for joy at the prospect of recovering all his surrendered estate. Guido naturally pronounced the whole tale "one long lie"--lying for robbery and revenge--and threw himself on the courts. The courts held the child to be a changeling. Pietro's renunciation they made null: he was no party to the cheat; but Guido is to retain the dowry! More proceedings naturally followed this strange decision. Then the Count forms the diabolical plan to drive his girl-wife, by his cruelty, into the sin which will enable him to be rid of her without parting with her money. Guido concocts a pencilled letter to his brother the Abate, which he makes his wife trace over with ink, he guiding her hand because she could not write, wherein she states--not knowing a word she pens--that the Comparini advised her, before they left Arezzo, to find a paramour, carry off what spoil she could, and then burn the house down. The Abate took care to scatter this information all over Rome. At Arezzo Guido set himself to make his wife's life there intolerable, at the same time setting a trap into which she could not avoid falling. The Other Half Rome thinks it probable that the priest Caponsacchi pitied and loved Pompilia, who wept and looked out of window all day long; for there were passionate letters (prayers, rather), addressed to him by the suffering wife; though it is true she avers she never wrote a letter in her life, still she abjured him, in the name of God, to help her to escape to Rome. If not love, this was love's simulation, and calculated to deceive the Canon. Pompilia, however, protested that she had never even learned to write or read; nor had she ever spoken to the priest till the evening when she implored him to assist her to escape. On the other hand, the priest admitted having received the letters purporting to come from Pompilia. He did write to her: as she could not read she burned the letters--never bade him come to her, yet accepted him when Heaven seemed to send him. When Guido's cruelty first sprang on Pompilia, she had appealed to the secular Governor and the Archbishop; but both were friends of Guido, and both refused to interfere between husband and wife, so she went to confess to a simple friar, told him how suicide had tempted her, begged him to write to her pretended parents to come and save her. He promised; but by nightfall was more discreet, and withdrew from the dangerous business. So the woman, thus hard-beset, looked out to see if God would help, and saw Caponsacchi; called him to her--she at her window, he in the street below--and at nightfall fled with him for Rome. The world sees nothing but the simple fact of the flight. The implicated persons protest that the course they took, though strange, was justified for life and honour's sake. Absorbed in the sense of the blessedness of the flight, she had said little to her preserver through the long night. As daybreak came they reached an inn: he whispered, "Next stage, Rome!" Prostrate with fatigue, she could go no farther; stayed to rest at the osteria, fell asleep, and awoke with Count Guido once more standing betwixt heaven and her soul--awoke to find her room full of roaring men, her preserver a prisoner. Then she sprang up, seized the sword which hung at the Count's side, and would have slain him, but men interposed. The priest avers that the flight had no pretext but to get Pompilia free: how should it be otherwise? If they were guilty, as Guido would have the world believe, what need to fly? or, if they must, why halt with Rome in sight? He vindicates Pompilia's fame. Guido's tale was to the effect that he and his whole household had been drugged by the wife, which gave the fugitives time to get thus far on their way. He expected easy execution probably; thought he would find his wife cowering under her shame. When she turned upon him, and would have slain him he had to invent another story; produce love letters from a woman who could not write, replies from the priest, who could happily defend his character and prove the forgery. Then the story of the investigation before the courts was told: how Pompilia owned she caught at the sole hand stretched out to snatch her from hell; how Caponsacchi proudly declared that as man, and much more as priest, he was bound to help weak innocence; how he exposed the trap set by Guido for them both; how he had never touched her lip, nor she his hand, from first to last, nor spoken a word the Virgin might not hear. Then they discussed the decision of the court--the sentence, the relegation of the priest, the seclusion of the wife in the convent at Guido's expense. They discussed the five months' peace which Pompilia passed with the nuns, the application made by the sisters on behalf of Pompilia's waning health, and her residence with Pietro and his wife at their villa. They tell of the determination of Guido, after the birth of his child, to avail himself of the propitious minute and rid himself of his wife and her putative parents, that the child remaining might inherit all and repair his losses. The sympathisers with Pompilia dwelt on the fact that, while the bells were chiming good-will on earth and peace to man, the dreadful five stole by back slums and blind cuts to the villa, asking admission in Caponsacchi's name. Then follow the murders. Violante was stabbed first, Pietro next; and then came Pompilia's turn. It was told how the murderers escaped, till at Baccano they were overtaken and cast red-handed into prison.

NOTES.--Line 59, Maratta: Carlo Maratti was the most celebrated of the later Roman painters of the seventeenth century. He was born 1625. The great number of his pictures of the Virgin procured him the name of "Carlo delle Madonne." l. 95, "That doctrine of the Philosophic Sin": "Philosophical Sin," is a breach of the dignity of man's rational nature. Theological Sin offends against the Supreme Reason. (See Rickaby's Moral Philosophy, p. 119.) l. 385, "Hesperian ball, ordained for Hercules to taste and pluck": the golden apples of the Hesperides plucked by Hercules, were probably oranges. l. 439, Danae, the daughter of Acrisius, and mother of Perseus by Jupiter. l. 555, "The Holy Year": the Jubilee at Rome, first instituted by Boniface VIII., elected Pope 1294. The Jubilee occurs every twenty-five years, and is a time of special indulgences. l. 556, "Bound to rid sinners of sin": no indulgence forgives sin, nor gives permission to commit sin; but it is "the remission, through the merits of Jesus Christ, of the whole or part of the debt of temporal punishment due to a sin, the guilt and everlasting punishment of which sin has, through the merits of Jesus Christ, been already forgiven in the Sacrament of penance" (Catholic Belief, by J. Bruno, D.D., p. 183). l. 567. "The great door, new-broken for the nonce": according to the special ritual, the Pope, at the commencement of the Jubilee year goes in solemn procession to a particular walled-up door (the Porta Aurea, or golden door of St. Peter's), and knocks three times, using the words of Psalm cxviii. 19, "Open to me the gates of righteousness." The doors are then opened and sprinkled with holy water, and the Pope passes through. When the Jubilee closes, the special doorway is again built up, with appropriate solemnities (Encyc. Brit.). l. 572, "Poor repugnant Penitentiary": a penitentiary is an "officer in some cathedrals, vested with power from the bishop to absolve in cases reserved to him. The Pope has a grand penitentiary, who is a Cardinal, and is chief of the other penitentiaries" (Webster's Dict.). That this particular ecclesiastic was "repugnant" is a gratuitous assumption of the poet: he probably took as much interest in his business as any other clergyman takes in his. 1413, Civita, Civita Vecchia, a seaport near Rome. 1445, "Hundred Merry Tales": the tales or novels of Franco Sacchetti. 1450, Vulcan, the god of fire and furnaces, son of Jupiter and Juno.

BOOK IV., TERTIUM QUID.--"A third something," siding neither wholly with Guido nor with his victim, attempts to arrive at a judicial conclusion apportioning in a superior manner blame now on one side now on the other, and, by granting on each side something, endeavours to reconcile opposing views, and from the contending forces produce something like order. The speaker is addressing personages of importance, and his phrase is courtly and polite. He refers with a sort of contempt to this "episode in burgess-life." His account of the business is as follows:--This Pietro and Violante, living in Rome in a style good enough for their betters, indulge themselves with luxury till they get into debt and creditors begin to press. Driven to seek the papal charity reserved for respectable paupers, they become pensioners of the Vatican, and Violante casts about for means to restore the fortunes of her household. Certain funds only want an heir to take, which heir Violante takes measures to supply by the aid of a needy washerwoman who ekes out her honest trade by a vile one, and who for a price will sell, in six months' time, the child of her shame, meantime pocketing the earnest money and promising secrecy. Violante returns flushed with success, and reaches vespers in time to sing Magnificat. Then home to Pietro, to whom is delicately confided the enrapturing but puzzling news that at last an heir will be born to him. In due time the infant is put in evidence, and Francesca Vittoria Pompilia is baptised; and so "lies to God, lies to man," lies every way. The heirs are robbed, foiled of the due succession. When twelve years have passed, the scheming Violante has next to arrange a good match for her daughter, with her savings and her heritage. This, with all Rome to choose from, may be proudly done, and then Nunc Dimittis may be sung. Miserably poor as Count Guido was, the family was old enough to afford the drawback. The Church helped the second son, Paolo, and made a canon of him--even took Guido under its protection so far as one of the minor orders went. A cardinal gave him some inferior post, but afterwards dispensed with his services. What was to be done? Youth had gone, age was coming on. His brother advised him to look out for a rich wife, told him of Pompilia, and offered his assistance in the suit. The burgess family's one want being an aristocratic husband for their girl Violante, eagerly accepted the Count, and they got the marriage done. Pietro had to make the best of things. Who was fool, who knave, it was difficult to decide: perchance neither or both. Guido gives the wealth he had not got, and the Comparini the child not honestly theirs--each cheated the other. It turned out that one party saw the cheat of the other first, and kept its own concealed. Which sinned more was a nice point. The finer vengeance which became old blood was Guido's, the victim was the hard-beset Pompilia, the hero of the piece Caponsacchi. "Out by me!" he cried. "Here my hand holds you life out!" Whereupon Pompilia clasped the saving hand. Then as to the love letters, Guido protests his wife can write. How could he, granting him skill to drive the wife into the gallant's arms, bring the gallant to play his part so well--a man to whom he had never spoken in his life?

NOTES.--Line 31, "Trecentos inseris: ohe, jam satis est! Huc apelle!" (Horace, Sat. i. 5): "Here, bring to, ye dogs, you are stowing in hundreds; hold, now sure there is enough." (Smart's trans.). l. 54, "basset-table: basset was a game at cards invented by a Venetian noble; it was introduced into France in 1674. l. 147, "posts off to vespers, missal beneath arm": a rather absurd line; a missal is a mass-book, and does not contain the vesper services; mass is always said in the morning. l. 437, "notum tonsoribus," the common gossip--(Pr.); tonsor, a barber; zecchines: sequins, Venetian coins worth from 9_s._ 2_d._ to 9_s._ 6_d._ l. 731, devils-dung: assafœtida, an evil-smelling drug. l. 761, "cross buttock": a blow across the back; quarter staff: a long stout staff used as a weapon of offence or defence. l. 834, "Hophni and the ark": "And the ark of God was taken; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain" (I Sam. iv., II etc.). "Correggio and Ledas": Correggio's picture of "Leda and the Swan," in the Berlin Museum. l. 1054, "cui profuerint!" Whom they might profit! l. 1069, "acquetta" == Aqua Tofana, a poisonous liquid much used in Italy in the seventeenth century by women who wished to get rid of their husbands or their rivals. l. 1131, Rota: a superior Papal court l. 1144, Paphos: a city of Cyprus where Venus was worshipped. l. 1322, Vicegerent: an officer deputed by a superior to take his place. l. 1408, Patrizj: the captain of the police who arrested the criminals. l. 1577, "fons et origo malorum": fount and origin of the evils.

BOOK V., COUNT GUIDO FRANCESCHINI.--We are now introduced to the persons of the drama themselves; and first to the Count, who is on his defence before the court for the murder. He has just been put to the torture, and with bones all loosened by the rack is cringing and trembling before the arbiters of life and death. He confesses that he killed his wife and the Comparini, who called themselves her father and mother to ruin him. What he has now to do is to put the right interpretation on his deed. He reminds the court that he comes of an ancient family, descended from a Guido who was Homager to the Empire. His family had become poor as St. Francis or our Lord. He had cast about for some means to restore the fallen fortunes of his house, and sought advice of his fellows how this might be done. He had thoughts of a soldier's life; but they said that, as eldest son and heir, his post was hard by the hearth and altar. He should "try the Church, and contend against the heretic Molinists, and so gain promotion," said one; but others said this would not do--"he must marry, that his line might continue; let him make his brothers priests, and seek his own fortune in the great world of Rome." And so to Rome he came. Humbly, he pleads, he has helped the Church: he has disposed of his property that he might have means to bribe his way to favour at Rome; for the better protection of his person and the advancement of his fortunes, he has taken three or four of the minor orders of the Church, which commit to nothing, yet help to flavour the layman's meat. Thus for the Church. On the world's side he danced, and gamed, and quitted himself like a courtier. At this time he was only sixteen, and was willing to wait for fortune. He waited thirty years, hung about the haunts of cardinals and the Pope, and made friends wherever he could. One day he grew tired of waiting any longer; he was hard upon middle life; he must, he saw, be content to live and die only a nobleman; and so, as his mother was growing old, his sisters well wedded away, and both his brothers in the Church, he resolved to leave Rome, return to Arezzo, and be content. He was like a gamester who has played and lost all. The owners of the tables do not like a man to leave the place penniless. "Let him leave the door handsomely," they say; and so his brother Paul whispered in his ear, told him to take courage and a wife--at least, go back home with a dowry. Paul's advice was weighty, and he listened to him; and before the week was out the clever priest found Pietro and Violante, who had just the daughter, and just the dowry with her, for his brother. "She is young, pretty, and rich," he said; "you are noble, classic, choice." "Done!" said Guido. All the priest proposed he accepted, and the girl was bought and sold--a chattel. "Where was the wrong step?" he asks the court: "if all his honour of birth, his style and state, went for nothing, then society and the law had no reward nor punishment to give. The social fabric falls like a card-house. He thought he had dealt fairly; the others found fault, and wanted their money back, just as the judge, disappointed with a picture for which he had given a great price, wanted his cash returned. Perhaps, also, the judge grew tired of the cupids. When he had purchased his wife he expected wifeliness; just as when, having bought twig and timber, he had bought the song of the nightingale too. Pompilia broke her pact; refused from the first to unite with him in body or in soul. More than this, she published the fact to all the world: said she had discovered he was devil and no man, and set all the town laughing at his meanness and his misery; said he had plundered and cast out her parents; and that she was fain to call on the stones of the street to save her, not only from himself, but the satyr-love of his own brother, the young priest. Was it any marvel that his resentment grew apace? Yet he was not a man of ice: women might have reached the odd corners of his heart, and found some remnants of love there. Pompilia was no dove of Venus either, but a hawk he had purchased at a hawk's price. He does not presume to teach the court what marriage means: it was composed of priests who had eschewed the marriage state with Paul; but the court knew how monks were dealt with who became refractory. If he were over-harsh in bringing his wife to due obedience it was her own fault; she should have cured him by patience and the lore of love. When the Comparini had returned to Rome, they boasted how they had cheated him who cheated them; boasted that Pompilia, his wife, was a bye-blow bastard of a nameless strumpet, palmed off upon him as the daughter with the dowry. Dowry? It was the dust of the street. Under these circumstances Pompilia's duty was no doubtful one: she ought to have recoiled from them with horror. She had been their spoil and prey from first to last, and had aided him in maintaining her cause and making it his own. He admits the trick of the false letter: it was his, and not hers; yet he protests that Pompilia, from window, at church and theatre, launched looks forth and let looks reply to Caponsacchi. And so, in his struggles to extricate his name and fame, this gad-fly must be stinging him in the face. Pricked with shame, plagued with his wife and her parents, what was he to do? Ever was Caponsacchi gazing at his windows. Was he to play at desperate doings with a wooden sword, or shorten his wife's finger by a third, for listening to a serenade? He did nothing of that sort: he only called her a terrible name; and the effect was, when he awoke next morning he found a crowd in his room, fire in his throat, wife gone, and his coffers ransacked. The servants had been drugged too. His wife had eloped with Caponsacchi. He discovered that all the town was laughing at the comedy. They told him how the priest had come at daybreak, while all the household slept; how the wife had led the way out of doors on to the gate where, at the inn, a carriage waited, and took the two to the gate San Spirito, on the Roman road. He told the court how he had set out alone on horseback, floundered through two days and nights, and so at last came up with the fugitives at an inn, saw his wife and her gallant together waiting to start again for Rome. "Does the court suggest," he asks, "that that was, if ever, the time for vengeance?" But he was content with calling in the law to help. He pleads guilty to cowardice: he might have killed them then; but cowardice was no crime. He urges that he had been brought up at the feet of law, and so had slain them not. He had searched the chamber where they passed the night, and found love-laden letters with such words on: "Come here, go there, wait, we are saved, we are lost"; even to details of the sleeping potion which was to drug his wine. The fugitives declared they had not written these; they were forged, they said. Then he tells how he had appealed in vain to the courts. The most he gained was that the priest was relegated to Civita for three years, and Pompilia was sent to a sisterhood. He reminds the court of its severity in cases of heresy and the like, and of its mildness in a case like his. Advice was given to him how to proceed with fresh trials from time to time, and he tried to play the man and bear his trouble as best he might; and then one day he learned that Pompilia's durance was at an end,--she was transferred to her parents' house. He reflected then how the Comparini had beaten him at every point: they gained all; he lost all, even to the wife, the lure; had caught the fish and found the bait entire. And now another letter from Rome, with the news that he is a father; his wife has borne a son and heir,--the reason plain why she left the convent. Then he rose up like fire; his troubles were but just beginning: the child he had longed for was stolen too, and scorn and contempt would be heaped on him full measure. He told the story to his servants, who all declared they would avenge their master's wrongs. He picked out four resolute youngsters, and off they went to Rome. They reached the city on Christmas-eve, as the festive bells rang for the "Feast of the Babe." This arrested him; he dropped the dagger. "Where is His promised peace?" he asked. Nine days he waited thus, praying against temptation, while the vision of the Holy Infant was before him. Soon this faded in a mist, and the Cross stood plain, and he cried, "Some end must be!" He reached the house where Pompilia lived; he knocked, asked admittance for "Caponsacchi," and the door was opened. Had Pompilia even then fronted him in the doorway in her weakness, had even Pietro opened, he had paused; but it was the hag, the mother who had wrought the mischief, who appeared. Then he told the court how the impulse to kill her had seized him, and how, having begun, he had made an end. He was mad, blind, and stamped on all. He told the court how the officers of justice had come upon him twenty miles off, when he was sleeping soundly as a child; and wherefore not? He was his own self again. His soul safe from serpents, he could sleep. He protests he has but done God's bidding, and health has returned and sanity of soul. He declares that he stands acquitted in the sight of God. If his wife and her lover were innocent, why did the court punish them? Their punishment was inadequate, and as soon as their backs were turned the evil began to grow again. He demands the court should right him now; thank and praise him for having done what they should have done themselves. He has doubled the blow they had essayed to strike. He urges them to protect their own defender. He was law's mere executant, and he demands his life, his liberty, good name, and civic rights again. He is for God; the game must not be lost to the devil. He has work to do: his wife may live and need his care; his brother to bring back to the old routine; his infant son to rear--and when to him he tells his story, he will say how for God's law he had dared and done.

NOTES.--"Vigil torment": this torment is referred to in the speech of Dominus Hyacinthus, line 329 et seq., as "the Vigiliarum." Line 149, Francis: St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Order of Franciscans; Dominic: St. Dominic, founder of the Order of Dominicans: "Guido, once homager to the Empire": i.e., he held lands of the Emperor by "homage." l. 207, "suum cuique": let each have his own; omoplat: shoulder-blade. l. 285, "utrique sic paratus": so prepared either way. l. 401, "sors, a right Vergilian dip": scholars used to open their Vergil at random for guidance, as people nowadays open their Bible to see what text will turn up. l. 542, baioc == bajocco: a Roman copper coin worth three farthings. l. 559, Plautus: a famous comic poet of Rome, who died 184 B.C.; Terence: a celebrated writer of comedies, a native of Carthage; he died 159 B.C. l. 560, "Ser Franco's Merry Tales": Sacchetti's novels and tales, somewhat in the manner of Boccaccio (1335-1400). l. 627, Caligula: Emperor of Rome, who delighted in the miseries of mankind, and amused himself by putting innocent persons to death. He was murdered A.D. 41. l. 672, Thyrsis: a young Arcadian shepherd (Vergil, Ecl. vii. 2); Neæra: a country maid, in Vergil. l. 811, Locusta: a vile woman, skilled in preparing poisons; who helped Nero to poison Britannicus. l. 850, Bilboa: a flexible-bladed rapier from Bilboa. l. 922, "stans pede in uno," standing on one foot. l. 1137, spirit and succubus: evil spirit, demon, or phantom. l. 1209, Catullus: a learned but wanton poet. l. 1264, Helen and Paris: Paris, the son of Priam, king of Troy, who eloped with Helen, the wife of Menelaus, carried her to Troy, and so occasioned the war between the Greeks and Trojans. l. 1356, Ovid's art: (of love). l. 1358, "more than his Summa": the "Summa Theologiæ," the famous work of St. Thomas Aquinas, from which every priest of the Roman Church has to study his theology. l. 1359, Corinna: a celebrated woman of Tanagra, who seven times obtained a poetical prize when Pindar was her rival. l. 1365, merum sal, pure salt. l. 1549, "Quis est pro Domino?" "Who is on the Lord's side?" l. 1737, acquetta: euphemism for the acquatofana, a deadly liquid, colourless poison. l. 1760, "ad judices meos," to my judges. l. 1780, Justinian's Pandects: the digest of Roman jurists, made by order of Justinian in the sixth century. l. 2009, soldier bee: a bee which fights for the protection of the hive, and sacrifices his life in the act of using his sting. l. 2010, exenterate: to disembowel. l. 2333, Tozzi: physician to the Pope. He succeeded Malpighi. l. 2339, Albano: Guido was right; Albano succeeded Innocent XII. as Pope in 1700.

BOOK VI., GIUSEPPE CAPONSACCHI.--The court now hears the story of Caponsacchi: he has been sent for to repeat the evidence which he gave on a former occasion, and to counsel the court in this extremity. It was six months ago, he says, that in the very place where he now stands, he told the facts, at which they decorously laughed, the stifled titter that so plainly meant "We have been young too,--come, there's greater guilt!" Now they are grave enough,--they stare aghast; as for himself, in this sudden smoke from hell he hardly knows if he understands anything aright. He asks why are they surprised at the ending of a deed whose beginning they had seen? He had his grasp on Guido's throat; they had interfered, they saw no peril, wanted no priest's intrusion; he had given place to law, left Pompilia to them,--and there and thus she lies! What do they want with him? he asks: is it that they understand at last it was consistent with his priesthood to endeavour to save Pompilia? It was well they had even thus late seen their error. He owns he talks to the court impertinently, yet they listen because they are Christians; and even a rag from the body of the Lord makes a man look greater, and be the better. He will be calm and tell the simple facts. He is a priest, one of their own body, and of a famous Florentine descent; he had been brought up for the priesthood from his youth, but had trembled when he came to take the vows, and would have shrunk from doing so had not the bishop quieted his qualms of conscience, and satisfied him there was an easier sense in which the vows could be taken than had appeared in his first rough reading. Nobody expected him in these days to break his back in propping up the Church: the martyrs built it; all that priests had to do now was to adorn its walls. He must therefore cultivate his gift of making madrigals, that he may please the great ladies, and make the bishop boast that he was theirs. And so he became a priest, a fribble, and a coxcomb, but a man of truth. He said his breviary and wrote the rhymes, was regular at service, and as regular at his post where beauty and fashion ruled. One night, after three or four years of this life, he found himself at the theatre with a brother Canon; he saw enter and seat herself,--

"A lady, young, tall, beautiful, strange, and sad,"

like a Rafael over an altar. As he stared, his companion the Canon said he would make her give him back his gaze; and straightway tossed a packet of comfits to her lap, and dodged behind him, nodding from over Caponsacchi's shoulder. The lady turned, looked their way, and smiled--a strange, sad smile. "Is she not fair, my new cousin?" said Canon Conti. The fellow at the back of the box is Guido; she's his wife, married three years since. He cautioned him to do nothing to make her husband treat her more cruelly than he already did; but this was not required,--the sight of Pompilia's 'wonderful white soul' shining through the sadness of her face had filled him with disgust for the frivolity and the vanity of his former life. Lent was near; he would live as became a priest. His patron, when he found him absent from the assemblies of fashion and reproved him, reproached him with playing truant, Caponsacchi said he had resolved to go to Rome, and look into his heart a little. One evening, as he sat musing over a volume of St. Thomas, contrasting his past life with that required of him by his office, his thoughts recurred to the sad, strange lady. There was a tap at the door, and a masked, muffled mystery entered with a letter; it purported to come from her to whom the comfits had been thrown, and assured him the recipient had a heart to offer him in return. Inquiring who the messenger might be, she said she was Guido's "kind of maid"; all the servants hated him, she added, and she had offered her aid to bring comfort to the sweet Pompilia. Caponsacchi said he then took pen and wrote, "No more of this!" explaining that once on a time he should not have proved so insensible to her beauty, but now he had other thoughts. Caponsacchi said that he saw Guido's mean soul grinning through this transparent trick. Next morning a second letter was brought by the same messenger; it urged him to visit the lovesick lady, and no longer cruelly delay; it declared she was wretched, that she had heard he was going to Rome, and implored him to take her with him. He asked the maid "what risk they ran of the husband?" "None at all," she answered; "he is more stupid than jealous." He took a pen and wrote that she solicited him in vain; he was a priest and had scruples. After that in many ways he was still pursued, and ever his reply was "Go your ways, temptress!" Urged to pass her window, and glance up thereat, if only once, he resolved to expose the trick and punish the Count. He went. There at the window, with a lamp in hand, stood Pompilia, grave and grief-full; like Our Lady of all the Sorrows, she was there but a moment, and then vanished. He knew she had been induced by some pretence to watch a moment on the balcony. He was about to cry, "Out with thee, Guido!" when all at once she reappeared, just on the terrace overhead; so close was she that if she bent down she could almost touch his head; and she did bend, and spoke, while he stood still, all eye, all ear. She told him that he had sent her many letters; that she had read none, for she could neither read nor write; that she was in the power of the woman who had brought them; that she had explained their purport, that she had made her listen while she told her that he, a priest, had dared to love her, a wife, because he had seen her face a single time. This wickedness she thinks cannot be true,--it were deadly to them both; but if indeed he had true love to offer, did he indeed mean good and true, she might accept his help. It was so strange, she said, that her husband, whom she had not wronged, should hate her so, should wish to harm her: for his own soul's sake would the priest hinder the harm? Then she told him how happily she had dwelt at Rome, with those dear Comparini whom she had been wont to call father and mother; she could not understand what it was that had prompted his soul to offer her his help, but, as he had done so, would he render her just aid enough to save her life with? To leave the man who hated her so were no sin. "Take me to Rome!" she cried. "You go to Rome: take me as you would take a dog!" She told him how she had turned hither and thither for aid,--to great good men, Archbishop and Governor, she had opened her heart. They only smiled: "Get you gone, fair one!" they said. In her despair she went to an old priest, a friar who confessed her; to him she told how, worse than husband's hate, she had to bear the solicitations of his young idle brother. "Write to your parents," said the friar. She said she could neither read nor write. "I will write," he promised; but no answer came. She ended with repeating her entreaty that he should take her to the Comparinis' home at Rome. Caponsacchi promised at once to do this thing for her; it was settled he should find a carriage, and the money for the purpose, and return when he had made arrangements for the flight [The messenger who had brought him the Count's letters was shown to be his mistress; the Count had forged the notes from Pompilia, and the replies thereto.] Then the priest went home to meditate on this strange matter, and the more he thought of what he had agreed to do, the more incongruous with his sacred office did it seem. Was he not wedded to the mystic bride--the Church? Did it not say to him, "Leave that live passion; come, be dead with me"? Then came the voice of God, His first authoritative word: "I had been lifted to the level of her!" he exclaimed. Now did he perceive the function of the priest: to leave her he had thought self-sacrifice; to save her, was the price demanded, and he paid it. "Duty to God is duty to her." Yet, when the morning broke, his heart whispered, "Duty is still wisdom," and the day wore on. When evening came he determined to see her again, to advise her, to bid her not despair. He went. There she stood as before, and now reproached him for not returning earlier; and when he saw her sadness, and heard her piteous pleading, he said

"Leave this home in the dark to-morrow night."

He told her the place of meeting and the way thereto, promising to be ready at the appointed time. Then he secured a carriage, made all arrangements, and, at the time agreed, Pompilia draped in black, but with the soul's whiteness shining through her veil, was there. She sprang into the carriage, he beside her--she and he alone, and so began the flight through dark to light, through day and night, again to night, once more on to the last dreadful dawn. He told the court the incidents of the weary journey,--all her weakness and her craving for rest at Rome,--how she urged him to continue, till they were at last within twelve hours of the city, and there seemed no fear of pursuit. Then he entreated her to descend and take some rest. For a while she waited at a roadside inn, nursed a woman's child, sat by the garden wall and talked, then off again refreshed. On they went till they reached Castelnuovo. "As good as Rome!" he cried. She was sleeping as he spoke, and woke with a start and scream--

"Take me no further; I should die: stay here! I have more life to save than mine!"

then swooned. The people at the inn urged him to let her rest the night with them. He could not but choose. All the night through he paced the passage, keeping guard. "Not a sound, nor movement," they said. At first pretence of gray in the sky he bade them have out the carriage, while he called to break her sleep; and as he turned to go there faced him Count Guido, as master of the field encamped, his rights challenging the world, leering in triumph, scowling with malice. He was not alone. With him were the commissary and his men. At once he was arrested. Then "Catch her!" the husband bade. That sobered Caponsacchi. "Let me lead the way!" he cried, explaining he was privileged, being a priest, and claiming his rights. Then they went to Pompilia's chamber. There she lay sleeping, "wax-white, seraphic." "Seize and bind!" hissed Guido. Pompilia started up, stood erect, face to face with her tormentor. "Away from between me and hell!" she cried. "I am God's, whose knees I clasp,--hence!" Caponsacchi tried to reach her side, but his arms were pinioned fast; the rabble poured in and took the husband's part, heaping themselves upon the priest. Springing at the sword which hung at Guido's side, she drew and brandished it. "Die, devil, in God's name!" she cried; but they closed round her, twelve to one. Then Guido began his search for the gold, the jewels, and the plate of which he declared he had been robbed, and for the amorous letters he had reason to expect to find. They could not refuse the priest's appeal to be judged by the Church, and so he was sent to Rome with Pompilia; and to separate cells in the same prison they were borne. He told his judges then that he had never touched Pompilia with his finger-tip, except to carry her that evening to her couch, and that as sacredly as priests carry the vessels of the altar. He tells the court he might have locked his lips and laughed at its jurisdiction, for when this murder happened he was a prisoner at Civita. She had only the court to trust to when Guido hacked her to pieces. He had come from his retreat as friend of the court, had told his tale for pure friendship's sake. He reminds them how in the first trial he had disproved the accusation of the letters, and the verses they contained: if any were found, it was because those who found had hidden first. Then he tells how, as in relegation he was studying verse, suddenly a thunderclap came into his solitude. The whirlwind caught him up and brought him to the room where so recently the judges had dealt out law adroitly, and he learned how Guido had upset it all. In a frank and dignified appeal to the court, he explains how it was that God had struck the spark of truth from contact between his and Pompilia's soul, daring him to try to be good and show himself above the power of show. Had they not acted as babes in their flight? Had they been criminals, was there not opportunity for sin without a flight at all? or, if it were necessary to fly, where had they stayed for sin? Had he saved Pompilia against the law?--against the law Guido slays her. Deal with him! If they say he was in love, unpriest him then; degrade, disgrace him: for himself no matter; for Pompilia let them "build churches, go pray!" They will find him there. He knows they too will come. He sees a judge weeping: he is glad--they see the truth. Pompilia helped him just so. As for the Count, he had him on the fatal morning in arms' reach; he could have killed him. It was through him (Caponsacchi) he had survived to do this deed. He asks them not to condemn the Count to death. Leave him to glide as a snake from off the face of things, and be lost in the loneliness. He stops the rapid flow of words, owns he has been rash in what he has said, fears he has been but a poor advocate of the woman, protests they had no thought of love, and begs them to be just. Even while he pleads for Pompilia they tell him she is dead. Why did they let him ramble on?--his friends should have stopped him. Then he grows almost incoherent in his mental distress; asks them if they will one day make Pope of the friar who heard Pompilia's dying confession, and declares he had never shriven a soul

"so sweet and true, and pure and beautiful."

Then he grows calm again, speaks of being as good as out of the world now he is a relegated priest, and concludes with a despairing cry to the God whom he is no longer permitted to serve.

NOTES.--Arezzo, the ancient Arretium, is the seat of a bishop and a prefect. The present population of the town is about eleven thousand, or, if the neighbouring villages are included, about thirty-nine thousand inhabitants. In the middle ages the town suffered severely in the wars of the Guelfs and Ghibellines; in this struggle it usually took the side of the Ghibellines. Caponsacchi's church is that of S. Maria della Pieve, said to be as old as the beginning of the ninth century, with a tower and façade dating from 1216. The façade has four series of columns, arranged rather incongruously. Many ancient sculptures are over the doors. The interior of the church consists of a nave, with aisles and a dome. Petrarch was born at No. 22 in the Via dell' Orto; the house bears an inscription to the effect that "Francesco Petrarca was born here, July 20th, 1304." The cathedral is a fine Italian Gothic building, dating from 1177; the façade is still unfinished. The interior has no transept, but is of fine and spacious proportions, with some good stained-glass windows of the early part of the sixteenth century. Pope Gregory X. died at Arezzo, and his tomb is in the right aisle. There is a marble statue of Ferdinand de' Medici in front of the cathedral, which was erected in 1595 by John of Douay. Arezzo is about a hundred miles north of Rome. In the story of the flight from Arezzo towards Rome, Caponsacchi indicates the chief places which they passed on the road. The first halt was at Perugia, the capital of the province of Umbria, with a population of some fifty thousand. It is the residence of a prefect, a military commandant, the seat of a bishop and a university. The city is built partly on the top of a hill and partly on the slope. Assisi may well be called "holy ground" (Caponsacchi, line 1205). Here was born St. Francis in 1182. "He was the son of the merchant Pietro Bernardine, and spent his youth in frivolity. At length, whilst engaged in a campaign against Perugia, he was taken prisoner, and attacked by a dangerous illness. Sobered by adversity, he soon afterwards (1208) founded the Franciscan order." St. Francis was one of the most beautiful characters in religious history. His whole life was devoted to the poor and sick, and his order, to the present day, is the most charitable monastic order in the world. The monastery of St. Francis at Assisi has existed for six centuries. Foligno is an industrial town of twenty-one thousand inhabitants, and is the seat of a bishop. The cathedral was erected in the twelfth century. The church of S. Anna, or Delle Contesse, once contained Rafael's famous Madonna di Foligno, now in the Vatican. Castelnuovo: at this place Guido overtook the travellers. It is situated about fifteen miles from Rome, and is only a village, with an inn. Line 230, "Capo-in-Sacco, our progenitor": see note to Book II., "HALF ROME," l. 1250. l. 234, Old Mercato: the old market-place in Florence, where the Caponsacchi formerly resided. l. 249, Grand-duke Ferdinand: the marble statue of Ferdinand in front of the cathedral was erected by Giovanni da Bologna in 1595. l. 251, Aretines: the men of Arezzo. l. 280, "The Jews and the name of God": the Jews do not pronounce the name of Jehovah, or Jahveh, out of reverence; they substitute the word Adonai, Lord. l. 333, Marinesque Adoniad: a celebrated poem called Adonis was written by Giovanni Marini, who lived at the beginning of the seventeenth century. l. 346, Pieve: the parish church of S. Maria della Pieve, said to have been built in the ninth century on the site of a temple of Bacchus. l. 389, Priscian was a great grammarian of the fifth century, whose name was almost synonymous with grammar. "To break Priscian's head" was to violate the rules of grammar. l. 402, facchini: porters, or scoundrels. l. 449, in sæcula sæculorum, "world without end": the concluding words of the "Glory be to the Father," etc., chanted at the end of each psalm. l. 467, canzonet: a short song in one, two, or three parts. l. 559, Thyrsis, a shepherd of Arcadia; Myrtilla, a country maid in love with Thyrsis. l. 574, "At the Ave": at the hour of evening prayer, when the "Hail Mary" and hymns to the Virgin are sung. l. 707, "Our Lady of all the Sorrows": the Blessed Virgin is called "Our Lady of Sorrows," and is painted with a sword piercing her heart, from the words of the Gospel, "A sword shall pierce through thine own soul also" (St. Luke xi. 35). l. 828, The Augustinian: the friar of the order of St. Augustine. l. 960, St. Thomas with his sober grey goose-quill: St. Thomas Aquinas is referred to here. He was a famous Dominican theologian. His Sum of Theology is the standard text-book of the divine science in all Catholic countries. Aquinas was called "the angelic doctor." l. 961, "Plato by Cephisian reed": the Cephisus was a river on the west side of Athens, falling into the Saronic Gulf; the largest river in Attica. l. 988, "Intent on his corona": the rosary or chaplet of beads is in Italy and Spain called the "corona." The monk was intent on his rosary. l. 1102, Our Lady's girdle: legend says that the Blessed Virgin, as she was being assumed into heaven, loosened her girdle, which was received by St. Thomas. (See Mrs. Jameson's Legends of the Madonna.) l. 1170, Parian: a pure and beautiful marble of Paros; coprolite: the petrified dung of carnivorous reptiles. l. 1203, Perugia: a city about thirty-five miles from Arezzo, on the road to Rome. l. 1205, "Assisi--this is holy ground": because there was the monastery founded by St. Francis of Assisi. l. 1266, The Angelus: a prayer consisting of the angelical salutation to Mary, with versicle and response and collect, said three times a day, at morning, noon and night; in Catholic countries and religious houses a bell is rung in a peculiar manner to announce the hour of this prayer. l. 1275, Foligno: a small town near Perugia. l. 1666, "Bembo's verse": Cardinal Bembo. (See notes to Asolo, p. 51.) l. 1667, "De Tribus": the title of a scandalous pamphlet, called "The Three Impostors," which was well known in the seventeenth century: Moses, Christ, and Mahomet were thus designated. (This explanation was sent me by the late Mr. J. A. Symonds.) l. 1747, "De Raptu Helenæ": concerning the rape of Helen of Troy.

BOOK VII., POMPILIA.--From her deathbed Pompilia tells the story of her life: says how she is just seventeen years and five months old: 'tis writ so in the church's register, where she has five names--so laughable, she thinks. There will be more to write in that register now; and when they enter the fact of her death she trusts they will say nothing of the manner of it, recording only that she "had been the mother of a son exactly two weeks." She has learned that she has twenty-two dagger wounds, five deadly; but she suffers not too much pain, and is to die to-night; thanks God her babe was born, and better, baptised and hid away before this happened, and so was safe; he was too young to smile and save himself. Now she will never see her boy, and when he grows up and asks "What was my mother like?" they will tell him "Like girls of seventeen"; but she thinks she looked nearer twenty. She wishes she could write that she might leave something he should read in time. Her name was not a common one: that may serve to keep her a little in memory. He had no father that he ever knew at all, and now--to-night--will have no mother and no name, not even poor old Pietro's. This is why she called the boy Gaetano. A new saint should name her child. Those old saints must be tired out with helping folk by this time. She had five, and they were! How happy she had been in Violante's love, till one day she declared she had never been their child, was but a castaway and unknown! People said husbands love their wives: hers had killed her! They said Caponsacchi, though a priest, did love her, and "no wonder you love him," shaking their heads, pitying and blaming not very much. Then she tells the tale of six days ago, when the New Year broke: how she was talking by the fire about her boy, and what he should do when he was grown and great. Pietro and Violante had assisted her to creep to the fireside from her couch, and they sat wishing each other more New Years. Pietro was telling, too, of the cause he expected to gain against the wicked Count, and Violante scolded him for tiring Pompilia with his chatter: she was so happy that friendly eve. Then, next morning, old Pietro went out to see the churches. It was snowing when he returned, and Violante brought out a flask of wine and made up a great fire; and he told them of the seven great churches he had visited, and how none had pleased him like San Giovanni. He was just saying how there was the fold and all the sheep as big as cats, and shepherds half as large as life listening to the angel,--when there was a tap at the door. The rest, she said, they knew.... Pietro at least had done no harm, and Violante, after all, how little! She did wrong, she knows; she did not think lies were real lies when they had good at heart: it was good for all she meant. She sees this now she is dying: she meant the pain for herself, the happiness all for Pompilia. And now the misery and the danger are over; as she sinks away from life, she finds that sorrows change into something which is not altogether sorrow-like. Her child is safe, her pain not very great. She is so happy that she is just absolved, washed fair. "We cannot both have and not have." Being right now, she is happy, and that colours things. She will tell the nuns, who watch by her and nurse her, how all this trouble came about. Up to her marriage at thirteen years, the days were as happy as they were long. Then, one day, Violante told her she meant next day to bring a cavalier whom she must allow to kiss her hand. He would be the same evening at San Lorenzo to marry her: but all would be as before, and she would still live at home. Till her mother spoke she must hold her tongue: that was the way with girl-brides. So, like a lamb, she had only to lie down and let herself be clipped. Next day came Guido Franceschini--old, not so tall as herself, hook-nosed, and with a yellow bush of beard, much like an owl in face; and his smile and the touch of his hand made her uncomfortable, though she did not suppose it mattered anything. Once, when she was ill, an ugly doctor attended her: he cured her, so his appearance did not affect his skill. Then, on the deadest of December days, she was hurried away at night to San Lorenzo. The church door was locked behind the little party, and the priest hurried her to the altar, where was hid Guido and his ugliness. They were married; and she, silent and scared, joined her mother, who was weeping; and they went home, saying no word to Pietro. "Girl-brides," said Violante, "never breathe a word!" For three weeks she saw nothing of Guido. Nothing was changed. She was married, and expected all was over. The scarecrow doctor did not return: she supposed that Guido would keep away likewise. Then, one morning, as she sat at her broidery frame alone, she heard voices, and running to see, found Guido and the priest who had married her. Pietro was remonstrating, and Guido was claiming his wife, and had come to take her. Then she began to see that something mean and underhand had happened. Her mother was to blame, herself to pity. She was the chattel, and was mute. She retired to pray to God. Violante came to her, told her that she would have a palace, a noble name, and riches; that young men were volatile; that Guido was the sort of man for housekeeping; and it had been arranged they were not to separate, but should all live together in the great palace at Arezzo, where Pompilia would be queen. And so she went with Guido to his home. Since then it was all a blank, a terrific dream to her. The Count had married for money, and the money was not forthcoming; and he became unkind to his wife to punish the Comparini who had cheated him. So he accused her of being a coquette, of licentious looks at theatre and church. She knew this was a false charge, but could not divine his purpose in making it, so made matters worse by never going out at all. When the maid began to speak of the priest and of the letters they said he had written, she begged her to ask him to cease writing, even from passing through the street wherein she lived. The Count's object she did not know was that they might be compromised. In her trouble she went to the Archbishop, begging him to place her in a convent. It was all so repugnant to her, barely twelve years old at marriage. But the Church could give no help: to live with her husband, she was told, was in her covenant. Then she told the frightful thing--of the advances of her husband's brother, who solicited, and said he loved her; told him that her husband knew it all, and let it go on. The Archbishop bade her be more affectionate to her husband, and to let his brother see it. So home she went again, and her husband's hate increased. Henceforth her prayers were not to man, but to God alone. She had been, she told them, three dreary years in that gloomy palace at Arezzo, when one day she learned that there could be a man who could be a saviour to the weak, and to the vile a foe. It was at the play where she first saw Caponsacchi. She saw him silent, grave, and almost solemn; and she thought had there been a man like that to lift her with his strength into the calm, how she could have rested. At supper that night her husband let her know what he had seen: the throwing of the comfits in her lap, her smile and interest in the priest; told her she was a wanton, drew his sword and threatened her. This was not new to her. He told her that this amour was the town's talk, and he menaced the person of Caponsacchi. A week later, Margherita, her maid, who it was said was more than servant to her lord, began to tell her of the priest who loved her, and urged her to send him some token in return. Pompilia bade her say no more; but ever and again the woman reverted to the subject, and she at last produced letters said to have been sent by him. And when the importunity continued, she declared she knew all this of Caponsacchi to be false. The face which she had seen that night at the play was his own face, and the portrait drawn of him she was sure was false. And then, when April was half through, and it was said every one was leaving for Rome, and Caponsacchi too, a light sprang up within her: was it possible she also could reach Rome? How she had tried to leave the hateful home! She had appealed to the Governor of the city, to the Archbishop, to the poor friar, to Conti her husband's relative, and he alone suggested a way of escape. "Ask Caponsacchi," he said: "he's your true St. George, to slay the monster." Then to Margherita she said, "Tell Caponsacchi he may come!" And so again she saw the silent and solemn face, and told him all her trouble: how she was in course of being done to death. She trusted in God and him to save her--to take her to Rome and put her back with her own people. He said "he was hers." The second night, when he came as arranged, he said the plan was impracticable,--he dare not risk the venture for her sake. But she urged him, and he yielded. "To-morrow, at the day's dawn," he would take her away. That night her husband, telling her how he loathed her, bade her not disturb him as he slept. And then she spoke of the flight, her prayers, her yearning to be at rest in Rome. Then all the horrors of the fatal night. She pardoned her husband: she knew that her presence had been hateful to him; she could not help that. She could not love him, but his mother did. Her body, but never her soul, had lain beside him. She hopes he will be saved. So, as by fire, she had been saved by him. As for her child, it should not be the Count's at all--"only his mother's, born of love, not hate!" Then, with her fast-failing mind-sight, she turns to the image of "the lover of her life, the soldier-saint." Death shall not part her from him: her weak hand in his strong grasp shall rest in the new path she is about to tread. She bids them tell him she is arrayed for death in all the flowers of all he had said and done. He is a priest, and could not marry; nor would he if he could, she thinks: the true marriage is for heaven.

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

NOTES.--Line 423, Master Malpichi: probably Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694), a great physician of Bologna. He was the founder of microscopic anatomy. In 1691 he removed to Rome to become physician to Pope Innocent XII. l. 427, "The lion's mouth": Via di Bocca di Leone--the name of a street near the Corso. l. 607, The square o' the Spaniards: Piazza di Spagna is the centre of the strangers' quarter in Rome. It derives its name from the palace of the Spanish Ambassador. l. 1153, Mirtillo, probably a minor poet of the period. l. 1303, The Augustinian: an order of monks following the rule of St. Augustine. l. 1377, The Ave Maria: the "Hail Mary"--an evening devotion, wherein the prayer occurs of which these are the first words.

BOOK VIII., DOMINUS HYACINTHUS DE ARCHANGELIS, PAUPERUM PROCURATOR.--In this book we have the counsel on behalf of Count Guido at work in his study, preparing the defence which he is to make on behalf of his client. He is a family man, and his life is bound up in that of his son, whose birthday it is, the lad being eight years old. He will devote himself to his case, and when his work is done will enjoy the yearly lovesome frolic feast with little Cinuolo. "Commend me," says the man of law, "to home joy, the family board, altar and hearth!" He is very anxious to make a good figure in the courts over this case, his opponent, old bachelor Bottinius, shall be made to bite his thumb; and he expresses his gratitude to God that he has Guido to defend just when his boy is eight years old, and needs a stimulus to study from his sire. He chuckles at his good fortune: a noble to defend, a man who has almost with parade killed three persons; it is really too much luck to befall him, and on his son's birthday too! he prays God to keep him humble, and mutters "Non nobis Domine!" as he turns over his papers. He determines to beat the other side, if only for love, as a tribute to little Cinotto's natal day (the boy was called by half a dozen pet names). He will astonish the Pope himself with his eloquence and skill; and the day shall be remembered when his son becomes of age. Then he bethinks himself of the night's feast: the wine, the minced herbs with the liver, goose-foot, and cock's-comb, cemented with cheese; he rubs his hands again, as he thinks of all the good things getting ready. But now to work: he must puzzle out this case. He is particular about the Latin he will use; he would like to bring in Vergil, but that will not do well in prose. His son shall attack him with Terence on the morrow. Then he curbs his ardour, and sets himself to deal in earnest with the case. Bottinius will deny that Pompilia wrote any letter at all. Anticipating what his opponent will say, he says he had rather lose his case than miss the chance of ridiculing his Latin and making the judge laugh, who will so enjoy the joke. If it comes to law, why, he is afraid he cannot "level the fellow": he sees him even now in his study, working up thrusts that will be hard to parry, he is sure to deliver a bowl from some unguessed standpoint. And now he stops to rub some life into his frozen fingers, hopes his boy will take care of his throat this cold day, and reflects how chilly Guido must be in his dungeon, despite his straw. Carnival time too: what a providence, with the city full of strangers! He will do his best to edify and amuse them: they may remember Cintino some day! But to the case. "Where are we weak?" he asks. The killing is confessed: they tortured Guido, and so got it out of him,--he shall object to that; nobles are exempt from torture. A certain kind of torture like that called Vigiliarum, is excellent for extracting confession; he has never known any prisoner stand it for ten hours; they "touched their ten," 'tis true, "but, bah! they died!" If the Count had not confessed, he should have set up the defence that Caponsacchi really murdered the three, and fled just as Guido, touched by grace,--consequent upon having been a good deal at church at the holy season--hastened to the house to pardon his wife, and so arrived just in time--to be charged with the murders. Yes, he could have done very well on this line, he thinks; but the confession has spoiled all that. Wonderful that a nobleman could not stand torture better! Why, he has known several brave young fellows keep a rack in their back garden, and take a turn at it for an hour or two at a time, just to see how much pain they could stand without flinching: he thinks men are degenerating. And so he meanders on, pulling himself up in the midst of a nice point to wonder whether his cook has remembered how excellently well some chopped fennel-root goes with fried liver. "But no; she cannot have been so obtuse as to forget!" He shall begin his speech with a pretty compliment to His Holiness, then he shall quote St. Jerome, St. Gregory, Solomon, and St. Bernard, who all say that a man must not be touched in his honour. Our Lord Himself said, "My honour I to nobody will give!" (He stops to reflect that a melon would have improved the soup, but that the boy wanted the rind to make a boat with.) He shall continue, that a husband who has a faithless wife must raise hue and cry,--the law is not for such cases,--these are for gentlemen to deal with themselves. Of course the other side will object that Guido allowed too long an interval to elapse between the capture of the fugitives and the killing; but he shall show that there really was no interval between the inn and the Comparinis' villa at Rome: Pompilia was inaccessible between these places. If they object that Guido, when he arrived at Rome on Christmas Eve, should have sought his vengeance at once, he shall ask, "Is no religion left?" A man with all those Feasts of the Nativity to occupy his mind could not be expected to go about his private business. (He pauses to reflect that a little lamb's fry will be very toothsome in an hour's time.) The charge is that "we killed three innocents"; as to the manner of the killing, that matters nothing, granted we had the right to kill. Eight months since they would have been held to blame if they had let this bad pair escape: true, that was the time to have killed them, but the Count had not the proper weapons handy. He shall say, too, that he did not instruct his confederates to kill any one of the three, but merely to disfigure them; they had been too zealous. He next proceeds to dispose of a number of points in which it is charged the offence was aggravated,--such as slaying the family in their own house, and lastly that the majesty of the sovereign has received a wound. (Here he fervently hopes the devil will not instigate his cook to stew the rabbit instead of roasting him: he will have to go and see after things himself--he really must.) But, if the end be lawful, the means are allowed. (The Cardinal has promised to go and read the speech to the Pope, and point its beauties out, so he must be adroit in his words.) As he stands forth as the advocate of the poor, he must put in a word or two for the four assassins who did the deed. On their behalf he pleads that, as the husband was in the right in what he did, those who helped him could not be in the wrong. (On which more Latin and neat phrases.) He will be reminded that Guido went off without paying the men the stipulated fee for the murders. "What fact," he shall ask, "could better illustrate the perfect rectitude of the Count?" The men were not actuated by malice, but by a simple desire to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. As for the Count, so absorbed was he in vindicating his honour, that paltry, vulgar questions of money wholly escaped him; "he spared them the pollution of the pay." In conclusion, he shall urge that Guido killed his wife in defence of the marriage vow, that he might creditably live. "There's my speech," he cries, as he dashes down the pen; "where's my fry, and family, and friends? What an evening have I earned to-day!" And off he goes to supper, singing "Tra-la-la, lambkins, we must live!"

NOTES.--Line 8, "And chews Corderius with his morning crust": the Colloquies of Corderius were used in every school of any consequence in the time of Shakespeare's boyhood. It was the most popular Latin book for boys of the time. l. 14, Papinianian pulp: Papinian was the most celebrated of Roman jurists, and an intimate friend of the Emperor Septimius Severus. l. 58, Flaccus: Horace, whose full name was Quintus Horatius Flaccus. l. 94, "Non nobis, Domine, sed Tibi laus": "Not unto us, Lord, but to Thee be the praise!" l. 101, Pro Milone: the celebrated oration of Cicero on behalf of Milo, a friend of his. l. 115, Hortensius Redivivus: Hortensius, the Roman orator. l. 117, "The Est-est": a wine so called because a nobleman once sent his servant in advance to write "Est," it is! on any inn where the wine was particularly good; at one place the man wrote "Est-est," It is! it is! in token of its superlative excellence, and the vintage has ever since gone by this designation. l. 329, "Questions," tortures; Vigiliarum: torture by incessant jerking of the body and limbs. l. 482, Theodoric: king of the Ostrogoths (c. A.D. 454-526); he caused the celebrated Boethius to be put to death. l. 483, Cassiodorus: a Roman historian, statesman, and monk, who lived about 468 A.D.; he was raised by Theodoric to the highest offices. He was one of the first of literary monks, and his books were much used in the middle ages. l. 498, Scaliger: Julius Cæsar Scaliger (1484-1558), a man of the greatest eminence in the world of letters, and as a man of science, and a philosopher. He had a son, Joseph Justus Scaliger, not less eminent, who wrote the work referred to. l. 503, The Idyllist is Theocritus, the Sicilian poet. l. 513, Ælian: a Roman, in the reign of Adrian, surnamed the honey-tongued, from the sweetness of his style; he wrote seventeen treatises on animals. l. 948, Valerius Maximus, a Latin writer, who made a collection of historical anecdotes, and published his work in the reign of Tiberius. It was called Books of Memorable Deeds and Utterances. Most of the tales are from Roman history. Cyriacus: patriarch of the Jacobites, monk of the convent of Bizona, in Syria; died at Mosul in 817 A.D. He wrote homilies, canons, and epistles. l. 1542, Castrensis: a distinguished professor of civil and canon law; he died in 1441. He was a professor at Vienna, Avignon, Padua, Florence, Bologna, and Perugia. His most complete work is his readings on the Digest. Butringarius: a jurisconsult (1274-1348). [I have not considered it necessary to translate the many Latin lines in this and the following section of the work, because in nearly every case their sense is given in the context, and therefore those who do not read Latin will lose nothing, as practically they have it all englished in the text.]

BOOK IX., JURIS DOCTOR JOHANNES-BAPTISTA BOTTINIUS (FISCI ET REV. CAM. APOSTOL. ADVOCATUS).--Bottinius is the Public Prosecutor, and has to present the case against the Count and his confederates. He is not a family man, and seems to have but a low ideal of feminine virtue. He admires the sex, but from a superior masculine standpoint; their weaknesses are amiable. Of girls he says--

"Know one, you know all Manners of maidenhood: mere maiden she. And since all lambs are like in more than fleece, Prepare to find that, lamb-like, she too frisks----"

He mixes up references to the Holy Family, Joseph, Mary, her Babe, Saint Anne and Herod; with whom he compares Pompilia, the Comparini family, and the Count; and all this with illustrations from the classics not greatly to the honour of women. The view of Bottinius, in short, is that of the bachelor man of the world, with no very lofty ideals about anything. His philosophy is summed up in his last words, "Still, it pays." He says he feels his strength inadequate to paint Pompilia; but we know this is a professional way of speaking, for he soon relapses into "melting wiles, deliciousest deceits"--very incongruous with our ideas of what Pompilia really was. No doubt, he thinks, there were some friskings, for which Guido naturally threatened the whip, and considers Guido to have been impatient. He supposes that Pompilia smiled upon everybody, till, when three years of married life had run their course, she smiled on Caponsacchi; and as he was a priest, and the court was more or less ecclesiastical, Bottinius makes light of the affair. He will grant that the lady somewhat plied "arts that allure," "the witchery of gesture," and the like. This was within the right of beauty, for the purpose of securing a champion. He will grant, for argument's sake, that she did write to Caponsacchi. What of it?--it was but to say her life was not worth an hour's purchase. It was not likely that Caponsacchi fell in love--he who might be Pope some day--yet the lady, being in such a case, was bound to offer him nothing short of love, as his great service was to save her. What was she to offer him--money? To escape death she might well have feigned love, and offered such a reward as the Idyl of Moschus makes Venus promise to any who should bring back lost Cupid. As it was wiser to choose a priest for the rescue of her life, if the cleric were young, handsome, and strong, so much the better, surely. Suppose it were true that Pompilia administered an opiate to her husband the night before she left him? Well, that was to protect him from rough usage if he aroused and interfered. This, says Bottinius, is how he would argue if the things which are but fables had been true: of course Guido never slept a wink, and Pompilia, equally of course, knew nothing about opiates. Then, when she started with her rescuer on the road to Rome, even granting what the suborned coachman said about the kissing which he saw--the one long embrace which constituted the journey--a sage and sisterly kiss were surely allowable, and this is probably what was exaggerated by the drowsy, tired driver. Then, when the pale creature, exhausted with the long journey, fainted at the inn, and Caponsacchi carried her to the chamber, what if he "stole a balmy breath, perhaps"? "why curb ardour here?" He could but pity her, and "pity is so near to love!" As Pompilia was asleep, she could neither know nor care. Were he to concede that Pompilia did write the incriminating letters, she, for self-protection, might deny she did so. "Would that I had never learned to write!" said one; Pompilia, splendidly mendacious, merely out-distanced him with, "To read or write I never learned at all!" Bottinius cannot resist a thrust or two at his "fat opponent's" love of good living; calls him "thou arch-angelic swine," and reminds him that he had not invited him to last night's birthday feast, when all sorts of good things were going. Turning to the action of Caponsacchi, he reminds the court that Archbishop and Governor, gentle and simple, did nothing to extricate Pompilia from her troubles; they all went their ways and left her to her fate; Caponsacchi alone, bursting through the impotent sympathy of Arezzo, caught Virtue up, and carried her off. He had not soiled her with the pitch alleged: the marks she bore were the evanescent black and blue of the necessary grasp. Then he must tell a tale how Peter, John, and Judas, being on a journey, were footsore and hungry; how they reached at night an inn for rest where there was but one room; for food but a solitary fowl, a wretched sparrow of a thing. Peter suggested they should all go to sleep till the fowl was ready, then he who had had the happiest dream should eat the entire fowl, as there was not enough for three; so each rested in his straw. When they awoke, John said he had dreamed he was the Lord's favourite disciple, and claimed the meal. Peter had dreamed he had the keys of heaven and hell, and thought the fowl must clearly be his. But Judas dreamed that he had descended from the chamber where they slept and had eaten the fowl. And so the traitor really had: he had left nothing but the drumstick and the merry-thought; and that is how the bone called merry-thought earned its name, to put us in mind that the best dream is to keep awake sometimes. So, said Bottinius, the great people of Arezzo never meant Innocence to starve while Authority sat at meat. They meant Pompilia to have something--in their dreams; they were willing to help her--in their sleep. Caponsacchi did wiser than dream or sleep: he brought a carriage, while the Archbishop and the Governor wondered what they could do. Then the Advocate bursts into a fit of admiration for the majesty and sanctity of the law, and what it would have done for Guido if only he had been content to wait. He comments on the penance which Pompilia had undergone; and though he cannot believe that Caponsacchi ever went near her when she left the convent, is inclined to ask, Suppose he did? Is it a matter for surprise that he would feel lonely at Civita, and pine a little for the feminine society to which he had been accustomed? And so he goes on denying all the accusations, but always adding, "And suppose it were otherwise?" He says, if he must speak his mind, it had been better that Pompilia had died upon the spot than lived to shame the law. Does he credit her story?--no! Did she lie?--still no! He explains it this way: She had made her confession at the point of death, and was absolved; it was only charity in her to spend her last breath by pretending utter innocence, and thus rehabilitate the character of Caponsacchi. Had she told the naked truth about him, it would have doubtless injured him, and she was not bound to do that; and as the Sacrament had obliterated the sin, she was justified in the course he believes she took.

NOTES.--Line 115, The Urbinate: Rafael. l. 116, The Cortonese: Luca da Cortona, Italian painter. l. 117, Ciro Ferri, Italian painter (1634-1689). l. 170, Phryne, a celebrated beauty of Athens. She was the mistress of Praxiteles, who made a statue of her, which was one of his greatest works, and was placed in the temple of Apollo at Delphi. l. 226, The Teian: the Greek poet Anacreon was born at Teos, in Ionia. l. 284, The Mantuan == Vergil. l. 394, Commachian eels were anciently, and are still, very celebrated. l. 400, Lernæan snake, the famous hydra which Hercules slew. l. 530, Idyllium Moschi, the first Idyl of the Greek poet Moschus, entitled "Love a Runaway." l. 541, Myrtilus, the son of Mercury and Phæthusa: for his perfidy he was thrown into the sea, where he perished; Amaryllis, the name of a countryman mentioned by Theocritus and Vergil. l. 873, Demodocus, a musician at the court of Alcinous: the gods gave him the power of song, but denied him the blessing of sight. l. 875, "foisted into that Eighth Odyssey": see Pope's Homer's Odyssey, Book VIII., with the first note thereto. l. 887, Cornelius Tacitus, a celebrated Roman historian, born in the reign of Nero. l. 893, "Thalassian-pure": Thalassius was a beautiful young Roman in the reign of Romulus. At the rape of the Sabines, a virgin captured by one of the ravishers was declared to be reserved for Thalassius, and all were eager to reserve her pure for him. l. 968, Hesione, a daughter of Laomedon, king of Troy. It fell to her lot to be exposed to a sea monster. Hercules killed the monster and delivered her, but Laomedon refused to give him the promised reward. l. 989, Hercules and Omphale: Omphale was queen of Lydia, and Hercules loved her so much that he used to spin by her side amongst her women, while she wore the lion's skin and bore the club of the hero. l. 998, Anti-Fabius, i.e., opposed to the policy of Quintus Fabius Maximus, the Roman general who opposed the progress of Hannibal, not by fighting, but by harassing counter-marches and ambuscades; for which he received the name of the delayer. A Fabian policy, therefore, is a waiting policy. Caponsacchi acted promptly. l. 1030, "Sepher Toldoth Yeschu": the Italians have an endless store of tales and legends of this character. See, for many such, Mr. Crane's Italian Popular Stories (Macmillan). l. 1109, "Thucydides and his sole joke": Thucydides was a celebrated Greek historian, born at Athens. He wrote the history of the Peloponnesian war, in which he tells the story of Cylon (l. 126). l. 1345, Maro == Vergil; Aristæus, a son of Apollo, said to have learnt from nymphs the art of the cultivation of olives and management of bees, which he communicated to mankind. l. 1494, Triarii, old soldiers that were kept in reserve to assist in case of hazard. l. 1573, "famed panegyric of Isocrates": Isocrates was one of the ten Attic orators, and one of the most remarkable men in the literary history of Greece. He was born B.C. 436. His splendid panegyric was delivered B.C. 380, for the purpose of stimulating the people of Greece to unite against the power of Asia.

BOOK X. [THE POPE.] As to a court of final appeal, the case has now come before the Pope, Guido having claimed "benefit of clergy." The Supreme Pontiff has made a prolonged study of the evidence adduced on the trials, and of the whole circumstances surrounding the case; now he has to decide the fate of the Count and his accomplices in the murder. And that he may give judgment without bias, in the sight of God and of the world, he nerves himself for the task by recalling the history of his predecessors in the Chair of Peter who have, from the Apostle up to Alexander, the last Pope, dared and suffered. How judged this one, how decided that? did he well or ill? He remembers that no infallibility attaches to such a decision as he must give in the case in which he is called upon to act: judgment must be given in his own behoof; so worked his predecessors. And now appeal is made from man's assize to him acting, speaking in the place of God. He must be just, and dare not let the felon go scot free. It is not possible to reprieve both criminal and Pope. Guido was furnished for his life with all the help a Christian civilisation could bestow: he had intellect, wit, a healthy frame, and all the advantages of family and position. He accepted the law that man is not here to please himself, but God; placed himself under obedience to the Church, which is the embodiment of that principle, and then deliberately clothed himself with the protection of the Church that he might violate the law with impunity. Three-parts consecrate, he sought to do his murder in the Church's pale. Such a man--religious parasite--proves "irreligiousest of all mankind." His low instincts make him believe only in "the vile of life." He is clothed in falsehood, scale on scale. The typical actuating principle of his life was plainly exhibited in his marriage. He was prompted to that by no single motive which should have suggested matrimony. In this he had sunk far below the level of the brute, "whose appetite, if brutish, is a truth." This lust of money led him to lie, rob and murder; to pursue with insatiate malice the parents of his wife by punishing their child, putting day by day and hour by hour,

"The untried torture to the untouched place,"

goading her to death and bringing damnation by rebound to those who loved her. Ruining the three, he enjoyed luck and liberty, person, rights, fame, worth, all intact; while these poor souls must waste away, be blown about as dust. Such cruelty needed only as its complement, as a masterpiece of hell, the craft of this simulated love intrigue,--these false letters, false to body and soul they figure forth--as though the man had cut out some filthy shapes to fasten below the cherubs on a missal-page. But Pompilia's ermine-like soul takes no pollution from all this craft. It arose that in the providence of God were born new attributes to two souls. Priest and wife--both champions of truth--developed new safeguards of their noble natures. Then does the law step in, secludes the wife and gives the oppressor a new probation. It only induces Guido to furbish up his tools for a fresh assault. He has a son. To other men the gift brings thankfulness; Guido saw in the babe but a money-bag. Even in the deepest degradation of his sinful career he has another grace vouchsafed from God. When he fled from the scene of the murders, he took with him the money which he had agreed to pay his confederates. They came near to his hiding-place, intending to kill him for the gold, but were too late: the agents of the law were too quick for them. He had another chance of repentance. So stands Guido; and this master of wickedness has for pupils his "fox-faced, horrible brother-brute the Abate," and his younger brother, neither wolf nor fox, but the hybrid Girolamo, and

"The hag that gave these three abortions birth, Unmotherly mother and unwomanly Woman,"

and lastly the four companions in the murder, who acceded at once to the crime, as though they were set to dig a vineyard. Then the Pope recalls the only answer of the Governor to whom Pompilia appealed--a threat and a shrug of the shoulder. He has a severe word for the Archbishop, as a hireling who turned and fled when the wolf pressed on the panting lamb within his reach. It comforts him to turn to Pompilia, "perfect in whiteness," as he pronounces. It makes him proud in the evening of his life as "gardener of the untoward ground," that he is privileged to gather this "rose for the breast of God."

"Go past me And get thy praise,--and be not far to seek Presently when I follow if I may!"

Nor very much apart from her can be placed Caponsacchi, his "warrior-priest." He finds much amiss in this freak of his. He disapproves the masquerade, the change of garb; but it was grandly done--that athlete's leap amongst the uncaged beasts set upon the martyr-maid in the mid-cirque. Impulsively had he cast every rag to the winds; but he championed God at first blush, and answered ringingly, with his glove on ground, the challenge of the false knight. Where, then, were the Church's men-at-arms, while this man in mask and motley has to do their work? When temptation came he had taken it by the head and hair, had done his battle, and has praise. Yet he must ruminate. "Work, be unhappy, but bear life, my son!" He turns to God, "reaches into the dark," "feels what he cannot see"; renews his confidence in the Divine order of the universe, but not without a pause, a shudder, a breathing space while he collects his thoughts and reviews his grounds of faith. The mind of man is a convex glass, gathering to itself

"The scattered points Picked out of the immensity of sky."

He understands how this earth may have been chosen as the theatre of the plan of redemption; as he in turn represents God here, he can believe that man's life on earth has been devised that he may wring from all his pain the pleasures of eternity. "This life is training and a passage," and even Guido, in the world to come, may run the race and win the prize. It does not stagger him, receiving and trusting the plan of God as he does, that he sees other men rejecting and disbelieving it, any more than it surprises him to find fishers who might dive for pearls dredging for whelks and mud-worms. But, alas for the Christians!--how ill they figure in all this! The Archbishop of Arezzo--how he failed when the test came! The friar, who had forsaken the world, how he shrank from doing his duty, for fear of rebuke! Women of the convent to whom Pompilia was consigned,--their kiss turned bite, and they claimed the wealth of which she died possessed because the trial seemed to prove her of dishonest life: so issue writ, and the convent takes possession by the Fisc's advice. Their fine speeches were all unsaid--their "saint was whore" when money was the prize. All this terrifies the aged Pope--not the wrangling of the Roman soldiers for the garments of the Lord, but the greed in His apostles. But are not mankind real? Is the petty circle in which he moves, after all, the world? The instincts of humanity have helped mankind in every age; they will do so still. If, because Christianity is old, and familiarity with its teachings has bred a confidence which is ill grounded, the Christian heroism of past times can no longer be looked for, yet the heroism of mankind springs up eternally, and will suffice for all its needs. And now he hears the whispers of the times to come. The approaching age (the eighteenth century) will shake this torpor of assurance; discarded doubts will be reintroduced; the earthquakes will try the towers of faith; the old reports will be discredited. Then what multitudes will sink from the plane of Christianity down to the next discoverable base, resting on the lust and pride of life! Some will stand firm. Pompilias will "know the right place by the foot's feel"; Caponsacchis by their mere impulses will be guided aright; the vast majority will fall. But the Vicar of Christ has a duty to perform, whatever may be in store in the womb of the coming age. With Peter's key he holds Peter's sword:

"I smite With my whole strength once more ere end my part,"

he says. Men pluck his sleeve, urge him to spare this barren tree awhile; others point out the privileges of the clergy, the right of the husband over the wife, the offence to the nobility involved in condemning one of their order, the danger to his own reputation for mercy. He brushes away with a sweep of his hand all these busy oppositions to his sense of duty, and signs the order for the execution of Guido and his companions. On the morrow the men shall die--not in the customary place, where die the common sort; but Guido, as a noble, shall be beheaded where the quality may see, and fear, and learn. He has no hope for Guido--

"Except in such a suddenness of fate. I stood at Naples once, a night so dark I could have scarce conjectured there was earth Anywhere, sky or sea, or world at all: But the night's black was burst through by a blaze-- Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore, Through her whole length of mountain visible: There lay the city, thick and plain, with spires, And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea. So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, And Guido see, one instant, and be saved.

* * * * *

"Carry this forthwith to the Governor!"

NOTES.--Line 1, Ahasuerus: Esther vi. 1. l. 11, "Peter first to Alexander last": St. Peter to Pope Alexander VIII., who died 1691. l. 25, Formosus Pope (891-6): he was bishop of Porto, and succeeded Stephen. He had formerly, from fear of Pope John, left his bishopric and fled to France. As he did not return when he was recalled, he was anathematised, and deprived of his preferments. He returned to the world, and put on the secular habit. Pope Martin (882-4) absolved him, and restored him to his former dignity; he then came to the popedom by bribery. (See Platina.) l. 32, Stephen VII. (The Pope, 896-7): "he persecuted the memory of Formosus with so much spite, that he abrogated his decrees and rescinded all he had done; though it was said that it was Formosus that conferred the bishopric of Anagni upon him. Stephen, because Formosus had hindered him before of this desired dignity, exercised his rage even upon his dead body; for Martin the historian says he hated him to that degree that, in a council which he held, he ordered the body of Formosus to be dragged out of the grave, to be stripped of his pontifical habit and put into that of a layman, and then to be buried among secular persons, having first cut off those two fingers of his right hand which are principally used by priests in consecration, and thrown into the Tiber, because, contrary to his oath, as he said, he had returned to Rome and exercised his sacerdotal function, from which Pope John had legally degraded him. This proved a great controversy, and of very ill example; for the succeeding popes made it almost a constant custom either to break or abrogate the acts of their predecessors, which was certainly far different from the practice of any of the good popes whose lives we have written." (Platina's Lives of the Popes, Dr. Benham's edition, vol. i., p. 237.) l. 89, "ΙΧΘΥΣ, which means Fish": the letters of this word, the Greek for fish, make the initials of the words Jesus, Christ, of God, Son, Saviour. The fish emblem for our Lord is common in the Roman catacombs, and is still used in ecclesiastical art. l. 91, "The Pope is Fisherman": because he is the successor of St. Peter the fisherman, and Christ said He would make Peter a fisher of men (Mark i. 17). l. 108, Theodore II. (Pope 898) restored the decrees of Formosus, and preferred his friends. l. 122, Luitprand: a chronicler of Papal history. l. 128, Romanus (Pope 897-8): as soon as he received the pontificate he disavowed and rescinded all the acts and decrees of Stephen. Platina calls such men "popelings," Pontificuli (ed. 1551). l. 132, Ravenna: Pope John IX. removed to Ravenna in consequence of the disturbances in Rome. He called a synod of seventy-four bishops, and condemned all that Stephen had done; he restored the decrees of Formosus, declaring it irregularly done of Stephen to re-ordain those on whom Formosus had conferred holy orders. (See Platina.) l. 138, De Ordinationibus == concerning Ordinations. l. 142, John IX. (Pope 898-900) reasserted the cause of Formosus, in consequence of which great disturbances arose in Rome. Sergius III. (Pope 904-11) "totally abolished all that Formosus had done before; so that priests, who had been by him admitted to holy orders, were forced to take new ordination. Nor was he content with thus dishonouring the dead pope; but he dragged his carcase again out of the grave, beheaded it as if it had been alive, and then threw it into the Tiber, as unworthy the honour of human burial. It is said that some fishermen, finding his body as they were fishing, brought it to St. Peter's church; and while the funeral rites were performing, the images of the saints which stood in the church bowed in veneration of his body, which gave them occasion to believe that Formosus was not justly persecuted with so great ignominy. But whether the fishermen did thus, or no, is a great question; especially it is not likely to have been done in Sergius' lifetime, who was a fierce persecutor of the favourers of Formosus, because he had hindered him before of obtaining the pontificate." (Platina, Lives of the Popes.) l. 293, "The sagacious Swede": this was Swedenborg, born at Stockholm 1688, died 1772: the mathematical theory of Probability is referred to here. (See Encyc. Brit., vol. xix., p. 768.) l. 297, "dip in Vergil here and there, and prick for such a verse": just as people open the Bible at random to find a verse to foretell certain events, so scholars used Vergil for this purpose; sortes Vergilianæ: Vergilian lots. l. 466, paravent: Fr. a screen; ombrifuge: a place where one flies for shade. l. 510, soldier-crab: the same as hermit-crab. Named from their combativeness, or from their possessing themselves of the shells of other animals. l. 836, Rota: a tribunal within the Curia, formerly the supreme court of justice and the universal court of appeal. It consists of twelve members called auditors, presided over by a dean. The decisions of the Rota, which form precedents, have been frequently published (Encyc. Dict.). l. 917, she-pard: a female leopard. l. 1097, "The other rose, the gold": this is "an ornament made of wrought gold and set with gems, which is blessed by the Pope on the fourth Sunday of Lent, and usually afterwards sent as a mark of special favour to some distinguished individual, church, or civil community" (Encyc. Brit., x. 758). l. 1188, "Lead us into no such temptations, Lord": "It is lawful to pray God that we be not led into temptation, but not lawful to skulk from those that come to us. The noblest passage in one of the noblest books of this century is where the old Pope glories in the trial--nay, in the partial fall and but imperfect triumph--of the younger hero." (R. L. Stevenson's Virginibus Puerisque, p. 43.) l. 1596: Missionaries to China have always had great difficulty in expressing the word God with our idea of the Supreme Being in the Chinese language. l. 1619, Rosy cross: Dr. Brewer says this is "not rosa-crux == rose-cross; but ros crux, dew cross. Dew was considered by the ancient chemists as the most powerful solvent of gold; and cross in alchemy is the synonym of light, because any figure of a cross contains the three letters L V X (light). 'Lux' is the menstruum of the red dragon (i.e. corporeal light), and this sunlight properly digested produces gold, and dew is the digester. Hence the Rosicrucians are those who use dew for digesting lux or light for the purpose of coming at the philosopher's stone." (Brewer's Dict. of Phrase and Fable, p. 765.) l. 1620, The great work == the magnum opus: "to find the absolute in the infinite, the indefinite, and the finite. Such is the magnum opus of the sages; such is the whole secret of Hermes; such is the stone of the philosophers. It is the great Arcanum." (Mysteries of Magic, A. E. Waite, p. 196.) This is the "Azoth" of Paracelsus and the sages. Magnetised electricity is the first matter of the magnum opus. l. 1698, "Know-thyself": e cœlo descendit Γνωθι σεαυτον--"Know thyself came down from heaven" (Juvenal, Sat. xi. 24); "Take the golden mean," "Est modus in rebus": "There is a mean in all things." (Horace, Sat. i. 106.) l. 1707, "When the Third Poet's tread surprised the two": "the talents of Sophocles were looked upon by Euripides with jealousy, and the great enmity which unhappily prevailed between the two poets gave an opportunity to the comic muse of Aristophanes to ridicule them both on the stage with humour and success" (Lemprière, Eur.). l. 1760, schene or sheen == brightness or glitter. l. 1762, tenebrific: causing or producing darkness. l. 1792, "Paul,--'tis a legend,'--answered Seneca": Butler, Lives of the Saints, under date June 30th, says: "That Seneca, the philosopher, was converted to the faith and held a correspondence with St. Paul, is a groundless fiction." l. 1904, antimasque or anti-mask: a ridiculous interlude; kibe: a crack or chap in the flesh occasioned by cold. l. 1942, Loyola: St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Order of the Jesuits. l. 1986-7, "Nemini honorem trado": Isaiah xlii. 8, xlviii. 11--"I will not give mine honour to another," or "my glory" (as A.V.). l. 2004, Farinacci: Farinaccius was procurator-general to Pope Paul V., and his work on torture in evidence, "Praxis et Theorica Criminalis (Frankfort, 1622)," is a standard authority. l. 2060, "the three little taps o' the silver mallet": when the Pope dies it is the duty of the camerlingo or chamberlain to give three taps with a silver mallet on the Pope's forehead while he calls him; it is a similar ceremony to that used at the death of the kings of Spain; where the royal chamberlain calls the dead sovereign three times, "Señor! Señor! Señor!" l. 2088, Priam: the last king of Troy; Hecuba: the wife of Priam, by whom he had nineteen children according to Homer; "Non tali auxilio": this is from Vergil's Æneid, ii., 519--"Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis tempus eget." "The crisis requires not such aid nor such defenders as thou art." l. 2111, The People's Square: Piazza del Popolo, at the north entrance to Rome. It is reached from the Corso.

BOOK XI., GUIDO--is now in the prison cell awaiting execution. He is visited by Cardinal Acciaiuoli and Abate Panciatichi, who are to remain with him till the fatal moment. He is pleading with them for their aid; he reminds them of his noble blood, too pure to leak away into the drains of Rome from the headsman's engine. He protests his innocence; he has only twelve hours to live, and is as innocent as Mary herself. He denounces the Pope, who could have cast around him the protection of the Church, whose son he is. His tonsure should have saved him. It was the Pope's duty to have shown him mercy, but he supposes he is sick of his life, and must vent his spleen on him. He asks the Abate if he can do nothing? They used to enjoy life together, but he concludes that his companions have hearts of stone. He wishes he had never entangled himself with a wife; he was a fool to slay her. Why must he die? It need not be if men were good. If the Pope is Peter's successor, he should act like Peter. Would Peter have ordered him to death when there was his soul to save? What though half Rome condemned him? the other half took his part. The shepherd of the flock should use the crumpled end of his staff to rescue his sheep, not the pointed end wherewith to thrust them. The law proclaims him guiltless, but the Pope says he is guilty; and he supposes he ought to acquiesce and say that he deserves his fate. Repent? not he! What would be the good of that? If he fall at their feet and gnash and foam, will that put back the death engine to its hiding-place? He reflects that old Pietro cried to him for respite when he chased him about his room. He asked for time to save his soul: Guido gave him none. Why grant respite to him if he deserves his doom? Then he reproaches his companions: had they not sinned with him if he had done wrong? had they ever warned him, not by words, but by their own good deeds? He declares that he does not and cannot repent one particle of his past life. How should he have treated his wife? Ought he to have loved or hated her? When he offered her his love, had she not recoiled with loathing from him? Had she not acted as a victim at the sacrifice? Was it not her desire to be anywhere apart from him? What was called his wife was but "a nullity in female shape"--a plague mixed up with the "abominable nondescripts" she called her father and her mother. It was intended that he should be fooled; it happened that he had anticipated those who wished to fool him: yet this boast was premature. All Rome knows that the dowry was a derision, the wife a nameless bastard; his ancient name had been bespattered with filth, and those who planned the wrong had revealed it to the world. Yes, he had punished those who fooled him so. He had punished his wife, too, who had no part in their crime; and why? Her cold, pale, mute obedience was so hateful to him. "Speak!" he had demanded, and she obeyed; "Be silent!" and she obeyed also, with just the selfsame white despair. Things were better when her parents were present; when they left she ran to the Commissary and the Archbishop to beg their interference, and then committed the "worst offence of not offending any more." Her look of martyr-like endurance was worse than all: it reminded him of the "terrible patience of God." All that meant she did not love him;--she might have shammed the love. As it was, his wife was a true stumbling-block in his way. Everything, too, went against him. It was so unlucky for him that he did not catch the pair at the inn under circumstances when he could lawfully have slain them both together. There is always some--

"Devil, whose task it is To trip the all-but-at perfection."

Unhappily, he had just missed his chance of appearing grandly right before the world. When he took his assassins to the villa he was fortunate, it is true, in finding all at home--the three to kill; but he had been unlucky in not escaping, as he had arranged. Then, when he thought he had killed his wife (with his knowledge of anatomy too!), she must linger for four whole days, the surgeon keeping her alive that every soul in Rome might learn her story. All the world could listen then. Had it not been for that he would have had a tale to tell that would have saved his head: he would have sworn he had caught Pompilia in the embraces of the priest, who had escaped in the darkness. And now she has lived to forgive him, commend him to the mercies of God, while fixing his head upon the block. And then at his trial all was against him: the dice were loaded, and the lawyers of no service to him. Yet he is sure that the Roman people approve his deed, though the mob is in love with his murdered wife. He says "there was no touch in her of hate." The angels would not be able to make a heaven for her if she knew he were in hell, she would pray him into heaven against his will; for it is hell which he demands, so heartily does he hate the good! Yes, he is impenitent,--no spark of contrition. Would the Church slay the impenitent? He passionately tells the Cardinal that he knows he is wronged, yet will not help him. As he sees no chance of their relenting, he tries to influence them by suggesting how he could have helped their chances at the next election of a Pope, which cannot be long delayed. Then he falls to entreaty again: "Save my life, Cardinal; I adjure you in God's name!" begs him go, fall at the Pope's feet, tell him he is innocent; and if that serve him not, say he is an atheist, and implore him not to send his soul to perdition. "Take your crucifix away!" he cries. Then, when all seems hopeless, he begins to abuse the Pope, the Cardinals, and all. He hates his victims too, he protests, as much as when he slew them; and while he curses, impenitent, scornful and full of malice, he hears the chant of the Brotherhood of Mercy, who sing the Office of the Dying at his cell-door. Then he shrieks that all he had been saying was false; he was mad:

"Don't open! Hold me from them! I am yours, I am the Grand Duke's--no, I am the Pope's! Abate,--Cardinal,--Christ,--Maria,--God, ... Pompilia, will you let them murder me?"

NOTES.--Line 13, Certosa: a Carthusian monastery, La Certosa, in Val' Emo, is situated about four miles from Florence. It was founded about 1341. It is Gothic, and is built in a grand style, like that of a castle. l. 186, mannaia: an instrument for beheading criminals, much like the guillotine. l. 188, "Mouth-of-Truth"--Bocca della Verità: S. Maria in Cosmedin, in ancient Rome. From the mouth of a fountain to the left is the portico, into which, according to a mediæval belief, the ancient Romans thrust their right hands when taking an oath. l. 261, "Merry Tales": the novels and tales of Franco Sacchetti (1335-1400). He wrote some three hundred novelle in pure Tuscan. l. 272, Albano, or Albani, Francesco (1578-1660): a celebrated Italian painter, who was born at Bologna. He lived and taught in Rome for many years. Among the best of his sacred pictures are a "St. Sebastian" and an "Assumption of the Virgin," both in the church of St. Sebastian at Rome. l. 274, "Europa and the bull": Europa was the daughter of Agenor, king of Phœnicia. Jupiter became enamoured of her, and assumed the form of a beautiful bull. When Europa mounted on his back he carried her off. l. 291, Atlas and axis are bones of the neck on which the head turns: the atlas is the first cervical vertebra, the axis is the second cervical vertebra; symphyses, the union of bones with each other. l. 327, "Petrus, quo vadis?" "Peter, whither goest thou?" On the Appian Way at Rome there is a small church called Domine Quo Vadis, so named from the legend that St. Peter, fleeing from the death of a martyr, here met his Master, and inquired of Him, "Domine, quo vadis?" ("Lord, whither goest Thou?") to which he received the reply, "Venio iterum crucifigi" ("I come to be crucified again")--whereupon the apostle, ashamed of his weakness, returned. l. 569, King Cophetua: an imaginary king of Africa, who fell in love with a beggar girl. He married her, and lived happily with her for many years. l. 683, "and tinkle near": at the mass, when the priest consecrates the elements, a small bell is rung by the server to acquaint the worshippers with the fact that the consecration has taken place. This, of course, is the most solemn part of the mass, when the worshippers are most attentive. l. 685, Trebbian: from Trevi, in the valley of the Clitumnus. l. 786, "Hocus-pocus"; Nares says these words represent Ochus Bochus, an Italian magician invoked by jugglers; but there are other explanations. Vallombrosa Convent: a famous convent near Florence. Milton says, "Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa" (Paradise Lost, i. 302). But the trees are pines, and not deciduous. l. 1119, "the Etruscan monster": Mr. Browning was a student of Etruscan art and archæology. The Etruscans were the nation conquered by the Romans, and their antiquities are abundant in the district between Rome and Florence. The monster is the Chimæra, represented with three heads--those of a lion, a goat, and a dragon. Bellerophon, mounted on the horse Pegasus, attacked and overcame it. l. 1413, Armida: a beautiful sorceress, a prominent character in Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. l. 1416, Rinaldo, in the same poem, was the Achilles of the Crusaders' army. He ran away from home at the age of fifteen, and was enrolled in the adventurers' squadron. Rinaldo fell in love with Armida, and wasted his time in voluptuous pleasures. l. 1420, zecchines, or sequins: Venetian gold coins, worth about 9_s._ 6_d._ l. 1669, stinche: a prison. l. 1808, "Helping Vienna": this refers to the second siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683, when 150,000 Turks sat down before the city, Cara Mustapha being their leader. Pope Innocent XI. and John Sobieski, king of Poland, entered into a league to oppose the common enemy of Christian Europe. The whole Turkish army was defeated, and fled in the utmost disorder after the great battle fought under the walls of Vienna on Sept. 12th, 1683. l. 1850, Gaudeamus, "let us be glad." l. 1925, Jove Ægiochus: Jupiter was surnamed Ægiochus because, according to some authors, he was brought up by a goat. Properly the name is from the ægis which the god bore. l. 1928, "Seventh Æneid": Virgil's great poem was the "Æneis," which has for its subject the settlement of Æneas in Italy. The passage referred to is in the Eighth Book (426), and begins "His informatum, manibus jam parte politâ." l. 2034, "Romano vivitur more": Life goes on in the Roman way. l. 2051, "Byblis in fluvius": Byblis fell in love with her brother, and was changed into a fountain. l. 2052, "sed Lycaon in lupum": a cruel king of Arcadia, named Lycaon, was changed into a wolf by Jupiter, because he offered human sacrifices on the altar of the god Pan. l. 2144, Paynimrie, heathendom. l. 2184, Olimpia, in Orlando Furioso: Countess of Holland and wife of Bireno: when her husband deserted her she was bound naked to a rock by pirates, but Orlando delivered her and took her to Ireland. Bianca: wife of Fazio. She tried to save her husband from death; failed, went mad, and died of a broken heart. l. 2185, Ormuz wealth: the island Ormuz, in the Persian Gulf, is a mart for diamonds. l. 2211, Circe: a sorceress, who turned the companions of Ulysses into swine. Ulysses resisted the metamorphosis by virtue of the herb moly, given him by Mercury. l. 2214, Lucrezia di Borgia: she was thrice married, her last husband being Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara. Through her influence many persons were put to death. Her natural son Gennaro having been poisoned, she died herself as he expired. l. 2414, "Who are these you have let descend my stair?" They were the Brothers of Mercy, whose duty it was to attend criminals on the scaffold. Their chant was the Office of the Dying.

BOOK XII., THE BOOK AND THE RING.--On Feb. 22nd, 1698, Guido and his confederates were executed. We have, in the concluding book of this long poem, the reports of the execution, and the comments made concerning it in Rome, from four persons. The first which the poet gives is a letter from a stranger, a man of rank, on a visit to Rome from Venice. He begins his letter on the evening of the day in question, by stating that the Carnival is nearly over, the city very full of strangers, the old Pope tottering on the verge of the grave, and the people already beginning to discuss his probable successor. The Pope took daily exercise a week ago by the river-side, for the weather was like May. Then, after more gossip about politics, he says he has lost his bet of fifty sequins by the execution of the Count: he had felt, up to two days ago, that he would win the wager, as everybody seemed to think the Count would save his head; but the Pope's was the one deaf ear to every appeal for a reprieve, and so "persisted in the butchery." One of the writer's friends was so annoyed at the Pope's refusal to spare the life of a man with whom he had dined, that he would have actually stayed away from the execution, had it not been for a lady, whose presence on that occasion made it a desirable amusement for him. Of course, everybody of any importance was there, and the people made a general holiday of the occasion. Then he narrates how the ecclesiastics who had attended Guido on the eve of his execution considered that their efforts to prepare him for the next world had been crowned at last with complete success. The procession from the prison to the place of execution is described; and severe exception is taken to the choice of the Piazza del Popolo, as a deliberate affront to the aristocracy residing there. Still, it had its compensations, as it afforded a fine spectacle, and made, on the whole, a very pleasant day. There were the usual incidents of a street crowd: the man run over and killed; the pushing and struggling for good places; outcries there were, also, against the Pope for forbidding the Lottery; and a miracle was worked upon a lame beggar by the prayer of the holy Guido as he glanced that way. The Count was the last to mount the scaffold steps, and the nobility were so occupied with observing him and his behaviour in the presence of death, that they paid no attention to the peasants who dangled on their respective ropes at the gallows. The Count made a speech to the multitude, and comported himself as became a good Christian gentleman. He begged forgiveness of God, and hoped his fellow-men would put a fair construction on his acts; asked their prayers for his soul, suggesting that they should forthwith say an "Our Father" and a "Hail, Mary!" for his sake. Then he turned to his confessor, made the sign of the cross, and cast a fervent glance at the church over the way; rose up, knelt down again, bent his head, and with the name of Jesus on his lips received the headsman's blow. That functionary showed the head to the populace in due form, and the spectacle was over. The strangers present were a little disappointed at the Count's height and general appearance. They understood he was fully six feet high, and youngish for his years, and if not handsome, at least dignified; but his face was not one to please a wife. No doubt something was due to the rough costume in which he committed the murder,--a coarse and shabby dress enough. His end was peace. If his friend wishes to bet on the next Pope, he will give him a hint; and now will conclude with the last new pasquinade which has amused the city.

There were three letters which were bound up with Mr. Browning's famous "find" at Florence. One of these was written by the Count's advocate, De Archangelis, concerning certain fresh points intended to be used in mitigation of the sentence; but the lawyer explains that the Pope had set every plea aside, and had hastened the execution. The letter is addressed to the friends of the Count, and the client is referred to as a gallant man, who died in faith in an exemplary manner. He considers that no blot has fallen on the escutcheon of his noble house, as he had respect and commiseration from all Rome, and from the cultivated everywhere. He concludes by hoping that God may compensate for this direful blow by sending future blessings on the family. Enclosed with this communication is another, not intended for the noble persons to whom the above polite effusion is addressed. This is for their lawyer, and is to be kept to himself. He tells him that their "Pisan aid" was of no avail: the Pope was determined to see Guido's head drop off, and would not listen to reason. Especially annoying was it that his superb defence was wasted: he got nothing for his work, and he does not care how soon the obstinate and inept Pope dies. He tells his correspondent, who is his boy's godfather, how much the lad enjoyed the fine sight at the execution. He had promised him, if his defence failed to save the Count's head, that he should go and see it chopped off. This was exactly to the boy's taste; and he sat at a window with a great lady, who twitted the boy on the triumph of his father's opponent Bottini, saying that his "papa, with all his eloquence, cannot be reckoned on to help as before." The boy cleverly replied that his "papa knew better than offend the Pope and baulk him of his grudge against the Count; he would else have argued off Bottini's nose." He would have his opponent see that he was a man able to drive right and left horses at once.--The next letter is from the Fisc Bottini, who says the case ended as he foresaw: Pompilia's innocence was easily proved. Guido had made very good sport, and "died like a saint, poor devil!" Bottini regrets he had not been on the other side. Pompilia gave him no opportunity to show his skill; he could have done better with the Count. He can imagine how De Archangelis crows and boasts that he kept the Fisc a month at bay; he knows how he would grin and bray; but the thing which most annoys him is the behaviour of the monk, whose report of the dying Pompilia's words took all the freshness from his best points; and then, when preaching at San Lorenzo yesterday about the case, from the text "Let God be true, and every man a liar," said this, which he encloses from a printed copy of the sermon all Rome is reading to-day. "Do not argue from the result of this trial," said the preacher, "that truth may look for vindication from the world." God seems to acquiesce with those who say 'He sleeps,' and will not always put forth His hand and be recognised:

"Because Pompilia's purity prevails, Conclude you, all truth triumphs in the end?"

Of all the birds that flew from the ark, one only returned: how many perished? So--

"How many chaste and noble sister-fames Wanted the extricating hand, and lie Strangled, for one Pompilia proud above The welter, plucked from the world's calumny?"

Truth has to wait God's time; for how long did the pagans of old Rome point to the Catacombs and say, "Down there, below the ground, foul and obscene rites are practised, far from the sight of men"? The most hideous and fearful practices were charged upon the early Christians, who worshipped in those places of refuge; but not for ages did God's lightning expose to the world those holy receptacles for the mangled remains of His martyred saints, and permit the gaze of the multitude to penetrate the sacred chambers, where the faith of Christ was kept alive in those dreadful centuries of persecution. Then, when God did call the world to see the whole secret so long preserved from the world above, what was there to behold?--a poor earthen lump by the rock where the corpse lay, the grave which held the treasured blood of the martyr:

"The rough-scratched palm branch, and the legend left Pro Christo."

And so these abhorred ones turned out to be saints. The best defence the law can make for Pompilia is to say that wickedness was bred in her, and after this specimen of man's protection, one wave of God's hand bids the mists dispel, and the true instinct of a good old man, who hates the dark and loves the light, adduces another proof that "God is true, and every man a liar": he who trusts to human testimony for a fact thereby proves himself a fool: man is false, man is weak, and "truth seems reserved for heaven, not earth." As for himself, added the friar, "he has long since renounced the world, yet he is not forbidden to estimate the value of that which he has forsaken. If any one were to press him as to his content in having put the pleasures of the world aside, he would answer that, apart from Christ's assurances, he dare not say whether he had not failed to taste much joy; how much of human love in varied forms he had lost; how much joy, from 'books that teach and arts that help,' he had missed. He might have learned how to grow great as well as good. Many precious things, no doubt, he had forsaken; but there was one--the chief object of men's ambition--earthly praise and the world's good repute; in renouncing these, his loss, he is sure, was light, and in choosing obscurity he was convinced he had chosen well." Bottini thinks this is vanity and spite: how dare he say "every man is a liar"! What next? He finds that the sermon has already had its effect for Gomez, who had decided to appeal to another court, and declines to have any more to do with lawyers; he has resolved to let the liars possess the world, and so he must whistle for his job and his fee. He is happy to say, however, that he shall soon be able to show the rabid monk whether law be powerless or not; for by a great piece of luck the convent to which Pompilia was first sent has claimed all her property which she had willed to those who were to act as trustees for her son and heir; as Pompilia had not been relieved at the trial from her imputed fault, the convent had a right to claim its due, and take the whole of the property. It has therefore become the lawyer's duty to institute procedure against this very Pompilia, whom last week he held up as a saint, and charging her with having been a very common sort of sinner, perform a volte-face before the selfsame court which he had so recently addressed, and show this "foul-mouthed friar" that his white dove is a sooty raven. The Pope, however, soon rectified this bad business, and issued an "instrument," which the poet says is contained in his precious little account of the trial, by which the Supreme Pontiff restores the perfect fame of the dead Pompilia, and quashes all proceedings brought or threatened to be brought against the heir, by the Most Venerable Convent of the Convertites in the Corso. So was justice done a second time. Two years later died good Innocent XII., after a rule of nine years in Rome; and so there is an end of the story. Mr. Browning is unable to say what became of the boy Gaetano, the child of Guido and Pompilia.

NOTES.--Line 12, Wormwood Star: a star which (it was fabled) appeared at the approach of death. l. 43: If the writer did bet on Spada for Pope he lost, as Cardinal Albani became the next Pope, in 1700. l. 62, Holy Doors: certain doors in St. Peter's, at Rome, which are opened only at the commencement of a Papal jubilee, and at its close are at once bricked up again. l. 65, "Fenelon will be condemned": Fenelon was one of the Jansenist leaders in France, and Jansenism was on its trial in Rome. l. 89, Dogana-by-the-Bank: a new customhouse. l. 104, Palchetto: a balcony made of scaffolding, used for public spectacles. l. 105, The Pincian: the Pincian hill, beyond the Piazza del Popolo, is a hill of gardens. Here were once the gardens of Lucullus, in which Messalina celebrated her orgies. This is a fashionable drive in the evening for the modern Romans. l. 114, The Three Streets diverge from the Piazza del Popolo on the south; to the right is the Via di Ripetta; to the left the Via del Babuino, leading to the Piazza di Spagna; in the centre is the Corso. l. 139, The New Prisons--Carceri Nuovi: these were built by Pope Innocent X. They are situated in the Via Giulia, leading to the Bridge of St. Angelo. l. 140, Pasquin's Street: the street in Rome where there stands a mutilated statue in a corner of the palace of Ursini; so called from a cobbler who was remarkable for his sneers and gibes, and near whose shop the statue was dug up. On this statue it has been customary to paste satiric papers. Hence a lampoon à Pasquinade is a piece of satirical writing (Webster's Dict.). Place Navona: the Piazza Navona is the largest in Rome after that of St. Peter. It is officially called Circo Agonale. The name is said to be derived from the agones (corrupted to Navone, Navona), or contests which took place in the circus. l. 158, Tern Quatern: a tern is a prize in a lottery, resulting from the favourable combination of three numbers in the drawing; a quatern is a combination of four numbers; and a combination of these is, I presume, some very exceptional prize for the holders of the tickets. l. 178: "Pater," the Lord's Prayer; "Ave," the angelical salutation to the Virgin. l. 179, "Salve Regina Cœli": a hymn to the Virgin, sung at Vespers, which begins with the words "Hail, Queen of Heaven!" l. 184, This is a satire against relic-worship, and not in very good taste. l. 199, just-a-corps: a short coat fitting tightly to the body. l. 208, quatrain: a stanza of four lines rhyming alternately. l. 217, socius: an ally, a confederate. l. 224, Tarocs: a game at cards played with seventy-eight cards. l. 277, "Quantum est hominum venustiorum": and all men who have any grace. l. 290, "hactenus senioribus": hitherto for our superiors. l. 320, Themis: a daughter of Cœlus and Terra, who married Jupiter against her own inclination. She is represented as holding a sword in one hand and a pair of scales in the other. l. 326, "case of Gomez": this was a legal matter before the courts, and which was referred to in one of the manuscripts consulted by Mr. Browning when engaged upon the poem. l. 327, "reliqua differamus in crastinum!" the rest let us put off till to-morrow; estafette: courier. l. 361, "Bartolus-cum-Baldo": the names of two eminent Italian jurists. l. 367, "adverti supplico humiliter quod": I have observed, I humbly beg that. l. 435, Spreti: the subordinate of "De Archangelis"; he is "advocate of the poor." l. 504, "their idol god an ass": the early Christians were accused by their pagan persecutors of all sorts of horrible and degrading superstitions, amongst other things of worshipping the head of an ass. There has recently been discovered amongst the wall scratchings on some relics of ancient Roman buildings the figure of a crucified man with the head of an ass; and an inscription roughly scratched implying that this was the god of some Christian thus held up to ridicule. l. 520, "the rude brown lamp": used in the Catacombs, both for light and for burning at the martyrs' tombs to honour them. l. 521, the cruse: thousands of these have been discovered, and are exhibited in the museum at the Church of St. John Lateran in Rome. l. 522, "the palm branch": graven in countless parts of the Roman catacombs, as a sign that the martyr buried beneath it had won the victory, and had conquered by his faith. l. 523, "pro Christo," for Christ: that is to say, the martyrs had shed the blood presented in the cruse for Christ's sake. l. 647, ampollosity: windbag behaviour. l. 679, "claim every paul": paolo, an Italian coin worth sixpence. l. 715, "Astræa redux": justice brought back. l. 745, "Martial's phrase": Mart. iv. 91. l. 787, Gonfalonier: Lord Mayor, who bore the standard, or gonfalon. l. 811, Buonarotti == Michael Angelo. l. 812, Vexillifer, standard-bearer. l. 813, The Patavinian: i.e., Livy of Padua. l. 815, "Janus of the double face": Janus, a Roman deity represented with two faces, because he was acquainted with the past and future, or because he was taken for the sun who opens the day at his rising and shuts it at his setting (Lemprière). l. 865, "Deeper than ever the Andante dived": a movement or piece in andante (rather slow) time, as the andante in Beethoven's fifth symphony. l. 872, "Lyric Love": the poet's dead wife invoked in the first part of this work. Her poems on Italy are referred to in the last line.--The Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. xiii., p. 85, says that Innocent XI. was the Pope of The Ring and the Book. Mr. Browning, however, says that Antonio Pignatelli (Innocent XII.) was the Pope in question. The character of the earlier sovereign pontiff certainly agrees better with the story told by the poet than does that of the latter. It may be, as has been suggested by Mr. George W. Cooke, in his Guide-Book to Browning, that the poet confounded the two men with each other, or, what is more probable, that he deliberately gave to Innocent XII. qualities which belonged only to Innocent XI. (p. 339). The following sketch of the life of Innocent XI. (Benedetto Odelscalchi) is taken from the Encyclopædia Britannica: "He was Pope from 1676 to 1689; was born at Como in 1611, studied law at Rome and Naples, [and] held successively the offices of protonotary, President of the Apostolic Chamber, Commissary of the Marca di Roma, and Governor of Macerta; in 1647 Innocent X. made him cardinal, and he afterwards successively became legate to Ferrara and bishop of Novara. In all these capacities the simplicity and purity of character which he displayed had, combined with his unselfish and open-handed benevolence, secured for him a high place in the popular affection and esteem; and two months after the death of Clement X. he was (Sept. 21st, 1676), in spite of French opposition, chosen his successor. He lost no time in declaring and practically manifesting his zeal as a reformer of manners and a corrector of administrative abuses. He sought to abolish sinecures, and to put the papal finances otherwise on a sound footing; beginning with the clergy, he endeavoured to raise the laity also to a higher moral standard of living. Some of his regulations with the latter object, however, may raise a smile as showing more zeal than judgment. In 1679 he publicly condemned sixty-five propositions, taken chiefly from the writings of Escobar, Suarez, and the like, as 'propositiones laxorum moralistarum,' and forbade any one to teach them under pain of excommunication. Personally not unfriendly to Molinos, he nevertheless so far yielded to the enormous pressure brought to bear upon him as to confirm in 1687 the judgment of the inquisitors by which sixty-eight Molinist propositions were condemned as blasphemous and heretical. His pontificate was marked by the prolonged struggle with Louis XIV. of France on the subject of the so-called 'Gallican Liberties,' and also about certain immunities claimed by ambassadors to the papal court. He died after a long period of feeble health on August 12th, 1689. Hitherto repeated attempts at his canonisation have invariably failed, the reason popularly assigned being the influence of France. The fine moral character of Innocent has been sketched with much artistic power, as well as with historical fidelity, by Mr. Robert Browning in The Ring and the Book."--Innocent XII. (Antonio Pignatelli), whose name Mr. Browning expressly gives, as fixing the identity of the Pope whose character he portrayed, was born at Naples in 1615. He took Innocent XI. for his model. This pontiff made him, in 1681, cardinal, bishop of Faenza, legate of Bologna, and archbishop of Naples. "His election as pope took place February 12th, 1691. At the beginning of his reign he endeavoured to abolish nepotism by means of a bull, in 1692. His nepotes were the poor--the Lateran his hospital. The Bullarium magnum contains many rules relating to cloister discipline and the life of the secular clergy. His efforts for the restoration of discipline were so great, that scoffers boasted he had reformed the Church both in its head and members. He died on September 27th, 1700. Shortly before his decease he settled a large sum on the hospital he had erected, and ordered that his goods should be sold and the proceeds given to the poor. He was a benevolent and pious prelate" (Imp. Dict. Univ. Biog.). There is such frequent reference to Molinos and the doctrines of Molinism or Quietism in The Ring and the Book, and the subject is so unfamiliar to the general reader, that I have thought it wise to extract the following admirable note on the question from Butler's Lives of the Saints, under the date November xxiv., "St. John of the Cross":--"Quietism was broached by Michael Molinos, a Spanish priest and spiritual director in great repute at Rome, who, in his book entitled The Spiritual Guide, established a system of perfect contemplation. It chiefly turns upon the following general principles. 1. That perfect contemplation is a state in which a man does not reason, or reflect, either on God or himself, but passively receives the impression of heavenly light without exercising any acts, the mind being in a state of perfect inaction and inattention, which this author calls quiet. Which principle is a notorious illusion and falsity: for even in supernatural impressions or communications, how much soever a soul may be abstracted from her senses, and insensible to external objects, which act upon their organs, she still exercises her understanding and will, in adoring, loving, praising, or the like, as is demonstrable both from principle and from the testimony of St. Teresa, and all true contemplatives. 2. This fanatic teaches, that a soul in that state desires nothing, not even his own salvation; and fears nothing, not even hell itself. This principle, big with pernicious consequences, is heretical; as the precept and constant obligation of hope of salvation through Christ is an article of faith. The pretence that a total indifference is a state of perfection is folly and impiety, as if solicitude about things of duty was not a precept. And so if a man could ever be exempt from the obligation of that charity which he owes both to God and himself, by which he is bound, above all things, to desire and to labour for his salvation and the eternal reign of God in his soul. A third principle of this author is no less notoriously heretical: that in such a state the use of the sacraments and good works becomes indifferent; and that the most criminal representations and motions in the sensitive part of the soul are foreign to the superior, and not sinful in this elevated state; as if the sensitive part of the soul was not subject to the government of the rational or superior part, or as if this could be indifferent about what passes in it. Some will have it that Molinos carried his last principles so far as to open a door to the abominations of the Gnostics; but most excuse him from admitting that horrible consequence (see F. Avrigny, Honoré of St. Mary, etc.). Innocent XI., in 1687, condemned sixty-eight propositions extracted from this author as respectively heretical, scandalous and blasphemous. Molinos was condemned by the Inquisition at Rome, recalled his errors, and ended his life in imprisonment in 1696 (see Argentere, Collect. Judiciorum de Novis Erroribus, t. iii., part 2, p. 402; Stevaert, Damnat. Prop., p. 1). Semi-Quietism was rendered famous by having been for some time patronised by the great Fenelon. Madame Guyon, a widow lady, wrote An Easy and Short Method of Prayer, and Solomon's Canticle of Canticles interpreted in a Mystical Sense, for which, by order of Lewis XIV., she was confined in a nunnery, but soon after enlarged. Then it was that she became acquainted with Fenelon; and she published the Old Testament with explanations, her own life by herself, and other works, all written with spirit and a lively imagination. She submitted her doctrine to the judgment of Bossuet, esteemed the most accurate theologian in the French dominions. After a mature examination, Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, Cardinal Noailles, Fenelon, then lately nominated archbishop of Cambray, and M. Trowson, superior of S. Sulpice, drew up thirty articles concerning the sound maxims of a spiritual life, to which Fenelon added four others. These thirty-four articles were signed by them at Issy in 1695, and are the famous 'Articles of Issy' (see Argentere, Collectio Judiciorum de Novis Erroribus, t. iii.; Du Plessis, Hist. de Meaux, t. I., p. 492; Mémoires Chronol., t. iii., p. 28). During this examination Bossuet and Fenelon had frequent disputes for and against disinterested love, or divine love of pure benevolence. This latter undertook in some measure the patronage of Madame Guyon, and in 1697 published a book entitled The Maxims of the Saints, in which a kind of Semi-Quietism was advanced. The clamour which was raised drew the author into disgrace at the court of Lewis XIV., and the book was condemned by Innocent XII. in 1699, on the 12th of March, and on the 9th of April following, by the author himself, who closed his eyes to all the glimmerings of human understanding to seek truth in the obedient simplicity of faith. By this submission he vanquished and triumphed over his defeat itself, and, by a more admirable greatness of soul, over his vanquisher. With the book, twenty-three propositions extracted out of it were censured by the Pope as rash, pernicious in practice, and erroneous respectively; but none were qualified as heretical. The principal error of Semi-Quietism consists in this doctrine,--that, in the state of perfect contemplation, it belongs to the entire annihilation in which a soul places herself before God, and to the perfect resignation of herself to His will, that she be indifferent whether she be damned or saved; which monstrous extravagance destroys the obligation of Christian hope. The Divine precepts can never clash, but strengthen one another. It would be blasphemy to pretend that because God, as a universal ruler, suffers sin, we can take a complacence in its being committed by others. God damns no one but for sin and final impenitence; yet, whilst we adore the Divine justice and sanctity, we are bound to reject sin with the utmost abhorrence, and deprecate damnation with the greatest ardour, both which by the Divine grace we can shun. Where, then, can there be any room for such a pretended resignation, at the very thought of which piety shudders? No such blasphemies occur in the writings of St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross, or other approved spiritual authors. If they are, or seem to be, expressed in certain parts of some spiritual works, as those of Bernieres, or in the Italian translation of Boudon's God Alone, these expressions are to be corrected by the rule of solid theology. Fenelon was chiefly deceived by the authority of an adulterated edition of The Spiritual Entertainments of St. Francis of Sales, published at Lyons, in 1628, by Drobet. Upon the immediate complaint and supplication of St. Francis Chantal and John Francis Sales, brother of the saint, then bishop of Geneva, Lewis XIII. suppressed the privilege granted for the said edition by letters patent given in the camp before Rochelle in the same year, prefixed to the correct and true edition of that book made at Lyons by Cœurceillys in 1629, by order of St. Francis Chantal. Yet this faulty edition, with its additions and omissions, has been sometimes reprinted; and a copy of this edition imposed upon Fenelon, whom Bossuet, who used the right edition, accused of falsifying the book (see Mem. de Trev. for July, anno 1558, p. 446). Bossuet had several years before maintained in the schools of Sorbonne, with great warmth, that a love of pure benevolence is chimerical. Nothing is more insisted on in theological schools than the distinction of the love of chaste desire and of benevolence. By the first, a creature loves God as the creature's own good--that is, upon the motive of enjoying Him, or because he shall possess God and find in Him his own complete happiness,--in other words, because God is good to the creature himself, both here and hereafter. The love of benevolence is that by which a creature loves God purely for His own sake, or because He is in Himself infinitely good. This latter is called pure or disinterested love, or love of charity; the former is a love of an inferior order, and is said by most theologians to belong to hope, not to charity; and many maintain that it can never attain to such a degree of perfection as to be a love of God above all things; because, say they, he who loves God merely because He is his own good, or for the sake of his enjoyment, loves Him not for God's own increated goodness, which is the motive of charity; nor can he love Him more than he does his own enjoyment of Him, though he makes no such comparison, nor even directly or interpretatively forms such an act, that he loves Him not more than he does his own possession of Him--which would be criminal and extremely inordinate. So this love is good, and of obligation, as a part of hope; and it disposes the soul to the love of charity. Bossuet allowed the distinct motives of the loves of chaste desire and of benevolence; but said no act of the latter could be formed by the heart which does not expressly include an act of the former; because, said he, no man can love any good without desiring to himself at the same time the possession of that good or its union with himself, and no man can love another's good merely as another's. This all allow, if this other's good were to destroy or exclude the love of his own good. Hence the habit of love of benevolence must include the habit of the love of desire. But the act may be and often is exercised without it, for good is amiable in itself and for its own sake; and this is the general opinion of theologians. However, the opinion of Bossuet, that an act of the love of benevolence or of charity is inseparable from an actual love of desire is not censured, but is maintained also by F. Honoratus of St. Mary (Tradition sur la Contempl., t. iii., ch. iv., p. 273). Mr. Morris carries this notion so far as to pretend that creatures, in loving God, consider nothing in His perfections but their own good (Letter 2, 'On Divine Love,' p. 8). Some advised Fenelon to make a diversion by attacking Bossuet's sentiments and books at Rome, and convicting him of establishing theological hope by destroying charity. But the pious archbishop made answer that he never would inflame a dispute by recriminating against a brother, whatever might have seemed prudent to be done at another season. When he was put in mind to beware of the artifices of mankind, which he had so well known and so often experienced, he made answer: "Let us die in our simplicity" (moriamur in simplicitate nostrâ). On this celebrated dispute the ingenious Claville (Traité du Vrai Mérite) makes this remark,--that some of those who carried the point were condemned by the public as if they lost charity by the manner in which they carried on the contest; but if Fenelon erred in theory he was led astray by an excess in his desire of charity. By this adversity and submission he improved his own charity and humility to perfection, and arrived at the most easy disposition of heart, disengaged from everything in the world, bowed down to a state of pliableness and docility not to be expressed, and grounded in a love of simplicity which extinguished in him everything besides. Those who admired these virtues in him before were surprised at the great heights to which he afterwards carried them: so much he appeared a new man, though before a model of piety and humility. As to the distinction of the motives in our love of God, in practice, too nice or anxious an inquiry is generally fruitless and pernicious; for our business is more and more to die to ourselves, purify our hearts, and employ our understanding in the contemplation of the Divine perfections and heavenly mysteries, and our affections in the various acts of holy love--a boundless field in which our souls may freely take their range. And while we blame the extravagances of false mystics, we must never fear being transported to excesses in practice by the love of God. It can never be carried too far, since the only measure of our love to God is to 'love without measure,' as St. Bernard says. No transports of pure love can carry souls aside from the right way, so long as they are guided by humility and obedience. In disputes about such things, the utmost care is necessary that charity be not lost in them, that envy and pride be guarded against, and that sobriety and moderation be observed in all inquiries; for nothing is more frequent than for the greatest geniuses, in pursuing subtleties, to lose sight both of virtue, of good sense and reason itself. (See Bossuet's works on this subject, t. vi., especially his Mystici in Tuto, in which he is more correct than in some of his other pieces; also Du Plessis, Hist. de l'Eglise de Meaux, t. I., p. 485; the several lines of Fenelon, etc.)" Mr. Browning in this poem is like a demonstrator of anatomy in a famous school of dissection--some Sir Charles Bell lecturing to a crowded room full of students; taking up nerve after nerve, following it through all its ramifications, tracing it from its origin in brain or spinal cord, and never leaving it till it is lost in microscopic fibres at the periphery. He is as impartial as the anatomist, who asks no questions as to the presence of the subject on his table: all he has to do with is the science to which he is devoted. Mr. Browning is as happy with Guido in his dungeon as with the Pope in the Vatican, or Pompilia in the presence of the angels waiting to conduct her to God. The matter in hand is the human soul; and as the greatest poet of the soul that the world has ever seen, he is lost in his work. Count Guido never could have thought or said so much for himself as Browning has said for him. Pompilia's innocent, unsophisticated heart never attempted to formulate such a meditation on her brief history. Caponsacchi, we may be sure, never rose from his sonnets and gallantry to such a conscious elevation of soul as burst suddenly forth in the splendour of Pompilia's soldier-saint on his defence. If the Pope himself, the Vicar of Christ, came to his decision by any such conscious process of reasoning and high-toned Christian philosophy--Catholic because it is the highest expression of the highest thought and noblest impulse of the human heart--as that with which Mr. Browning has invested him, then Innocent XII. was a man of genius second only to the poet who has "created" him nearly two hundred years after he died. But no! These people lived indeed; they wrought all which their histories tell of them; but how and why, they never knew. God alone perfectly reads the human heart; and a few men like Browning are privileged to catch a word of the record here and there.

=Roland.= (See CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME.)

=Rosny.= (Asolando, 1889.) Love, pure and passionate, unrestrained by thought of self, and gluttonous of sacrifice, was the undoing of the hero. No prudence could keep Rosny from his fate. Strength in love, and its victory in death is judged by the maiden to be the best. Although there does not seem to be any historical incident referred to in the poem, it may be advisable to say that Maximilian de Béthune, duke of Sully (1560-1641), the French statesman, was born at the château of Rosny, near Mantes. The title of his baronetcy was derived from the name of his birthplace, and he was commonly known by the name of Rosny all his life. Murray says that "Rosny is a dirty little village about half-way between Mantes and Bonnières. The château was the birthplace of Sully, where he was frequently visited by his friend and master, Henri IV., who slept here the night after his victory at Ivry. The king, having overtaken Sully on the road desperately wounded, carried on a litter, accompanied by his squires in a like plight, fell on his neck and affectionately embraced him. The château is a plain, solid building of red brick, with stone quoins and a high tent roof, surrounded by a deep ditch. It was rebuilt by Sully at the beginning of the seventeenth century. From 1818 down to the Revolution of 1830 Rosny was the favourite residence of the Duchesse de Berri, who erected here a chapel to contain the heart of her husband."

=Rosamund Page.= (Martin Relph.) She was the young girl who was shot by the military for supposed treason, and whose innocence would have been proved by her lover Parkes, if Mr. Martin had made known his presence when he saw him arrive at the village from the eminence on which he was standing.

="Round us the Wild Creatures."= (Ferishtah's Fancies.) The lyric to the first poem, "The Eagle," commences with this line.

=Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli.= (Dramatic Lyrics, in Bells and Pomegranates, No. III., 1842. Since transferred to Men and Women in Poetical Works, 1863.) Geoffrey de Rudel was a gentleman of Blieux, in Provence, and one of those who were presented to Frederick Barbarossa in 1154. He was a troubadour. Sismondi, in his Literature of the South of Europe, vol. i., p. 87 (Bohn's Edit.), gives the following account of Rudel:--"The knights who had returned from the Holy Land spoke with enthusiasm of a Countess of Tripoli, who had extended to them the most generous hospitality, and whose grace and beauty equalled her virtues. Geoffrey Rudel, hearing this account, fell deeply in love with her without having ever seen her, and prevailed upon one of his friends, Bertrand d'Allamanon, a troubadour like himself, to accompany him to the Levant. In 1162 he quitted the court of England, whither he had been conducted by Geoffrey, the brother of Richard I., and embarked for the Holy Land. On his voyage he was attacked by a severe illness, and had lost the power of speech when he arrived at the port of Tripoli. The Countess, being informed that a celebrated poet was dying of love for her on board a vessel which was entering the roads, visited him on shipboard, took him kindly by the hand, and attempted to cheer his spirits. Rudel, we are assured, recovered his speech sufficiently to thank the Countess for her humanity, and to declare his passion, when his expressions of gratitude were silenced by the convulsions of death. He was buried at Tripoli, beneath a tomb of porphyry which the Countess raised to his memory, with an Arabic inscription. I have transcribed his verses on "Distant Love," which he composed previous to his last voyage:--

"Angry and sad shall be my way, If I behold not her afar: And yet I know not when that day Shall rise--for still she dwells afar. God! who hast formed this fair array Of worlds, and placed my love afar, Strengthen my heart with hope, I pray, Of seeing her I love afar.

"Oh Lord I believe my faithful lay, For well I love her, though afar; Though but one blessing may repay The thousand griefs I feel afar, No other love shall shed its ray On me, if not this love afar; A brighter one, where'er I stray I shall not see, or near, or far."

In Mr. Browning's poem, Rudel chooses for his device a sun flower, which, by ever turning towards the sun, has parted with the graces of a flower to become a mimic sun. He says that men feed on his songs; but the sunflower's concern is not for the bees which gather the sweetness of the flower's breast,--its concern is solely for the sun. So turns Rudel longingly to the East, where his lady dwells afar.

=St. John.= (A Death in the Desert.) The poem is a monologue of the dying saint in the desert near Ephesus. He records what he has seen of our Lord, and sadly anticipates the time when men will ask, "Did he say he saw?"

=St. Martin's Summer.= (Pacchiarotto, with Other Poems, 1876.) A husband and wife, both young, are reflecting on the fact that they have each buried love under some tomb now moss-grown and forgotten. The man admits that somehow, somewhere, he has pledged his "soul to endless duty, many a time and oft." Grief is fickle, for time is a traitor. Love, being mortal, must pass away, and he does not think either of them so very guilty; they grieved over their lost love at the time, though now it is forgotten. Yet, though Love's corpse lies quiet, its ghost sometimes escapes, and it is not well to build too durable a monument over it; trellis-work is better. It is better to own the power of first love, recognise its permanence in the soul, and let the succeeding love be estimated at its value, which to the poet does not seem to be very high. Dead loves are the potent, though living loves are ghost dispellers. From the oft-repeated expressions of Mr. Browning's opinion, and from the drift of this poem, we might be warranted in concluding that he believed only in first love.

NOTES.--St. Martin's Summer; or, St. Martin's Little Summer. From October 9th to November 11th. At the close of autumn we generally have a month of magnificent summer weather. "Expect St. Martin's summer, halcyon days" (Shakespeare, I Hen. VI., Act i., sc. 2), and, "Farewell thou latter spring! farewell All-hallown summer!" It is also called "St. Luke's Summer," and Martinmas, and Martilmasse, because the feast of St. Martin is kept on November 11th. St. Luke's Day is October 18th. Verse 12, Penelope was the wife of Ulysses. During the long absence of her husband she was several times importuned by suitors to marry them. She told them that she could not marry again, even if she were assured that Ulysses were dead, until she had finished weaving a shroud for her aged father-in-law. Every night she pulled out what she had woven during the day, and so her work made no progress. Ulysses: is a corrupt form of Odusseus, the king of Ithaca. He is one of the principal heroes in the Iliad of Homer, and the chief hero of the Odyssey.

=St. Peter's at Rome.= (Christmas Eve.) The great colonnade on either side of St. Peter's Square is of semicircular form, and is beautifully described by the poet as

"Arms wide open to embrace The entry of the human race."

=Saul.= This is perhaps the grandest and most beautiful of all Mr. Browning's religious poems. It is a Messianic oratorio in words. The influence of music in the cure of diseases has long been a subject of study by physicians. Disraeli, in his Curiosities of Literature, has an article on "Medical Music." In Dr. Burney's History of Music there is a chapter on "The Medicinal Powers attributed to Music by the Ancients." Dr. Burney thought this influence was partly due to its occasioning certain vibrations of the nerves, as well as its well-known effect in diverting the attention. Depression of mind, delirium and insanity, were anciently attributed to evil spirits, which were put to flight by suitable harmonies. It was for this reason that David was sent for to cure the mental derangement of Saul. The influence of music on the lower animals is often exceedingly marked, and can scarcely in their case, as in our own, be due to the association of ideas. The peculiar and sweet melancholy inspired by distant church bells on a calm summer evening in the country, though difficult to account for, is not less real than is the inspiring and invigorating effect produced by march music on weary soldiers. Life is a harmonious process; where there is most health there is most harmony in the way in which the bodily functions are performed. A great physician has described health as "going easy." It would be strange, therefore, if animal life were not attuned to sympathy with mechanical harmony. The most modern theory is that "Music is one of the stimuli which regulates the vaso-motor activity employed in tissue nutrition." (See Lancet, May 9th, 1891, p. 1055.) In another article in the same journal, for May 23rd, the subject is still further treated. The writer says: "The value of music as a therapeutic method cannot yet be so precisely stated that we may measure it by dosage or by an invariably similar order of effects. Of its wholesome influence in various forms of disease, however, there can be little or no doubt. In making this assertion we do not, of course, assign to it any specific or peculiar action. It is no quack's nostrum, no reputed conqueror of ache or ailment. It is only, as we have already shown in a recent article, one of those intangible but effective aids of medicine which exert their healthful properties through the nervous system. It is as a mental tonic that music acts. Accordingly, we may naturally expect it to exert its powers chiefly in those diseases, or aspects of disease, which are due to morbid nervous action. The evidence of its utility on occasions where fatigue or worry has disturbed the proper balance and relation between the mind and body of the so-called healthy will explain its action in disease. We can readily understand how a pleasing and lively melody can awake in a jaded brain the strong emotion of hope, and energising by its means the languid nerve-control of the whole circulation, strengthen the heart-beat and refresh the vascularity of every organ. We can picture the same brain in forced irritation fretfully stimulating the service of the vaso-motor nerves, and starving the tissues of their blood-supply. Here, again, it is easy to comprehend the regulating effect of quieter harmony, which brings at once a rest and a diversion to the fretting mind. Even aches are soothed for a time by a transference of attention; and why, then, should not pain be lulled by music?" That it sometimes is thus relieved, we cannot doubt. It is especially in the graver nervous maladies, however, that we should look for benefit from this remedy. Definite statistics on the subject may not be forthcoming, but all that we have said goes to show that states of insanity, which are largely influenced by the condition of the sympathetic system, should find some part of their treatment in the hands of the musician. It is, therefore, for such cases especially that we would enlist his services. In nervous diseases music produces a stimulating effect on the trophic nerves, these are so called because they are supposed to govern or control the normal metabolism of their tissues (or the phenomena whereby living organisms assimilate their food into their tissues). Depressing news will impede or even arrest digestion, as is well known; cheerful conversation and music assist the assimilation of our sustenance. The almost total ignorance of the ancients concerning physiological processes caused them to attribute to demons the maladies which they could not comprehend. Music was prescribed for Saul empirically: it mattered little to the patient, so long as he was cured, whether music expelled a demon who was tormenting him, or lubricated the wheels of his nervous mechanism. David took his harp to Saul's tent, untwisted the lilies which were twined round the strings to keep them cool, and began by playing the tune all the sheep knew, appealing to his mere animal nature, and bringing him into harmony with the lower forms of healthy life; for there are points in our lives touched alike by men and sheep. Then he played the tune which the quails love, and that which delights the crickets, and the music which appeals to the quick jerboa; for there is a bond of sympathy between these creatures of our Father's hand and ourselves which we do ill to overlook; it is well for us sometimes to allow ourselves to be influenced by those things which God has made to delight the beautiful dumb creatures whom St. Francis of Assisi delighted to call his brothers and sisters. It was another step towards Saul's recovery when his soul achieved the harmony of a quail and a jerboa. Then he advanced his theme: he led the patient by his melody to the help tune of the reapers; brought before his saddened soul the good friendship of the toilers at their merry-making; expanded his heart in the warmth of brotherliness, the sympathy of man with man. But higher yet! The march of the honoured dead is played,--the praise of the men who have forgotten the faults in the work the man completed. And after that the joyful marriage chant, the abounding life and cheerfulness of the maidens; the march, too, of the comradeship of man in his greater task, the compulsion of the mechanical forces to aid the progress of the race. More exalted strains follow when, in the spirit of the worship of the one God of Israel, the Levites ascend the altar steps to appease Jehovah in sacrifice. By slow degrees the music had done the first part of its work: the sluggish forces of his life began to tremble, the quiverings of returning vital force began to thrill his torpid nerves. The song went forward: the wild joys of living were celebrated, the value of man's life, the good providence of God, the friendship, the kingship, the gifts combined to dower one head with the wealth of the world,--the stimulus of high ambition, the surpassing deeds, the crowning fame all concentrated in Saul, king of Israel. And the leap of David's heart voicing itself in the cry "Saul!" went to his wintry soul as "spring's arrowy summons to the vale, making it laugh in freedom and flowers." Saul was "released and aware," the despair was gone; pale and worn, he stood by the tent pole, once more himself; he was recalled to life, but not yet fitted to enjoy it. David pushes his advantage: the future, with its glorious prospect, the reward which God shall give to the successors of the king; and as David sings of the ages to come, which will ring with his praises and the fame of his mighty deeds, the life stream courses through his veins, he begins to live once more, he puts out his hand, touches tenderly the brow of the harpist, and as he looks on David the beautiful soul of the youthful singer goes out to the king in love, the magnetism of his sympathy touches him, and he longs to impart to him more than the past and present; he would give him new life altogether ages hence as at the moment. If he would do this, how much more would God do!

"Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare. Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care!"

If he would fain do so much for this suffering man, would save, redeem and restore him, interpose to snatch Saul the mistake, the failure, from ruin, and bid him win by the pain-throb, the intensified bliss of the next world's reward and repose, if he would starve his own soul to fill up Saul's life, surely God would exceed all that David could desire to do, as the Creator in everything surpasses the creature, and as the Infinite transcends the finite. Then, in a magnificent prophetic burst, the singer tells Saul:

"O Saul, it shall be A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me, Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever; a Hand like this hand Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!"

The singer leaves the tent, goes to his home through the night, but not alone: clouds of witnesses hover around him, angels have come to listen to his prophecy, and the air is full of yearning spirits; the earth has awakened; hell has heard the echoes of his song,--her crews are loosed with alarm at the danger which impends; the stars in their courses beat with emotion; all creation palpitates with excitement; but the Hand which impelled him "quenched it with quiet," and earth in rapture sank to rest. But the world was the better for the blessed news, "felt the new law"; the flowers rejoiced, the heart of the cedars and the sap of the vines responded to the thrill of joy the brooks murmured, "E'en so, it is so!" (What are known as the Messianic Psalms, or those in which David sings of the Christ, who was to come, are the following: Psalm ii., xxi., xxii., xlv., lxxii., and cx.)--In Longus's romance of Daphnis and Chloe there occur two passages which may have furnished Browning with the suggestion of this series of tunes. The first is found on pp. 303-4 (I quote from Smith's translation, in the Bohn edition): "He ran through all variations of pastoral melody; he played the tune which the oxen obey, and which attracts the goats,--that in which the sheep delight. The notes for the sheep were sweet, those for the oxen deep, those for the goats were shrill. In short, his single pipe could express the tones of every pipe which is played upon. Those present lay listening in silent delight; when Dryas rose up, and desired Philetas to strike up the Bacchanalian tune, Philetas obeyed; and Dryas began the vintage-dance in which he represented the plucking of the grapes, the carrying of the baskets, the treading of the clusters, and the drinking of the new-made wine.... Upon losing sight of her, Daphnis, seizing the large pipe of Philetas, breathed into it a mournful strain as of one who loves; then a lovesick strain as of one who pleads; lastly, a recalling strain, as of one who seeks her whom he has lost." The other is from pp. 332-4: "Daphnis disposed the company in a semicircle; then standing under the shade of a beech-tree, he took his pipe from his scrip, and breathed into it very gently. The goats stood still, merely lifting up their heads. Next he played the pasture tune, upon which they all put down their heads and began to graze. Now he produced some notes soft and sweet in tone: at once his herd lay down. After this he piped in a sharp key, and they ran off to the wood, as if a wolf were in sight." Again, may not the impulse to write this poetry have been derived from Heber's Spirit of Hebrew Poetry? On p. 197, vol. ii., of the translation, there is a kind of challenge to poets in general: "Take David in the presence of Saul. More than one poet has availed himself of the beauty of this situation; but no one to my knowledge has yet stolen the harp of David, and produced a poem, such even as Dryden's ode in the composition of Handel, where Timotheus plays before Alexander. If Browning did accept the challenge, it was only to refute the observation by his success."--Pall Mall Gazette.

NOTES.--The Bible story of David playing before Saul is found in 1 Samuel xvi. 14-23. Stanza i., Abner: the son of Ner, captain of Saul's host (1 Samuel xxvi. 5). Stanza vi., jerboa: a small jumping rodent animal, called also the jumping hare. Stanza viii., Male-Sapphires: the asterias or star-stone, a semi-transparent sapphire. Stanza xiv., Hebron: the most southern of the three cities of refuge west of Jordan; Kidron: a brook in Jerusalem.

=Science in Browning.= The following are some references to scientific matters in the poet's works appended to my essay on "Browning as a Scientific Poet" in Browning's Message to his Time. The list of references makes no pretension to be an exhaustive one--it could be considerably amplified by a careful reperusal of the works--but it will suffice for the purpose:--

Anatomy.--Poems, v., p. 152; vi., p. 158. Fifine, p. 68.

Astronomy.--Prince H. S., p. 96. Sordello, pp. 187, 188.

Botany.--Poems, i., p. 194; v., pp. 193, 208, 228, 312. Fifine, p. 14. Sordello, p. 20.

Chemistry.--Poems, iii., pp. 219, 220; iv., p. 238; v., pp. 155, 156. Prince H. S., pp. 44, 91. Red Cotton, p. 196. Croisic, pp. 90, 92. Fifine, pp. 65, 97, 130. Ferishtah, pp. 39, 40, 45, 76. Pippa P., p. 250. Sordello, p. 194. Ring and Book, i., p. 2.

Electricity.--Poems, vi., pp. 183, 203. Red Cotton, p. 196. Fifine, p. 115.

Evolution.--Poems, i., p. 188. Prince H. S., p. 68. Fifine, p. 162. La Saisiaz, p. 57.

Light.--Poems, iii., p. 170. Jocoseria, p. 124. Fifine, pp. 65, 29. Numpholeptos, p. 101. Ring and Book, i., p. 71; iii., p. 170; iv., pp. 57, 79.

Materia Medica and Therapeutics.--Pietro of Abano, p. 84. Prince H. S., p. 77. Paracelsus, p. 111.

Medicine.--Poems, iv., p. 273; v., p. 220. Dramatic Idyls, ii., preface. Red Cotton, p. 199. Ferishtah, pp. 27, 55, 56. Ring and Book, iv., p. 12.

Pharmacy.--Poems, iii., p. 96; v., p. 220.

Physiology.--Poems, v., p. 191. Sordello, p. 195. Tray.

Scientific Matters in General.--Poems, v., pp. 128, 302; vi., p. 203. Dramatic Idyls, ii., p. 68. Fifine, pp. 51, 86. La Saisiaz, pp. 69, 82. Ferishtah, p. 131. Sordello, pp. 25, 203. Ring and Book, iv., pp. 61, 77, 180.

The references are to the six-volume edition of the poems, and to the original separate editions of the larger works.

=Sebald.= The man in Pippa Passes who murdered Ottima's husband.

=Serenade at the Villa, A.= (Men and Women, 1855; Lyrics, 1863; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.) A lover serenades his lady on a sultry summer night; and the burden of his song is that, as he watches through the dark night at her villa, so he vows to watch through life over her path, and shield her from danger and serve her in secret devotion, as he sings to her now while she sleeps. The lady dreamed of music, but slept on, though "the earth turned in her sleep in pain," Earth has heard many serenades and many vows made only to be broken. The iron gate which ground its teeth to let the serenader pass seemed to be disputing the lover's protestations; and one fears that if his mistress was like the earth, and "turned in her sleep" too, she would derive little satisfaction from his music.

=Setebos.= (Caliban and Setebos.) The god of the Patagonians, whom Caliban worships because his mother did so. Caliban thinks he lives in the moon, and has made mankind for his amusement.

=Shah 'Abbas.= (Ferishtah's Fancies, III.) Shah 'Abbas, surnamed the Great, was one of the most celebrated of the sovereigns of Persia. He came to the throne at the age of eighteen, in the year 1585. He defeated the predatory Uzbeks, who occupied Khorassan, after a long and severe struggle, in a great battle near Herat (1597), and drove them out of his dominions. He was successful in the wars he waged against the Turks, and thereby greatly extended his dominions. He defeated the united armies of the Turks and Tartars in 1618. Baghdad was taken in 1623. When he died, in 1628, his dominions reached from the Tigris to the Indus. The circumstances narrated in Mr. Browning's poem are not historical. The subject of the poem is Belief. "It is beautiful, but is it true?" Ferishtah has now achieved dervishhood, and a pupil asks, "Was this life lived, was this death died, not dreamed?" It was answered, "Many attested it for fact." A cup-bearer left on record a story of the death of the brave Shah 'Abbas of simple fear at discovering a spider in his wine. The cup-bearer was eye-witness of the fact. The Dervish says we must distinguish between the noble act of belief, and mere easy acquiescence. Twenty soldiers testify to the death of a comrade; yet he comes home safe and sound after the wars. He had two sons. One who heard that his father was living rejoiced; the other preferred the evidence of the twenty men who saw him die. Ten years later home comes Ishak. The townsmen bid the man of ready faith go and welcome his father, and the unbelieving one to hide his head. The father would praise the loving heart in preference to the sceptical head. "Is God less wise?" asks Ferishtah. The lyric teaches that the true light of life is love. The dark ways of life and the mysteries of the human heart will prove stones of stumbling and rocks of offence where love is not the guide. With love and truth our obstacles disappear.

=Shakespeare.= The poem which Mr. Browning wrote for the Shakespearean Show-Book, 1884, commenced with the word "Shakespeare!" See NAMES, THE.

=Shop.= (Pacchiarotto, with other Poems, 1876.) "As even in science all roads," it has been said, "lead to the mouth," so is it with Art and Letters. The poet deplores the life of a tradesman who knows no other use of life but to enable him to drive a roaring business, his "meat and drink but money chink,"--and so, because flesh must be fed, spirit is chained to the counter. The poet would have the tradesman brighten his daily life with art and song, as men do who let their good angels sometimes converse with them, in lands where poets and painters think more of art than money. The danger and wickedness of compelling the soul to be the eternal slave of sordid desires and petty anxieties is pointed out in this poem, and by "shop" we are not only to think of tradesmen, but of all the large class of those who are, like the man in the Pilgrim's Progress, too busy with the muck-rake to look at the heavens above them, and losing their higher selves in their absorption in earthly employments.

=Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis.= (See GARDEN FANCIES.) The name of some old scholar, who has written a book, which is read by a profane fellow in a garden, who throws it into a decaying tree, there to be in company with congenial fungi.

="Sighed Rawdon Brown."= (See RAWDON BROWN.)

=Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.= [Dramatic Lyrics, in Bells and Pomegranates, III., 1842, under the title of "Camp and Cloister--I. Camp (French), II. Cloister (Spanish)."] There is, of course, no historical basis for the subject-matter of this poem; but there is no reason why such things should not occur in a convent or monastery. Human nature, we find, is pretty much the same, under whatever conditions we examine it; and petty malice, ill-nature, and evil passions, find their congenial soil alike in the cloister and the world. Some of the most unpleasant failings of our nature are no doubt directly fostered by cloister life, just as religious people of every class are often censorious, uncharitable in their judgments, pharisaical and severe. Unless monks and nuns are regularly and entirely employed in useful labour, these evil weeds are certain to spring up in the untilled soil of the human heart. Work is the only remedy for pettiness of spirit, and active employment the only atmosphere for the nobler products of the soul. It must never be forgotten, however, that thousands of the most beautiful characters which have blessed the world have been formed in the cloister; such are being formed now, and will continue to be so formed, in direct proportion to the useful work in which its inmates are employed.--To inferior and evil natures the lofty and noble soul is generally an object of hatred and jealousy. In this poem we have a coarse-minded Spanish monk, boiling over with abhorrence of a good, gentle brother, who loves his flowers, trims his bushes and waters his rose trees with tender solicitude for the welfare of his plants, the only things in the monastery he can love. The simple talk of the hated friar at meal-time and recreation disgusts him; he knows in his heart that the good brother is a saint, though he tries in his malice to rake up some remembrance of a wandering look at odd times, and is not so ritualistically exact as he is himself. He spites him by damaging his plants all he can in a sly and ingenious way. He would like him to lose his chances of salvation if he could, so he will endeavour to pervert his orthodoxy and trip him up on his way to heaven; he will slip in amongst his greengages a wicked French novel; or he will even go so far as to ask Satan's aid,--when, as he meditates all this evil doing, the vesper bell rings and the wicked old fellow goes to his prayers.

NOTES.--Verse ii., "Salve tibi": a salutation, "Hail to thee!" Verse v., Cross-wise: the use of the sign of the cross is traceable to the earliest Christian times; "The Trinity illustrate": when the sign of the cross is made it is usual to add internally "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." A Catholic remembers the Trinity in numberless ways; Arian: "One who adheres to the doctrines of Arius, a presbyter of the Church in the fourth century, who held Christ to be a created being, inferior to God the Father in nature and dignity, though the first and noblest of created beings." (Mosheim.) Verse vii., "The great text in the Galatians" I take to be the tenth verse of the third chapter: "For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, 'Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.'" "It is written,"--that is to say, in the book of Deuteronomy, xxviii., 15 to 68, wherein are set forth at length the curses for disobedience. Those arithmetically-minded commentators on this poem who have been disappointed in finding only some "seventeen works of the flesh" in Galatians v. 19-21 will find an abundant opportunity for their discrimination in the chapter of Deuteronomy to which I refer. The question to settle is "the twenty-nine distinct damnations." St. James says in his epistle (ii. 10), that "he who offends against the law in one point is guilty of all." If, therefore, the envious monk could induce his brother to trust to his works instead of to his faith, he would fall under the condemnation of the law, as explained by St. Paul in his epistle. Manichee: "A follower of Manes, a Persian, who tried to combine the Oriental philosophy with Christianity; and maintained that there are two supreme principles: the first of which, light, was held to be the author of all good; the second, darkness, the author of all evil" (Webster's Dict.). Verse viii., Belial: an evil spirit; "Plena gratiâ Ave, Virgo!": probably intended to represent "the angelical salutation," which is "Ave Maria, gratiâ plena"--"Hail, Mary, full of grace!"

=Solomon and Balkis.= (Jocoseria, 1883.) The Queen of Sheba sits on Solomon's ivory throne, and talks of deep mysteries and things sublime; she proves the king with hard problems, which he solves ere she has finished her questions. He humiliates the Queen by making her difficulties appear so childish that there is no spirit in her; but she musters up strength enough for just one more hard question: "Who are those," she asks, "who of all mankind should be admitted to the palace of the wisest monarch on application?" Solomon says the wise are the equals of the king; those who are kingly in craft should be his friends. He in turn asks the Queen, "Who are those whom she would admit on similar terms?" "The good," replies the Queen; and as she speaks she contrives to jostle the king's right hand, so that the ring which he wore was turned from inside now to outside. The ring bore the "truth-compelling Name" of Jehovah; then the King was obliged to confess that those only would be considered wise who came to offer him the incense of their flattery.--"You cat, you!" he adds; and then, turning the Name towards her, makes her also tell the truth. Promptly she is compelled to answer that by the good she means young men, strong, tall, and proper: these she enlists always as her servants. Then sighed the King: the soul that aspires to soar, yet ever crawls, can discern the great, yet always chooses the small; there is earth's rest, as well as heaven's rest; above, the soul may fly; here, she must plod heavily on earth. Solomon proposes to resume their discourse; but the Queen tells him that she came to see Solomon the wise man; not to commune with mind, but body--and, if she does not make too bold, would rather have a kiss!

NOTES.--Conster: Old English for construe. "spheieron do": (Greek), his home: the idea of Balkis talking Greek to Solomon is to show what a prig she was. Solomon's Seal, as Solomon's ring is commonly called, was celebrated for its potency over demons and genii. It is probably of Hindu origin, and bore the double triangle sign of the Kabalists. (See Isis Unveiled (Blavatsky), vol i., pp. 135-6.) "You cat, you!" Solomon descending to this is exquisitely funny. Habitat: a suitable dwelling-place. Hyssop (1 Kings iv. 33): a plant which grows in crevices of walls. Dr. J. Forbes Royle considers it to be the caper (Capparis spinosa), the asuf of the Arabs. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. xxiv., p. 738, the land of Sheba is Yemen, in Arabia. The ancient name of the people of Yemen was Saba (Sheba). "The Queen of Sheba who visited Solomon may have come with a caravan trading to Gaza, to see the great king whose ships plied on the Red Sea. The Biblical picture of the Sabæan kingdom is confirmed and supplemented by the Assyrian inscriptions. Tiglath Pileser II. (733 B.C.) tells us that Teima, Sabá, and Haipá (== Ephah, Gen. xxv. 4 and Isa. lx. 6) paid him tribute of gold, silver, and much incense. Similarly Sargon (715 B.C.), in his Annals, mentions the tribute of Shamsi, queen of Arabia, and of Itamara of the land of Sabá, gold and fragrant spices, horses and camels." The following is the Talmudic legend concerning the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon. "It is said that Solomon ruled the whole world, and this verse is quoted as proof of the assertion: 'And Solomon was ruling over all the kingdoms, which brought presents, and served Solomon all the days of his life' (1 Kings iv. 21). All the kingdoms congratulated Solomon as the worthy successor of his father, David, whose fame was great among the nations; all save one, the kingdom of Sheba, the capital of which was called Kitore. To this kingdom Solomon sent a letter: 'From me, King Solomon, peace to thee and to thy government. Let it be known to thee that the Almighty God has made me to reign over the whole world, the kingdoms of the north, the south, the east, the west. Lo, they have come to me with their congratulations, all save thee alone. Come thou also, I pray thee, and submit to my authority, and much honour shall be done thee; but if thou refusest, behold, I shall by force compel thy acknowledgment.--To thee, Queen Sheba, is addressed this letter in peace from me, King Solomon, the son of David.' Now, when Queen Sheba received this letter, she sent in haste for her elders and councillors, to ask their advice as to the nature of her reply. They spoke but lightly of the message and the one who sent it; but the Queen did not regard their words. She sent a vessel, carrying many presents of different metals, minerals, and precious stones, to Solomon. It was after a voyage of two years' time that these presents arrived at Jerusalem; and in a letter intrusted to the captain, the Queen said 'After thou hast received the message, then I myself will come to thee.' And in two years after this time Queen Sheba arrived at Jerusalem. When Solomon heard that the Queen was coming, he sent Benayahu, the son of Jehoyadah, the general of his army, to meet her. When the Queen saw him she thought he was the King, and she alighted from her carriage. Then Benayahu asked, 'Why alightest thou from thy carriage?' And she answered, 'Art thou not his majesty, the King?' No, replied Benayahu, 'I am but one of his officers.' Then the Queen turned back and said to her ladies in attendance, 'If this is but one of the officers, and he is so noble and imposing in appearance, how great must be his superior, the King!' And Benayahu, the son of Jehoyadah, conducted Queen Sheba to the palace of the King. Solomon prepared to receive his visitor in an apartment laid and lined with glass; and the Queen at first was so deceived by the appearance that she imagined the King to be sitting in water. And when the Queen had tested Solomon's wisdom[5] and witnessed his magnificence, she said: 'I believed not what I heard; but now I have come, and my eyes have seen it all, behold, the half has not been told to me. Happy are thy servants who stand before thee continually to listen to thy words of wisdom. Blessed be the Lord thy God, who hath placed thee on a throne to rule righteously and in justice.' When other kingdoms heard the words of the Queen of Sheba, they feared Solomon exceedingly, and he became greater than all the other kings of the earth in wisdom and in wealth. Solomon was born in the year 2912 A.M., and reigned over Israel forty years. Four hundred and thirty-three years elapsed between the date of Solomon's reign and that of the Temple's destruction." (From Polano's translation of selections from the Talmud.)

=Sonnet=:[6]--

"Eyes, calm beside thee, (Lady could'st thou know!) May turn away thick with fast-gathering tears: I glance not where all gaze: thrilling and low Their passionate praises reach thee--my cheek wears Alone no wonder when thou passest by; Thy tremulous lids bent and suffused reply To the irrepressible homage which doth glow On every lip but mine: if in thine ears Their accents linger--and thou dost recall Me as I stood, still, guarded, very pale, Beside each votarist whose lighted brow Wore worship like an aureole, 'O'er them all My beauty,' thou wilt murmur, 'did prevail Save that one only:'--Lady could'st thou know!

August 17th, 1834 Z."

=Sordello.= [THE MAN.] Sordello was a troubadour, and we have to thank Dante for having made, in his Purgatorio, such frequent reference to him as will preserve his name from oblivion as long as the Divina Commedia is known to the world. Sordello is referred to in the Purgatorio eight times: viz., in Canto vi. 75; vii. 2, 52; viii. 38, 43, 62, 93; ix. 53 (Cary's translation). In the sixth Canto we are introduced to Sordello thus:--

"But lo! a spirit there Stands solitary, and toward us looks; It will instruct us in the speediest way." We soon approach'd it. O thou Lombard spirit! How didst thou stand, in high abstracted mood, Scarce moving with slow dignity thine eyes. It spoke not aught, but let us onward pass, Eying us as a lion on his watch. But Vergil, with entreaty mild, advanced, Requesting it to show the best ascent. It answer to his question none return'd; But of our country and our kind of life Demanded--When my courteous guide began, 'Mantua,' the shadow, in itself absorb'd, Rose towards us from the place in which it stood, And cried, 'Mantuan! I am thy countryman, Sordello.' Each the other then embraced."

Cary's note is valuable: "The history of Sordello's life is wrapt in the obscurity of romance. That he distinguished himself by his skill in Provençal poetry is certain; and many feats of military prowess have been attributed to him. It is probable that he was born towards the end of the twelfth, and died about the middle of the succeeding century. Tiraboschi, who terms him the most illustrious of all the Provençal poets of his age, has taken much pains to sift all the notices he could collect relating to him; and has particularly exposed the fabulous narrative which Platina has introduced on this subject in his history of Mantua. Honourable mention of his name is made by our poet in the treatise De Vulg. Eloq., lib. i. cap. 15, where it is said that, remarkable as he was for eloquence, he deserted the vernacular language of his own country, not only in his poems, but in every other kind of writing. Tiraboschi had at first concluded him to be the same writer whom Dante elsewhere (De Vulg. Eloq., lib. ii. c. 13) calls Gottus Mantuanus, but afterwards gave up that opinion to the authority of the Conte d'Arco and the Abate Bettinelli. By Bastero, in his Crusca Provenzale, (ediz. Roma., 1724, p. 94), amongst Sordello's MS. poems in the Vatican, are mentioned "Canzoni, Tenzoni, Cobbole," and various "Serventesi," particularly one in the form of a funeral song on the death of Blancas, in which the poet reprehends all the reigning princes in Christendom.--Many of Sordello's poems have been brought to light by the industry of M. Raynouard, in his Choix des Poésies des Troubadours and his Lexique Roman." Sismondi, in his Literature of Europe, vol i., p. 103, says that the real merit of Sordello as a troubadour "consists in the harmony and sensibility of his verses. He was amongst the first to adopt the ballad form of writing; and in one of these which has been translated by Millot, he beautifully contrasts, in the burthen of his ballad, the gaieties of nature, and the ever-reviving grief of a heart devoted to love. Sordel, or Sordello, was born at Goïto, near Mantua, and was for some time attached to the household of the Count of S. Bonifazio, the chief of the Guelf party, in the march of Treviso. He afterwards passed into the service of Raymond Berenger, the last count of Provence of the house of Barcelona. Although a Lombard, he had adopted in his compositions the Provençal language, and many of his countrymen imitated him. It was not at that time believed that the Italian was capable of becoming a polished language. The age of Sordello was that of the most brilliant chivalric virtues and the most atrocious crimes. He lived in the midst of heroes and monsters. The imagination of the people was still haunted by the recollection of the ferocious Ezzelino, tyrant of Verona, with whom Sordello is said to have had a contest, and who was probably often mentioned in his verses. The historical monuments of this reign of blood were, however, little known; and the people mingled the name of their favourite poet with every revolution which excited their terror. It was said that he had carried off the wife of the Count of S. Bonifazio, the sovereign of Mantua; that he had married the daughter or sister of Ezzelino; and that he had fought this monster, with glory to himself. He united, according to popular report, the most brilliant military exploits to the most distinguished poetical genius. By the voice of St. Louis himself he had been recognised, at a tourney, as the most valiant and gallant of knights; and at last the sovereignty of Mantua had been bestowed upon this noblest of the poets and warriors of his age. Historians of credit have collected, three centuries after Sordello's death, these brilliant fictions, which are, however, disproved by the testimony of contemporary writers. The reputation of Sordello is owing, very materially, to the admiration which has been expressed for him by Dante; who, when he meets him at the entrance of Purgatory, is so struck with the noble haughtiness of his aspect, that he compares him to a lion in a state of majestic repose, and represents Virgil as embracing him on hearing his name."--I am indebted to Professor Sonnenschein for the following account of the man Sordello, as well as for the valuable notes on the period, and the persons with whom the poem deals. The notes distinguished by the initial [S.] are also due to Professor Sonnenschein's generous assistance: "All that is known of the real Sordello is that he was a troubadour of the thirteenth century mentioned by his contemporary Rolandin, who states that he eloped with Cuniza, wife of Count Richard de Saint Bonifazio, and sister of Ezzelino da Romano. Some of his poems still survive, and from them a few more facts relating to the poet may be gleaned; and that is the whole of our real knowledge of him. For some reason, however, the poets and romantic historians have made much more of him. First, Dante met him at the portals of Purgatory among those who had perished by violence without a chance of repenting them of their sins. When he saw Vergil he cried: 'O Montovano io son Sordello, della tua terra' ('Oh Mantuan, I am Sordello of thy country!') Dante, in his poem says he had the appearance and aspect of a lion; and the same author, in a prose treatise on the vulgar tongue, says Sordello excelled in all kinds of poetry and aided in founding the Italian language by numerous words skilfully borrowed from the dialects of Cremona, Brescia and Verona. A century later Benvenuto d'Imola, in a commentary on the works of Dante, says Sordello was a citizen of Mantua, an illustrious and able warrior and a courtier, who lived in the reign of Ezzelin da Romano, whose sister Cuniza fell in love with him and invited him to a rendezvous. Ezzelino, disguised as a servant, discovered them together, but permitted Sordello to escape upon promising not to return. Yielding, however, again to the entreaties of Cuniza, he was again discovered by her watchful brother, and fled. He was pursued and slain by the emissaries of Ezzelino. Benvenuto, who gives no authority for his statements, also says that Sordello was the author of a book which he admits never to have seen, called Thesaurus thesaurorum. About the same time some biographical notices of the troubadours, written in the language of Provence, mention Sordello as having been the son of a poor knight of Mantua. At an early age he composed numerous songs and poems, which gained him admittance to the court of the Count of St. Boniface. He fell in love with the wife of that lord, and eloped with her. The fugitives were received by the lady's brothers, who were at war with St. Boniface. After a time he left the lady there, and passed into Provence, where his talents obtained such brilliant recognition that he was soon the owner of a château, and made an honourable marriage. Early in the next century Aliprando wrote a fabulous rhyming chronicle of Milan, in which Sordello plays a conspicuous part. In this he is a member of the family of Visconti, born at Goïto. He began his literary career in early youth by producing a book called The Treasure. Arms proving more attractive, by the time he was twenty-five he was distinguished for his bravery, his address, his nobility, and the grace of his demeanour, although he was small of stature. Accepting many challenges, he was always victorious, and sent the vanquished knights to tell his deeds of valour to the King of France. At the invitation of that prince he was about to cross the Alps, when he yielded to the entreaties of Ezzelino and went to reside with him at Verona. There he long resisted the advances, the prayers, the entreaties of Ezzelino's sister Beatrice. At last he fled to Mantua, but was followed by Beatrice disguised as a man. He finally yielded, and married her. A few days later he left her, and went to France, where he spent several months with the court at Troyes, where his valour, his gallantry and his poetic talents were greatly admired. After being knighted by the King, who gave him three thousand francs and a golden falcon, he returned to Italy. All the towns received him with pomp, as the first warrior of his time. The Mantuans came out to meet him, but he passed on to Verona to reclaim his bride. When he returned with her, he was welcomed with eight days of public rejoicing. After that, Ezzelino laid siege to Mantua, but was driven away by Sordello, who afterwards aided the Milanese against him and gave him the wound of which he died. What became of him afterwards does not appear; but this chronicle, which was a mass of anachronisms, romances, and fictions, was largely drawn upon by the historic writers of the next century, many of whom have adopted the story of Sordello as therein told, and of the Lady Beatrice who never existed. In the sixteenth century, Nostradamus, in his Lives of Provençal Poets, says: Sordello was a Mantuan, who at the age of fifteen years entered the service of Berenger, Count of Provence. His verses were preferred to those of Folquet de Marseille, Perceval Doria, and all the other Genoese and Tuscan poets. He made very beautiful songs, not about love, but on subjects relating to philosophy. He translated into Provençalese a digest of the laws, and wrote a historical treatise on the Kings of Aragon and Provence. Darenou, to whom I am indebted for most of my information, after examining all of these and some later authorities, considers that the only certain facts are those written by Rolandin shortly after Sordello's death. Dante was so nearly contemporaneous that he also may be taken as an authority. Of his Italian poems, and his prose works, nothing is known to have survived; but at least thirty-four of his Provençalese poems still exist. Of these one-half are love songs of the most pronounced type, despite the statement of Nostradamus to the contrary. Several have been translated into French, and some are said to be of a high character. In one, the poet boasts of his conquests and his fickleness. Some are in the form of dialogues, in which he discusses such questions as, Whether it be better for a lover to die or continue to exist after the loss of his beloved; or Whether it be right to sacrifice love to honour, or to prefer the glory of knightly combat to love. In a poetic letter to the Count of Provence, he begs that prince not to send him to the Crusades, as he cannot make up his mind to cross the seas, and wishes to delay as long as possible entering into life eternal. In several of his poems he violently attacks Pierre Vidal, the troubadour, whom he seems to have hated bitterly. The whole story is a curious instance of development. Originally a troubadour, apparently with most of the vices, faults, and virtues of the typical troubadour of the thirteenth century, he gradually became, as the centuries advanced, first a hero of romance, a preux-chevalier and model Italian knight-errant, and finally that which we see Mr. Browning has made of him. In Sismondi I find the following concerning Sordello: "Two men, superior in character to these court parasites, about this time attained great reputations in the Lombard republics, through their Provençalese songs. One of these, Ugo Cattola, devoted his talents to combating the corruption and tyranny of princes; the other, Sordello de Mantua, is enveloped in mysterious obscurity. The writers of the following century speak of him with profound respect, without giving us any details of his life. Those who came later have made him a magnanimous warrior, a valiant defender of his country, and some even a prince of Mantua. The nobility of his birth and his marriage with a sister of Eccelino da Romana, are attested by his contemporaries. His violent death is obscurely indicated by the great Florentine poet; and the only claims to immortality that remain to Sordello to-day are his words and actions mentioned by Dante in the Purgatorio." The following is also given in Sismondi as one of the few surviving specimens of Sordello's poetry. It is called:

TENSA DE SORDEL ET DE PEYRE GUILHEM.

GUILHEM. GUILLAUME.

En Sordel que vous en semblan Eh bien, Sordel, que vous en De la pros contessa preysan? semble de cette aimable comtesse Car tout dison, et van parlan si prisée? Car tous disent, tous Que per s'amor etz in vengutz, vous répétant que pour son E quen cujatz esser son drutz, amour vous êtes veni ici, que En blanchatz etz por ley canutz. vous avez cru pouvoir être son amant, et que pour elle vos cheveux blanchissent, et vos forces vous abandonnent.

SORDEL. SORDELLO.

Peyre Guilhem tot son affan Pierre Guillaume, Dieu mit en Mist Dieu in ley for per mon dan. elle tout son travail, pour en Les beautatz que les autratz an faire mon tourment. Les beautés En menz, et el pres son menutz. qu'ont toutes les autres ne sont Ans fos ab emblanchatz perdutz rien; leur prix est peu de chose. Che esso non fos advengutz. Plutôt fussé-je perdu par la vieil-lesse, que d'avoir éprouvé ce que j'éprouve.

The poem of Sordello is a picture of the troublous times of the early part of the thirteenth century in North Italy, and is the history of the development of Sordello's soul. Frederick II. is Emperor and Honorius III. is Pope. Frederick II., the noblest of mediæval princes, the man who suffered much because he was centuries in advance of his time, is too well known to need any description. To understand the causes of the conflicts in which Lombardy was engaged, we must go back to the time of Charlemagne, who took the Lombard king Desiderius prisoner, in 774, and destroyed the Lombard kingdom. Luitprand, the sovereign of the Lombards from 713 to 726, had extended the dominion of Lombardy into Middle Italy. The Popes found this dominion too formidable, so they solicited the assistance of the Frankish kings. The whole of Upper Italy had been conquered by the Lombards in the sixth century. "Charles, with the title of King of the Franks and Lombards, then became the master of Italy. In 800, the Pope, who had crowned Pepin King of the Franks, claimed to bestow the Roman Empire, and crowned his greater son Emperor of the Romans" (Encyc. Brit.). Now began a vast system in North Italy of episcopal "immunities," which made the bishops temporal sovereigns. In the eleventh century the Lombard cities had become communes and republics, managing their own affairs and making war on their troublesome neighbours. Leagues and counter-leagues were formed, and confederacies of cities even dared to challenge the strength of Germany. Otto the Great's empire, in the early years of the tenth century, consisted of Germany and Lombardy, with the Romagna and Burgundy; and it was Otto who fixed the principle, that to the German king belonged the Roman crown. The crown of Germany was at this period elective, although it often passed in one family for several generations. Struggles for supremacy between the two powers took place in the reign of the Emperor Henry IV. of Franconia and the papacy of Gregory VII., the famous Hildebrand. It was the struggle between Church and State destined to be fraught with so much misery. The contest ended at this period in a compromise; but most of the gains were on the side of the Pope. It was renewed with great fierceness in the reign of Frederick I. of Hohenstaufen, called Barbarossa or "Red Beard," who came to the throne in 1152. He bestowed on the Empire the title of Holy. The cities of Lombardy were commonwealths, somewhat after the fashion of those of ancient Greece; they had grown very rich and powerful, and whilst they admitted the Emperor's authority in theory, were averse to the practice of submission. The city of Milan, by her attacks on a weaker neighbour, who appealed to Frederick for aid, began a war which resulted in the Peace of Constance in 1183, by which the Emperor abandoned all but a nominal authority over the Lombard League. The son and successor of Frederick--Henry VI.--began to reign in 1190; he married Constance, heiress of the Norman kingdom of Sicily, which was a fief of the papal crown. After the death of Henry VI., Philip, his brother, began to reign, in 1198. In 1208, Otho IV., surnamed the Superb, ascended the throne, and was crowned Emperor. The next year he was excommunicated and deposed. In 1212, Frederick II., King of Sicily, who was the son of Henry VI., began his reign, he received the German crown at Aix-la-Chapelle, 1215, and the Imperial crown of Rome, 1230. When he died he possessed no fewer than six crowns,--the Imperial crown, and the crowns of Germany, Burgundy, Lombardy, Sicily, and Jerusalem. He had assumed the cross, and in 1220 he left his Empire for a space of fifteen years, to accomplish the crusade and to carry on the war with the Lombard cities and the Pope (Gregory IX.). John of Brienne, the dethroned King of Jerusalem, who was afterwards Emperor of the East, had a daughter named Yolande, whom Frederick married. He sent a bunch of dates to Frederick to remind him of his promised crusade. When that sovereign formed the army of the East, he left his young son Henry to represent him in Germany. Frederick was deposed by his subjects, and died in 1250, naming his son Conrad as his successor. In the beginning of the reign of Conrad III., 1138, the Imperial crown was contested by Henry the Proud Duke of Saxony. It was at this time that the contests between the factions, afterwards so famous in history as those of the Guelfs and the Ghibellines, began. Duke Henry had a brother named Welf, the leader of the Saxon forces. They used his name as their battle cry, and the Swabians responded by crying out the name of the village where their leader, the brother of Conrad, had been born--namely, Waibling. The Welfs and the Waiblings were therefore the originals of the terms Guelfs and Ghibellines.--"The Romano Family." During the reign of Conrad II. (1024-39) a German gentleman, named Eccelino, accompanied that Emperor to Italy, with a single horse, and so distinguished himself that, as a reward for his services, he received the lands of Onaro and Romano in the Trevisan marches. This founder of a powerful house, famous for its crimes, was succeeded by Alberic, and he by another Eccelino, called the First and also le Bègue--'the Stammerer.' These gentlemen largely augmented their patrimony, acquiring Bassano, Marostica, and many other estates situated to the north of Vicenza, Verona, and Padua; so that their fief formed a small principality, equal in power to either of its neighbouring republics; and as the factions of the towns sought to strengthen themselves by alliances with them, the Seigneurs de Romano were soon regarded as the chiefs of the Ghibelline party in all Venetia. Eccelin le Bègue and Tisolin de Campo St. Pierre, a Paduan noble, were warm friends, and the latter was married to a daughter of the former, and had a son grown to manhood. Cecile, orphan daughter and heiress of Manfred Ricco d'Abano, was offered in marriage, by her guardians, to the young St. Pierre; but the father before concluding the advantageous alliance, thought it proper to consult his friend and father-in-law, Eccelino. That gentleman, however, wished to obtain this great fortune for his own son, and secretly bribed the lady's guardians to deliver her up to him, when he carried her off to his castle of Bassano and then hurriedly married her to his son. This treachery made the whole family of Campo St. Pierre indignant, and they vowed vengeance. They had not long to wait for their opportunity. Several months after the marriage, the wife of the young Eccelino went on a visit to her estates in the Paduan territory, with a suite more brilliant than valiant. Tisolin's son, Gerard, who was to have been Cecile's husband, and was now her nephew, seized her and carried her off from the midst of her retinue to his castle of St. André. Cecile, escaping after a time, returned to Bassano and related her terrible misfortune to her husband, who at once repudiated her, and she afterwards married a Venetian nobleman. The two families had, however, thus founded a mutual hate, which descended from father to son, and cost many lives and much blood. In the meantime, Eccelino II.'s power was augmented by this marriage and the one he afterwards contracted. He made alliances with the republics of Verona and Padua; and he soon required their aid, for in 1194, when one of his enemies was chosen podesta of Vicenza, he, his family, and the whole faction of Vivario, were exiled from the city. Before submitting, he undertook to defend himself by setting fire to his neighbours' houses; and a great portion of the town was destroyed during the insurrection. These were the first scenes of disorder and bloodshed which greeted the eyes of Eccelino III. or the Cruel, who was born a few weeks before. Exile from Vicenza was not a severe sentence for the lords of Romano; for they retired to Bassano, in the midst of their own subjects, and called around them their partisans, who were persecuted as they themselves were, without the same resources. By the aid thus given with apparent generosity, they degraded their associates, transforming their fellow-citizens into mercenary satellites, and increasing their influence in the town, from which their exile could not be of long duration. The Veronese interfered to establish peace in Vicenza. They had the Romanos recalled, with all their party; and an arrangement was made by which two podestas were chosen at the same time, one by each party. In 1197, however, the Vicenzese again chose a single podesta, hostile to Eccelino, and this time not only banished the Romanos, but declared war against them, and sent troops to besiege Marostica. Eccelino, placed between three republics, could choose his own allies; and decided now upon Padua. The Paduan army attacked that of Vicenza, near Carmignano, and took two thousand prisoners. The Vicenzese called upon the Veronese to assist them, and together they invaded the Paduan territory, desolating it up to the very walls of the city, and so frightening the Paduans that they delivered up all of their prisoners without waiting to consult Eccelino. That prince took this opportunity to break with Padua, and called upon Verona to arbitrate between him and Vicenza, giving them as hostages his young daughter and his strongest two castles, Bassano and Anganani. By this thorough confidence he so won the affection of the podesta of Verona that he concluded peace for him with Vicenza and the whole Guelf party, and then returned his castles to him. The Paduans revenged themselves by confiscating Onaro, the first estate possessed by the Romano family in Italy.--Salinguerra. William Marchesella des Adelard, chief of the Guelf party in Ferrara, had the misfortune to see all the male heirs of his house, his brother and all his sons, perish before him. An only daughter of his brother, named Marchesella, remained, and he declared her the sole heiress to his immense estates, naming the son of his sister as heir should Marchesella die without children. Tired of warfare, and hoping to ensure peace to his distracted country, he determined to do so by uniting the leading families of the two factions. Salinguerra, son of Torrello, was at the head of the Ghibellines in Ferrara; and William not only offered his niece to him in marriage, but actually before his death placed her, then a child of seven years, in his hands to be reared and educated. The Guelfs were, however, unwilling to permit the heiress of their leading family to remain in the hands of their enemies; and they could not consent to transfer their affection and allegiance to those with whom they had fought for so long a time. They therefore found an opportunity to surprise Salinguerra's palace, and abduct Marchesella, whom they placed in the palace of the Marquis d'Este, choosing Obizzo d'Este to be her husband, and placing her property in the hands of the Marquis. In the end Marchesella died before she was married; her cousins, designated by William, in this event, to be his heirs, were afraid to claim the estates, and the whole property continued in the hands of the Este family. In the meantime the insult offered to Salinguerra was keenly resented. The abduction took place in 1180, and for nearly forty years afterwards civil war continued within the walls of Ferrara without ceasing. During those years, ten times one faction drove the other out of the city, ten times all the property of the vanquished was given up to pillage, and all their houses razed to the ground.--Eccelino and Salinguerra. In 1209 Otho IV. entered Italy, and held his court near Verona. All the chief lords of Venetia--but especially Eccelino II., de Romano, and Azzo VI., Marquis d'Este--were summoned to attend. Those two gentlemen had profited by the long interregnum which preceded Otho's reign to increase their influence in the marches, and the factions were more bitter against each other than ever. These factions had different reasons for existing in the different towns; but they quickly adopted the newly introduced names of Guelf and Ghibelline, and a common tie was thus suddenly formed between the factions in the various places. Thus, by the mere adoption of a name, Salinguerra in Ferrara and the Montecci in Verona, found themselves allies of Eccelino; and, on the other hand, the Adelards of Ferrara, Count St. Bonifazio at Verona and Mantua, and the Campo St. Pierre at Padua, were all allies of the Marquis d'Este. The year before, Este, after a short banishment, had re-entered Ferrara, and had succeeded in being declared lord of that city,--the first time that an Italian republic abandoned its rights for the purpose of voluntarily submitting to a tyrant. About the same time the Marquis had gained an important victory over Eccelino and his party; but, at the moment when the Emperor entered Italy, Eccelino had gained some advantages over the Vicenzese, and thought himself on the point of capturing the city. Azzo marched against him, whereupon Salinguerra entered Ferrara and drove out all of Azzo's adherents. The summons sent to the chiefs to meet the Emperor no doubt prevented a bloody battle and a useless massacre. (See note, p. 500; see also the article, TAURELLO SALINGUERRA, in this work.) In 1235, after a long and turbulent reign, full of vicissitudes, Eccelino II. retired into a monastery, and divided his principality between his two sons, Eccelino III. and Alberic. The latter remained at Treviso; but Eccelino III. became very powerful, kept all Italy in turmoil, and was notorious for his infamous tyrannies and cruelties. In 1255 he was excommunicated by the Pope, Alexander IV., and a crusade was preached against him. He fought against his enemies from that time, with varying success and stubborn courage, until 1259, when he was wounded in battle and taken prisoner. The leaders of the enemy with difficulty protected him from the fury of the soldiers and the people; but he himself tore the bandages from his wounds, and died on the eleventh day of his captivity. All the cities which he had conquered and oppressed at once revolted; and Treviso, where Alberic had reigned ever since his fathers abdication, revolted and drove him out. Alberic, with his family, took refuge in his fortress of San Zeno, in the Euganean mountains; but the league of Guelf cities declared against him, and the troops of Venice, Treviso, Vicenza, and Padua surrounded the castle, where they were soon joined by the Marquis d'Este. Traitors delivered up the outworks; but Alberic and his wife, two daughters and six sons, took refuge on the top of a tower. After three days, compelled by hunger, he delivered himself up to the Marquis, at the same time reminding him that one of his daughters was the wife of Renaud d'Este. In spite of this, however, he and his family were all murdered and torn to pieces, and their dismembered bodies divided among all the cities over which the hated Romano family had tyrannised. In 1240 Gregory IX. preached a crusade against the Emperor Frederick II., and a crusading army surrounded Ferrara, where Salinguerra, then more than eighty years old, had reigned for some time as prince and as head of the Ghibellines. He successfully defended the city for some time; but when attending a conference, to which he was invited by his enemies, he was treacherously captured and sent to Venice, where, after five years' imprisonment, he died." [S.]

[THE POEM.] Sordello is Browning's Hamlet, and is the most obscure of all Mr. Browning's poems. It has been aptly compared to a vast palace, in which the architect has forgotten to build a staircase. Its difficulties are not merely those which are inseparable from an attempt to trace the development of a soul,--such a work without obscurity could only deal with a very simple soul,--but are consequent on the remoteness of time in which the political events and historical circumstances which formed the environment of Sordello's existence took place, and the partial interest which the majority of readers feel concerning those events. The work deals with the struggles of the Guelfs and Ghibellines; and it is necessary to possess a fair knowledge of the history of the times, places, and persons concerned before we can grasp the mere outlines of the story. It must be admitted, whether we allow the charge of obscurity or not, that Mr. Browning never helps his reader. He may or may not actually hinder him: it is certain that he does not go out of his way to assist him. The first step towards understanding Sordello, then, is to gain some acquaintance with the period and personages of the story. The work is full of beauty. Probably no poet ever poured out such wealth of richest thought with such princely liberality as Mr. Browning has done in this much discussed poem. It is like a Brazilian forest, in which, though we shall almost certainly lose our way, it will be amidst such profusion of floral loveliness that it will be a delight to be buried in its depths.

BOOK I.--The poem in its first scene places us in imagination in Verona six hundred years ago. A restless group has gathered in its market-place to discuss the news which has arrived,--that their prince, Count Richard of St. Boniface, the great supporter of the cause of the Guelfs, who had joined Azzo, the lord of Este, to depose the Ghibelline leader, Tauzello Salinguerra, from his position in Ferrara, has become prisoner in Ferrara; and in consequence immediate aid is demanded from the "Lombard League of fifteen cities that affect the Pope." The Pope supported the Guelf cause, the Kaiser that of the Ghibellines. The leaders of the two causes are described, and the principles of which each was the representative. We are next introduced to Sordello; not in his youth, but in a supreme moment before the end of his career--a moment which has to determine his future. How this pregnant moment has come about, and how the past has fashioned the present, the poet now proceeds to explain. We are taken back to the castle of Goïto, when Sordello was a boy already of the regal class of poets, musing by the marble figures of the fountain, and finding companions in the embroidered figures on the arras. Adelaide, wife of Eccelino da Romano, the Ghibelline prince, was mistress of the castle. Sordello was only a page, known only as the orphan of Elcorte, an archer, who, in the slaughter of Vicenza, had saved his mistress and her new-born son at the cost of his own life. The son was afterwards known as Eccelin the Cruel. Sordello led the ideal life of a poet child at Goïto. All nature was a scene of enchantment to him, was endowed with form and colour from his own rich fancy. But Sordello was not content with living his own life, he must combine in his person the lives of his imaginary heroes. He will be perfect: he chooses Apollo as his ideal: he must love a woman to match his high ambition. He aims at Palma, Eccelin's only child by his former wife, Agnes Este, but who has been already set apart, for reasons of state, as the wife of Count Richard of St. Boniface, the Guelf. Palma, however, it is reported in the castle, will refuse him. Sordello anxiously awaits his opportunity. The return of Adelaide to the castle demands the services of the troubadours: Sordello's chance lies this way.

BOOK II. shows us Sordello setting forth on a bright spring day, full of hope that he will meet Palma. Arriving at Mantua, he finds a Court of Love, in which his lady sits enthroned as queen, and the troubadour Eglamor contending for her prize against all comers. Eglamor seems to make but a poor affair of the story he is singing. He ceases. Sordello knows the story too, and feels that he can do better with it. He springs forward, and with true inspiration sings a new song to the old idea transfigured. He has won the prize from Palma's hands. Swooning with joy, he is carried back to Goïto, the poet's crown on his brow and Palma's scarf round his neck. Eglamor is dead with spite, and the troubadours have a new chief. Thus was Sordello poet, Master of the Realms of Song. He will slumber: he can arise in his strength any day. He is summoned to Mantua to sing to order. He finds the idea of work distasteful; but he conquers, and is crowned with honours. But he feels he has only been loving song's results, not song for its own sake; his failure to reach his ideal destroys the pleasure derived from his success. Soon the true Sordello vanished, sundered in twain, the poet thwarting the man. The man and bard was gone; internal struggles frittered his soul; he became too contemptuous, and so he neither pleased his patrons nor himself. He falls lower and lower, abjures the soul in his songs, and contents himself with body. His degradation is complete. Meanwhile Adelaide dies, and Eccelin resolves to forsake the world and the Emperor, and come to terms with the Pope. Taurello rages furiously at this news, and returns to Mantua. Sordello is chosen to sound his praises. "'Tis a test, remember," says Naddo. But Sordello loathes the task: he will not sing at all, and runs away to Goïto.

BOOK III.--Once more at his old home, Mantua becomes but a dream. Sordello, well or ill, is exhausted: rather than imperfectly reveal himself, he will remain unrevealed. He will remain himself, instead of attempting to project his soul into other men. He spent a year with Nature at Goïto, but as one defeated,--youth gone, love and pleasure foregone, and nothing really done. With an all-embracing sympathy he has not himself really lived. When Nature makes a mistake she can rectify it. He must perish once, and perish utterly. He should have brought actual experience of things obtained by sterling work to correct his mere reflections and observations. He may do something yet: though youth is gone, life is not all spent. He has the will to do,--what of the means? Resolution having thus been taken, the means are suddenly discovered. Naddo arrives as messenger from Palma, telling how Eccelin has distributed his wealth to his two sons, has married them to Guelf brides, and has retired to a monastery; that Palma is betrothed to Richard of St. Boniface, and Sordello must compose a marriage hymn. Sordello seizes the opportunity, and hastens to meet Palma at Verona. We have now arrived at the point at which the poem of Sordello opens in Book I. He has to hear a strange confession from the lips of Palma. If Sordello had been paralysed by indecision, she too had done nothing, because she was awaiting an "out-soul." Weary with waiting for her complement, which should enable her to live her proper life, she had conceived a great love for Sordello when he burst upon the scene at the Love Court. To win Sordello for herself and her cause henceforth was her life-object. When Adelaide died this became practicable. She had heard the astonishing dying confession of Adelaide, and had witnessed Eccelin's visit to the death-chamber when he came to undo everything which Adelaide had done. He had resolved to reconcile the Guelf and Ghibelline factions. Taurello determined to use Palma to support the Ghibellines. Palma, as head of the house, agreed to this; but it was arranged that the project should not at present be made public. She must profess her intention to carry out the arrangement which Taurello had made, before he entered on the religious life, of marrying the Guelf, Count Richard. Taurello has thus entrapped the Count, and has him in prison at Ferrara. Palma's father, Eccelin, blots out all his old engagements. All now rests with Palma, and she arranges to fly with Sordello on the morrow as arbitrators to Taurello at Ferrara. Now is one round of Sordello's life accomplished. Mr. Browning here makes a long digression, beginning, "I muse this on a ruined palace-step at Venice." The City in the Sea seems to him a type of life:--

"Life, the evil with the good, Which make up living, rightly understood; Only do finish something!"

No evil man is past hope; if he has not truth, he has at least his own conceit of truth; he sees it surely enough: his lies are for the crowd. Good labours to exist; though Evil and Ignorance thwart it. In this life we are but fitting together an engine to work in another existence. He sees profound disclosures in the most ordinary type of face: the world will call him dull for this, as being obscure and metaphysical. There are poets who are content to tell a simple story of impressions; another class presents things as they really are in a general, and not, as in the previous class, in an individual sense; but the highest class of all brings out the deeper significance of things which would never have been seen without the poet's aid. These are the Makers-see--obviously a higher type of genius than the Seers. "But," asks the objector, "what is the use of this?" It is quite true that men of action, like Salinguerra, are not unwisely preferred to dreamers like Sordello: they, at least, do the world's work somehow; this is better than talking about it. But, at any rate, there is no harm done in compelling the Makers-see to do their duty. It is their province to gaze through the "door opened in heaven," and tell the world what they see, and make us see it too, as did John in Patmos Isle. And so Mr. Browning has analysed for us the soul of Sordello; but he expects no reward for it. The world is too indolent to look into heaven with John, or into hell with Dante.

BOOK IV.--The description of the unhappy position of Ferrara, "the lady city," for which both Guelf and Ghibelline contended, opens the fourth book. Sordello is here with Palma. He has seen the dreadful condition of the people, and has espoused their cause. Here, in the midst of carnage and ruin, Sordello learns his altruism. He appeals to Taurello Salinguerra, but nothing comes of it. The more he sees of the misery of the people, the more he vows himself to an effort to raise them. The soldiers ask him to sing at their camp-fire. He sings, and Palma hears and takes him back to Taurello Salinguerra. The poet here describes the chief and tells his story. He is the doer, as contrasted with Sordello the visionary; but he has led a life of misfortune and adventure. At the burning of Vicenza he lost wife and child; he embraced the cause of Eccelin and the Ghibellines. As Eccelin had gone into a monastery, all Taurello's plans were disarranged. He ponders as to whom shall be given the Emperor's badge of the prefectship; and what shall he do with his prisoner Richard; Sordello asks Palma what are the laws at work which explain Ghibellinism. He feels he has been a recreant to his race: Taurello has the people's interest at heart; all that Sordello should have done he does. Are Guelfs as bad as Ghibellines, or better? Both these do worse than nothing, is a reflection which comforts the do-nothing poet. What if there were a Cause higher and nobler than either, and he (Sordello) were to be its true discoverer? A soldier, at this point, suggests to Sordello a subject for a ballad: a tale of a dead worthy long ago consul of Rome, Crescentius Nomentanus, who--

"From his brain, Gave Rome out on its ancient place again."

Sordello resolves to build up Rome again--a Rome which should mean the rights of mankind, the realisation of the People's cause.

BOOK V.--The splendid dream of a New Rome has vanished from Sordello's mind ere night; his enthusiasm is chilled, and arch by arch the vision has dissolved. Mankind cannot be exalted of a sudden; the work of ages cannot be done in a day. The New Rome is one more thing which Sordello could imagine, but could not make. His heart tells him that the minute's work is the first step to the whole work of a man: he has purposed to take the last step first: he may be a man at least, if he cannot be a god. The world is not prepared for such a violent change; society has never been advanced by leaps and bounds. Charlemagne had to subject Europe by main force, then Hildebrand was enabled to rule by brain power. Strength wrought order, and made the rule of moral influence possible; in its turn, moral power allied itself with material power. The Crusaders learned the trick of breeding strength by other aid than strength; and so the Lombard League turned righteous strength against pernicious strength. Then comes, in its turn, God's truce to supersede the use of strength by the Divine influence of Religion. All that precedes is as scaffolding, indispensable while the building is in progress, but a thing to spurn when the structure is completed: that, however, is not yet. As talking is Sordello's trade, he endeavours to persuade Salinguerra to join the Guelfs, as this, to Sordello, seems the more popular cause. Taurello hears him with patience, mixed with a contemptuous indifference. His scornful demeanour rouses Sordello to make the highest claims for the poet's authority: "A poet must be earth's essential king." To bend Taurello to the Guelf cause, Sordello would give up life itself. He knows that "this strife is right for once." Taurello is impressed at last: the argument hits him, not the man; himself must be won to the Ghibellines. Palma, being a woman, is impossible as leader of the party; her love for Sordello may, however, be cast in the balance, and in an inspired moment Taurello invests Sordello with the Emperor's badge, which he casts upon his neck. Palma now tells Taurello that Adelaide, on her death-bed, confessed that Sordello was Taurello's own son, who did not perish, as he believed, at Vicenza. Adelaide, for her own purposes, had concealed his rescue. "Embrace him, madman!" Palma cried; thoughts rushed, fancies rushed. "Nay, the best's behind," Taurello laughed. Palma hurries Taurello away, that Sordello may collect his thoughts awhile. Sordello is crowned. They hear a foot-stamp as they discuss the future, in the room where they left Sordello, and "out they two reeled dizzily."

BOOK VI.--Now has arisen the great temptation of Sordello. Is it to be the Great Renunciation or the Fall? With the magnificent prospect before him of Chief of the Ghibellines, the Emperor cause; with the Emperor's badge on his neck; with Palma, his Ghibelline bride, he, Taurello Salinguerra's son, might at last do something! After all, what was the difference between Guelf and Ghibelline? Why should he give up all the joy of life that the multitude might have some joy? "Speed their Then." "But how this badge would suffer!--you improve your Now!" So Sordello lovingly eyes the tempter's apple. After all, evil is just as natural as good; and without evil no good can accrue to men. Sordello may then as well be happy while he may. Soul and body have each alike need of the other: soul must content itself without the Infinite till the earth-stage is over. He has tried to satisfy the soul's longing, and has failed: why not seek now the common joys of men? Salinguerra and Palma reach the chamber door and dash aside the veil, only to find Sordello dead, "under his foot the badge." Has he lost or won? He learned how to live as he came to die: he made the Great Renunciation, and in seeming defeat he achieved his soul's success.

NOTES TO BOOK I.--Line 6, Pentapolin, "o' the naked arm," king of the Garamanteans, who always went to battle with his right arm bare. (See Don Quixote, I. iii. 4; "The friendless-people's friend," etc.) Don Quixote is here spoken of, and "Pentapolin named o' the Naked Arm" is mentioned by Don Quixote when he sees the two flocks of sheep: "Know, friend Sancho, that yonder army before us is commanded by the Emperor Alifanfaron, sovereign of the Island of Trapoban; and the other is commanded by his enemy the king of the Garamanteans, known by the name of Pentapolin with the naked arm, because he always engages in battle with the right arm bare." l. 12, Verona: a city of North Italy, on the Adige, under the Lombard Alps. l. 66, "The thunder phrase of the Athenian," etc.: Æschylus, who fought at Marathon. l. 70, "The starry paladin": Sir Philip Sidney's love poems to Stella were written under the nom de plume of Astrophel (the lover of the star). [S.] l. 80, The Second Friedrich == Holy Roman Emperor (1194-1250), surnamed the Hohenstauffen, the most remarkable historic figure of the middle ages. He was the grandson of Barbarossa, and was crowned in 1220. l. 81, Third Honorius == Pope Honorius III. (1216-1227): he was a Guelf. l. 104, Richard of St. Boniface, Count of Verona, was of the Guelfs; Lombard League: the famous alliance of the great Lombard cities began in 1164. l. 117, "Prone is the purple pavis": a pavise is a large shield covering the whole body: when the shield was prone--i.e. fallen flat on its face--its owner was defenceless. l. 124, "Duke o' the Rood": of the Order of the Holy Cross. l. 126, Hell-cat == Eccelin. l. 131, Ferrara: an ancient city of North Italy, twenty-nine miles from Bologna and seventy from Venice. l. 131, Osprey: a long-winged eagle. "An osprey appears to have been the coat of arms of Salinguerra, as the 'ostrich with a horseshoe in his beak' was that of Eccelin." [S.] l. 142, Oliero: the monastery which Eccelin the monk entered. It is situated near Bassano, in the Eastern Alps. ll. 148 and 149, Cino Bocchimpane and Buccio Virtù: citizens. l. 149, God's Wafer: an oath (Ostia di Dio). l. 150, "Tutti Santi" == "All Saints!" an exclamation. l. 153, Padua: a famous city of Lombardy, said to be the oldest in North Italy; Podesta == governor of a city. l. 197, Hohenstauffen: this dynasty of Germany began with Conrad III. (1137-52). Frederick II. was the most illustrious man of this illustrious family. l. 198, John of Brienne: crusader and titular king of Jerusalem (1204). He was afterwards Emperor of the East. His daughter Yolande or Iolanthe married Frederick II. l. 201, Otho IV., Holy Roman Emperor (c. 1174-1218). l. 202, Barbaross == Frederick Barbarossa: one of the greatest sovereigns of Germany (1152-90). There is a German tradition that he is not dead, but only sleeping, and that when he starts from his slumbers a golden age will begin for Germany. l. 205, Triple-bearded Teuton Barbarossa: the legend runs that his beard has already grown through the table slab, but must wind itself thrice round the table before his second advent. l. 253, Trevisan: of the province of Treviso; its chief town, Treviso, is distant seventeen miles from Venice. l. 257, Godego: a town in Venetia, amongst the Asolan hills. Marostica: a town of North Italy, fifteen miles north-east of Vicenza, at the foot of Mount Rovero. l. 258, Castiglione: a town at the Italian end of the Lago di Garda (Cartiglion in the text, but evidently a misprint); Bassano: a city of Italy, in the province of Vicenza, on the Brenta. In the centre of the town is the Tower of Ezzelino. Loria, or Lauria: a city of Italy in the province of Potenza. The castle was the birthplace of Ruggiero di Loria. l. 259, Suabian: the struggle for the Imperial throne between Philip of Swabia and Otto of Brunswick (1198-1208) enlisted the sympathies of Italy, and some of the Guelfic towns took the part of the Guelf Otto. l. 262, Vale of Trent: Trent or Tridentum was once the wealthiest town in Tyrol; it lies between Botzen and Verona. l. 263, Roncaglia, near Piacenza, where Frederick I. held the Diet in 1154, and received the submission of the Lombards. l. 265, Asolan and Euganean hills: in the Trevisan, a district of North Italy, between Trent and Venice. l. 266, Rhetian, of the country of the Tyrol and the Grisons; Julian mountains: between Venetia and Noricum. l. 288, Romano: Eccelino da Romano. l. 304, Rovigo: a city of Italy, about twenty-seven miles S.S.W. of Padua. From the eleventh to the fourteenth century the Este family was usually in authority. l. 305, Ancona's March: the frontier or boundary of Ancona, a city of Central Italy on the Adriatic. l. 315, Hildebrand: Pope Gregory VII. (1073-85). l. 317, Twenty-four: the magistrates of Verona who managed the affairs of the city. l. 324, Carroch, or caroccio: a Lombard war carriage, which was drawn by oxen, and bore a great bell, the standard of the army, and the Sacred Host, forming a rallying point. l. 373, "John's transcendent vision"--Book of Revelation. ll. 382 and 385, Mantua and Mincio: about seven hundred years ago the river Mincio formed a great marsh round the city of Mantua; this separated the city from the mountains, on the slope of which stood the castle of Goïto. l. 420, Caryatides: figures of women serving to support entablatures. l. 587, "That Pisan Pair": Niccolo Pisano, and Giovanni Pisano, his son were great sculptors and architects of Pisa (circ. 1207-78). "Nicolo was born about 1200, and was one of the first to seek after the truer forms of art in the general quickening of the century. He was a great sculptor, as his works and those of his son Giovanni (architect of the Campo Santo at Pisa) and his school bear witness at Pisa, Orvieto, Pistoia, and many other towns. After he had met with an example of the genuine antique--a sarcophagus now at Pisa--he brought his future work into accordance with its rules." [S.] l. 589, "while at Sienna is Guidone set": "The name Guido da Sienna and the date 1221, mark a picture now at Sienna; and this, with other works attributed to the same painter, show him to have been one of the earliest artists who express a feeling independent of Byzantine influence." [S.] l. 591, "Saint Euphemia": a fine brick church at Verona, dating from the thirteenth century. The interior has now been entirely remodelled. [S.]. Saint Eufemia: of Chalcedon: her body was said to have been miraculously conveyed to Rovigno, in the sixth century. l. 606, "so they found at Babylon": "It is said that after the city (of Seleucia) was burnt, the soldiers searching the temple (of Apollo) found a narrow hole, and when this was opened in the hope of finding something of value in it, there issued from some deep gulf, which the secret magic of the Chaldeans had closed up, a pestilence laden with the strength of incurable disease, which polluted the whole world with contagion, in the time of Verus and Marcus Antoninus, and from the borders of Persia to Gaul and the Rhine."--Ammianus Marcellinus. [S.] l. 607, "Colleagues, mad Lucius and sage Antonine": during the joint reign of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (the philosopher) and the scapegrace Lucius Verus; the latter was in command of the Roman forces in the east, and engaged in a war with Parthia. His generals sacked Seleucia, and he was himself present in the neighbourhood of Babylon during the winters of A.D. 163-5 (v. Clinton, Fasti Romani). [S.] l. 608, "Apollo's shrine": "Seleuceus, one of Alexander's generals, and himself a Macedonian, founded the Syrian empire, and built the town of Seleucia. A good deal is told of the Hellenization of the East under Seleucus. He, no doubt, founded the temple of Apollo, who was claimed as an ancestor of the family." [S.] l. 617, Loxian: surname of Apollo. l. 671, Orpine: a yellow plant, commonly called Livelong (Sedum Telephium). l. 679, "adventurous spider": the geometric spiders (Orbitelariæ), are almost the only ones whose method of forming a snare have been at all minutely recorded. The garden spider (Epeira) spins a large quantity of thread, which, floating in the air in various directions, happens, from its glutinous quality, at last to adhere to some object near it--a lofty plant, or the branch of a tree. When the spider has one end of the line fixed, he walks along part of it, and fastens another, then drops and affixes the thread to some object below; climbs again, and begins a third, fastening that in a similar way. Mr. Browning is in error when he makes the spider shoot her threads from depth to height, from barbican to battlement. l. 707, "eat fern seed": this was anciently supposed to make the eater invisible; Naddo: appears as Sordello's friend and adviser: Mr. Browning makes him a representative of the "Philistine" party, and puts into his mouth the words of mere conventional, superficial wisdom. l. 720, "Poppy--a coarse brown rattling crane": the cranium or skull-like poppy head, when it contains the seed and is dry. l. 784, Valvassor, or vavasour: in feudal law a principal vassal, not holding immediately of the sovereign, but of a great lord; suzerain: a feudal lord, a lord paramount. l. 835, "The Guelfs paid stabbers, etc.": "In 1209 Otho IV. entered Italy, and held his court near Verona. All the chief lords of Venetia, but especially Eccelino II., da Romana, and Azzo VI., Marquis d'Este, were summoned to attend. Those two gentlemen had profited by the long interregnum which preceded Otho's reign. They had used the various discords between the towns to increase each his own faction; and the hatred between the two was more bitter than ever. A dramatic scene took place at the meeting before the Emperor. When Eccelino saw Azzo, he said, in the presence of the whole court, 'We were intimate in our youth, and I believed him to be my friend. One day we were in Venice together, walking on the Place of St. Mark, when his assassins flung themselves upon me to stab me; and at the same moment the Marquis seized my arms, to prevent me from defending myself; and if I had not by a violent effort escaped, I should have been killed, as was one of my soldiers by my side. I denounce him, therefore, before this assembly as a traitor; and of you, Sire, I demand permission to prove by a single combat his treachery to me as well as to Salinguerra, and to the podesta of Vicenza.' Shortly afterwards, Salinguerra arrived, followed by a hundred men at arms, and throwing himself at the feet of the Emperor, he made a similar accusation against the Marquis, and also demanded the ordeal of battle. Azzo replied to him, that he had on his hands plenty of gentlemen more noble than Salinguerra ready to fight for him if he was so anxious for battle. Then Otho commanded all three to be silent, and declared that he should not accord to any of them the privilege of fighting for any of their past quarrels. From these two chiefs the Emperor expected greater service than from all other Italians; and he secured their allegiance by confirming the lordship of the Marches of Ancona upon the Marquis, and by declaring Eccelino to be imperial deputy and permanent podesta of Vicenza." [S.] Line 857, Malek, a Moor. l. 885, Miramoline: a Saracen prince, whose territory was situated in North Africa: in the year 1214, St. Francis of Assisi set out for Morocco to preach the gospel to this famous Mahometan, but was taken seriously ill on the way. l. 888, "dates plucked from the bough John Brienne sent": he sent a bunch of dates to remind Frederick of his promise to join the crusade. l. 924, crenelled: embattled, crenellated. l. 935, Damsel-fly: the dragon-fly, so called from its elegant appearance. l. 946, Python: a monstrous serpent which haunted the caves of Parnassus, and was slain by Apollo. l. 950, "Girls--his Delians": at the island of Delos the festival of Apollo was celebrated. The girls were priestesses of Apollo. l. 956, "Daphne and Apollo": Daphne was a nymph who, being pursued by Apollo, was at her own entreaty changed into a bay tree--the tree consecrated to Apollo. l. 1008, Trouvères == troubadours.

BOOK II.--Line 68, Jongleurs: minstrels who accompanied the troubadours, and who sometimes did a little jugglery. l. 71, Elys: "Elys, then, is merely the ideal subject, with such a name, of Eglamour's poem, and referred to in other places as his (Sordello's) type of perfection, realised according to his faculty (Ellys--the lily)"--Robert Browning. [S.] l. 156: "The rhymes 'Her head that's sharp ... sunblanched the livelong summer' are referred to Book V., l. 246, 'the vehicle that marred Elys so much,' etc., and 'his worst performance, the Goïto as his first.' l. 980 of the same book." [S.] l. 94, "spied a scarab": one of the marks of Apis, the sacred bull of ancient Egypt. The marks were "a black coloured hide with a white triangular spot on the forehead, the hair arranged in the shape of an eagle on the back, and a knot under the tongue in the shape of a scarabæus, the sacred insect and emblem of Ptah, and a white spot resembling a lunar crescent at his right side" (Dr. S. Birch). l. 183, "A Roman bride": "on the wedding day, which in early times was never fixed upon without consulting the auspices, the bride was dressed in a long white robe with purple fringe and a girdle at the waist; her veil was of a bright yellow, and shoes likewise; her hair was divided with the point of a spear, which the antiquarians explained as emblematic of the husband's authority, or as typical of the guardianship of Juno Curitico (Juno with the lance)." "But while these rites are being performed, remain unwedded, ye damsels; let the torch of pinewood await auspicious days, and let not the curved spear part thy virgin ringlets" (Ovid, Fasti, ii. 160). [S.] l. 218, "Perseus"--rescuing Andromeda when chained to the rock in the sea. l. 222, "gnome": the Rosicrucians imagined gnomes to be sprites presiding over mines, etc. l. 224, "Agate cup, his topaz rod, his seed pearl": amongst the various superstitions connected with precious stones the agate was held to be an emblem of health and long life, and to possess certain medicinal uses. The topaz, said the old doctor, "is favourable to hæmorrhages, to impart strength, and promote digestion"; it was an emblem of fidelity. l. 307, "Massic jars dug up at Baiæ": Massic wine was famous in old Roman days. Baiæ, an ancient town near Naples; in old Roman days a health and pleasure resort of the wealthy; innumerable relics of these times have been unearthed. "Mons Massicus was a vine-clad hill in the Campagna, where the Falernian wine was grown." [S.] l. 297, "A plant they have"; The day-lily--St. Bruno's lily--the Hemerocallis liliastrum, in French, belle de jour. l. 329, Vicenza: a city of Northern Italy of great antiquity; the first encounter between the Guelfs and Ghibellines took place here, about 1194. l. 330, Vivaresi: a Lombard family. l. 331, Maltraversi: a noble family of Padua. l. 435, Machine: see l. 1014. l. 460, "some huge throbbing stone": In one of Ossian's poems a description is given of bards walking around a rocking stone, and by their singing making it move as an oracle of battle." [S.] l. 483, truchman == an interpreter. l. 527, rondel, tenzon, virlai, or sirvent: forms of Provençal poetry. "Rondel, a thirteen-verse poem, in which the beginning is repeated in the third and fourth verses--from rotundus; tenzon, a contest in verse before a tribunal of love--from tendo, in the sense of to strive; virlai, or vireley, a short poem, always in short lines, and wholly in two rhymes, with a refrain--from virer; sirvent, a poem of praise or service, sometimes satirical; from servire." (Imp. Dict.) [S.] l. 529, angelot: an instrument of music somewhat resembling a lute. l. 625, "sparkles off": intransitive verb,--"his mail sparkles off and it rings, whirled from each delicatest limb it warps." [S.] l. 627, "Apollo from the sudden corpse of Hyacinth": Apollo was one day teaching Hyacinthus to play at quoits, and accidentally killed him. l. 630, Montfort: the father of Simon de Montfort, who fought against the Albigenses. l. 729, Vidal: Pierre Vidal, of Toulouse, a poet of varied inspiration, was loaded with gifts by the greatest nobles of his time (see Sismondi, Lit. Eur., vol. i., p. 135). Professor Sonnenschein says he was a Provençal troubadour, who died about 1210. He was a sort of caricature of the usual troubadour excellence and foolishness. Some of his poems are the best remaining of the Provençal poetry. He went twice to Palestine, once with a crusade. He was hated by Sordello, and referred to in some of his poems which are extant. l. 730, filamot: yellow-brown colour; from feuille-morte; murrey-coloured: of a dark-red or mulberry colour (morus, mulberry). l. 755, plectre, or plectrum: a staff of ivory, horn, etc., for playing with on a lyre. l. 784, "Bocafoli's stark-naked psalms": not merely plain song, but naked song. l. 785, Plara's sonnets. Both personages are imaginary. l. 786, almug: "probably the red sandalwood of China and India" (Dr. W. Smith). l. 788, river-horse: the hippopotamus. l. 792, pompion-twine: pumpkin. l. 843, Pappacoda: a nickname. Tagliafer, or Taillefer: the favourite minstrel-knight of William of Normandy, who rode in front of the invading army at the battle of Senlac, and sang the song of Roland. l. 846, o'ertoise: overstretch? l. 877, Count Lori, or Loria of Naples. l. 883, "The Grey Paulician": "Eccelino II. found the Paterini or Paulicians, a Manichæan sect, who were driven from the East by the Empress Theodora (who had a hundred thousand of them killed) and her successors. They were slowly forced westward, and at last settled in Italy, and in Languedoc, in the neighbourhood of Albi. They are credited with planting the first seeds of the Reformation in the Latin Church. Innocent III., alarmed at their doctrines and increasing numbers, opposed them, and instructed St. Dominic and St. Francis to preach against them. The result was the cruel crusade of 1206, which continued in the form of more or less spasmodic persecution for many years,--at least thirty." [S.] l. 899, Romano: the birthplace of Ezzelino, near Bassano. Eccelino Romano was chief of the Ghibellines. l. 901, Azzo's sister Beatrix: married Otho IV. l. 902, Richard's Giglia: a Guelf lady. l. 929, Retrude: wife of Salinguerra. l. 948, Strojavacca: a troubadour? l. 986, "Cat's head and Ibis' tail": "Egyptian symbols in mosaic on the porphyry floor." [S.] l. 989, Soldan: Sultan. l. 1009, "Iris root the Tuscan grated over them": orris-root. l. 1013, Carian group: the Caryatides--women dressed as at the feasts of Diana Caryatis. Carya was a town in Arcadia.

BOOK III.--Line 2, moonfern and trifoly: plants which have supposed magical and healing properties [S.]; moonfern, the same as moonwort--Rumex lunaria; mystic trifoly == trefoil; "Herb Trinity" was used by St. Patrick to teach the mystery of the Holy Trinity. l. 12, painted byssus: silky fibres of a mollusc which has sometimes been spun with silk. l. 14, Tyrrhene whelk: the celebrated Tyrian purple, formerly prepared from a shell fish at Tyre. l. 14, trireme: a galley or vessel with three benches of oars on a side. l. 15, satrap == the governor of a province (Persian). l. 87, "Marsh gone of a sudden": when the lake appeared in its place. l. 88, "Mincio in its place laughed": when the river occupied the place of the marsh. l. 121, Island house: "a villa outside Palermo called La Favara" [S.]; Nuocera: between Pompeii and Amalfi. It was called "de Pagani," from a Saracenic colony of Frederick II., who was sometimes contemptuously called the Sultan of Nocera. Villani preserves the quaint words of the famous taunt which Charles of Anjou addressed to Manfred, before the bath of Benvinutum: "Alles e dit moi a li Sultan de Nocere hoggi metorai lui en enfers o il mettar moi en paradis." [S.] l. 123, Palermitans: citizens of Palermo. l. 124, Messinese: citizens of Messina. l. 125, "dusk Saracenic clans Nuocera holds": Frederick, who was afterwards the renowned Frederick II., Emperor of Germany, was crowned at Palermo, in Sicily, in 1198; during his minority the land was torn by turbulent nobles, and revolted Saracens; in 1220 the Emperor-King planted a colony of Saracens at Nocera on the mainland. l. 132, mollitious alcoves == soft alcoves. l. 133, Byzant domes: Byzantine architecture, in which the dome was a feature, developed about A.D. 300. l. 135, "August pleasant Dandolo": "Enrico Dandolo, one of the patrician family of that name in Venice, was chosen doge in 1192, although already blind and seventy-two years old. After naval successes against the Pisans, he was applied to at the time of the fourth crusade to furnish vessels for transport to Constantinople. After making terms most advantageous to the Republic, he himself led the enterprise to success, and shared with the French in the pillage of the city, and very largely in booty and privileges accruing. The four horses of St. Mark's Church were brought over to Venice by him." [S.] l. 140, "Transport to Venice square": St. Mark's Church in Venice is adorned with precious columns brought from temples and buildings in all parts of the ancient world. l. 225, "The bulb dormant, etc.": "It was the custom to bury the hyacinth bulb with mummies." [S.] l. 85, The Carroch: "during the war of the Milanese with Conrad, the Salic archbishop, Eribert, invented the Carroccio, which was at once adopted by all the cities of Italy. He placed it at the head of the army, and it was an imitation of the ark of the covenant of the tribes of Israel. The carroccio was a four-wheeled car drawn by four yokes of oxen. It was painted red; the oxen were dressed in red clothes to their heels; a very high mast, also painted red, was in the midst; it terminated in a golden ball. Below, between two white veils, floated the standard of the commune, and below that again was a crucifix, with the Saviour extending His arms to bless the army. A sort of platform in the front of the car was devoted to some of the bravest soldiers appointed for its defence. Another platform in the rear was occupied by musicians and trumpeters. Mass was said upon the carroccio before it left the town, and there was frequently a special chaplain attached to it." [S.] l. 312, "the candle's at the gateway": "compare with King Alfred's measurement of time. It is still the custom at Bremen for property to be sold at an auction by the candle--that is, the bidding goes on till the candle goes out." [S.] l. 314, Tiso Sampier: "Eccelin I. and Tissolin di Campo St. Pierre had been warm friends until, a difference occurring about a marriage portion, Eccelin proved treacherous and grasping, and a lasting feud arose between the two families." [S.] l. 315, "Ferrara's succoured Palma!" "The preceding passages in quotation marks are all in the Guelf spirit; this explanation is Ghibelline, say from Browning himself." [S.] l. 386, Cesano: a city of Emilia, between Bologna and Ancona, Dante, in Inferno, canto xxvii., characterises Cesano as living midway between tyranny and freedom. l. 456, Fomalhaut: a star of the first magnitude, in the constellation Priscus Australis, one of the brightest visible in the midnight meridian of September. [S.] l. 476, Conrad: the Swabian (1138-52). l. 486, Saponian: Mr. Browning explained this puzzling term as referring to the Saponi, who were a branch of the Eccelini family, which settled in Lombardy before the time of Sordello. l. 496, Vincentines: the people of Vicenza. l. 514,

"_... just As Adelaide of Susa could entrust Her donative ... ... to the superb Matilda's perfecting_."

"The Biographie Universelle says: 'Adelaide, Marchioness of Susa, was contemporary with Matilda the great Countess of Tuscany, and governed Piedmont with wisdom and firmness. She endeavoured more than once to make peace between the Emperor and Popes. She was married three times--to a Duke of Swabia, a Marquis of Montferrat, and a Count of Maurienna; and partly through her inheritance from the husbands, all of whom she survived, partly on account of her wise management, her fief Susa became the most important in Italy. Matilda, the great Countess of Tuscany, was one of the most famous characters of her age. Absolute ruler of the most powerful country in Italy, she defended Hildebrand, and adhered to the Pope against all enemies, proffers or threats. During her lifetime she transferred the greater part of her possessions by deed of gift to the papacy; and that deed was the foundation of Papal claims to many lands in Italy throughout the following centuries. She owned the Castle of Canozza, where the Pope took refuge from Henry IV., who had married Adelaide's daughter; and it was to Canozza that that Emperor was obliged to resort, when later he sought the Pope's forgiveness, and when he was left standing barefoot in the snow awaiting the Pope's pleasure. Matilda conveyed her estates to the Pope in 1102, was made sovereign of all Italy in 1110, and died 1115.' There appears to be no mention of any donative entrusted to the superb Matilda, either in the Biographie Universelle, or in Sismondi." [S.] Line 501, "lion's crine" == lion's hair. l. 583, "like the alighted Planet Pollux wore." Castor and Pollux were generally represented mounted on two white horses, armed with spears, and riding side by side with their heads covered with a bonnet, on the top of which glittered a star. The twins took part in the Argonautic expedition, and when a violent storm arose two flames of fire appeared, and were seen to play around their heads. Pollux was the son of Jupiter, whilst Castor was only his half-brother; but he obtained from Jupiter, for Castor, the gift of immortality, and a place with him amongst the constellations. St. Elmo's fire, which frequently appears and plays about masts and yards of ships during storms, was called Castor and Pollux by Roman sailors" (Lemprière, Class. Dict.). l. 590,

"_For thus I bring Sordello_."

See Book I., l. 353. l. 616, "Verona's Lady" is a statue on the top of a fountain at one end of the Piazza d'Erbe. The fountain was put up in 916, at the completion of the aqueduct by Berenger. It was restored in 1368. The statue was first erected by Theodosius in 1380. It is called by the people Donna Verona, and wears a steel crown as a symbol that the town was an imperial residence. l. 617, Gaulish Brennus, who besieged Rome B.C. 385. l. 621, Manlïus: Manlius Marcus, a celebrated Roman who defended the Capitol against the Gauls. l. 625, platan: the plane tree. l. 626, Archimage: the high priest of the Magi or fire-worshippers. l. 687, colibri: humming birds. l. 712, Bassanese, of Bassano, a noble town on the Brenta. l. 797, Basilic: the Basilica, St. Mark's great Cathedral. l. 798, "God's great day of the Corpus Domini" (or Body of the Lord): the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. It is held on the Thursday following Trinity Sunday. l. 811, losel == a wasteful, worthless fellow. l. 813,

"_God spoke, Of right hand, foot, and eye_." (See St. Matthew v. 29, 30) [S.]

l. 837, mugwort == a herb of the genus Artemisia. l. 839, "Zin the Horrid": the Syrian wilderness where the Israelites found no water (Num. xx. 1). l. 847, "potsherd and Gibeonites": see Joshua ix. l. 852, Meribah: see Exod. xvii. 7 and Num. xxvii. 14. l. 898, "Prisoned in the Piombi": horrible torture cells on the leads of the Ducal Palace at Venice, where the prisoners were roasted in the sun. l. 924, "Tempe's dewy vale": a beautiful valley in Thessaly. l. 964, Hercules--in Egypt: in his quest for the golden apples of the Hesperides, Hercules journeyed through Egypt--Busiris, the king, was about to sacrifice Hercules to Zeus, but he broke his bonds and slew Busiris, his sons and servants. l. 975, patron-friend: Walter Savage Landor, who warmly praised Browning's poetry when others abused it; the reference is to Empedocles, a Greek poet. l. 977, Marathon, Platæa, and Salamis: celebrated Greek battle-places. l. 987, "The king who lost the ruby": Polycrates of Samos. He was advised to throw into the sea the most precious of his jewels, a beautiful seal; he grieved much at the loss, but in a few days he had a present of a large fish, in the belly of which his ring was found. l. 992, English Eyebright: the botanical name of the plant is Euphrasia officinalis. Euphrasia was the name of a lady who was an old friend of Mr. Browning's (Dr. Furnivall). l. 1021, Xanthus: a disciple of St. John the Evangelist. l. 1024, Polycarp, an early Christian martyr, A.D. 166; and a disciple of St. John. l. 1025, Charicle: also a disciple. l. 1045, "twy prong" was one of the instruments used by necromancers in "raising the devil." "To procure the magic fork.--This is a branch of a single beam of hazel or almond, which must be cut at a single stroke with the new knife used in the sacrifice. The rod must terminate in a fork." (Waite's Mysteries of Magic, p. 260.) Pastoral Cross: the cross on a priest's vestment is sometimes Y-shaped. Hargrave Jennings, in his Rosicrucians, says it is now used as an anagram exemplifying the Athanasian Creed; exactly, in fact, like the magic twy prong in shape. An Archbishop's crozier or pastoral staff terminates in a cross at the top.

BOOK IV.--Line 24, quitch-grass == couch-grass or dog-grass; it roots deeply, and is not easily killed. l. 24, "loathy mallows": loathsome mallows, probably because they grow in ditches and in churchyards. l. 34, Legate Montelungo: Gregorio di Montelongo, Pontifical legate for Gregory IX. l. 50, arbalist, a crossbow; manganel, an engine of war for battering down walls and hurling stones; and catapult, a war engine. l. 72, Jubilate: rejoice ye! Jubilate Deo, 66th Psalm. l. 83:

"_... What cautelous Old Redbeard sought from Azzo's sire to wrench vainly_."

The Lombard League had built Alexandria to defy Barbarossa, who was twice unsuccessful in taking it. l. 89, Brenta: a river of North Italy, passing near Padua. Bacchiglione: the river on which stand Vicenza and Padua. l. 98, San Vitale: a small town near Vicenza. l. 147, "Messina marbles Constance took delight in": the marbles of Sicily. For variety and beauty they rival those of any country of Europe. l. 229, Mainard, or Meinhard: Count of Görz, in the Tyrol. l. 280, Concorezzi: a knightly family of Padua. l. 395, "Crowned grim twy-necked eagle": the two-headed eagle, symbol of the empire. l. 479, The Adelardi: were a noble Guelf family of Ferrara and Mantua. Marchesella was heiress of the Adelardi family; Obizzo I. carried her off, and married her to his son Azzo V. l. 483, Blacks and Whites: the Neri, the black party, and the Bianchi the white. The Bianchi are called the Parte selvaggia, because its leaders, the Cerchi, came from the forest lands of Val di Sieve. The other party, the Neri, were led by the Donati. (See Longfellow's Dante--Notes to Inferno, vi. 65.) l. 511, "goshawk": a short-winged slender hawk (Falco palumbarius). l. 533, Pistore: Pistoia. l. 577, Matilda: Countess of Tuscany (1046-1114), known as the Great Countess; she was the champion of the Church and the ally of Hildebrand. l. 585, Heinrich: "Henry VI., married Constance, daughter of the King of Naples and Sicily. He reigned from 1190 to 1197." [S.] "Philip and Otho": "the latter conspired against Frederick II., who was brought up by Innocent III., and after Philip's death made Emperor, in 1212. He lived till 1250. His son Henry, King of the Romans, rebelled against him." [S.] l. 614, Bassano: a city of Italy, in the province of Vicenza, on the Brenta. There is a church of St. Francis at Bassano. Lanze says, "It is the peculiar boast of Bologna that she can claim three of the few artists of the earliest times: one Guido, one Ventura, and one Ursone, of whom there exist memorials as far back as 1248." [S.] l. 615, Guido the Bolognian: Guido Reni, the great painter of Bologna (1575-1642). l. 645, Guglielm == William; Aldobrand or Aldovrandino: Governor of Ferrara, in conjunction with Salinguerra (1231). l. 735, San Biagio: St. Biase, a place near the Lake of Garda. l. 797, Constance: wife of Henry VI. of Germany; by this marriage Frederick hoped that his empire would soon include Naples and Sicily. l. 837, Moorish lentisk: the mastich tree. l. 884, poison-wattles: the baggy flesh on the animal's neck, an excrescence or lobe. l. 977, Crescentius Nomentanus: a Roman tribune, who, in the absence of Pope John and King Otho, tried to restore consular Rome. But the Pope and King returned, and crucified him, A.D. 998. (See Gibbon's Decline and Fall, chap. xlix.) Professor Sonnenschein sends me the following further note: "Crescentius was a Roman who, towards the end of the tenth century, endeavoured to restore his country's liberty and ancient glory. The power of the Eastern emperors had long ceased in Rome, that of the Western emperors had been suspended by long interregnas. Rome was a republic in which the citizens, the neighbouring nobles, and the Pope, disputed the authority. Crescentius, who was of the family of the Counts of the Tusculum, placed himself at the head of the anarchic government about 980, with the title of Consul. He had, to dispute his rank, Boniface VII., who, murderer of two popes, had become Pope himself. This pontiff was stained by the most shameful crimes, and as his authority was not well founded, the nobles and the people aided Crescentius in breaking the yoke. Boniface died 985. John XV., who succeeded him, was detained by Crescentius far from Rome, in exile, until he recognised the sovereignty of the people. Upon his return he did not seek to trouble the government; and, as well as one can judge through the obscurity of ages, the Roman republic enjoyed until 996, under the Consul Crescentius, such peace, order, and security, as it had not known for a long time. John XV. died the year Otho III. went from Germany to Italy, to receive the imperial crown. The young monarch chose his relative, Gregory V., to succeed John. None of the rights or privileges of Rome were known to the new pontiff, who, long accustomed to regard the popes as gods on earth, having now himself become pope, could not conceive of any resistance to his will. Crescentius refused to recognise a pope whose election and conduct were alike irregular. He opposed to him another pope, a Greek by birth, who took the name of John XVI., and he asked the Emperor of the East to send troops to his assistance. Otho III. entered Rome with an army in 998. He condemned John XVI. to horrible torture, and besieged Crescentius in the castle of St. Angelo; and as he could not conquer the latter, he offered him an honourable capitulation. However, he no sooner had him in his hands than he put him to death and ill-treated his wife. Three years later, on his return from a penitential pilgrimage, she succeeded in causing his death by poison." l. 1006, wranal: a lantern. l. 1032, "Rome of the Pandects": "The digest or abridgment in fifty books of the decisions and opinions of the old Roman jurists, made in the sixth century, by order of the Emperor Justinian, and forming the first part of the body of the civil law." (Webster.)

BOOK V.--Line 6, Palatine, one invested with royal privileges and rights. l. 16, atria, halls or principal rooms in Roman houses. l. 17, stibadium, a half-round reclining couch used by Romans near their baths. l. 18, lustral vase: used in purification at meals, etc. l. 34, pelt, a skin of a beast with the hair on. l. 43, obsidion, a kind of black glass produced by volcanoes. l. 58, Mauritania, an ancient country of North Africa == land of the Moors, celebrated for the wood called Citrus, for tables of which the Romans gave fabulous prices. l. 61, Demiurge: a worker for the people; so God, as Creator of the world. Mareotic: of the locality of Lake Mareotis, in Egypt. Mareotic wine was very famous; Cæcuban: Cæcubum, a town of Latium. Cæcubus Ager was noted for the excellence and plenty of its wines. l. 82, Pythoness: the priestess who gave oracular answers at Delphi, in Greece. l. 83, Lydian king: Lydia was a kingdom of Asia Minor. The king referred to was Crœsus, who interpreted in his own favour the ambiguous answer of the oracle, and was destroyed by following the advice he thought was given to him. l. 115, Nina and Alcamo: Sicilian poets of the period. In the life of Joanna, Queen of Naples, we read of "the Poetess Nina, whose love of her art caused her to become enamoured of a poet whom she had never seen. This fortunate bard (who returned her poetical passion) was called Dante; but we cannot plead in her excuse that he had anything else in common with the great poet of that name. Nina was the most beautiful woman of the day, and the first female who wrote verse in Italian. She was so engrossed by her passion for her lover that she caused herself always to be called 'The Nina of Dante.'" [S.] "Sismondi only mentions C. d'Alcamo as a Sicilian poet, apparently nearly contemporary with Frederick II. See Ginguené for a full account of Sicilian poetry." [S.] l. 145, Castellans, governors of castles. l. 146, Suzerains, feudal lords. l. 163, "Hildebrand of the huge brain mask": Pope Gregory VII. He was one of the most famous of the popes, and he lived in the latter part of the eleventh century. l. 174, Mandrake: Mandragora--a plant with a bifurcated root, concerning which many singular superstitions have accumulated. l. 186, "Three Imperial Crowns": the Imperial Crown proper, the German crown, and the Italian or Lombard crown. There seems a little confusion here in the order of the different metals. The Imperial Crown was of gold. The German is always spoken of as the silver crown. The Italian or Lombard crown was known as the iron crown, because one of the nails of Christ's cross was inserted into its gold frame. (Encyc. Brit.) l. 188, Alexander IV., Pope of Rome (1254-61); Innocent IV., Pope (1243-54). l. 189, Papal key: the keys of Peter in the papal arms. l. 194, "The hermit Peter": Peter, the Hermit of Amiens, who preached up the first Crusade. l. 195, Claremont == Clermont, a city of France, in which, at a council held in 1095, Pope Urban II. first formally organised the great Crusade. l. 200, Vimmercato, a town on the Molgova, fourteen miles north-east of Milan. l. 203, "Mantuan Albert": Blessed Albert founder of the Order of Canons Regular. But it was Albert, patriarch of Jerusalem, who was umpire between Pope and Emperor. l. 204, Saint Francis, of Assisi, born 1182; one of the most beautiful characters who ever lived. All living creatures to him were his "brothers and sisters." l. 205, "God's truce": "The Pax Ecclesiæ," or "Treuga Dei"--a suspension of arms, putting a stop to private hostilities within certain periods. The treaty called the "Truce of God" was set on foot in A.D. 999. It was agreed, among other articles, that "churches should be sanctuaries to all sorts of persons, except those who violated this truce; and that from Wednesday till Monday morning no one should offer violence to any one, not even by way of satisfaction for any injustice he had received" (Butler's Lives of the Saints, sub "St. Odilo," Jan. 1st.) l. 281, hacqueton: a quilted jacket, worn under a coat of mail. l. 298, trabea: a regal robe. l. 384, thyrsus: a spear wrapped about with ivy, carried at feasts of Bacchus. l. 405, baldric: a richly ornamented belt, passing only over one shoulder. l. 453, "Caliph's wheel work man": an automaton. l. 509, Typhon, a giant. l. 660, Lombard Agilulph: a king of Lombardy, A.D. 601. l. 712, "changed the spoils of every clime at Venice": the great Cathedral of St. Mark's, Venice, contains columns and ornaments of various kinds, brought from heathen temples in all parts of the Roman world. Pillars from the Temple of Jerusalem, and precious marbles from ancient Roman palaces, combine to make the interior of St. Mark's one of the strangest and richest Christian churches in the world. So these spoils from many lands, taken from temples devoted to alien worship, have been "changed" to Christian uses in this church. l. 718, "earth's reputed consummations": that is to say, the noblest works which the world at the time could produce. "The temple at Thebes was the consummate achievement of one age; of another, that of the Temple of Jupiter Tonans; of another, the Parthenon at Athens. All these were 'earth's reputed consummations.'" l. 719, "razed a seal": Thebes being despoiled like Rome, Athens rifled like Byzant, until St. Mark's at Venice having razed a seal (i.e. broken the seal, or, as it were, extracted the nails that fixed the most famous works in the world to their original site) lo! the glittering symbols of the all-purifying Trinity blazed above them: so the "horned and snouted god," the "cinerary pitcher," became part of the Christian edifice. l. 719, "The All-transmuting Triad blazed above": that is, they were consecrated by reason of the new faith in the Trinity. The three persons of the Holy Trinity are represented in the mosaics of St. Mark's Church."[7] l. 750, Treville or Treviglio: a town in Lombardy, fourteen miles south of Bergamo. l. 751, Cartiglione: is this a misprint for Castiglione? l. 788, writhled == wrinkled. l. 794, pauldron: a defence of armour-plate over the shoulders. l. 909, Gesi or Jesi: a city in the Italian province of Ancona. It was the birthplace of Frederick II. in 1194. l. 943, Valsugan: a town on the Brenta, on the road from Trent to Venice. l. 970 Torriani: a faction of Valsassina of Lombardy, contending with the Visconti (l. 971): Otho Visconti, Archbishop of Milan (1262), founded the house of Visconti. The Torriani were democrats, the Visconti aristocrats. l. 1065, "Trent upon Apulia": i.e., Northern upon Southern Italy. l. 1071, Cunizza: called Palma throughout the poem (see p. 123). l. 1090, Squarcialupo: not historical.

BOOK VI.--Line 100, jacinth == hyacinth in mineralogy; a name given to several kinds of stone--topaz, etc.; lodestone: magnetic oxide of iron. l. 101, flinders: fragments (of shining metal). l. 142, Cydippe: an Athenian girl who met Acontius at a festival of Artemis. He wrote a promise of marriage from the girl to himself on an apple, and threw it at her feet. The girl read the words aloud, and the oracle told her father she would have to comply with the words she had read. l. 143, Agathon--evidently meant for Acontius in the above story. l. 184, Dularete: not historical. l. 323, "brakes at balm-shed": brake ferns at seed time--i.e., autumn. l. 387, reate == a waterweed, as water crow-foot. l. 388, gold-sparkling grail: gravel gold-coloured. l. 417, citrine == crystals: a yellow pellucid variety of quartz; "fierce pyropus-stone" == a carbuncle of fiery redness. l. 590, King-bird: "The Phœnix travels (in an egg of myrrh) to Heliopolis to die." [S.] l. 614, "an old fable," etc. See Pindar's, "Fourth Pythian Ode." l. 630, Hermit-bee--a species of Apidæ; some of the best known of this species are solitary in their habits. The Carpenter-bee (Xylocopa) excavates nests and cells in wood; the Mason-bee (Osmia and Megachill) forms nests with particles of sand. l. 677-8, "Henry of Egna," "Sofia," "Lady of the Rock," etc.: Sofia was the "youngest daughter of Eccelin the monk, widow of Henry of Egna, the 'Lady of the Rock,' or of the Trentine Pass" (W. M. Rossetti). l. 698, Campese: a town on the Brenta, near Bassano. l. 699, Solagna: a village in the province of Vicenza, in the Eastern Alps. l. 787, Valley Rù: in the valley of Enneberg or Gaderthal, on the Eastern Alps. l. 788, San Zeno: the basilica of St. Zeno, an early bishop of Verona. l. 792, raunce, or rance, a bar or rail. l. 799, cushat's chirre--the ringdove's coo. l. 802, barrow: a tomb. l. 803, Alberic: brother of Eccelin. He was tortured to death. l. 858, Hesperian fruit: of the Western land (Italy or Spain). The golden apples of the Hesperides probably were oranges. l. 894, "rifle a musk pod and 'twill ache like yours": a freshly-opened musk pod has a most powerful and pungent ammoniacal odour. Musk requires to be smelt in minute quantity. Sordello's story deals with political troubles and horrors of war, too powerful a dose for reading at one sitting.

="So, the head aches and the limbs are faint!"= (Ferishtah's Fancies.) The sixth lyric begins with these words.

=Soul, The.= It "existed ages past" (Cristina); "is resting here an age" (Cristina); "on its lone way" (Cristina and Rabbi ben Ezra); "its nature is to seek durability" (Red Cotton Night-cap Country); "is independent of bodily pain" (Red Cotton); "is here to mate another soul" (Cristina); "shall rise in its degree" (Toccata of Galuppi's); "it craves all" (Cleon); and "can never taste death" (Paracelsus). La Saisiaz is the poem for proof of its existence and immortality.

=Soul's Tragedy, A=: Act I. being what was called the poetry of Chiappino's life, and Act II. its prose (London, 1846). The incidents are not all historical; they are imagined to have occurred at Faenza, a city of Italy about twenty miles south-west of Ravenna, in the sixteenth century. Chiappino is a patriot--so far as words and fine sentiments go. He is a good type of the men who in all popular movements seek their own interest while pretending to be concerned only for the welfare of the people. Having fomented popular feeling against the Provost of Faenza he has been sentenced to exile. He has, however, an influential friend, Luitolfo, who has volunteered to exert his good offices with the Provost, with whom he is on good terms, with the view of obtaining a pardon. The first Act opens with a dialogue between Eulalia and Chiappino in Luitolfo's house, concerning the cause of the latter's prolonged absence on his errand of friendly intercession. Luitolfo and Eulalia are betrothed lovers. Chiappino, while his friend is absent endeavouring to save him, is bragging of his humanitarian courage and daring, and depreciating his friend while making love to his betrothed. Eulalia listens, but begs for "justice to him that's now entreating, at his risk, perhaps, justice for you!" Chiappino hates Luitolfo for the favours he has done him, the fines he has paid for him, the intercession he has made; and so he endeavours to make himself important in the woman's eyes, to pose as the martyr of humanity, while he belittles her betrothed lover, and tries to prove that his acts of kindness were unimportant. While they discuss, a knocking is heard without; the door is opened, and Luitolfo rushes in with blood upon him. He declares he has killed the Provost, and the crowd are in pursuit of him. Chiappino offers his protection, and talks bravely as usual; forces Luitolfo to fly in his disguise while he remains with Eulalia and meets the angry pursuers. The populace enter, and Chiappino, without hesitation, declares it was he who killed the Provost: he knows the people will bless him as their saviour, so he takes the credit of Luitolfo's act of vengeance. Eulalia is anxious he should give the credit to Luitolfo, as the murder turns out to be popular; but Chiappino defers the explanation till the morrow. Act II. is in prose; the scene is laid a month after, in the market-place of Faenza: Luitolfo is mingling in disguise with the populace assembled outside the Provost's palace. A bystander tells him that Chiappino will be the new Provost: it is he who was the brave friend of the people; Luitolfo the coward, who ran away from them and their cause. Ravenna, he says, governs Faenza, as Rome governs Ravenna; and the Papal legate, Ogniben, has entered the town, saying satirically: "I have known three-and-twenty leaders of revolts!" He wishes to know what the revolters want. The soldiers came into Ravenna, bearing their wounded Provost (he had not been killed, as Luitolfo supposed). The Legate had come to arrange matters amicably. He will have no punishments for the insurrection. What he desires to know is, Do they wish to live without any government at all? or if not, do they wish their ruler to be murdered by the first citizen who conceives he has a grievance? Chiappino puts himself forward as spokesman, and declares he is in favour of a republic. "And you the administrator thereof?" asks the Legate. After a little fencing, Chiappino agrees to this; and so the crowd is waiting to see him invested with the provostship. He is to marry Luitolfo's love and succeed to his property. Luitolfo will not believe all this till he sees Eulalia and his quondam friend. Chiappino enters with Eulalia, making excuses for his volte-face both in politics and love, and shows that he falls completely into the trap the clever and satirical ecclesiastic has set for the pretended patriot. After much cutting sarcasm at Chiappino's expense on the part of the brilliant legate, who evidently knows his man to the marrow, the waiting populace are informed that the provostship will be conferred on Chiappino as soon as the name of the person who attempted to kill the late Provost is given up. Luitolfo comes from his place in the crowd to own and justify his act, much to the confusion of the man who has claimed all the credit of the deed. The Legate orders Luitolfo to his house, and recommends the patriot to rusticate himself awhile. Then, demanding the keys of the Provost's palace, and advising profitable meditation to the people, he leaves them chuckling that he has known four-and-twenty leaders of revolts. The character of the ecclesiastic Ogniben is one of the finest inventions of Mr. Browning.

NOTES.--Act I. Scudi: dollars. Act II.: Brutus the Elder: who conspired with Cassius against Julius Cæsar. "Dico vobis!" I tell you! "St. Nepomucene of Prague" == St. John Nepomucen of Prague (1383), martyr. He was an anchorite and an apostle. The Emperor Wenceslaus had him put to death because he refused to betray what the Empress had told him under the seal of confession. Ravenna: a very celebrated and very ancient city of North-east Italy. Its great historical importance began early in the fifth century, when Honorius transferred his court thither. From 402 to 476 A.D. Ravenna was the chief residence of the Roman emperors. It was subject to papal rulers in the period of this story. "Cur fremuere gentes?" (Psalm ii. 1): "Why do the heathen so furiously rage together?" Pontificial Legate: an ambassador sent by the Pope to the court of a foreign prince or state. "Western Lands": The allusion is to the discovery of America and the treasures and curiosities brought by Columbus to Spain.

=Speculative.= (Asolando, 1889.) Could the inspirations and pure delights of the past return, and remain with some great souls who have learned the divine alchemy of turning to gold the pains and pleasures of earth's old life, it would be for them all that lower minds seek in a new life in what they call heaven; the real heaven being a state, and not a place. Love has inspired the poem.

=Spiritualism.= Browning's opinions on this subject are to be found in his poem Mr. Sludge the Medium.

=Spring Song.= The poem commencing

"Dance, yellows and whites and reds!"

was published under the title of "Spring Song" in the New Amphion, 1886. In 1887 it was published at the end of Gerard de Lairesse in the "Parleyings" volume.

=Statue and the Bust, The.= The Riccardi Palace in Florence is the scene of the story told in this poem. A lady who has just been married to the head of the noble Riccardi house notices one who rides past her window with a "royal air." The bridesmaids whisper that it is the great Duke Ferdinand; who in his turn directs his glance at the bride the head of the house of Riccardi had that day brought home. As he looked at the woman and she at the man, her past was a sleep--her life that day only began. That night there was a feast in the house of the bride, and the Grand Duke was present. The lovers stood face to face a minute. In accordance with the courtly custom of the time, he was privileged to kiss the bride. Whether a word was spoken or not cannot be said. The husband, who stood by, however, saw or heard something which mortally offended him; and when, at night, he led his bride to her chamber, he told her calmly that the door which was then shut on her was closed till her body should be taken thence for burial. She could watch the world from the window, which faced the east, but could never more pass the door. The bride as calmly assented:

"Your window and its world suffice,"

she said. It would be easy, she thought, to fly to the Duke, who loved her: it would only be necessary to disguise herself as a page, and she would save her soul. She reflected, however, that next day her father was to bless her new condition; and she must tarry for a day, consoling herself with the reflection that she should certainly see the Duke ride past. And so she turned on her side, and went to sleep. That night the Duke resolved to ruin body and soul, if need might be, for the sake of this beautiful woman; and on the morrow he addressed the bridegroom, whose duties at court brought him into his presence, suggesting that he, with his wife, should visit him at his country seat at Petraja. The bridegroom quietly declined the invitation, giving as his reason that the state of his lady's health did not permit her to quit the palace, the wind from the Apennines being particularly dangerous for her. The Duke was foiled in his project; but promised himself it should not be long before he met the bride again, yet he must wait a night, for the envoy from France was to visit him. He too reflects that he shall see the lady as he rides past her palace. They saw each other, and each resolved that next day they would do more than glance at a distance; but next day and the next passed, and as constantly was the project of union deferred; the weeks grew months, the years passed by, till age crept on, and each perceived they had been dreaming. One day the lady had to confess that her beauty was fading: her hair was tinged with grey, her mouth was puckered, and she was haggard-cheeked; and as she beheld herself in her glass she bade her servants call a famous sculptor to fix the remains of her beauty, so that it should no more fade. Della Robbia must make her a face on her window waiting, as ever, to watch her lover pass in the square below. But long before the artist's work was finished, and the cornice in its place, the Duke had sighed over the escape of his own youth; and he too set John of Douay to make an equestrian statue of him, and to place it in the square he had crossed so often, so that men should admire him when he had gone to his tomb. The figure looks straight at one of the windows of the Riccardi Palace: the attitude suggests love for the lady and contempt of her husband. In connection with all this the poet reflects on the condition of the spirits of these two awaiting the Last Judgment. Do they reflect on the greatness of the gift of life--how they had seen the proper object of their lives, and yet had missed it? "But," the poet hears us object, "their end was a crime, and delay was best." The test, however, of our use of life can be as well attained by a crime as a virtue. A game can be played without money: where a button answers, it would be vain to use a sovereign. Whether we play with counters or coins, we must do our best to win:--

"If you choose to play!--is my principle, Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will."

These people as surely lost their counter as if it were lawful coin. This moral has been much disputed by Browning students. So far as society was concerned the lady and the Duke did well: so far as their own souls were concerned they undoubtedly did ill. The Duke would have been more manly and the woman truer to her human instincts if he and she had let love have its way. Both dwarfed and withered their souls by looking and longing and pining for what they had not courage to grasp. The sin in each case was as great in the sight of God. It was simply prudence and conventionality which restrained the lovers; and these things count for nothing with the poet-psychologist. But conventionality counts for a great deal in our conduct of life. It may have been "the crowning disaster to miss life" for the man and woman: if so, it was a sacrifice justly due to human society. If every woman flew to the arms of the man whom she liked better than her own husband, and if every governor of a city felt himself at liberty to steal another man's wife merely to complete and perfect the circle of his own delights, society would soon be thrown back into barbarism. The sacrifice to conventionality and the self-restraint these persons practised may have atoned for much that was defective in their lives. "Pecca fortiter" (sin bravely), said Luther; but it would be difficult to defend the doctrine on any principle of ethics. Many readers have found difficulties in understanding this poem. One such wrote to an American paper to inquire: "(1) When, how, and where did it happen? Browning's divine vagueness lets one gather only that the lady's husband was a Riccardi. (2) Who was the lady? who the Duke? (3) The magnificent house where Florence lodges her Préfet is known to all Florentine ball-goers as the Palazzo Riccardi. It was bought by the Riccardi from the Medici in 1659. From none of its windows did the lady gaze at her more than royal lover. From what window, then, if from any? Are the statue and the bust still in their original positions?" These queries fell into the hands of Mr. Wise, who forwarded them to Mr. Browning, who sent the following answer:--"Jan. 8th, '87. DEAR MR. WISE,--I have seldom met with such a strange inability to understand what seems the plainest matter possible. 'Ball-goers' are probably not history readers; but any guide-book would confirm what is sufficiently stated in the poem. I will append a note or two, however. (1) 'This story the townsmen tell': 'when, how, and where' constitutes the subject of the poem. (2) The lady was the wife of Riccardi, and the Duke--Ferdinand, just as the poem says. (3) As it was built by and inhabited by the Medici till sold, long after, to the Riccardi, it was not from the Duke's palace, but a window in that of the Riccardi, that the lady gazed at her lover riding by. The statue is still in its place, looking at the window under which is 'now the empty shrine.' Can anything be clearer? My 'vagueness' leaves what to be 'gathered' when all these things are put down in black and white? Oh, 'ball-goers'!--Yours very sincerely, ROBERT BROWNING." The Medicean palace in the Via Larga, now called the Via Cavour, is meant as the duke's palace. See articles on this question in Poet Lore, vol. iii., pp. 284 and 648. It is an error to suppose that but one palace is referred to in the poem. The Piazza della Annunziata in Florence is the square referred to in the first verse. The Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin was built in 1250, and adorned at the expense of Pietro de' Medici from the designs of Michelozzi. The loggia of the church forms the north side. On the east is the Foundling Hospital, Spedale degli Innocenti, dating from the year 1421. In the centre of the square is an equestrian statue of Ferdinand I., cast from cannon taken by the Knights of St. Stephen from the Turks.

NOTES.--"Great Duke Ferdinand": Ferdinand I. was Grand Duke of Florence, an honour first conferred on Cosimo (dei Medici) I. by Pope Pius V., who conferred the patent and crown upon him in Rome. Ferdinand was a cardinal from the age of fourteen, but he had never taken holy orders. He was an amiable and capable ruler, and Tuscany flourished under his government. He was thirty-eight years old when, in 1587, he succeeded his brother on the throne. Riccardi: a noble family of Florence. "The Palazzo Riccardi, a proud and stately residence, was begun in 1430 by Cosimo dei Medici. It remained in the possession of the family till 1659, when they sold it to Gabriele Riccardi; but towards the end of the last century it was bought by the Grand Duke, and is now employed as a species of Somerset House, partly for literary purposes and partly for government offices. It is a noble building, and is most imposing in appearance. The window-sills are by Michael Angelo" (see Murray's Handbook to North Italy). Via Larga: this was overshadowed by the Medici Palace, symbolical of the shadow cast by the crime of its owners in destroying the liberties of the city. Encolure (Fr.): the neck and shoulders of a horse. Emprise: undertaking, enterprise. "Cosimo and his cursed son": Cosimo dei Medici was called "the father of his country," his grandson was "Lorenzo the Magnificent." Arno: the river which flows through Florence. Petraja: a suburban residence near Florence. Apennine: the mountain range in the valley of which Florence is seated. "Robbia's craft," "Robbia's cornice": Della Robbia is the name of a family of great distinction in the art history of Florence. "Robbia's craft" would seem to be a term applied to the kind of work done, and does not refer to the artist himself, as the last famous Della Robbia (Girolamo) died in 1566. The work called Robbia ware was terra-cotta relief covered with enamel. John of Douay (1524-1608), usually called Giovanni da Bologna: a celebrated sculptor of Italy. "stamp of the very Guelph": English money of our time, our royal family being Guelfs. "de te fabula": the fable is told concerning yourself.

=Strafford.= [THE STATESMAN AND THE HISTORICAL PERIOD OF THE POEM.] It is so important that the reader of the tragedy of Strafford should start with a clear idea of the historical facts with which it deals, that I have included in my article the following extract from Professor Gardiner's Life of Strafford in the Encyclopædia Britannica. For the benefit of such of my readers as may have forgotten the fact, I may state that, before the earldom was conferred on Strafford, he was Sir Thomas Wentworth:--"High-handed as Wentworth was by nature, his rule in Ireland made him more high-handed than ever. As yet he had never been consulted on English affairs, and it was only in February 1637 that Charles asked his opinion on a proposed interference in the affairs of the Continent. In reply, he assured Charles that it would be unwise to undertake even naval operations till he had secured absolute power at home. The opinion of the judges had given the King the right to levy ship-money; but, unless his Majesty had 'the like power declared to raise a land army, the crown' seemed 'to stand upon one leg at home, to be considerable but by halves to foreign princes abroad.' The power so gained, indeed, must be shown to be beneficent by the maintenance of good government; but it ought to exist. A beneficent despotism supported by popular gratitude was now Wentworth's ideal. In his own case Wentworth had cause to discover that Charles' absolutism was marred by human imperfections. Charles gave ear to courtiers far too often, and frequently wanted to do them a good turn by promoting incompetent persons to Irish offices. To a request from Wentworth to strengthen the position of the deputy by raising him to an earldom he turned a deaf ear. Yet, to make Charles more absolute continued to be the dominant note of his policy; and, when the Scottish Puritans rebelled, he advocated the most decided measures of repression, and in February 1639 he offered the king £2000 as his contribution to the expenses of the coming war. He was, however, too clear-sighted to do otherwise than deprecate an invasion of Scotland before the English army was trained. In September 1639, after Charles' failure in the first Bishops' War, Wentworth arrived in England, to conduct in the Star Chamber a case in which the Irish chancellor was being prosecuted for resisting the deputy. From that moment he stepped into the place of Charles' principal adviser. Ignorant of the extent to which opposition had developed in England during his absence, he recommended the calling of a parliament to support a renewal of the war, hoping that by the offer of a loan from the privy councillors, to which he himself contributed £20,000, he would place Charles above the necessity of submitting to the new parliament if it should prove restive. In January 1640 he was created Earl of Strafford, and in March he went to Ireland to hold a parliament, where the Catholic vote secured a grant of subsidies to be used against the Presbyterian Scots. An Irish army was to be levied to assist in the coming war. When, in April, Strafford returned to England, he found the Commons holding back from a grant of supply, and tried to enlist the peers on the side of resistance. On the other hand, he attempted to induce Charles to be content with a smaller grant than he had originally asked for. The Commons, however, insisted on peace with the Scots; and on May 9th, at the Privy Council, Strafford, though reluctantly, voted for a dissolution. After this Strafford supported the harshest measures. He urged the King to invade Scotland; and, in meeting the objection that England might resist, he uttered the words which cost him dear: 'You have an army in Ireland'--the army which, in the regular course of affairs, was to have been employed to operate in the west of Scotland--'you may employ here to reduce this kingdom.' He tried to force the citizens of London to lend money. He supported a project for debasing the coinage, and for seizing bullion in the Tower, the property of foreign merchants. He also advocated the purchasing a loan from Spain by the offer of a future alliance. He was ultimately appointed to command the English army, but he was seized with illness, and the rout of Newburn made the position hopeless. In the great council at York he showed his hope that, if Charles maintained the defensive, the country would still rally round him; whilst he proposed, in order to secure Ireland, that the Scots of Ulster should be ruthlessly driven from their homes. When the Long Parliament met, it was preparing to impeach Strafford, when tidings reached its leaders that Strafford, now Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, had come to London, and had advised the King to take the initiative by accusing his chief opponents of treason. On this the impeachment was hurried on, and the Lords committed Strafford to the Tower. At his trial in Westminster Hall he stood on the ground that each charge against him, even if true, did not amount to treason; whilst Pym urged that, taken as a whole, they showed an intention to change the government, which in itself was treason. Undoubtedly the project of bringing over the Irish army--probably never seriously entertained--did the prisoner most damage; and, when the Lords showed reluctance to condemn him, the Commons dropped the impeachment, and brought in a bill of attainder. The Lords would probably have refused to pass it if they could have relied on Charles's assurance to relegate Strafford to private life if the bill were rejected. Charles unwisely took part in projects for effecting Strafford's escape, and even for raising a military force to accomplish that end. The Lords took alarm and passed the bill. On May 9th, 1641, the King, frightened by popular tumults, reluctantly signed a commission for the purpose of giving to it the royal assent, and on the 12th Strafford was executed on Tower Hill."

[THE TRAGEDY.] (Published 1837, and dedicated to William C. Macready.) Strafford, a tragedy in five acts (written for the stage at Macready's request), has for its plot the impeachment of the Earl of Strafford and his condemnation and execution. It tells the story of the faithful statesman who loved his sovereign, and sacrificed his life from an almost insane devotion to an utterly unworthy man. The tragedy deals with a period of English history which was richer than any other in the assertion of the rights of the people against the tyranny of their rulers. We are introduced to the band of patriots who secured for us the rights which are to-day the most precious heritage of every Englishman--the brave men who, like Hampden and Pym, resisted the system of forced loans, and the obnoxious tax called "ship-money." Strafford has been carrying fire and sword through Ireland, and Charles is proposing to persecute the Scotch with similar severity. Wentworth has answered the summons of the king, and has yielded to his request to undertake the Scotch war. He now begins to see how treacherous his sovereign is. Charles, by bribes and promises, has detached him from the people's cause only to use him as a catspaw, to bear the hatred and fury of the people in his stead. Pym tries to win back "the apostate" to the cause of liberty. They loved each other as David and Jonathan; and the efforts of Pym to touch the heart of his friend, and win him from his chivalrous devotion to Charles to his duty to his country, are finely described in the play. But neither duty, danger, nor the imminent approach of death itself, can divert for a single moment the nobleman who is devoted body and soul to the wretchedest semblance of a "king by right divine" who ever secured such devoted service. Strafford, deaf alike to the calls of friendship and patriotism, serves one man only--Charles,--and leaves the patriots to fight for England as best they may. Lady Carlisle interposes her influence, warns Strafford of his danger, and begs him to secure his retreat while he may; but he is as little moved by the appeals of a woman's love as by those more powerful and legitimate motives which he has refused to entertain. Such blind devotion to an ideal founded on so insecure a base could have only ruin for its end. Strafford leads the army to the north, is ignominiously defeated, finds that Charles has treacherously listened to proposals of reconciliation with the Scotch, and that the patriots are in league with them; returns to London, and determines to impeach the patriots, but finds his move anticipated. He is himself impeached, a bill of attainder against him is passed, and he is arrested and imprisoned in the Tower. Charles, who had promised that Strafford should not suffer in life, liberty, or estate for his devotion to his cause, makes no effort to save him, though nothing could have been easier than to have done so; and actually, after a little show of hesitation, signs his death warrant at the request of Pym. Passionately and entirely devoted to Strafford, Lady Carlisle has conceived a plan by which, with the King's connivance, he may escape from the Tower. A boat has been brought to the river entrance of the fortress, and arrangements made for his escape to France; but Strafford refuses to run away from the country which demands his life, and will not let it be said to his children in after years that their father broke prison to save his head; and so, while he delays the acceptance of Lady Carlisle's assistance, he is led to execution. He sees that not he alone, but the master who has betrayed him, must incur the vengeance of the outraged people of England; and his last words addressed to Pym are to implore him (on his knees) to spare the King's life. He feels that nothing will move the stern patriot from his sense of duty, and thanks God that it is himself who dies first. He expresses no word of ill-feeling against Pym, and goes bravely to death, the victim of a misplaced affection almost without parallel in our history. Strafford is a presentation of "naked souls," as Dr. J. Todhunter called it. "They are almost like Hugo's personages, monomaniacs of ideas--Strafford of loyalty to Charles; Lady Carlisle of loyalty to Strafford's infatuation; Pym of loyalty to an ideal England.... Browning has not left the King even a rag of conventional royalty to cover his nakedness. He has stript him with a vengeance." How far Browning's representation of the circumstances attendant on the impeachment and condemnation of Strafford is true to the actual facts must be left to the decision of the greatest authority on the history of the period--Professor Gardiner. In his introduction to Miss E. H. Hickey's Strafford, he says: "We may be sure that it was not by accident that Mr. Browning, in writing this play, decisively abandoned all attempt to be historically accurate. Only here and there does anything in the course of the drama take place as it could have taken place at the actual court of Charles I. Not merely are there frequent minor inaccuracies, but the very roots of the situation are untrue to fact. The real Strafford was far from opposing the war with the Scots at the time when the Short Parliament was summoned. Pym never had such a friendship for Strafford as he is represented as having; and, to any one who knows anything of the habits of Charles, the idea of Pym or his friends entering into colloquies with Strafford, and even bursting unannounced into Charles's presence, is, from the historical point of view, simply ridiculous. So completely does the drama proceed irrespectively of historical truth, that the critic may dispense with the thankless task of pointing out discrepancies. He will be better employed in asking what ends those discrepancies were intended to serve, and whether the neglect of truth of fact has resulted in the highest truth of character.--For myself I can only say that, every time I read the play, I feel more certain that Mr. Browning has seized the real Strafford, the man of critical brain, of rapid decision, and tender heart, who strove for the good of his nation without sympathy for the generation in which he lived. Charles I., too, with his faults perhaps exaggerated, is the real Charles. Of Lady Carlisle we know too little to speak with anything like certainty; but, in spite of Mr. Browning's statement that his character of her is purely imaginary, there is a wonderful parallelism between the Lady Carlisle which history conjectures rather than describes. There is the same tendency to fix the heart upon the truly great man, and to labour for him without the requital of human affection; though in the play no part is played by that vanity which seems to have been the main motive with the real personage." It has frequently been said that Browning, in this play, has closely followed the story as given in the Life of Strafford by the late John Forster. The reason for this undoubted fact has recently been given to the world. In the Pall Mall Gazette, in the month of April 1890, Dr. F. J. Furnivall published the following letter, which asserts the late poet's right to almost the whole of the Life of Strafford that has hitherto gone under the name of the late John Forster, in the second volume of the Lives of Eminent British Statesmen in Lardner's "Cabinet Cyclopædia," pp. 178-411, with the Strafford Appendix, pp. 412-21: "This volume was published in 1836. John Forster wrote the life of Eliot, the first in the volume, and began that of Strafford. He then fell ill; and as he was anxious to produce the book in the time agreed on, Browning offered to finish Strafford for him, on his handing over all the material he had accumulated for it. Forster was greatly relieved by Browning's kindness. The poet set to work, completed Strafford's life on his own lines, in accordance with his own conception of Strafford's character, but generously said nothing about it till after Forster's death. Then he told a few of his friends--me among them--of how he had helped Forster. On my telling Prof. Gardiner of this, I found that he knew it; and had been long convinced that the conception of Strafford in this Lardner Life was not John Forster's, but was Robert Browning's. The other day Prof. Gardiner urged me to make the fact of Browning's authorship public; and I do so now, though I have frequently mentioned it to friends in private; and at the Browning Society, when a member has said, 'It is curious how closely Browning has followed his authority, Forster's Life of Strafford,' I have answered, 'Yes, because he wrote it himself.' We thus understand why, when Macready asked Browning, on May 26th, 1836, to write him a play, the poet suggested Strafford as its subject; and why, the Life being finished in 1836, the play was printed and played in 1837. The internal evidence will satisfy any intelligent reader that almost all the prose Life is the poet's. It is not only little touches like these on pp. 182-3, describing James I., which reveal Browning,--'He was not an absolute fool, and little more can be said of him ... whenever an obvious or judicious truth seemed likely to fall in his way, his pen infallibly waddled off from it'; on p. 227, 'divers ill-spelt and solemn sillinesses from the King,' the reference to the 'Sordello' Ezzelin[8] on p. 229, etc.,--but it is the conception and working-out of the character of Strafford, 'that he was consistent to himself throughout,' p. 228, etc., and that his one object was to make Charles 'the most absolute lord in Christendom,' and that this explains all apparent inconsistencies and vanities in his conduct. Let any one read the following last paragraph of the Life, and ask himself if it is not the poet's hand. Page 411: '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 realisation 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 project 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."' Take again a couple of passages of two and a half lines each on Strafford's illnesses, on page 369, and recollect that Browning owed much to Donne:--'The soul of the Earl of Strafford was indeed lodged, to use the expression of his favourite Donne, within a "low and fatal room" ... But even by the side of the body's weakness we find a witness of the spirit's triumph,--a vindication of the mightiness of will!' And on page 370--'Then, when every energy was to be taxed to the uttermost, the question of his fiery spirit's supremacy was indeed put to the issue, by a complication of ghastly diseases.' Are these and like passages by John Forster? No! They are Robert Browning's Plenty of others have his mark, especially those passages analysing and philosophising on character. I have appealed to Messrs. Smith & Elder to reprint this Life of Strafford, with an Introduction by Prof. Gardiner; but I suppose that there is no copyright in it, as it has always gone under John Forster's name. Assuredly all students of Browning should have this Life on their shelves. I should say that Forster did not write more than the first four pages of it, and that Browning began with 'James I. ... came to this country in an ecstasy of infinite relief,' on page 182." In this Life of Strafford there is a striking passage on the question of that statesman's "apostacy." "In one word, what it is desired to impress upon the reader, before the delineation of Wentworth in his after years, is this--that he was consistent to himself throughout. I have always considered that much good wrath is thrown away upon what is usually called 'apostacy.' In the majority of cases, if the circumstances are thoroughly examined, it will be found that there has been 'no such thing.' The position on which the acute Roman thought fit to base his whole theory of æsthetics--

"Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam Jungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas, Undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atram Desinat in piscem mulier formosa supernè, Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?" etc.

is of far wider application than to the exigencies of an art of poetry; and those who carry their researches into the moral nature of mankind cannot do better than impress upon their minds, at the outset, that in the regions they explore they are to expect no monsters--no essentially discordant termination to any 'Mulier formosa supernè.' Infinitely and distinctly various as appear the shifting hues of our common nature when subjected to the prism of CIRCUMSTANCE, each ray into which it is broken is no less in itself a primitive colour, susceptible, indeed, of vast modification, but incapable of further division.[9] Indolence, however, in its delight for broad classifications, finds its account in overlooking this; and among the results none is more conspicuous than the long list of apostates with which history furnishes us. It is very true, it may be admitted, that when we are informed by an old chronicler that 'at this time Ezzelin changed totally his disposition,'--or by a modern biographer that 'at such a period Tiberius first became a wicked prince,'--we examine too curiously if we consider such information as in reality regarding other than the act done and the popular inference recorded; beyond which it was no part of the writer to inquire.--Against all such conclusions I earnestly protest in the case of the remarkable personage whose ill-fated career we are now retracing. Let him be judged sternly, but in no unphilosophic spirit. In turning from the bright band of patriot brothers to the solitary Strafford--'a star which dwelt apart'--we have to contemplate no extinguished splendour, razed and blotted from the book of life. Lustrous, indeed, as was the gathering of the lights in the political heaven of this great time, even that radiant cluster might have exulted in the accession of the 'comet beautiful and fierce,' which tarried a while within its limits ere it 'darted athwart with train of flame.' But it was governed by other laws than were owned by its golden associates, and impelled by a contrary, yet no less irresistible force, than that which restrained them within their eternal orbits,--it left them, never to 'float into that azure heaven again.'"--John Forster's Life of Strafford, in the "Cabinet Cyclopædia" (conducted by Dr. Lardner), pp. 228-9.

NOTES.--Act I., Scene i. Pym, the great and learned champion of English liberty, was an intimate friend of Wentworth, and deeply felt his desertion of the popular cause. Sir Benjamin Rudyard was a prominent member of the Long Parliament. When the quarrel broke out between Charles and the Parliament, Rudyard quitted his parliamentary pursuits and joined Hampden and Pym's party. He opposed the attainder of Strafford. He ultimately became anxious for a compromise between the King and the Commons; he acted, however, to the last with the patriots. Henry Vane, Sir, the younger, was a disciple of Pym, and was of considerable talents and equal fanaticism. He purloined from his father's cabinet a very important document, which was used against Strafford on his trial. After the Restoration he was brought to trial and executed. Hampden, John, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, quiet, courteous, and submissive; but with a correct judgment, an invincible spirit, and the most consummate address. In 1626 he was imprisoned for refusing to contribute towards the forced loan; he resisted the payment of ship-money. He threw himself heartily into the work of the Long Parliament, and commanded a troop in the parliamentary army. He was a great patriot and defender of the rights of the people. Denzil Hollis, Lord: "In 1629, when the Speaker refused to put to the vote Sir John Eliot's remonstrance against the illegal levying of tonnage and poundage, and against Catholic and Arminian innovations, Hollis read the resolutions, and was one of two members who forcibly held the Speaker in the chair till they were passed. He was in consequence committed to the Tower. He was one of the 'five members,' as they were called, whom Charles accused of high treason in January 1642. He took no part in the proceedings against Strafford, who was his brother-in-law" (Imp. Dict. Biog.). The Bill of Rights: the third great charter of English liberties must not be confounded with "the Petition of Right." "The Bill of Rights" was passed in the reign of William and Mary, in 1689. "much worn Cottington": he was ambassador to Madrid. "maniac Laud": Archbishop Laud was detested by the Puritans because he endeavoured to assimilate the doctrines and ritual of the Church of England to those of Rome. He was charged by Holles with high treason, and executed. Runnymead: the place where Magna Charta was signed. renegade: one faithless to principle or party; a deserter of a cause. Haman: see the Book of Esther. Haman resolved to extirpate the Jews out of the Persian empire, but Haman fell and Mordecai was advanced to his place. Ahitophel was a conspirator with Absalom against David, who prayed the Lord to turn the counsel of Ahitophel into foolishness (2 Sam. xv. 31); whence the term "Ahitophel's counsel." League and Covenant: the "Solemn League and Covenant" was designed by the Scotch to carry out in their integrity the principles of the Reformation and to establish the Presbyterian in lieu of the Episcopal Church. Eliot: Sir John Eliot compared Buckingham to Sejanus in lust, rapacity and ambition, in the House of Commons, and seconded the motion for his impeachment. Eliot was sent to the Tower. "The Philistine": the giant slain by David. "Exalting Dagon where the ark should be" (1 Sam. v.). Dagon was an idol, half man and half fish. He was worshipped by the Philistines. When they captured the "ark" from the Jews, it was placed in his temple, the idol fell, and the palms of his hands were broken off. scourge and gag: instruments of torture well understood in those days. "The Midianite drove Israel into dens" (Judges vi. 2): the Israelites for their sins were oppressed by Midian, and were compelled to hide from them in dens and caves of the mountains. Gideon: the Israelites prayed to God for deliverance from their enemies, and an angel sent Gideon, who destroyed Baal's altar and delivered Israel (Judges vi.). Loudon: Scottish lord and covenanter; committed to the Tower for soliciting the aid of the king of France: he was sent to Scotland by Charles. Hamilton, Marquess of: sent by Charles to Scotland as commissioner to suppress the Covenant, he dared not land; was suspected of treason, and fled; was restored to the King's favour, and became a leader of the royalists; was defeated by the parliamentary troops; fined £100,000, and executed. Joab: David, when dying, gave charge to Solomon to put his enemy Joab to death, which was done (1 Kings ii. 28-34). "No Feltons": J. Felton assassinated Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and was executed. Gracchus: Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, the celebrated Roman tribunes, were after their death worshipped as gods, and their mother esteemed herself the happiest of Roman matrons in having given birth to such illustrious sons. The Petition of Right, the second great charter of English liberties, was directed against those grievances which Wentworth thus described in his speech in the third parliament: "the raising of money by loans, strengthened by commission, with unheard-of instruction; the billeting of soldiers by the lieutenants.... Our persons have been injured both by imprisonment without law (the King exercised an absolute right to imprison any one without legal proceedings), and by being designed to some office, charge, and employment, foreign or domestic, as a brand of infamy and mark of disgrace" (Prof. Gardiner). Aceldama: "a field said to have lain south of Jerusalem, purchased with the bribe which Judas took for betraying his Master, and therefore called the field of blood;--sometimes used in figurative sense" (Webster's Dict.). Nathaniel Fiennes was the second son of William Fiennes; he was a lawyer, and in 1640 sat in the House of Commons for Banbury. He was a rigid Presbyterian, and a member of nearly all Cromwell's parliaments. Ship money: "An imposition formerly charged on the ports, towns, cities, boroughs and counties of England, for providing and furnishing certain ships for the king's service. The attempt made by Charles I. to revive and enforce this imposition was resisted by John Hampden, and was one of the causes which led to the death of Charles. It was finally abolished" (Webster's Dict.). "Wentworth's influence in the North": Wentworth represented Yorkshire in parliament, and had great influence in the north of England.--Scene ii. "Old Vane" was secretary of state and comptroller of the household under Charles I. Savill: George Savill, Marquis of Halifax (?). Holland, Earl of: raised forces against the parliament after espousing its cause against Charles; he was tried after the King's death and executed. "Lady Carlisle was the daughter of the ninth Earl of Northumberland. In 1639 she had been for three years a widow. Her husband was James, Lord Hay, created successively Viscount Doncaster and Earl of Carlisle" (from Miss Hickey's Strafford). Weston, Sir Richard, Chancellor of the Exchequer, made Earl of Portland; denounced by Sir J. Eliot as an enemy of the Commonwealth. "This frightful Scots affair": Professor Gardiner shows that Strafford opposed peace with the Scots, supported the harshest measures, and urged the King to invade Scotland (Encyc. Brit., vol xxii., p. 586). "In this Ezekiel chamber": in the eighth chapter of Ezekiel the prophet has a vision of the chambers of imagery where he saw "wicked abominations." "The Faction," a party acting in opposition to the constituted authority.--Act II., Scene i. "Subsidies," says Blackstone, were taxes, not immediately on property, but on persons in respect of their reputed estates, after the nominal rate of 4_s._ in the pound for lands and 2_s._ 8_d._ for goods. cockatrice: "The basilisk; a fabulous serpent, said to be produced from a cock's egg brooded by a serpent. Its breath, and even its look, is fabled to be fatal" (Webster's Dict.). Star Chamber: "The origin of this court is derived from the most remote antiquity. Its title was derived from the Camera Stellata or Star Chamber, an apartment in the king's palace at Westminster, in which it held its sittings; it exercised an illegal control over the ordinary courts of justice, and in the reign of Charles I. became very tyrannical and offensive as a means of asserting the royal prerogative. It was abolished by the Long Parliament" (Student's Hume, p. 358).--Scene ii. The George: a figure of St. George on horseback, worn by knights of the Garter. A masque, a species of dramatic entertainment. Fletcher and Ben Jonson wrote many masques which were acted at Court. The most beautiful work of this kind is the Comus of Milton. Act III., Scene i.--The new Parliament: "The Long Parliament," which met Nov. 3rd, 1640; it voted the House of Lords as useless. The Great Duke: Buckingham.--Scene ii. Windebank, one of the secretaries of state, was impeached by the Commons for treason, and escaped to France. "sly, pitiful intriguing with the Scots": "Charles, in his eagerness to conclude the negotiation, was induced to concede many points which he would otherwise have refused" (Lingard, Hist. Eng., vol. vii., p. 232). "The Crew and the Cabal": the "crew" was a number of people associated together; the "cabal" a number of persons united to promote their private views in church or state by intrigue. What is usually understood by the "cabal" was a name given to a ministry under Charles II., the initial letters of the names of its members forming the word cabal. Mainwaring, Dr., a clergyman who preached in favour of the general loan. He was impeached by the Commons. Goring, Colonel: he was Governor of Portsmouth, was an officer of distinguished merit, and devoted to the King.--Scene iii., rufflers, bullies, swaggerers. "Are we in Geneva?": Calvin's city, where all sorts of puritanical restrictions were enforced against harmless amusements as well as breaches of morality. St. John, Oliver: St. John was Solicitor-General; he was one of the leaders of the Independents. stockishness, hardness, stupidity, blockishness (rare). Maxwell, Usher of the Black Rod. He received Strafford as his prisoner, after his impeachment, and required him to deliver his sword.--Act IV., Scene i. Hollis: Strafford was his brother-in-law, and so he took no part in the proceedings against him. "A blind moth-eaten law": Strafford said on his trial that "it was two hundred and forty years since any man was touched for this crime."--Scene ii. "Prophet's rod": "Moses took the rod of God in his hand" (Exod. iv. 20). Haselrig, Sir Arthur: was one of the five members of the House of Commons whom Charles tried to impeach. Laud, Archbishop: had been impeached by Sir Harry Vane, and was a prisoner in the Tower. Bill of attainder: The Student's Hume says (p. 399): "The student should bear in mind the difference between an Impeachment and a Bill of Attainder. In an impeachment the Commons are the accusers, and the Lords alone the judges. In a bill of attainder the Commons are the judges as well as the Lords; it may be introduced in either House; it passes through the same stages as any other bill; and when agreed to by both Houses it receives the assent of the Crown."--Act V., Scene ii. "O bell' andare": "The Italian boat-song is from Redi's Bacco, long since naturalised in the joyous and delicate version of Leigh Hunt" (R. B.) Term, or Terminus: the Roman god of bounds, under whose protection were the stones which marked boundaries. Genius: the Italian peoples regarded the Genius as a higher power which creates and maintains life, assists at the begetting and birth of every individual man, determines his character, tries to influence his destiny for good, accompanies him through life as his tutelary spirit, and lives on in the Lares after his death. (Seyffert's Dict. Class. Ant.) "Garrard--my newsman": was a clergyman who, when Wentworth went to Ireland as Lord Deputy, in 1633, was instructed to furnish him with news and gossip. (Miss Hickey.) Tribune: in ancient Rome, a magistrate chosen by the people to protect them from the oppression of the patricians or nobles. Sejanus, Ælius: distinguished himself at the court of Tiberius, who made a confidant of this fawning favourite, who made himself the darling of the senate, and the army. He was commander of the prætorian guards, and used every artifice to make himself important. He became practically head of the empire. He ridiculed the Emperor by introducing him on the stage; Tiberius then ordered him to be accused before the senate; he was subsequently imprisoned and strangled, A.D. 31. Richelieu, Cardinal: fomented the first commotions in Scotland, and secretly supplied the Covenanters with money and arms. He was prime minister to Louis XIII. of France. "A mask at Theobald's": Theobald's, in Hertfordshire, was a beautiful house, inherited by Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, from his father, William Cecil, Lord Burleigh. King James liked this house so much that, in 1607, he offered Robert Cecil the Queen's dower-house at Hatfield in exchange for it. Several of Ben Jonson's masques were written for performance at Theobald's. (Prof. Morley.) Prynne: William Prynne was a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, of a morose and gloomy disposition, and a thorough-going Puritan; he particularly hated theatres, dancing, hunting, card playing, and Christmas festivities. He wrote a great book against all these things, which he called Histrio-Mastix. He was indicted as a libeller of the Queen, condemned to stand in the pillory, to lose both his ears, to pay £5000 fine to the King, and to be imprisoned for life. "Strafford shall take no hurt": Charles had said to Strafford, "Upon the word of a king you shall not suffer in life, honour, or fortune." "Put not your trust in princes": Psalm cxlvi. 3. Wandesford: Sir Christopher Wandesford was Master of the Rolls, and Privy Councillor in Ireland, and had been deputy there during Strafford's absence. He was an intimate friend of Strafford's, and is said to have died of grief at hearing of Strafford's arrest. (Miss Hickey's Strafford.) Radcliffe, Sir George: was appointed by Strafford guardian of his children; he was charged by Pym with treason. Balfour: Lieutenant of the Tower. "Too late for sermon at St. Antholin's": the Government had appropriated the Church of St. Antholin to the use of the Scotch commission. (Miss Hickey.) Billingsley: Balfour was desired by the King to admit Captain Billingsley and one hundred men to the Tower to effect Strafford's escape. (Miss Hickey's notes.) "I fought her to the utterance": the last or utmost extremity--the same as Fr. à outrance. "David not more Jonathan": were inseparable friends. The allusion is to David the psalmist and Jonathan the son of Saul. David's lamentation at the death of Jonathan was never surpassed in pathos and beauty. (2 Sam. i. 19-27.) "His dream--of a perfect church." Laud wished to make the Church of England "Catholic"; he endeavoured to assimilate its doctrines and ceremonies to those of the Catholic Church, ignoring the fact that "the Tudor settlement" was Protestant. Laud desired to appropriate all that to him appeared valuable in the Roman Catholic system, and to reject all that to him seemed objectionable. His "perfect church" was, as Browning puts it, "a dream."

=Summum Bonum.= (Asolando, 1889.) A Latin phrase meaning the chief or ultimate good. "In ethics it was a phrase employed by ancient philosophers to denote that end in the following and attainment of which the progress, perfection and happiness of human beings consist. Cicero treated of the subject very fully in his De Finibus." (Encyc. Dict.) Concentration is the key-note of the poem: in the honey-bag of one bee there is the breath and bloom of a year; in a single gem is represented all the chemistry of nature, from the condensation of the gases which went to form the earth; in the beauty of a single pearl is all the wonder of the sea, just as in a lump of coal are the imprisoned sun-rays of prehistoric forests. But truth and trust are brighter and purer than gems and pearls; in the love of a young girl Mr. Browning sees the concentration of the brightest truth and purest trust in the universe, so holy a thing to him is love. The Summum Bonum of St. Augustine is, of course, the true, ultimate good of man--the Love of God--of which the love of the purest of mankind is but a dim reflection.

=Sun, The.= (Ferishtah's Fancies, 5.) Some one told one of Ferishtah's pupils that it had been reported that "God once assumed on earth a human shape," and he desired to know how the strange idea arose. Ferishtah replied that in days of ignorance men took the sun for God. "Let it be considered as the symbol of the Supreme," said the Dervish. "There must be such an Author of life and light somewhere: let us suppose the sun to be that Author. This ball of fire gives us all we enjoy on earth, and so inspires us with love and praise. If we eat a fig we praise the planter; and so on up to the sun, which gathers to himself all love and praise. The sun is fire, and more beside. Does the force know that it gives us what it does? Must our love go forth to fire? If we must thank it, there must be purpose with the power--a humanity like our own. Power has no need of will or purpose; and no occasion for beneficence when all that is, so is and so must be. As these qualities imply imperfection, let us 'eject the man, retain the orb,' and then 'what remains to love and praise?' We cannot be expected to thank insentient things. No! man's soul can only be moved by what is kindred soul: man's way it receives good; man's way it must make acknowledgment. If man were an angel, his love and praise, right and fit enough now, would go forth idly. Man's part is to send love forth, even if it go astray." "But," says the objector, "man is bound by man's conditions, can only judge as good and right what his faculty adjudges such: how can we then accept in this one case falsehood for truth? We lack an union of fire with flesh; but lacking is not gaining: is there any trace of such an union recorded?" Ferishtah replies, "Perhaps there may be; perhaps the greatly yearned-for once befell; perhaps the sun was flesh once." The pupil demands "An union inconceivable once was fact?" The Dervish replies, "There is something pervading the sun which it does not consume: is it not fitter to stand appalled before a conception unattainable by man's intelligence?" Firdausí, in the Sháh Námeh, records that Húsheng was the first who brought out fire from stone; and from that circumstance he founded the religion of the fire-worshippers, calling the flame which was produced the light of the Divinity. Húsheng was the second king of the Peshadian dynasty; from his time the fire faith seems to have slept till the appearance of Zerdusht, in the reign of Gushtasp, many centuries afterwards, when Isfendiyár propagated it by the sword. After Húsheng had discovered fire by hurling a stone against a rock, thereby producing a spark, which set light to the herbage, he made an immense fire, and gave a royal entertainment, calling it the Feast of Siddeh. The lyric explains that the divine element of fire is enshrined in the earthly flint when the spark escapes; the relationship is difficult to remember. So God was once incarnate in the form of man; and this some find it as hard to believe.

=Tab.= (Ned Bratts.) Tabitha Bratts, who was converted by John Bunyan, and who went with her husband to the Chief Justice at the assizes, asking to be hanged, and whose request was favourably entertained.

=Tale, A.= The Epilogue to the Two Poets of Croisic is included in the second series of Selections under this title.

=Taurello Salinguerra.= (Sordello.) His name, says Mr. W. M. Rossetti, may be translated as "Bullock Sally-in-war," or "Dash-into-fight." He belonged to the family of the Torelli, one of the two leading families of Ferrara. He married Sofia, a daughter of Eccelin the Monk, and he became the ruler of his native city. He was the right-hand man of Eccelin, and also of his son. The great authority on this character is Muratori (Annali d' Italia, compilati da Lodovico Antonio Muratori). Mr. W. M. Rossetti read a paper to the Browning Society in November 1889 on "Taurello Salinguerra," and I am indebted to this valuable essay for the following dates and particulars concerning this interesting character. He was born about the year 1160. In 1200, when he was head of the Ghibelline faction in Ferrara, he suddenly assailed the town of Argenta with the Ferrarese army, and having taken it, sacked it. In 1205 the head of the Guelf faction, both in Ferrara and the March of Verona, was Azzo VI., Marquis of Este. Naturally they quarrelled, and Azzo took the castle of La Fratta from Salinguerra and dismantled it. This was the beginning of the many dissensions between them. In 1207 Azzo VI. was compelled by Eccelino da Onara and others to retire from Verona. Then it was that Salinguerra, head of the Ghibellines in Ferrara, declaring himself the intimate friend of Eccelino, expelled from that city all the adherents of Marquis Azzo; and, leaving no room for him, began to act as Lord of Ferrara. In 1208 Marquis Azzo VI. re-established himself in Verona. Reaching Ferrara with an army, he expelled Salinguerra. In 1209 Salinguerra re-entered Ferrara, stripped Azzo VI. of Este of its dominion, and sent his partisans into exile. In 1210, the Emperor Otho IV. professing that the March of Ancona belonged to the empire, Azzo obtained the investiture of it from the Emperor. Probably at this time peace was re-established between Azzo VI. and Salinguerra, the competitors for the lordship of Ferrara. In 1213 Aldrovandino, Marquis of Este and Ancona, succeeded his father Azzo VI. and continued to hold, along with Count Richard of San Bonifazio, the dominion of Verona, where he was created Podestà in this year. He had contests with Salinguerra in Ferrara. In 1215 Aldrovandino, Marquis of Este, died, and was succeeded by Azzo VII., a minor. In 1221 Azzo VII. and his adherents assailed Salinguerra at Ferrara, and forced him to abandon the city, and consigned the palace of Salinguerra to the flames. After mediation, the expelled men returned to their homes. In 1222 the Ghibelline cause prevailed at Ferrara: Azzo and the Guelfs had to leave the city. He collected an army at Rovigo, and returned to Ferrara. Salinguerra, a crafty fox, made peace, for fear the people should turn against him. The peace was only a trap, however, by which to catch Azzo. In 1224 Azzo VII. returned to lay siege to Ferrara. The astute Salinguerra sent embassies to Count Richard of San Bonifazio, to induce him, with a number of horsemen, to enter Ferrara under pretext of concluding a friendly pact. But on entering he was at once made prisoner, with all his company; and therefore the Marquis of Este, disappointed, retired from the siege. Enraged at this result, Marquis Azzo proceeded to the siege of the castle of La Fratta, a favourite stronghold of Salinguerra, and starved it into submission. Salinguerra complained of this to Eccelino da Romana, his brother-in-law, and they both studied more assiduously than ever how best to crush the Guelfs, of which the Marquis of Este was chief. In 1225 the Lombard League procured the release of Count Richard, who returned to Verona; but he was expelled, when he took refuge in Mantua. He ultimately returned to Verona. In 1227 Eccelino the younger was established in Verona, and Count Richard again expelled. In 1228 Eccelino da Onara, father of Eccelino da Romana and of Alberic, had become a monk, and led the life of a hypocrite, finally showing himself to be a Paterine heretic. In 1230 Verona was in trouble: the Ghibellines raised a riot and imprisoned Count Richard; Salinguerra was made Podestà. In 1240 Pope Gregory IX. incited the Lombards and the Marquis of Este to besiege Ferrara. The Doge of Venice attended in person; the Mantuans concurred, as also did Alberico da Romana. After some months peace was proposed, and Salinguerra came to the camp of the confederates to ratify them. Salinguerra was entrapped, and was transferred as a prisoner to Venice; where, treated courteously, he ended his days in holy peace; and the House of Este, after so many years, re-entered Ferrara.

=Templars.= The poem The Heretic's Tragedy deals with the suppression of the order of the Knights Templars.

=Theocrite.= (The Boy and the Angel.) The boy who wishes to praise God "the Pope's great way," and who leaves his common task, and is replaced by the angel Gabriel. As neither boy nor angel please God in their changed positions, each returns to his appropriate sphere.

="The Poets pour us wine."= (Epilogue to Pacchiarotto.) These words are the beginning of the Epilogue named, and are quoted from a poem of Mr. Browning's entitled Wine of Cyprus, the last verse but one, the last line of which is "And the poets poured us wine."

="There's a Woman like a Dewdrop."= (A Blot in the 'Scutcheon.) The song in Act I., Scene iii., begins with this line. It is sung by Earl Mertoun as he climbs to Mildred Tresham's chamber.

="The Year's at the Spring."= (Pippa Passes.) The song which Pippa sings as she passes the house of Ottima, and thereby brings conviction to her lover Sebald.

=Thorold, Earl Tresham.= (A Blot in the 'Scutcheon.) The brother of Mildred Tresham, who challenges Mertoun, her lover, on his way to a stolen interview with his sister, and kills him, thinking he has disgraced the family.

=Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kader.= (1842.) The Metidja is an extensive plain near the coast of Algeria, "commencing on the eastern side of the Bay of Algiers, and stretching thence inland to the south and west. It is about sixty miles in length by ten or twelve in breadth" (Encyc. Brit.). Algiers was conquered by the French in 1830; but, after the conquest, constant outbreaks of hostilities on the part of the natives occurred, and in 1831 General Bertherene was despatched to chastise the rebels. Later in the same year General Savary was sent with an additional force of 16,000 men for the same purpose. He attempted to suppress the outbreaks of hostilities with the greatest cruelty and treachery. These acts so exasperated the people against their new ruler that such tribes as had acquiesced in the new order of things now armed themselves against the French. It was at this time that the world first heard of Abd-el-Kader. He was born in 1807, and was a learned and pious man, greatly distinguished amongst his people for his skill in horsemanship and athletic sports. He now rapidly collected an army of ten thousand men, marched to Oran and attacked the French, who had taken possession of the town; but was repulsed with great loss. He was so popular with his people that he had little difficulty in recruiting his forces, and he made himself so dangerous to the French that they found it expedient to offer him terms of peace, and he was recognised as emir of the province of Mascara. The peace did not last long, and hostilities broke out, leading to a defeat of the French in 1835. Constant troubles were caused the French by the opposition of Abd-el-Kader, and reinforcements on a large scale were sent against him from France. After varying fortunes, Abd-el-Kader was at last reduced to extremities, and was compelled to hide in the mountains with a few followers; at length he gave himself up to the French, and was imprisoned at Pau, and afterwards at Amboise. He afterwards obtained permission to remove to Constantinople, and from thence to remove to Damascus. The poem describes an incident of the war which took place in 1842, when the Duke d'Aumale fell upon the emir's camp and took several thousand prisoners, Abd-el-Kader escaping with difficulty.

="Thus the Mayne glideth."= (Paracelsus.) The song which Festus sings to Paracelsus in the closing scene in his cell in the Hospital of St. Sebastian.

=Tiburzio.= (Luria.) The general of the army of the Pisans, who exposes to Luria the treachery of the Florentines, and whose letter the Moor destroys without reading it.

=Time's Revenges.= A SOLILOQUY. (Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, in Bells and Pomegranates, VII., 1845; Romances, 1863; Dramatic Romances, 1868.) "Love begets love," they say: probably this is not much truer than proverbs usually are. The speaker in the poem has a friend who would do anything in the world for him; in return, he barely likes him. As a compensation, inasmuch as "human love is not the growth of human will," the lady to whom the soliloquiser is passionately devoted, the woman for whom he is prepared to sacrifice body, soul, everything he holds dear, cares nothing at all for him; she would roast him before a slow fire for a coveted ball-ticket. And why not? if love be what the poet says it is--the merging by affinity of one soul in another--where no affinity exists no union can result. Lovers should study the elements of chemistry, and the laws which govern the affinities of the elementary bodies; or, if they are not inclined to so serious a task, let them take to heart the Spanish proverb, "Love one that does not love you, answer one that does not call you, and you will run a fruitless race."

=Toccata of Galuppi's, A.= (Men and Women, 1855.) Baldassare Galuppi (1706-85) was a celebrated Italian composer, who was born in 1706 near Venice. His father was a barber with a taste for music, and he taught his son sufficient of the elements of music to enable him to enter the Conservatorio degli Incurabile, where Lotti was a teacher. He produced an opera at the age of sixteen, but it was a failure; seven years after, however, he produced a comic opera Dorinda, which was a great success. The young composer's great abilities were now everywhere recognised, and his fame assured. He was a most industrious writer, and left no less than seventy operas; which, however, have not survived to our time. Galuppi resided and worked in London from 1741 to 1744. He went to Russia, where he lived at the court of the Empress Catherine II. (at whose invitation he went) in great honour, and did much for the improvement of musical taste in that country. In 1768 he left Russia, and became organist of St. Mark's, Venice. He died in 1785, and left fifty thousand lire to the poor of that city. His best comic opera is his Il Mondo della Luna. A Toccata is a "Touch-piece," a prelude or overture. "It does but touch its theme rapidly, even superficially, for the most part; so that the interpolation of solemn chords and emotional phrases, inconsistent with its traditional character, may naturally, by force of contrast, lead to some suggestion or recognition of the many irregularities of life" (Mrs. Alexander Ireland). In the admirable paper on this poem written by Mrs. Alexander Ireland for the Browning Society, she continues: "A Toccata of Galuppi's touches on deep subjects with a mere feather-touch of light and capricious suggestiveness, interwoven with the graver mood, with the heart-searching questionings of man's deep nature and mysterious spirit. The Toccata as a form of composition is not the measured, deliberate working-out of some central musical thought, as is the Sonata or sound-piece, where the trained ear can follow out the whole process to its delightful and orderly consummation, where the student marks the introduction and development of the subject, its extension, through various forms, and its whole sequence of movement and meaning, to its glorious rounding-off and culmination, spiritually noting each stage of the climbing structure and acknowledging its perfection with the inward silent verdict, 'It is well.' The Toccata, in its early and pure form, possessed no decided subject, made such by repetition, but bore rather the form of a capricious Improvisation or "Impromptu." It was a very flowing movement, in notes of equal length, and a homophonous character, the earliest examples of any importance being those by Gabrieli (1557-1613), and those by Merulo (1533-1604); while Galuppi, who was born in 1706 and died in 1785, produced a further advanced development of this particular form of musical composition, with chords freely introduced and other important innovations." Vernon Lee, in her Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy (III. "The Musical Life") says of the Venetian, Baldassare Galuppi, surnamed Buranello, that he was "an immensely prolific composer, and abounded in melody, tender, pathetic and brilliant, which in its extreme simplicity and slightness occasionally rose to the highest beauty.... He defined the requisites of his art to Burney in very moderate terms: 'Chiarezza, vaghezza, e buona modulazione'--clearness, beauty, and good modulation, without troubling himself much about any others.... Galuppi was a model of the respectable, modest artist, living quietly on a moderate fortune, busy with his art and the education of his numerous children, beloved and revered by his fellow-artists; and when some fifteen years later [than 1770] he died, honoured by them with a splendid funeral, at which all the Venetian musicians performed; the great Pacchiarotti writing to Burney that he had sung with much devotion to obtain a rest for Buranello's (Galuppi's) soul" (p. 101). In a note Vernon Lee adds: "Mr. Browning's fine poem, 'A Toccata of Galuppi's,' has made at least his name familiar to many English readers." Ritter, in his History of Music (p. 245), has a concise but expressive notice of Galuppi. "Balthasar Galuppi, called Buranello (1706-85), a pupil of Lotti, also composed many comic operas. The main features of his operas are melodic elegance and lively and spirited comic forms; but they are rather thin and weak in their execution. He was a great favourite during his lifetime." The poem deals with two classes of human beings--the mere pleasure-takers with their balls and masks (Stanza iv.), and the scientists (Stanza xiii.) with their research and their 'ologies. The Venetians--who seemed to the poet merely born to blow and droop, who lived frivolous lives of gaiety and love-making--lived lives which came to nothing, and did deeds better left undone--heard the music which dreamily told them they must die, but went on with their kissing and their dancing till death took them where they never see the sun. The other class, immersed in the passion for knowledge, the class which despises the vanities and frivolities of the butterfly's life, and consecrates itself to science, not the less surely dissipates its energies and misses the true end of life if it has nothing higher to live for than "physics and geology."

NOTES.--ii., St. Mark's. The great cathedral of Venice, named after St. Mark, because it is said that the body of that Evangelist was brought to Venice and enshrined there. "where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings": the Doge was the chief magistrate of Venice when it was a republic. "The ceremony of wedding the Adriatic was instituted in 1174 by Pope Alexander III., who gave the Doge a gold ring from off his own finger in token of the victory achieved by the Venetian fleet at Istria over Frederick Barbarossa, in defence of the Pope's quarrel. When his Holiness gave the ring, he desired the Doge to throw a similar ring into the sea annually, in commemoration of the event" (Dr. Brewer). iii., "the sea's the street there": there are neither horses nor carriages in Venice; you go everywhere by gondola--to church, to theatre, to market; your gondola meets you at the railway station; in a word, the sea is the street. Shylock's Bridge: they show you Shylock's house in the old market place by the Rialto Bridge. vi., clavichord, a keyed and stringed instrument, not now in use, being superseded by the pianoforte. viii., dominant's persistence. The dominant in music is the name given to the fifth note of the scale of any key, counting upwards. The dominant plays a most important part in cadences, in which it is indispensable that the key should be strongly marked (Grove). "dear dead women": the ladies of Venice are celebrated for their beauty. An article in Poet Lore, October 1890, p. 546, thus explains the technical musical allusions in A Toccata of Galuppi's. These are all to be found in the seventh, eighth, and ninth verses. "The lesser thirds are, of course, minor thirds, and are of common occurrence; but the diminished sixth is an interval rarely used. So rare is it, that I have seen it stated by good authorities that it is never used harmonically. Ordinarily a diminished sixth (seven semitones), exactly the same interval as a perfect fifth, instead of giving a plaintive, mournful, or minor impression, would suggest a feeling of rest and satisfaction. As I have said, however, there is one way in which it can be used--as a suspension, in which the root of the chord on the lowered super-tonic of the scale is suspended from above into the chord with added seventh on the super-tonic, making a diminished sixth between the root of the first and the third of the second chord. The effect of this progression is most dismal, and possibly Browning had it in mind, though it is doubtful almost to certainty if Galuppi knew anything of it. Whether it be an anachronism or not, or whether it is used in a scientifically accurate way or not, the figure is true enough poetically, for a diminished interval--namely, something less than normal--would naturally suggest an effect of sadness. Suspensions, as may already have been guessed by the preceding example, are notes which are held over from one chord into another, and must be made according to certain musical rules as strict as the laws of the Medes and Persians. This holding over of a note always produces a dissonance, and must be followed by a concord,--in other words, a solution. Sevenths are very important dissonances in music, and a commiserating seventh is most likely the variety called a minor seventh. Being a somewhat less mournful interval than the lesser thirds and the diminished sixths, whether real or imaginary, yet not so final as 'those solutions' which seem to put an end to all uncertainty, and therefore to life, they arouse in the listeners to Galuppi's playing a hope that life may last, although in a sort of dissonantal, Wagnerian fashion. The 'commiserating sevenths' are closely connected with the 'dominant's persistence' in the next verse:--

'Hark! the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to: So an octave struck the answer.'

The dominant chord in music is the chord written on the fifth degree of the scale, and it almost always has a seventh added to it, and in a large percentage of cases is followed by the tonic, the chord on the first degree of the scale. Now, in fugue form a theme is repeated in the dominant key, the latter being called the answer. After further contrapuntal wanderings of the theme, the fugue comes to what is called an episode, after which the theme is presented first, in the dominant. 'Hark! the dominant's persistence' alludes to this musical fact; but, according to rule, this dominant must be answered in the tonic an octave above the first presentation of the theme; and 'so an octave struck the answer.' Thus the inexorable solution comes in after the dominant's persistence. Although life seemed possible with commiserating sevenths, the tonic, a resistless fate, strikes the answer that all must end--an answer which the frivolous people of Venice failed to perceive, and went on with their kissing. The notion of the tonic key as a relentless fate seems to suit well with the formal music of the days of Galuppi: while the more hopeful tonic key of Abt Vogler, the C major of this life, indicates that fate and the tonic key have both fallen more under man's control."--Miss Helen Ormerod's paper, read before the Browning Society, May 27th, 1887, throws additional light on some of the difficulties of this poem. "That the minor predominated in this quaint old piece (Toccata, by the way, means a touch piece, and probably was written to display the delicacy of the composer's touch) is evident from the mention of--

"Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh, Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions,--'Must we die?' Those commiserating sevenths--'Life might last! we can but try!'"

The interval of the third is one of the most important; the signature of a piece may mislead one, the same signature standing for a major key and its relative minor; but the third of the opening chord decides the question, a lesser 'plaintive' third (composed of a tone and a semitone) showing the key to be minor; the greater third (composed of two whole tones) showing the key to be major. Pauer tells us that 'the minor third gives the idea of tenderness, grief and romantic feeling.' Next come the 'diminished sixths': these are sixths possessing a semitone less than a minor sixth,--for instance, from C sharp to A flat: this interval in a different key would stand as a perfect fifth. 'Those suspensions, those solutions'--a suspension is the stoppage of one or more parts for a moment, while the others move on; this produces a dissonance, which is only resolved by the parts which produced it moving on to the position which would have been theirs had the parts moved simultaneously. We can understand that 'those suspensions, those solutions' might teach the Venetians, as they teach us, lessons of experience and hope; light after darkness, joy after sorrow, smiles after tears. 'Those commiserating sevenths,' of all dissonances, none is so pleasing to the ear, or so attractive to musicians, as that of minor and diminished sevenths, that of the major seventh being crude and harsh; in fact, the minor seventh is so charming in its discord as to suggest concord. Again, to quote from Pauer: 'It is the antithesis of discord and concord which fascinates and charms the ear; it is the necessary solution and return to unity which delights us.' After all this, the love-making begins again; but kisses are interrupted by the 'dominant's persistence till it must be answered to.' This seems to indicate the close of the piece, the dominant being answered by an octave which suggests the perfect authentic cadence, in which the chord of the dominant is followed by that of the tonic. The Toccata is ended, and the gay gathering dispersed. I cannot help the thought that this old music of Galuppi's was more of the head than the heart--more formal than fiery, suggestive rather of the chill of death than the heat of passion. The temporary silence into which the dancers were surprised by the playing of the Maestro is over, and the impressions caused by it are passed away, just as the silence of death was to follow the warmth and brightness of the glad Venetian life."

=To Edward Fitzgerald.= In the Athenæum of July 13th, 1889, appeared this sonnet:--

"TO EDWARD FITZGERALD.

"I chanced upon a new book yesterday; I opened it, and, where my finger lay 'Twixt page and uncut page, these words I read-- Some six or seven at most--and learned thereby That you, Fitzgerald, whom by ear and eye She never knew, 'thanked God my wife was dead.' Ay, dead! and were yourself alive, good Fitz, How to return you thanks would task my wits. Kicking you seems the common lot of curs-- While more appropriate greeting lends you grace, Surely to spit there glorifies your face-- Spitting from lips once sanctified by hers.

"ROBERT BROWNING. July 8th, 1889."

The passage referred to is as follows: "Mrs. Browning's death is rather a relief to me, I must say: no more Aurora Leighs, thank God! A woman of real genius, I know; but what is the upshot of it all! She and her sex had better mind the kitchen and the children; and perhaps the poor. Except in such things as little novels, they only devote themselves to what men do much better, leaving that which men do worse or not at all." (Life and Letters of Edward Fitzgerald. Edited by Aldis Wright.)--Browning Society Papers, Notes, 229.

=Tokay.= See NATIONALITY IN DRINKS. (Dramatic Lyrics, III.)

=Too Late.= (Dramatis Personæ, 1864.) A man addressing a dead woman whom he has loved and lost, tells how he feels that she needs help in her grave and finds none; wants warmth from a heart which longs to send it. She married another who did not love her "nor any one else in the world." This great sorrow was the rock which stopped the even flow of his life current. Some devil must have hurled it into the stream, and so thwarted God, who had made these two souls for each other. Just a thread of water escaped from the obstacle, and that wandered "through the evening country" down to the great sea which absorbs all our life streams. He has hoped at times that some convulsion of nature might roll the stone from its place and let the stream flow undisturbed. But all is past hope now: Edith is dead that should have been his. What should he have done that he omitted? Had he not taken her "No" too readily? Men do more for trifling reasons than he had done for his life's whole peace. Perhaps he was proud--perhaps helpless as a man paralysed by a great blow; anyway, she was gone from his life, and he was desolate henceforth. She was not handsome,--nobody said that. She had features which no artist would select for a model; but she was his life, and even now that she is dead he will be her slave while his soul endures. The poem is full of concentrated emotion, and is the expression of a strong man's life passion for a woman's soul; a passion unalloyed by any gross affection; such a love of one soul for another congenial soul as proves that man is more than matter.

=Transcendentalism: a Poem in Twelve Books.= (Men and Women, 1855.) This poem is probably intended by Mr. Browning as an answer to his critics. It has been said of Mr. Browning's poetry by a hundred competent writers that he does not sing, but philosophises instead; that he gives the world his naked thoughts, his analyses of souls not draped in the beauty of the poet's art, but in the form of "stark-naked thought." There is no objection, says his interviewer, if he will but cast aside the harp which he does not play but only tunes and adjusts, and speak his prose to Europe through "the six-foot Swiss tube which helps the hunter's voice from Alp to Alp." The fault is, that he utters thoughts to men thinking they care little for form or melody, as boys do. It is quite otherwise he should interpret nature--which is full of mystery--to the soul of man: as Jacob Boehme heard the plants speak, and told men what they said; or as John of Halberstadt, the magician, who by his will-power could create the flowers Boehme thought about. The true poet is a poem himself, whatever be his utterance. Take back the harp again, and "pour heaven into this short home of life." Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) was a German mystical writer, who began life as a shoemaker and developed into a "seer" of the highest order. He was a follower of the school of Paracelsus, and professed to know all mysteries by actually beholding them. He saw the origin of love and sorrow, heaven and hell. Nature lay unveiled to him; he saw into the being of God, and into the heart of things. Mr. Browning refers to this in the line of the poem, "He noticed all at once that plants could speak." "William Law (1686-1761) was a follower of Boehme's system of philosophy. The Quakers have been much influenced by the Boehmenists. The old magicians thought they had discovered in the ashes of plants their primitive forms, which were again raised up by the force of heat. Nothing, they say, perishes in Nature; all is but a continuation or a revival. The germina of resurrection are concealed in extinct bodies, as in the blood of men; the ashes of roses will again revive into roses, though smaller and paler than if they had been planted. The process of the Palingenesis--this picture of immortality--is described. These philosophers, having burnt a flower by calcination, disengaged the salts from its ashes, and deposited them in a glass phial; a chemical mixture acted on it till in the fermentation they assumed a bluish and spectral hue. This dust, thus excited by heat, shoots upwards into its primitive form; by sympathy the parts unite, and while each is returning to its destined place we see distinctly the stalk, the leaves, and the flower arise; it is the pale spectre of a flower coming slowly forth from its ashes." (Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, art. "Dreams at the Dawn of Philosophy.") John of Halberstadt was the magician who made the flowers on some such principles as is fabled above. He was an ecclesiastic, and had probably some knowledge of alchemy, often considered in those days as more or less a diabolical kind of learning. Transcendentalism is thus described by Webster: "Transcendental, Empirical.--These terms, with the corresponding nouns transcendentalism and empiricism, are of comparatively recent origin. Empirical refers to knowledge which is gained by the experience of actual phenomena, without reference to the principles or laws to which they are to be referred, or by which they are to be explained. Transcendental has reference to those beliefs or principles which are not derived from experience, and yet are absolutely necessary to make experience possible or useful. Such, in the better sense of the term, is the transcendental philosophy, or transcendentalism. The term has been applied to a kind of investigation, or a use of language which is vague, obscure, fantastic, or extravagant." The reference in the title of the poem is purely imaginary: there is no such work.

=Tray.= (Dramatic Idyls, 1879.) Three bards sing each a song of a hero; but the bard who sings of Olaf the Dane, and he who tells of the hero standing unflinching on the precipice, have not their song rewarded here: the place of honour is reserved by the poet for a dog story. Tray was the poet's hero of the three. A beggar child fell into the Seine in Paris. The bystanders prudently bethought themselves of their families ere risking their lives to save her. While the people were wondering how the child was to be extricated, "a mere instinctive dog" jumped over the balustrade and brought her to land. The people applauded the dog, who had no sooner deposited his burden on the shore than he was off again, apparently to save another child whom nobody had seen fall. The dog was so long under the water that he was thought to have been carried away by the current; but in a few minutes he was seen swimming to land with the child's doll in his mouth. The people began to pride themselves on man's possession of reason, and to vaunt the superiority of our race over that of the dog. Meanwhile Tray trotted off; till one of the crowd, with a larger share of "reason" than the rest, bade his servant go and catch the animal for him, that, by expenditure "of half an hour and eighteen-pence," he might vivisect it at the physiological laboratory and see "how brain secretes dog's soul." This was poor Tray's reward at the hands of humanity, endowed with the "reason" which had been denied to the brave and faithful little brain of the "lower animal." (See VIVISECTION.)

=Twins, The.= (Originally published in a little volume with a poem of Mrs. Browning's, on behalf of the Ragged Schools of London, 1854; then in Men and Women, 1855; Romances, 1863; Dramatic Romances, 1868.) In Martin Luther's Table Talk there is a story which is the foundation of this poem. In the talk "On Justification" (No. 316), he says: "Give, and it shall be given unto you: this is a fine maxim, and makes people poor and rich.... There is in Austria a monastery which, in former times, was very rich, and remained rich so long as it was charitable to the poor; but when it ceased to give, then it became indigent, and is so to this day. Not long since, a poor man went there and solicited alms, which were denied him; he demanded the cause why they refused to give for God's sake? The porter of the monastery answered, 'We are become poor'; whereupon the mendicant said, 'The cause of your poverty is this: ye had formerly in this monastery two brethren--the one named Date (give), and the other Dabitur (it shall be given to you): the former ye thrust out, and the other went away of himself.'... Beloved, he that desires to have anything must also give: a liberal hand was never in want or empty.'" (Mr. Browning's poem is simply the above narrative in verse.)

=Two Camels.= (Ferishtah's Fancies, 8: "Self-mortification.") Is self-mortification necessary for the attainment of wisdom? Two camels started on a long journey with their loads of merchandise. One, desiring to please his master, refused to eat the food which was provided for him: he died of exhaustion on the road, and thieves secured his burden. The other ate his provender thankfully, and safely reached his destination with his load. Which beast pleased his master? We are here to do our day's work: help refused is hindrance sought. We are to desire joy and thank God for it. The Creator wills that we should recognise our creatureship and call upon Him in our need. As we are God's sons, He cannot be indifferent to our needs and sorrows. Neither work nor the spirit of self-dependence are antagonistic to prayer. The "ear, hungry for music," is a more intelligible phrase when we know that the organ of Corti in the human ear has three thousand arches, with keys ranged like those of a piano, marvellously adapted for the appreciation of every tone-shade. The "seven-stringed instrument" refers to light and the seven colours of the spectrum.--In the lyric, the chemical combination of two harmless substances produces an effect which either by itself would have been powerless to produce. How know we what God intends to work in us by the influences by which we are surrounded? We are not to reject the joys of earth, the bliss produced by slight and transient mental stimuli; they suffice to move the heart. There is earth-bliss which heaven itself cannot improve, but may make permanent: why despise it?

=Two in the Campagna.= (Men and Women, 1855; Lyrics, 1863; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.) The Campagna di Roma is that portion of the area almost coinciding with the ancient Latium, which lies round the city of Rome. Gregorovius says we might mark its circumference "by a series of well-known points: Civita Vecchia, Tolfa, Ronciglione, Soracte, Tivoli, Palestrina, Albano, and Ostia." Anciently it was the seat of numerous cities, and is now dotted with ruins in its whole extent. In summer its vast expanse is little better than an arid steppe, and is very dangerous on account of the malaria almost everywhere prevalent. In winter and spring it is safer, and affords abundant pasture for sheep and cattle. There is a solemnity and beauty about the Campagna entirely its own. To the reflective mind, this ghost of old Rome is full of suggestion: its vast, almost limitless extent, as it seems to the traveller; its abundant herbage and floral wealth in early spring; its desolation, its crumbling monuments, and its evidences of a vanished civilisation, fill the mind with a sweet sadness, which readily awakens the longing for the infinite spoken of in the poem, the key-note of which is undoubtedly found in the lines--

"Only I discern Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn."

Says Pascal: "This desire and this weakness cry aloud to us that there was once in man a true happiness, of which there now remains to him but the mark and the empty trace, which he vainly tries to fill from all that surround him; seeking from things absent the succour he finds not in things present; and these are all inadequate, because this infinite void can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object--that is to say, only by God Himself." The speaker in the poem says to the woman, "I would that you were all to me." As pleasure, learning, wealth, have failed to satisfy the soul of man, so not even Love, the holiest passion of the soul, can satisfy the human heart, which can rest in God alone. Dr. Martineau says that "all finite loves are only half-born, wandering in a poor twilight, unknowing of their peace and power, till they lie within the encompassing and glorifying love of God." The restful music, the anodyne for the pain of yearning hearts, comes from no earth-born love, however pure.

=Two Poets Of Croisic, The.= (1878, with La Saisiaz.) Le Croisic is an old town in Brittany, in the department of Loire Inférieure. Murray describes it as "a popular watering-place. Croisic was formerly a place of some importance--was fortified, and had a castle, and reached its greatest prosperity in the sixteenth century, when it sent vessels to the cod-fishery, and had some six thousand inhabitants; but, like many other towns, was ruined by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. There is a chapel of St. Gourtan to the west of the town, with a miraculous well near it. When there is a storm from the south the sailors' wives pray at St. Gourtan; when from the north, at the Chapel of the Crucifix, at the east of the town. About half a mile due north-west of the church is a menhir eight feet high, situated on a mound overlooking the sea. The rocky cliffs on the sea shore near it, for about a mile, have been worn by the waves and weather into the most extraordinary and fantastic shapes, and are well worth a visit." Croisic is one of the principal ports of the sardine fishery. Guérande and Batz, also referred to in the poem, are close to Le Croisic, the former being "a very curious old town, still surrounded," says Murray, "by the ditches and walls built by Duke John V. about 1431. On Sundays, the assemblage of Bretons from the north, peat-diggers from the east, and salt-makers from the west, is very striking. Soon after leaving Guérande the road descends into a wide plain covered with pits and salterns. This plain is of great extent, below the level of the sea, and protected by dykes. The water is admitted at high water, by channels or rivers, into reservoirs called vasières, from which it is passed into shallow, irregularly-formed receptacles called fares. In these a considerable portion of the water is evaporated, and the brine is allowed to run into square basins called œillets, where the sun finally evaporates the water and leaves a layer of salt. The salt is scraped off to square patches between the œillets, and is thence carried to a conical heap on the high ground, where it is left without protection from the rain until the autumn, when the heap is covered with wood, and so left until it can be sold. The men engaged in the work are called paludiers, and receive one-fourth of the salt, the owner of the salterns receiving the other three-fourths." Mr. Browning refers to such a process in Sordello, to illustrate his theory of the necessity of evil:--

"Where the salt marshes stagnate, crystals branch; Blood dries to crimson; Evil's beautified In every shape."

"The paludiers, and their assistants, called saulniers, inhabit Batz, Pouliguen, Saillié, and other villages, and form a most peculiar class. Their usual dress is an enormous black flapped hat, a long white frock or waistcoat, huge baggy white breeches, white gaiters and white shoes. The men of Batz are a magnificent race of large, stalwart, evident Saxons."--The opening stanzas of the poem are descriptive of a scene in winter, round a good log-fire of old shipwood. As the flames ascend, they are tinted with various brilliant colours, due to the chemicals with which the old timber is impregnated and the metals which are attached to it. Sodium salts from the sea brine account for the yellow and crimson flames; the greenish flame owes its tint to the copper; the flake brilliance is due to the zinc; and so forth. All this flame splendour suggests the flash of fame--brilliant for a few minutes, and then subsiding into darkness. At the eleventh stanza begins a description of Croisic, Guérande, and Batz, and the salt industry as described above. An island opposite was the Druids' chosen chief of homes; where their women were employed, building a temple to the sun, destroying it and rebuilding it every May. Even at the present day women steal to the sole menhir standing and the rude stone pillars, with or without still ruder inscriptions, found in many parts of Brittany. But Croisic has had its men of note: two poets must be remembered who lived there. René Gentilhomme, in the year 1610, flamed forth a liquid ruby; he was of noble birth, and page to the Prince of Condé, whom men called "the Duke." His cousin the King had no heir, so men began to call him "Next King," and he to expect the dignity. His page René was a poet, and had written many sonnets and madrigals. One day, when he sat a-rhyming, a storm came on; and, struck by lightning, a ducal crown, emblem of the Prince, was dashed to atoms. René ceased his sonnets, and, considering the destruction as an omen of the ruined hopes of the Duke, wrote forty lines, which he gave to the man, who asked how it came his ducal crown was wrecked--"Sir, God's word to you!" It happened as the poet foresaw: at the year's end was born the Dauphin, who wrecked the Prince's hopes. King Louis honoured René with the title "Royal Poet," inasmuch as he not only poetised, but prophesied. The other famous poet of Croisic, represented by the green flame, was a dapper gentleman, Paul Desforges Maillard, who lived in Voltaire's time, and did something which made Voltaire ridiculous. He wrote a poem, which he submitted to the Academy, but which the Forty ignominiously rejected. When the poet's rage subsided, he made bold to offer his work to the Chevalier La Roque, editor of the Paris Mercury, who rejected it with the polite excuse that he could not offend the Forty. Flattered, though enraged at this excuse, the poet abused the editor till he explained that his poetry was execrable, but he had sought to conceal the truth in his rejection. Maillard had a sister, who determined to help him by strategy. Copying out some of her brother's verses, she sent them as the efforts of a young girl, who threw herself on the great editor's mercy, and begged his introduction to a literary career under the name of Malcrais. The editor fell into the trap, and published the poems from time to time till she grew famous. He even went so far as to fall in love with the authoress, and to offer her marriage. Voltaire moreover was deceived, and wrote "a stomach-moving tribute" in her honour. Naturally the brother, finding that his poetry had such value, was unwilling that he should be any longer deprived of the glory attaching to it; so he determined to go to Paris and confront the editor who had insulted him with the proofs of his incapability, by explaining who the real Malcrais was. This step was his ruin: the world does not like to be convicted of its foolishness. Voltaire was not the man to enjoy a jibe at his own expense. Maillard's literary career was over. Piron wrote a famous play on this subject, entitled Métromanie.

=Up at a Villa--Down in the City.= As distinguished by an Italian person of quality. (Men and Women, 1855; Lyrics, 1863; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.) The speaker likes city life: it is expensive, he admits, but one has something for one's money there. The whole day long life is a perfect feast; but up in the villa on the mountain side the life is no better than a beast's. In the city you can watch the gossips and the passers-by; whereas up in the villa there is nothing to see but the oxen dragging the plough. Even in summer it is no better, and it is actually cooler in the city square with the fountain playing. He hates fireflies, bees, and cicalas, about which folks talk so much poetry: what he prefers is the blessed church-bells, the rattle of the diligence, the ever succeeding news, the quack doctor, the fun at the post office, the execution of "liberals," and the gay church procession in the streets on festivals, the drum, the fife, the noise and bustle. Of course it is dear; you cannot have all these luxuries without paying for them, and that is why he is compelled to live a country life; but oh, the pity of it,--the processions, the candles, the flags, the Duke's guard, the drum, the fife!--

"Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!"

NOTES.--Stanza ii., "By Bacchus": Per Bacco--Italians still swear by the wine-god. Stanza ix., "with a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart!" The "seven sorrows of Our Lady" are referred to here. They are (1) Her grief at the prophecy of Simeon; (2) Her affliction during the flight into Egypt; (3) Her distress at the loss of her Son before finding Him in the Temple; (4) Her sorrow when she met her Son bearing His cross; (5) Her martyrdom at the sight of His agony; (6) The wound to her heart when His was pierced; and (7) Her agony at His burial. The contrast of these sorrows with the pink gown, the spangles, and the smiles, is an exquisite satire on some peculiarities in Continental devotions, very distasteful to English people. Stanza x., "Tax on salt": salt is taxed in Italy; the salt monopoly, the lottery, the grist tax and an octroi are the more important items of Italy's immoral system of taxation. "what oil pays passing the gate": the octroi or town-dues have to be paid on all provisions entering the cities of Italy. yellow candles: these are used at funerals, and in penitential processions in the Roman Church.

=Valence.= (Colombe's Birthday.) The advocate of Cleves who marries Colombe.

="Verse-making was the least of my Virtues."= (=Ferishtah's Fancies.=) The first line of the ninth lyric.

=Villains.= Browning's principal villains are the following:--Halbert and Hob; Ned Bratts; Count Guido Franceschini; the devil-like elder man of the Inn Album; Paolo and Girolamo in The Ring and the Book; Ottima and the Intendant of the Bishop, Uguccio, Stefano and Sebald, in Pippa Passes (Bluphocks, in the same poem, is rather a tool of others than a great villain on his own account); Louscha, the mother, in Ivan Ivanovitch; Chiappino in A Soul's Tragedy.

=Vincent Parkes.= (Martin Relph.) He was Rosamund Page's lover. The girl is accused of being a spy, and unless she can clear herself within a given time is to be shot. Parkes arrives at the place of execution with the proofs of the girl's innocence just as the fatal volley is fired.

=Violante Comparini.= (The Ring and the Book.) The supposed mother of Pompilia. She was the wife of Pietro, and by him had no children; she bought Pompilia of a courtesan, and brought the child up as her own, and was murdered, with her husband and Pompilia, by Count Guido.

=Vivisection=, or the cutting into living animals for scientific purposes. Mr. Browning was to the last a Vice-President of the Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals, and he always expressed the utmost abhorrence of the practices which it opposes. The following letter was written by Mr. Browning on the occasion of the presentation of the memorial to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1875:--"19, Warwick Crescent, W., December 28th, 1874.--DEAR MISS COBBE,--I return the petition unsigned, for the one good reason--that I have just signed its fellow forwarded to me by Mrs. Leslie Stephen. You have heard, 'I take an equal interest with yourself in the effort to supress vivisection.' I dare not so honour my mere wishes and prayers as to put them for a moment beside your noble acts; but this I know: I would rather submit to the worst of the deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured on the pretence of sparing me a twinge or two. I return the paper, because I shall be probably shut up here for the next week or more, and prevented from seeing my friends. Whoever would refuse to sign would certainly not be of the number.--Ever truly and gratefully yours, ROBERT BROWNING."--In two of his poems the poet has expressed his emphatic opinion upon Vivisection: in Tray, and in Arcades Ambo. See my chapter "Browning and Vivisection" in Browning's Message to his Time. In the recently published Life and Letters of Robert Browning, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, there are many interesting incidents connected with the great poet's love for animals, which characterised him from infancy till death. Mrs. Orr says (p. 27) this fondness for animals was conspicuous in his earliest days. "His urgent demand for 'something to do' would constantly include 'something to be caught' for him: 'they were to catch him an eft; 'they were to catch him a frog.'" He would refuse to take his medicine unless bribed by the gift of a speckled frog from among the strawberries: and the maternal parasol, hovering above the strawberry bed during the search for this object of his desires, remained a standing picture in his remembrance. But the love of the uncommon was already asserting itself; and one of his very juvenile projects was a collection of rare creatures, the first contribution to which was a couple of lady-birds, picked up one winter's day on a wall and immediately consigned to a box lined with cotton-wool, and labelled 'Animals found Surviving in the Depths of a Severe Winter.' Nor did curiosity in this case weaken the power of sympathy. His passion for beasts and birds was the counterpart of his father's love of children, only displaying itself before the age at which child-love naturally appears. His mother used to read Croxall's Fables to his little sister and him. The story contained in them of a lion who was kicked to death by an ass affected him so painfully that he could no longer endure the sight of the book; and as he dare not destroy it, he buried it between the stuffing and the woodwork of an old dining-room chair, where it stood for lost, at all events for the time being. When first he heard of the adventures of the parrot who insisted on leaving his cage, and who enjoyed himself for a little while and then died of hunger and cold, he--and his sister with him--cried so bitterly that it was found necessary to invent a different ending, according to which the parrot was rescued just in time and brought back to his cage to live peacefully in it ever after. As a boy he kept owls and monkeys, magpies and hedgehogs, an eagle, and even a couple of large snakes; constantly bringing home the more portable creatures in his pockets, and transferring them to his mother for immediate care. I have heard him speak admiringly of the skilful tenderness with which she took into her lap a lacerated cat, washed and sewed up its ghastly wound, and nursed it back to health. The great intimacy with the life and habits of animals which reveals itself in his works is readily explained by these facts."

=Wall, A.= The prologue to Pacchiarotto (q.v.) bears this title in the Selections, Series the Second (published in 1880).

=Wanting is--what?= (Prologue to Jocoseria, 1883.) In every phase of human life, and in every human action, there is imperfection--always something still to come. In the characters depicted and the incidents narrated in the volume called Jocoseria the poet asks us to say what is wanting to perfect them. His question "Wanting is--what?" governs the whole volume. In Solomon and Balkis what was wanting was not mere wisdom, but a sanctified nature. In Christina and Monaldeschi the woman was wanting in forgiveness. Here the love was not perfect. In Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli what was wanting was self-sacrifice. Had Mary really loved Fuseli, she would not have attempted to ruin his life by endeavouring to win him from his wife. In Adam, Lilith, and Eve, there was wanting, says Mr. Sharpe, "the union of perfect love with perfect holiness." In Ixion was wanting a just conception of the Fatherhood of God. God is not the tyrannical Master of the world, but the Loving All-Father. In Jochanan Hakkadosh, Mr. Sharpe says, in answer to the question, "Wanting is--what?" "One who shall combine perfect wisdom with the full experience of life, and the completeness of these intuitions of the Spirit." "Is not this the Christ?" In Never the Time and the Place, to completely develop our souls we need perfect conditions of existence. We shall not find them till we reach heaven. In Pambo the saint recognised that he could not perfectly fulfil the smallest of God's commandments, nor can we perfectly keep God's law. Wanting is the Atonement.

NOTE.--"Come, then, complete incompletion, O Comer, Pant through the blueness,"--i.e. descend from heaven. The Rev. J. Sharpe, M.A., thus explains the title "O Comer": "ὁ ερχομενος, in the New Testament, is one of the titles of the Messiah--the Future One, He who shall come (Matt. xi. 3, xxi. 9; Luke vii. 19, 20; John xii. 13; also John vi. 14, xi. 27). So in the periphrase of the name Jehovah, ὁ ων και ο ην και ὁ ερχομενος (Rev. i. 4, 8; iv. 8).--Robinson's Greek Lexicon of the New Testament. The title hints at the connection between this preface and the stories from the Talmud which follow. The Incarnation, the union of God and man, of Creator and creation, supplies the solution of the problem raised by the incompleteness and death all around us. The beauty is no longer without meaning, for it is a revelation of God; the huge mass of death is no longer revolting, for 'all things were created by Him, and for Him ... and by Him all things consist,' and He will 'reunite all things ... whether they be things on earth or things in heaven.'" In the character of Donald, what was wanting was the development of "the latent moral faculty." He did not recognise the rights of the stag, which the commonest principles of justice, to say nothing of gratitude, should have made obvious to the sportsman.

=Waring.= Waring was the name given by the poet to his friend Mr. Alfred Domett, C.M.G., son of Mr. Nathaniel Domett, born at Camberwell, May 20th, 1811. He matriculated at Cambridge in 1829, as a member of St. John's College. In 1832 he published a volume of poems. He then travelled in America for two years, and after his return to London, about 1836-7, he contributed some verses to Blackwood's Magazine. Mr. Domett afterwards spent two years in Italy, Switzerland, and other continental countries. He was called to the bar in 1841. Having purchased some land of the New Zealand Company, he went as a settler to New Zealand in 1842. In 1851 he became Secretary for the whole of that country. He accepted posts as Commissioner of Crown Lands and Resident Magistrate at Hawke's Bay. Subsequently he was elected to represent the town of Nelson in the House of Representatives. In 1862 Mr. Domett was called upon to form a Government, which he did. Having held various important offices in the Legislature, and rendered great services to the country, he was created a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (1880). He returned to England and published several volumes of poems. His chief work is Ranolf and Amohia, full of descriptions of New Zealand scenery, and paying a warm tribute to Mr. Browning, whom he calls

"Subtlest assertor of the soul in song."

Mr. Domett suddenly disappeared from London life in the manner described in the poem. He shook off, by an overpowering impulse, the restraints of conventional life, and without a word to his dearest friends, vanished into the unknown. As the story is told in the poem, we see a man with large ideas, ambitious, full of great thoughts, inspired by a passion for great things, a man born to rule, and fretting against the restraints of the petty conventionalities of civilised life. Those about him cannot understand, and if they did could in no wise help him; he chafes and longs to break his bonds and live the freer life in which his energies can expand. The poem tells of the cold and unsympathetic criticism he received amongst his friends; and now that he has disappeared, the poet's spirit yearns for his society once more. He wonders where he has pitched his tent, and in fancy runs through the world to seek him. He has been heard of in a ghostly sort of way. A vision of him has been narrated by one who for a few moments caught sight of him and lost him again in the setting sun. The poet reflects that the stars which set here, rise in some distant heaven. The following obituary notice of Alfred Domett, by Dr. Furnivall, appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette of November 9th, 1887. It has had the advantage of being revised and corrected in a few small details by Mr. F. Young, "Waring's" cousin. See also an article in Temple Bar, Feb., 1896, p. 253, entitled "A Queen's Messenger."

="What's Become of Waring?"=--IN MEMORIAM. (By a Member of the Browning Society.) "What's become of Waring?" is the first line of one of Mr. Browning's poems of 1842 (Bells and Pomegranates, Part II.), which, from its dealing with his life in London in early manhood, is a great favourite with his readers. Alas! the handsome and brilliant hero of the Browning set in the thirties died last Wednesday, at the house in St. Charles's Square, North Kensington, where he had for many years lived near his artist son. Alfred Domett was the son of one of Nelson's middies, a gallant seaman. He was called to the bar, and lived in the Temple with his friend 'Joe Arnold,' a man of great ability, afterwards Sir Joseph, Chief Justice of Bombay, who ultimately settled at Naples, where he died. Having an independency, Alfred Domett lingered in London society for a time,--one of the handsomest and most attractive men there,--till he was induced to emigrate to New Zealand, to join his cousin, William Young, the son of the London shipowner, George Frederick Young, who had bought a large tract of land in the islands. Alfred Domett landed to find his cousin drowned. He was himself soon after appointed to a magistracy with £700 a year. He had a successful career in New Zealand,--where Mr. Browning alludes to him in The Guardian Angel--became Premier, married a handsome English lady, and then returned to England. He first lived at Phillimore Place or Terrace, Kensington, and while there saw a good deal of his old friend Mr. Browning; but after he moved to St. Charles's Square, the former companions seldom met. On the foundation of the Browning Society, Alfred Domett declined any post of honour, but became an interested member of the body. His grand white head was to be seen at all the Society's performances and at several of its meetings. He naturally preferred Mr. Browning's early works to the later ones. He could not be persuaded to write any account of his early London days, but said he would try to find the letters in which his friend 'Joe Arnold' reported to him in New Zealand the doings of their London set. Mr. Domett produced with pride his sea-stained copy of Browning's Bells and Pomegranates, now worth twenty or thirty times its original price. Before he left England, his poem on Venice was printed in Blackwood, and very highly praised by Christopher North. (The reprint is in the British Museum.) His longer and chief poem, Ranolf and Amohia (1872), full of New Zealand scenery, and paying a warm tribute to Mr. Browning, was reprinted by him in two volumes, revised and enlarged, some four or five years ago. A lucky accident to a leg, which permanently lamed him, soon after his arrival in New Zealand, saved his life; for it prevented his accepting the invitation of some treacherous native chiefs to a banquet at which all the English guests were killed. A sterling, manly, independent nature was Alfred Domett's. He impressed every one with whom he came in contact, and is deeply regretted by his remaining friends. We hope that Mr. Browning will in his next volume give a few lines to the memory of his early friend. Not many of the old set remain, possibly not one save the poet himself; and all his readers will rejoice to hear again of Waring, "Alfred, dear friend." The Guardian Angel question--

"Where are you, dear old friend?"

needs other answer now than that of 1855--

"How rolls the Wairoa at your world's far end? This is Ancona, yonder is the sea."

NOTES.--Canto iv., "Monstr'--inform'--ingens--horren-dous": from Vergil's Æn. iii. 657--"Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademtum": a horrid monster, misshapen, huge, from whom sight had been taken away. vi., Vishnu-land: India, where Vishnu is worshipped; the second person of the modern Hindu Trinity. He is regarded as a member of the Triad whose special function is to preserve. To do this he has nine times in succession become incarnate, and will do so once more. Avatar: the incarnation of a deity. The ten incarnations of Vishnu are--1. Matsya-Avatar, as a fish; 2. Kurm-Avatar, as a tortoise; 3. Varaha, as a boar; 4. Nara-Sing, as a man-lion, last animal stage; 5. Vamuna, as a dwarf, first step toward the human form; 6. Parasu-Rama, as a hero, but yet an imperfect man; 7. Rama-Chandra, as the hero of Ramayána, physically a perfect man, his next of kin, friend and ally Hamouma, the monkey-god, the monkey endowed with speech; 8. Christna-Avatar, the son of the virgin Devanaguy, one formed by God; 9. Gautama-Buddha, Siddhârtha, or Sakya-muni; 10. This avatar has not yet occurred. It is expected in the future; when Vishnu appears for the last time he will come as a "saviour." (Blavatzky, Isis Unveiled, vol. ii., p. 274.) Kremlin, the citadel of Moscow, Russia. serpentine: a rock, often of a dull green colour, mantled and mottled with red and purple. syenite: a stone named from Syene, in Egypt, where it was first found. "Dian's fame": Diana was worshipped by the inhabitants of Taurica Chersonesus. Taurica Chersonesus is now the country called the Crimea. Hellenic speech == Greek. Scythian strands: Taurica is joined by an isthmus to Scythia, and is bounded by the Bosphorus, the Euxine Sea, and the Palus Mæotis. Caldara Polidore da Caravaggio (1495-1543): he was a celebrated painter of frieze, etc., at the Vatican. Raphael discovered his talents when he was a mere mortar carrier to the other artists. The "Andromeda" picture, of which Browning speaks in Pauline, was an engraving from a work of this artist. "The heart of Hamlet's Mystery": few characters in literature have been more discussed than that of Hamlet. Schlegel thought he exhausted the power of action by calculating consideration. Goethe thought he possessed a noble nature without the strength of nerve which forms a hero. Many say he was mad, others that he was the founder of the pessimistic school. Junius: the mystery of the authorship of the famous letters of Junius is referred to. Chatterton, Thomas (1752-70): the boy poet who deceived the credulous scholars of his day by pretending that he had discovered some ancient poems in the parish chest of Redcliffe Church, Bristol. Rowley, Thomas: the hypothetical priest of Bristol, said by Chatterton to have lived in the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV., and to have written the poems of which Chatterton himself was the author. ii. 2, Triest: the principal seaport of the Austro-Hungarian empire, situated very picturesquely at the north-east angle of the Adriatic Sea, in the Gulf of Trieste. lateen sail: a triangular sail commonly used in the Mediterranean. "'long-shore thieves": "along-shore men" are the low fellows who hang about quays and docks, generally of bad character.

="When I vexed you and you chid me."= (Ferishtah's Fancies.) The first line of the seventh lyric.

=Which?= (Asolando, 1889.) Three court ladies make

"Trial of all who judged best In esteeming the love of a man."

An abbé sits to decide the wager and say who was to be considered the best Cupid catcher. First, the Duchesse maintains that it is the man who holds none above his lady-love save his God and his king. The Marquise does not care for saint and loyalist, so much as a man of pure thoughts and fine deeds who can play the paladin. The Comtesse chooses any wretch, any poor outcast, who would look to her as his sole saviour, and stretch his arms to her as love's ultimate goal. The abbé had to reflect awhile. He took a pinch of snuff to clear his brain, and then, after deliberation, said--

"The love which to one, and one only, has reference, Seems terribly like what perhaps gains God's preference."

=White Witchcraft.= (Asolando, 1889.) Magic is defined to be of two kinds--Divine and evil. Divine is white magic; black magic is of the devil. Amongst the ancients magic was considered a Divine science, which led to a participation in the attributes of Divinity itself. Philo-Judæus, De Specialibus Legibus, says: "It unveils the operations of Nature, and leads to the contemplation of celestial powers." When magic became degraded into sorcery it was naturally abhorred by all the world, and the evil reputation attaching to the word, even at the present day, must be attributed to the fact that white witchcraft had a singular affinity for the black arts. Perhaps what is now termed "science" expresses all that was originally intended by the term white magic. The men of science of the past were not unacquainted with black arts, according to their enemies. Hence Pietro d'Abano, John of Halberstadt, Cornelius Agrippa, and other learned men of the middle ages, incurred the hatred of the clergy. Paracelsus is made expressly by Browning to abjure "black arts" in his struggles for knowledge. Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, speaks of white witches. He says (Part II., sec. i.): "Sorcerers are too common: cunning men, wizards, and white-witches, as they call them, in every village, which, if they be sought to, will help almost all infirmities of body and mind--servatores, in Latin; and they have commonly St. Catherine's wheel printed in the roof of their mouth, or in some part about them."

[THE POEM.] One says if he could play Jupiter for once, and had the power to turn his friend into an animal, he would decree that she should become a fox. The lady, if invested with the same power, would turn him into a toad. He bids Canidia say her worst about him when reduced to this condition. The Canidia referred to is the sorceress of Naples in Horace, who could bring the moon from heaven. The witch boasts of her power in this respect:--

"Meæque terra cedit insolentiæ. (Ut ipse nosti curiosus) et Polo An quæ movere cereas imagines, Diripere Lunam." (HORAT., Canid. Epod., xvii. 75, etc.)

Hudibras mentions this (Part II., 3);--

"Your ancient conjurors were wont To make her (the moon) from her sphere dismount, And to their incantations stoop."

The Zoophilist for July 1891 gives the following, from Mrs. Orr's Life of Browning, as the origin of the reference to the toad in the poem: "About the year 1835, when Mr. Browning's parents removed to Hatcham, the young poet found a humble friend "in the form of a toad, which became so much attached to him that it would follow him as he walked. He visited it daily, where it burrowed under a white rose tree, announcing himself by a pinch of gravel dropped into its hole; and the creature would crawl forth, allow its head to be gently tickled, and reward the act with that loving glance of the soft, full eyes which Mr. Browning has recalled in one of the poems of Asolando." The lines are:--

"He's loathsome, I allow; There may or may not lurk a pearl beneath his puckered brow; But see his eyes that follow mine--love lasts there, anyhow."

="Why from the World."= The first words of the twelfth lyric in Ferishtah's Fancies.

=Why I am a Liberal= was a poem written for Cassell & Co. in 1885, who published a volume of replies by English men of letters, etc., to the question, "Why I am a Liberal?"

"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 future 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 through Liberty. Who, then, dares hold, emancipated thus, His fellow shall continue bound? Not I, Who live, love, labour freely, nor discuss A brother's right to freedom. That is 'Why.'"

=Will, The.= (Sordello.) Mr. Browning uses the term "will" to express Sordello's effort to "realise all his aspirations in his inner consciousness, in his imagination, in his feeling that he is potentially all these things." See Professor Alexander's Analysis of "Sordello," lvii., p. 406 (Browning Society's Papers); "The Body, the machine for acting Will" (Sordello, Book II., line 1014, and p. 477 of this work). Mr. Browning's early opinions were so largely formed by his occult and theosophical studies that it is necessary for the full understanding of his theory of the will and its power, to study the following axioms from the work of an occult writer, Eliphas Levi, as a good summary of the teaching so largely imbibed by the poet.

"THEORY OF WILL-POWER.

"Axiom 1. Nothing can resist the will of man when he knows what is true and wills what is good. Axiom 2. To will evil is to will death. A perverse will is the beginning of suicide. Axiom 3. To will what is good with violence is to will evil, for violence produces disorder and disorder produces evil. Axiom 4. We can and should accept evil as the means to good; but we must never practise it, otherwise we should demolish with one hand what we erect with the other. A good intention never justifies bad means; when it submits to them it corrects them, and condemns them while it makes use of them. Axiom 5. To earn the right to possess permanently we must will long and patiently. Axiom 6. To pass one's life in willing what it is impossible to retain for ever is to abdicate life and accept the eternity of death. Axiom 7. The more numerous the obstacles which are surmounted by the will, the stronger the will becomes. It is for this reason that Christ has exalted poverty and suffering. Axiom 8. When the will is devoted to what is absurd it is reprimanded by eternal reason. Axiom 9. The will of the just man is the will of God Himself, and it is the law of nature. Axiom 10. The understanding perceives through the medium of the will. If the will be healthy, the sight is accurate. God said, 'Let there be light!' and the light was. The will says: 'Let the world be such as I wish to behold it!' and the intelligence perceives it as the will has determined. This is the meaning of Amen, which confirms the acts of faith. Axiom 11. When we produce phantoms we give birth to vampires, and must nourish these children of nightmare with our own blood and life, with our own intelligence and reason, and still we shall never satiate them. Axiom 12. To affirm and will what ought to be is to create; to affirm and will what should not be is to destroy. Axiom 13. Light is an electric fire, which is placed by man at the disposition of the will; it illuminates those who know how to make use of it, and burns those who abuse it. Axiom 14. The empire of the world is the empire of light. Axiom 15. Great minds with wills badly equilibrated are like comets, which are abortive suns. Axiom 16. To do nothing is as fatal as to commit evil, and it is more cowardly. Sloth is the most unpardonable of the deadly sins. Axiom 17. To suffer is to labour. A great misfortune properly endured is a progress accomplished. Those who suffer much live more truly than those who undergo no trials. Axiom 18. The voluntary death of self-devotion is not a suicide,--it is the apotheosis of free-will. Axiom 19. Fear is only indolence of will; and for this reason public opinion brands the coward. Axiom 20. An iron chain is less difficult to burst than a chain of flowers. Axiom 21. Succeed in not fearing the lion, and the lion will be afraid of you. Say to suffering, 'I will that thou shalt become a pleasure,' and it will prove such, and more even than a pleasure, for it will be a blessing. Axiom 22. Before deciding that a man is happy or otherwise seek to ascertain the bent of his will. Tiberius died daily at Caprea, while Jesus proved His immortality, and even His divinity, upon Calvary and the Cross."

="Wish no word unspoken."= (Ferishtah's Fancies.) The first words of the lyric to the second poem.

=Woman's Last Word, A.= (Men and Women, 1855; Lyrics, 1863; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.) In the presence of perfect love words are often superfluous, wild, and hurtful; words lead to debate, debate to contention, striving, weeping. Even truth becomes falseness; for if the heart is consecrated by a pure affection, love is the only truth; and the chill of logic and the precision of a definition can be no other than harmful; therefore hush the talking, pry not after the apples of the knowledge of good and evil, or Eden will surely be in peril. The only knowledge is the charm of love's protecting embrace, the only language is the speech of love, the only thought to think the loved one's thought--the absolute sacrifice of the whole self on the altar of love; but before the altar can be approached sorrow must be buried, a little weeping has to be done; the morrow shall see the offering presented,--"the might of love" will drown alike both hopes and fears.

=Women and Roses.= (Men and Women, 1855; Lyrics, 1863; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.) The singer dreams of a red rose tree with three roses on its branches; one is a faded rose whose petals are about to fall,--the bees do not notice it as they pass; the second is a rose in its perfection, its cup "ruby-rimmed," its heart "nectar-brimmed,"--the bee revels in its nectar; the third is a baby rosebud. And in these flowers the poet sees types of the women of the ages,--the past, the present, and the future: the shadows of the noble and beautiful, or wicked women in history and poetry dance round the dead rose; round the perfect rose of the present dance the spirits of the women of to-day; round the bud troop the little feet of maidens yet unborn; and all dance to one cadence round the dreamer's tree. The dance will go on as before when the dreamer has departed, roses will bloom then for other beholders, and other dreamers will see and remember their loveliness; the creations of the poet even must join the dance. As the love of the past, so the love to come, must link hands and trip to the measure.

=Women of Browning.= The best are Pompilia, in The Ring and the Book, the lady in the Inn Album, and the heroine in Colombe's Birthday; the others, good and bad, are the wife in Any Wife to any Husband; James Lee's Wife, Michal, Pippa, Mildred, Gwendolen, Polixena, Colombe, Anael, Domizia, "The Queen," Constance; and the heroines of The Laboratory, The Confessional, A Woman's Last Word, In a Year, A Light Woman, and A Forgiveness.

=Works of Robert Browning.= The new and uniform edition of the works of Robert Browning is published in sixteen volumes, small crown 8vo. This edition contains three portraits of Mr. Browning, at different periods of life, and a few illustrations. Contents of the volumes:--

Vol. 1. Pauline and Sordello.

" 2. Paracelsus and Strafford.

" 3. Pippa Passes, King Victor and King Charles, _The Return of the Druses_, and A Soul's Tragedy; with a portrait of Mr. Browning.

" 4. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, Colombe's Birthday, and Men and Women.

" 5. Dramatic Romances, and Christmas Eve and Easter Day.

" 6. Dramatic Lyrics, and Luria.

" 7. In a Balcony, and Dramatis Personæ; with a portrait of Mr. Browning.

" 8. The Ring and the Book: books i. to iv.; with two illustrations.

" 9. The Ring and the Book: books v. to viii.

" 10. The Ring and the Book: books ix. to xii.; with a portrait of Guido Franceschini.

" 11. Balaustion's Adventure, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society, and Fifine at the Fair.

" 12. Red Cotton Nightcap Country, and The Inn Album.

" 13. Aristophanes' Apology, including a Transcript from Euripides, being the Last Adventure of Balaustion, and The Agamemnon of Æschylus.

" 14. Pacchiarotto, and How he worked in Distemper; with other Poems; La Saisiaz and The Two Poets of Croisic.

" 15. Dramatic Idyls, first series; Dramatic Idyls, second series, and Jocoseria.

" 16. Ferishtah's Fancies, and Parleyings with certain People of Importance in their Day, with a portrait of Mr. Browning.

Also Mr. Browning's last volume, Asolando, Fancies and Facts.

=Worst of it, The.= (Dramatis Personæ, 1864.) A fleck on a swan is beauty spoiled; a speck on a mottled hide is nought. A man had angel fellowship with a young wife who proved false to him; he loves her still, and mourns that she ruined her soul in stooping to save his; he made her sin by fettering with a gold ring a soul which could not blend with his. He sorrows, not for his own loss, but that his swan must take the crow's rebuff. He desires her good, and hopes she may work out her penance, and reach heaven's purity at last. He will love on, but if they meet in Paradise, will pass nor turn his face.

=Xanthus.= (A Death in the Desert.) One of the disciples of St. John in attendance upon the dying apostle in the cave.

="You groped your way across my room."= (Ferishtah's Fancies.) The first line of the third lyric.

="You'll love me yet."= (Pippa Passes.) A song.

=Youth and Art.= (Dramatis Personæ, 1864.) A meditation on what might have been, had two young people who had the chance not missed it and lost it for ever. They lodged in the same street in Rome. The man was a sculptor who had dreams of demolishing Gibson some day, and putting up Smith to reign in his stead; the woman was a singer who hoped to trill bitterness into the cup of Grisi, and make her envious of Kate Brown. The warbler earned in those days as little by her voice as the chiseller by his work. They were poor, lived on a crust apiece, and for fun watched each other from their respective windows. She was evidently dying for an introduction to him; she fidgeted about with the window plants, and did her best to attract his attention in a quiet sort of way; she did not like his models always tripping up his stairs, which she could not ascend, and was glad to have the opportunity of showing off the foreign fellow who came to tune the piano. But life passed, he made no advances, and so in process of time she married a rich old lord, and he is a knight, R.A., and dines with the Prince. With all this show of success neither life is complete, neither soul has achieved the sole good of its earth wanderings. Their lives hang patchy and scrappy; they have not sighed, starved, feasted, despaired, and been happy. There was once the chance of these things; they were missed, and eternity cannot make good the loss. As for life "Love," as Browning is always telling us, "is the sole good of it." This poem may be compared with the moral of The Statue and the Bust. In the one case reasons of prudence and the restrictions of religion and society prevented the duke and the lady from following the inclinations of their hearts; in the other case mere worldly motives operated to the same end--the missing of the union of the actors' souls. In both cases the lives were spoiled. In Youth and Art the woman's character cuts a very poor figure: love is subordinated to her art, and that to the mere worldly advantage of a rich marriage and the opportunity of becoming "queen at bals-parés." The man was cold, not because his art made him so, but because of his overwhelming prudence, which we may be sure did not make him a Gibson after all.

NOTE.--Verse ii., Gibson, John (1790-1866), the sculptor, best known to fame by his "Tinted Venus." He died at Rome. Verse iii., Grisi, Giulietta (born in Milan, 1812), one of the most distinguished singers of our time She came to London in 1834, and at once took a leading position in the operatic world. Verse xv., bals-parés == dress-balls.

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