papers under his arm,
walked off, worked hard, finished the Life, and it came out to time in
1836, to Forster's great relief, and passed under his name." Professor
Gardiner, the historian, was of the opinion from internal evidence that
the Life was more Browning's than Forster's. He said to Furnivall, "It
is not a historian's conception of the character but a poet's. I am
certain that it's not Forster's. Yes, it makes mistakes in facts and
dates, but, it has got the man--in the main." In this opinion Furnivall
concurs. Of the last paragraph in the history he exclaims, "I could
swear it was Browning's":--The paragraph in question sums up the
character of Strafford and is interesting in this connection, as giving
hints, though not the complete picture of the Strafford of the Drama.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Estes and Lauriat, Boston, Mass.

"A great lesson is written in the life of this truly extraordinary
person. In the career of Strafford is to be sought the justification of
the world's 'appeal from tyranny to God.' In him Despotism had at length
obtained an instrument with mind to comprehend, and resolution to act
upon, her principles in their length and breadth,--and enough of her
purposes were effected by him, to enable mankind to 'see as from a tower
the end of all.' I cannot discern one false step in Strafford's public
conduct, one glimpse of a recognition of an alien principle, one
instance of a dereliction of the law of his being, which can come in to
dispute the decisive result of the experiment, or explain away its
failure. The least vivid fancy will have no difficulty in taking up the
interrupted design, and by wholly enfeebling, or materially emboldening,
the insignificant nature of Charles; and by according some half-dozen
years of immunity to the 'fretted tenement' of Strafford's 'fiery
soul',--contemplate then, for itself, the perfect realization of the
scheme of 'making the prince the most absolute lord in Christendom.'
That done,--let it pursue the same course with respect to Eliot's noble
imaginings, or to young Vane's dreamy aspirings, and apply in like
manner a fit machinery to the working out the projects which made the
dungeon of the one a holy place, and sustained the other in his
self-imposed exile.--The result is great and decisive! It establishes,
in renewed force, those principles of political conduct which have
endured, and must continue to endure, 'like truth from age to age.'" The
history, on the