ases
which, previously right, now jar with the spiritual passion of
repentance. But his fury with her passes away into the passion of
despair--

My brain is drowned now--quite drowned: all I feel
Is ... is, at swift recurring intervals,
A hurry-down within me, as of waters
Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit:
There they go--whirls from a black fiery sea!

lines which must have been suggested to Browning by verses, briefer and
more intense, in Webster's

_Duchess of Malfi_. Even Ottima, lifted by her love, which purifies
itself in wishing to die for her lover, repents.

Not me,--to him, O God, be merciful!

Thus into this cauldron of sin Browning steals the pity of God. We know
they will be saved, so as by fire.

Then there is the poem on the story of _Cristina and Monaldeschi_; a
subject too odious, I think, to be treated lyrically. It is a tale of
love turned to hatred, and for good cause, and of the pitiless vengeance
which followed. Browning has not succeeded in it; and it may be so
because he could get no pity into it. The Queen had none. Monaldeschi
deserved none--a coward, a fool, and a traitor! Nevertheless, more might
have been made of it by Browning. The poem is obscure and wandering, and
the effort he makes to grip the subject reveals nothing but the weakness
of the grip. It ought not to have been published.

* * * * *

And now I turn to passions more delightful, that this chapter may close
in light and not in darkness--passions of the imagination, of the
romantic regions of the soul. There is, first, the longing for the
mystic world, the world beneath appearance, with or without reference to
eternity. Secondly, bound up with that, there is the longing for the
unknown, for following the gleam which seems to lead us onward, but we
know not where. Then, there is the desire, the deeper for its constant
suppression, for escape from the prison of a worldly society, from its
conventions and maxims of morality, its barriers of custom and rule,
into liberty and unchartered life. Lastly, there is that longing to
discover and enjoy the lands of adventure and romance which underlies
and wells upwards through so much of modern life, and which has never
ceased to send its waters up to refresh the world. These are romantic
passions. On the whole, Browning does not often touch them in their
earthly activities. His highest romance was beyond this world. It