Browning, turning from the proofs of the intellect to the "still small voice" of the heart, ventured to declare upon its authority that God was love. Not more than a small proportion of the world has yet advanced to the plane of thought expressed thus powerfully seventy years ago. It is interesting to note in this connection that when Dr. Furnivall asked Browning some questions as to his attitude toward Darwin, Browning replied in a letter: "In reality, all that seems proved in Darwin's scheme was a conception familiar to me from the beginning: see in Paracelsus' the progressive development from senseless matter to organized, until man's appearance.” Browning has just as faithfully portrayed the outer man, Paracelsus. He has glozed over none of his faults, his vanity, his bumptiousness, his scorn of his fellow-men, his license, but he has brought out the inmost truth within his soul and shown how his faults were the necessary defects of an ardent nature carving out a new path in an unsympathetic environment, and failing of the attainment of his cherished ideal in an age which had not yet been made wise to know that absolute knowledge is beyond man's ken. There are still subtle echoes of Shelley to be found in this poem, witness Aprile's lovely song, - but those which Paracelsus sings touch a note of fascinating originality. The beautiful "Over the Sea our Galleys went" is one of those inevitable creations where art seems to have passed through its apprenticeship as art and reached a sphere where art becomes not nature but the natural, better described by the poet himself in "Transcendentalism," "He with a look-you vents a brace of rhymes, The closing speeches are convincing examples of how so-called dull philosophy may be made "musical as is Apollo's lute," if the poet be wielder of rich verse harmonies and magnificent symbols. Sordello" and "Strafford," although the next of the young poet's works in chronological order, have, on account of considerations of space, been put together in a single volume. "Sordello" falls naturally into the first period of Browning's work, when it seemed necessary for him to disburden himself of the seething philosophies that tormented his brain, and when the dramatic force of his genius was still somewhat in abeyance. In "Strafford" the dramatic ground is firmly broken, and by the time" Pippa Passes" appears he is able to touch the highest pinnacles of dramatic art in such a scene as that of Sebald and Ottima, or in the characterizing of the little wicked street girls. He had created his first woman in "Strafford," Lady Carlisle, and is so pleased with the work of his hands that now he makes a drama in which everything hangs upon the loving heart of a little girl, while revolving round her are women of various degrees of moral development, from the selfish, sensual Ottima to the pure-souled Phene. The poet has often been criticised for making Pippa talk Browningese, but certainly the strong impression left upon the mind after reading the play is that she is a childlike presence; and upon looking more closely at her, it will be found that all her thoughts are eminently childlike. She hopes she will have a fine day for her holiday, because it is her one day and matters much for her, though to the great ones of Asolo it makes little difference, because all days bring happiness to them. She longs for love such as that these great ones know, the lovers, the bride, the mother and son,and since she can have no such love will be satisfied with God's love, the best after all. How natural it is that she should spend her holiday trying to imagine herself in the places of those who are so seemingly unapproachable, and wondering if it might ever chance that she could touch their lives. She cannot by any possibility be considered responsible for the dainty workmanship and delicate thought of the songs she sings, which we may presume she had learned from some one. To take as a last test her manner of expressing herself, her speech will not, we think, be found to contain philosophy beyond the range of a bright child, or poetical fancies beyond her imagination. She pictures day boiling up over night's brim, and plays with the sunbeams caught in her wash-basin, and being like all children, watches the reflections of the sun in the water dance on the ceiling. The one slight ground for the criticism rests upon the fact that she occasionally uses words and phrases suggestive of certain mannerisms in speech, but that is something no poet has ever succeeded entirely in disguising. Even Shakespeare's Caliban sometimes talks like the author of the sonnets. Ottima is drawn with a few broad, clear strokes. A woman 66 'magnificent in sin," indeed, because so courageous that she awakens the same sort of respect Lady Macbeth does in contrast with the cowardliness of Macbeth or Sebald. All sympathy would go to Sebald for his repentance of his crime when he hears the pure voice and song of Pippa ; but to repudiate the woman he has loved and regard only his own salvation shows that his love had been false, makes his crime doubly horrible, and reveals the depths of self ishness in his nature. Ottima, on the other hand, proves herself true to her passions. She hates Luca in death as she hated him in life; her love for Sebald never wavers an instant, even in the face of his crime, while the sincerity of her repentance as well as her unselfishness comes out forcefully at the end, when she exclaims, "Not me to him, O God, be merciful." For dramatic intensity it is one of the most tremendous scenes in all literature. The morbid dwelling upon the literal facts of the murder by Sebald, the efforts of Ottima to divert his mind, now attempting to incite his love by recalling past episodes in their life, now distracting his attention toward trivial matters; the nervous rapid speech, unvarnished by any ornamentation not the legitimate outgrowth of passion - all combine to make of this scene a masterful soul-stirring piece of realism. The same qualities, though not in such perfection, are found in the other dramatic episodes of the play, which taken all together present a variety of human types wherein good and evil are mixed; and some who are to all appearances utterly depraved, like the villain Bluphocks or the fiendish instigator of the cruel practical joke upon Jules. The construction of this play does not follow the ordinary rules of unity, nevertheless it has its own sort of unity. It may be described as a series of dramatic episodes, each giving some crucial point in the moral development of the characters portrayed. The lives of the characters in the episodes are not intricately interwoven, as with the persons of an ordinary drama, in fact, they do not touch: but this gives a certain vraisemblance to the life in any town, where tragedies are born and die while the world wags on unknowing. It is the sweet influence of Pippa that binds them all to -- gether, through her unconscious power of awakening them at these crucial moments in their lives. She is the all-conquering power of goodness dissipating evil impulses, whether springing from the nature of those she persuades with her artless eloquence, as with Sebald and Ottima and Luigi, or induced by machinations from outside, as with Jules. While thus flooding the lives of others with light, she is herself threatened with the greatest danger. Diabolic forces are working against her, and it is a beautiful piece of dramatic justice that the last of her good offices on her simply spent holiday was the arousing to a sense of his own iniquity the selfish Monsignor, who for personal greed plotted her ruin. Thus in saving him she saved herself, and goes home, the same simple child of the morning, somewhat weary, and wondering if she could ever touch the lives of the very people she has saved from` moral ruin. in This was the second piece of purely imaginative work done by Browning, and in its power of charactercreation is infinitely ahead of his first attempt "Pauline." In King Victor and King Charles" he goes back to history for his subject, and according to the habit which grew upon him chose a historic episode about which ordinary readers know little. Though the subject cannot compare in interest with that of Strafford," it has dramatic possibilities, and Browning has made the most of them. It differs from Browning's other work on historical subjects in that the interest is purely personal, the action in the drama, just as in life, not having any larger social bearings. A great historical movement is centred, for example, in the persons of Strafford and Pym, but King Victor's abdication was an incident which, according to all the " |