he dreaded was reprieve, a discreet forgiveness that would have left him two alternatives, disgrace or suicide. Here his interlocutor interposes an orthodox objection-it needs more courage to disobey God's canon against self-slaughter than to bear reputed disgrace. Now comes the effectiveness of the Browning interpolation. A week after the conversation, Clive destroyed himself. His last words were, 'fearfully courageous!' So had the opium-drugged man designated what he did in a fit of depression, so had he clung to a possible interpretation of his friend's words as some desperate excuse.

Muléykeh is a touching story of an Arab's pride in his steed. It comes refreshingly after the melancholy of Clive. The pathos of Muléykeh is bearable.

Pietro of Abano reads drearily after these vivid and warm-blooded poems. The 'lilt' is of course extremely clever and well-suited to the quasi-comic treatment. Pietro of Abano (a suburb of Padua) was a sort of inferior Paracelsus of the thirteenth century, of whom it is recorded that he was prohibited the drinking of milk. Browning takes this milk as parabolic, or at least suggestive, of the human kindness which a misunderstood benefactor of man

kind has to forego. One night, the persecuted philosopher was accosted by a Greek who offered him gratitude and love if he would endow him with his powerful secrets. Pietro seems to comply, muttering the first half of a Benedicite as a charm. self-seeking Greek begins by applying the secret of

The

Good the fruit of Evil to the furtherance of his own schemes for obtaining wealth from his fellows. The method succeeds. In a year's time, Pietro calls upon the Greek for his payment. But the Greek prefers to postpone it till Pietro has endowed him with power to subjugate men. Power becomes his, and, at the height of his success, Pietro again asks for gratitude. This is again deferred, on the plea that the Greek must first touch the top of the ladder, and wield power over souls as well as bodies. His request is granted and he is Pope. Pietro comes again, and is about to be unceremoniously ousted, when he utters the latter half of the Benedicite. spell is broken, and the Greek finds that Pietro only gave him an instant's dream of greatness, to test the sincerity of his promised gratitude. Pietro's wouldbe disciple is dismissed, Browning telling him that magic is unnecessary to one so well able to rule the masses by 'cleverness uncurbed by conscience.' The conclusion is cynical, but Browning regards his version of Abano's legend1 as a mere vagary, a throw of 'sportive fancy-dice.'

The

Doctor - renders the Talmudic tradition of Satan married to a virago who is more than his match. The touch of humour in Satan's medical son refusing the princess and her dowry on account of his father's unfortunate matrimonial experience is Browning's after-gust to the story.

Pan and Luna is in some respects one of Brown

1 Cp. Grimms' The Fisherman and his Wife.

ing's most perfect gems. Keats could not have lingered more lovingly about the Girl-moon's orbed loveliness. Browning averts Virgil's somewhat equivocal conclusion of the myth by acknowledging himself gratefully content to rest on the five consummate ideas,

‘Arcadia, night, a cloud, Pan, and the moon !’

The epilogue to Dramatic Idyls, with its contrasted presentments of poet - nature, presentments which after all are probably in Browning's eyes but the inevitable two sides of a shield, recalls the Epilogue to Pacchiarotto.

Jocoseria, 1883 (Vol. XV.), is a volume of miscellaneous poems, made up of Browning's twin moods, gravity and jest. The Joco-Seria of Melander (16—)1 suggested the title. Browning's personality is strong in Jocoseria, on his capriccioso side, as in Solomon and Balkis, and on the side of his creed, as in the last utterance of Jochanan Hakkadosh. Individuality, not poetical beauty, characterises the book, though it contains a leaven of imaginative exaltation in Ixion and Cristina and Monaldeschi.

The prelude, 'Wanting is-what?' expresses the vivifying, transmuting power of love in a life.

Donald is a striking but improbable story with a somewhat unfair application. A short introduction

1 A reference was made in the Notes on Paracelsus to this jestbook, in which, too, a version of the story immortalised in The Pied Piper appears under the title of De Diabolo horrenda historia.

(time, Long Vacation; place, a Highland Bothie), ushers in the story, as told, in another bothie, by the odious protagonist. 'Donald' met a stag on a narrow way, above a precipice, where they could neither turn nor pass each other. The man lay down, and the stag, with responsive intelligence, was daintily stepping over him, when Donald, without a vestige of a sense of honour, stabbed him. They rolled together down the ravine, and Donald had to repent his deed for the rest of his life. Browning tells the tale as a retort to those who maintain that Sport educes manly virtues. He calls the wretched ingrate, 'sportsman first, man after.' As a matter of fact, the treacherous brutality was not sport any more than the animal's action was nature, and Donald's meanness would be as abhorrent to honest sportsmen as to Browning himself.

Solomon and Balkis is an extravaganza of sound and sense. Solomon and the Queen of Sheba hold high converse on the ivory throne, till the lady, jerking the hand of the King, brings into sight 'the truth-compelling Name' on the royal ring. It then comes out that Solomon's boasted delight in the companionship of wise men is largely tinctured with vanity and love of flattery, and that Balkis is not to be taken literally when she professes a disinterested eagerness for the companionship of the simply good. She is a frivolous, but fascinating 'cat,' but Solomon is the very Solomon of history.

Cristina and Monaldeschi, though it may be justly accused of obscurity, resembles in dramatic fervency

Cristina,

the grand poems of Men and Women. 'King' of Sweden, the only child of Gustavus Adolphus, abdicated after four years' rule. She was extraordinarily brilliant, but restless and fickle. Her voice and bearing were manly, and she occasionally assumed masculine garb. Marchese Monaldeschi, her Secretary, disgracefully divulged her secrets, and his violent execution was at least as much in punishment for political treachery as for waning personal devotion. Louis XIV. had assigned Cristina the palace of Fontainebleau for a residence, and there, on November 1st, 1657, she had Monaldeschi killed in the Gallery of Stags. Monaldeschi, coward as well as traitor, wore beneath his clothes a shirt of mail, which prolonged his death. An hour's previous conversation between him and Cristina actually took place, she pacing the gallery, while he, kneeling and prostrating himself, implored her to spare his life. Monaldeschi was buried in the church of Avon, a neighbouring village. Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli is a lonely woman's cry for love. The poem represents a strong, but baffled nature, and so far reflects the general impression received from Mary's life. Whether Browning, following Fuseli's biographer, is not unjust to her in this particular episode of her career, does not, in the poet's case, very much matter. The poem rests on

its truth to nature, not to Mary Wollstonecraft.

Adam, Lilith, and Eve is excellent fooling, where, like Shakspere's, the serious lies near the jocular. Eve confesses to her husband that her superficial