been less wearing than his. The wife sums up the outcome of the discipline that has developed both, with the statement of the Ideal that has been their guiding star in the evolution of a better marriage, - Love is all and Death is nought." (Epilogue to 'Fifine at the Fair,' 1872.)

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P. 308. Tray. The speaker, thirsting for a song of heroism to stir his soul, dismisses those offered by two Bards, one of the heroism of war, the other of moral heroism, and gives the preference to the story of a brave dog who rescued a beggar child from drowning. With graphic touches, the scene of the rescue is placed before the reader, while the teller of the story hints that the instinct of the dog to save life, without regard to persons or consequences, is more worthy of admiration than the human reason which calculates so much upon consequences that it does nothing, and is even so blind to the moral aspect of the dog's act that it thinks by vivisection to discover the cause of the instinct. ('Dramatic Idyls,' 1879.)

P. 310. Cavalier Tunes. Three rousing songs rendering to the life the stalwart and confident temper of the uprising for King Charles against the Parliament. -7. Pym, John (1584-1643), leader of the Parliament party in every important movement, from the impeachments of Buckingham and Strafford, to the proceedings against their Royal Master himself.-14. Hampden, John (1594-1643), advocate for the people against the king's right to exact the ship-money tax. He took up arms in the civil war, falling in the engagement of Chalgrove Field against Prince Rupert.-15. Hazelrig, Sir Arthur, introduced Pym's bill of attainder against Strafford, and was one of the five members Charles tried to impeach in 1642. Died in the Tower, 1661. Fiennes, Nathaniel (1608–1669), a rigid Presbyterian and leading member of Parliament, in special favor with Cromwell. Young Harry, son of the Secretary of State to Charles I., Sir Henry Vane the elder, held views opposed to his father's, and distinguished himself as a Liberal. Beheaded in 1662 on a charge of high treason. 16. Rupert, Prince Robert, of Bavaria (1619-1682), son of Elizabeth, daughter of James I. He embraced the cause of his uncle, Charles I., and went to England at the beginning of the civil war, proving himself a brave but imprudent soldier.— II. 16. Noll's damned troopers. Oliver Cromwell's own company of horse, noted for their discipline and valor. Bells and Pomegranates, No. 3- Dramatic Lyrics,' 1842, III., originally entitled, 'My Wife Gertrude,' as now in 'Poems,' 1849. Set to music by C. V. Stanford.) P. 312. Before and After. 'Before' is an argument on the part of a third person in favor of two men fighting out a quarrel, on the grounds that the one in the wrong will never acknowledge his guilt, and the wronged one will not forgive as long as there is wrong to be resisted; while if the guilty man lives, life with its ever recurrent reminders of his deed will be constant torment for him, and thus he will be fitly punished, and if the guiltless man dies, he will but have borne one stroke more in the cause of truth and will win heaven. 'After' reflects the feelings of the man who survives after the quarrel — the wronged man, who realizes when it is too late, that death avails nought to erase either offence or disgrace. If only their old days of friendship could be recalled how easily all might be borne. ('Men and Women,' 1855.)

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P. 314. Hervé Riel. A ballad of the Breton hero who piloted the French ships into harbor and saved them from the English, and being urged to name his own reward asked leave to go and see his wife. Written in 1867, published 1871, in the Cornhill, because Browning desired to give a subscription to the Fund on behalf of the French after the siege of Paris by the Germans in 1870-71. He sent the 100 given by Mr. Smith for the poem to that fund. When the poem

appeared, the facts of the story were denied at St. Malo; but on the reports to the French Admiralty of the time being looked up, they were found to be correct. Browning was mistaken, however, in stating that Hervé Riel was granted but one day's holiday in which to see his wife, "La Belle Aurore,”- that is, if the Notes sur le Croisic (par Caillo Jeune) are correct: "Ce brave homme ne demanda pour récompense d'un service aussi signalé, qu'un congé absolu pour rejoindre sa femme, qu'il nommait la Belle Aurore." This fact was brought to the poet's notice by Dr. Furnivall, to whom he writes: "Where do you find that the holiday of Hervé Riel was for more than a day- his whole life-time? If it is to be found, I have strangely overlooked it." That he had "overlooked it" is evident from the following letter:

You are undoubtedly right, and I have mistaken the meaning of the phrase I suppose through thinking that, if the coasting-pilot's business ended with reaching land, he might claim as a right to be let go: otherwise, an absolute discharge seems to approach in importance a substantial reward. Still-truth above all things." (Poet-lore, Feb. 1896.) - -I. at the Hogue. "Cap la Hougue." 2. The English, etc. Louis XIV. had sent an expedition against England to restore James II. to the throne, when the English and Dutch fleets fell upon them and the French retired.-5. St. Malo. An island in the mouth of the Rance River.30. Plymouth Sound. The harbor of the Devonshire English naval station. 43. Tourville. The French naval leader. -46. Malouins. Inhabitants of St. Malo.50. Grève. The dangerous sands left bare by the ebbing tide. — 53. Solidor. The fort defending the bay of St. Michel. (Pacchiarotto with other Poems,' 1876.)

P. 318. In a Balcony presents in three dramatic scenes a crisis in the lives of three human beings, ending tragically for two of them. The dramatic motive is the conflict between truth on the part of Norbert, and dissembling policy on the part of Constance, who winning her way loses all she thought to have gained and more, while had Norbert's straightforward course been followed, all would have been gained for both. As it is, Constance, misunderstanding the true nature, both of the Queen and of Norbert, tries to convince Norbert that if he should now ask her hand of the Queen, from whom he has just won such high favor on account of his services, that he might aspire to ask of her anything, even to the sharing of her crown the revulsion of feeling will be so great upon the discovery that all was for the sake of Constance and not primarily for her, that not only will she not grant his request, but his own future prospects will be ruined. Rather than this, Constance would have their love remain unannounced, but he will not consent to anything less than a frank avowal to all the world of his love, and is ready to rely on the justice of the Queen to grant him the reward he chooses. Against his better judgment, he finally submits to follow the advice of Constance so far as to flatter the Queen by insinuating that he asks for Constance, because she is as near as he dare approach to the Queen. When Constance learns that the Queen has mistaken Norbert's dissembling for an avowal of love to herself, that she is overwhelmed with joy, and how great her sufferings have been through the starving of her affections, with sympathies roused and with fears for the consequences if the Queen finds out the mistake, she tries to force Norbert, whose character she still fails fully to comprehend, into actually giving himself to the Queen. Norbert now shows himself the champion of truth at any cost, but too late. The Queen is undeceived, but cannot forgive the deception. Constance, at last, learns to know Norbert as he really is, and her love reaches a height worthy of his. 130. Rubens (1577-1640), the greatest of the Flemish school of painters. ('Men and Women,' 1855-)

P. 339. Old Pictures in Florence is a plea for the catholic appreciation of all exponents and schools of art as related parts in the whole plan of man's soulgrowth, and, especially, for the due praise of those early painters whose decaying work is still unapprehended, yet who were the pioneers in the development of the perfected art of the great Italian Masters. This is expressed in the course of the spontaneous soliloquy of a genuine art-critic whose picture-collecting is a labor of love. His delight in Giotto's bell-tower, aspiring above the beauty of Florence on a certain warm March morning, provokes these thoughts, also the reproaches he sportively addresses to the ghosts of the artists he is so alone in understanding that they have not helped him to ferret out their lost art treasures. Even his adored, great Giotto has let another discover a "certain precious little tablet" he will not yet give up hoping to secure, and in anticipation of which he closes his musings with a prophecy of Florence freed from the Austrian yoke, celebrating her liberty by no noisy demonstration, but by sympathetically correlating the historic evolutions of art and life, attributing the fruitful periods to the Republic, the sterile to Monarchy, and carrying on the unfinished work of Giotto to a new pinnacle of glory.-15. Bell-tower Giotto raised. The Campanile of Santa Maria in Florence, founded 1334, from designs and models of Giotto's which were his last public work. - 64. Da Vincis derive from Dellos. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) representing the fullest scope of artistic power; Niccolo Dello, who painted cassoni, in the style of the bird-painter Uccelli, with careful perspective, representing the power of art in little. — 69. Stefano, a pupil of Giotto's, called the "Ape of Nature" for his improved color and softness.-97. Sit like Theseus. As represented in the sculptures from the Parthenon now in the British Museum. -98. Son of Priam. The Paris of the Ægina sculptures, kneeling and drawing a bow, now in the Munich Glyptothek. 101. Slay your snake like Apollo. See Browning's own note. — 102. Niobe's the grander. The sculptured Niobe mourning for her children, now in the Uffizi, Florence.— 103. Racers' frieze. From the Parthe104. Dying Alexander. The sculptured head, so called, now in Florence. -134. Thy one work . . . done at a stroke. When the envoy of Benedict IX., visiting Giotto, asked for a drawing to carry as a proof of his skill to that Pope, Giotto took a sheet of paper and a brushful of red paint, and resting his elbow on his hip, to form a sort of compass, with one turn of his hand drew a circle so perfect that it was a marvel to behold, whence the proverb "rounder than the O of Giotto." -179. Nicolo (1207-1278) and Cimabue (1240-1302), Giotto's teacher, pioneers both of a more natural art.— -182. Ghiberti, Lorenzo (1381-1455), and Ghirlandajo or Domenico Bigordi, the great Bigordi, line 201 (1449–1494).198. Dree. Endure, Anglo Saxon dreógan. - -202. Sandro. Filipepi or Botticelli, 1457-1515.203. Lippino (1460-1505), son of Fra Lippo Lippi, "wronged" because his work was credited to others. 203. Angelico (1387-1455), greatest of monastic painters. -204. Gaddi (1300-1366), Giotto's pupil who carried out his plans for erecting the bell-tower. — 205. intonaco. Rough plaster cast. 207. Monaco (about 1410), a monastic painter. -210. Pollajolo (1430-1498), first artist to study anatomy. — 215. Baldovinetti (1422-1499), distinguished for his minuteness. -217. Margheritone (1236-1313), among the first to show some departure from the Byzantine manner. Crucifix painting was his specialty. His sour expression refers to mixed disdain and despair excited in him by Giotto's innovations, which made him take to his death-bed in vexation. The epithet "pollclawed parrot" applied to him by Browning seems to be a reminiscence from Shakespeare: 2 Henry IV. ii. 4, 282. The pictures described in stanzas twentyseven and twenty-eight, Browning possessed. — 230. Calm as Zeno. The first stoic

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philosopher.-232. Carlino, Carlo Dolci (1616–1686), whose pictures were smoothed into lifelessness. — 236. A certain tablet. This, Browning wrote Dr. Corson, "was a famous 'Last Supper' mentioned by Vasari, gone astray long ago from the Church of S. Spirito: it turned up, according to report, in some obscure corner, while I was in Florence, and was at once acquired by some stranger. I saw it, genuine or no, a work of great beauty.” - 242. Ognissanti. All Saints Church.. 244. Detur Amanti. Let it be given to the loving one. -245. Kohinoor. The celebrated diamond, "Mountain of light," presented to Queen Victoria in 1850; the Jewel of Giamschid, its only rival, belonging to the king of Persia. 249. A certain dotard. Joseph Wenzel Radetzky (1766-1858), governor of Italy for the Austrians. For the allusions in stanza thirty-three, see, as Browning suggests, Mrs. Browning's 'Casa Guidi Windows,' Part I. — 260. Quod videas ante, "which you may have seen before."-264. Orgagna, Andrea (1315-1376), an artist who derived from Giotto yet without imitation. - 271. Chimæra. A three-headed monster, one indeed," says Hesiod, "of a grim-visaged lion, one of a goat, and another of a serpent,". - an unnatural birth.—275. Half-told tale. Chaucer's unfinished story of Cambuscan in the 'Squire's Tale.' - 277. Beccaccia. Woodcock. 279. Fifty braccia, etc. The Campanile, as Giotto planned it, was to have been crowned by a spire fifty braccia (cubits) high. ('Men and Women,' 1855.) P. 347. Bishop Blougram's Apology is made over the wine after dinner, to defend himself from the criticisms of a doubting young literary man, who despises him because he considers that he cannot be true to his convictions in conforming to the doctrines of the Catholic Church. He builds up his defence from the proposition that the problem of life is not to conceive ideals which cannot be realized, but to find what is and make it as fair as possible. The bishop admits his unbelief, but being free to choose either belief or unbelief, since neither can be proved wholly true, chooses belief as his guiding principle, because he finds it the best for making his own life and that of others happy and comfortable in this world. Once having chosen faith on this ground, the more absolute the form of faith, the more potent the results; besides, the bishop has that desire of domination in his nature, which the authorization of the Church makes safer for him. To Gigadibs' objection that were his nature nobler, he would not count this success, he replies he is as God made him, and can but make the best of himself as he is. To the objection that he addresses himself to grosser estimators than he ought, he replies that all the world is interested in the fact that a man of his sense and learning, too, still believes at this late hour. He points out the impossibility of his following an ideal like Napoleon's, for conceding the merest chance that doubt may be wrong, and judgment to follow this life, he would not dare to slaughter men as Napoleon had for such slight ends. As for Shakespeare's ideal, he can't write plays like his if he wanted to, but he has realized things in his life which Shakespeare only imagined, and which he presumes Shakespeare would not have scorned to have realized in his life, judging from his fulfilled ambition to be a gentleman of property at Stratford. He admits, however, that enthusiasm in belief, such as Luther's, would be far preferable to his own way of living, and after this, enthusiasm in unbelief, which he might have if it were not for that plaguy chance that doubt may be wrong. Gigadibs interposes that the risk is as great for cool indifference as for bold doubt. Blougram disputes that point by declaring that doubts prove faith, and that man's free will preferring to have faith true to having doubt true tips the balance in favor of faith and shows that man's instinct or aspiration is toward belief, that unquestioning belief, such as that of the Past, has no moral effect on man, but faith which knows itself through doubt is a moral spur. Thus the arguments from

expediency, instinct, and consciousness, all bear on the side of faith and convince the bishop that it is safer to keep his faith intact from his doubts. He then proves that Gigadibs, with all his assumption of superiority in his frankness of unbelief, is in about the same position as himself, since the moral law which he follows has no surer foundation than the religious law the bishop follows, both founded upon instinct. The bishop closes as he began, with the consciousness that rewards for his way of living are of a substantial nature, while Gigadibs has nothing to show for his frankness, and does not hesitate to say that Gigadibs will consider his conversation with the bishop the greatest honor ever conferred upon him. The poet adds some lines, somewhat apologetic for the bishop, intimating that his arguments were suited to the calibre of his critic, and that with a profounder critic he would have made a more serious defence. Speaking of a review of this poem by Cardinal Wiseman, Browning says in a letter to a friend, printed in Poet-lore, May, 1896, "The most curious notice I ever had was from Cardinal Wiseman on Blougram — i.e., himself. It was in the Rambler, a Catholic journal of those days, and certified to be his by Father Prout, who said nobody else would have dared put it in." This review praises the poem for its " fertility of illustration and felicity of argument," and says that " though utterly mistaken in the very groundwork of religion, though starting from the most unworthy notions of the work of a Catholic bishop, and defending a self-indulgence every honest man must feel to be disgraceful, [it] is yet in its way triumphant."-10. Brother Pugin (1810-1852), an eminent English architect, who, becoming a Catholic, designed many cathedrals for the Catholic Church. -34. Corpus Christi Day, Thursday after Trinity Sunday, when the Feast of the Sacrament of the Altar is celebrated. -45. Che, what. — 54. Count D'Orsay (1798-1852), a clever Frenchman, distinguished as a man of fashion, and for his drawings of horses.-113. Parma's pride, the Jerome; 114. Correggio; 117. Modenese. In the Ducal academy at Parma, one of the most important paintings is the St. Jerome by Correggio. He was born in the territory of Modena, Italy. 184. A chorus-ending from Euripides. The Greek dramatist, Euripides (480 B.C.-406 B.C.), frequently ended his choruses with this thought - sometimes with slight variations in expression: "The Gods perform many things contrary to our expectations, and those things which we looked for are not accomplished; but God hath brought to pass things unthought of." — 316. Hildebrand (Gregory VII., 1073-85), claimed the temporal power of the Popes and the authority of the Papacy over sovereigns.— 411. Schelling, distinguished German philosopher (1775-1854).— 516. Giulio Romano (1492–1546), Italian painter, referred to in Winter's Tale,' v. ii. Dowland, English musician, praised for his lute playing in a sonnet in 'The Passionate Pilgrim,' attributed to Shakespeare. — 588. Strauss (1808-74), one of the Tübingen philosophers, author of a Rationalistic Life of Jesus.'-715. King Bomba, means King Puffcheek, King Liar, King Knave, a sobriquet given to Ferdinand II., late king of the Two Sicilies. Lazzaroni, Naples beggars, named from Lazarus.-716. Antonelli, Cardinal, secretary of Pope Pius IX.-728. Naples liquefaction. The supposed miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius the Martyr. A small quantity of it is preserved in a crystal reliquary in the great church at Naples, and when brought into the presence of the head of the saint it melts. -744. Fichte (1762-1814), celebrated German metaphysician. He defined God as the "moral order of the universe." -877. Pastor est tui Dominus, the Lord is your shepherd.—915. Anacreon, Greek lyric poet of the sixth century B.C. -972. In partibus, Episcopus, etc. "In countries where the Roman Catholic faith is not regularly established, as it was not in England before the time of Cardinal Wiseman, there were no bishops of sees in the kingdom itself, but they took their titles from heathen lands" (Dr. Berdoe). (Men and Women,' 1855.)