tolerant and forgiving through
intellectual breadth and power. Pompilia is the image of natural
goodness and of its power. A spotless soul, though she is passed through
hell, enables her, without a trained intellect, with ignorance of all
knowledge, and with as little vanity as Balaustion, to give as clear and
firm a judgment of right and wrong. She is as tolerant, as full of
excuses for the wrong thing, as forgiving, as Balaustion, but it is by
the power of goodness and love in her, not by that of intellect.
Browning never proved his strength more than when he made these two, in
vivid contrast, yet in their depths in harmony; both equal, though so
far apart, in noble womanhood. Both are beyond convention; both have a
touch of impulsive passion, of natural wildness, of flower-beauty. Both
are, in hours of crisis, borne beyond themselves, and mistress of the
hour. Both mould men, for their good, like wax in their fingers. But
Pompilia is the white rose, touched with faint and innocent colour; and
Balaustion is the wild pomegranate flower, burning in a crimson of love
among the dark green leaves of steady and sure thought, her powers
latent till needed, but when called on and brought to light, flaming
with decision and revelation.

In this book we see her in her youth, her powers as yet untouched by
heavy sorrow. In the next, in _Aristophanes' Apology_, we first find her
in matured strength, almost mastering Aristophanes; and afterwards in
the depth of grief, as she flies with her husband over the seas to
Rhodes, leaving behind her Athens, the city of her heart, ruined and
enslaved. The deepest passion in her, the patriotism of the soul, is all
but broken-hearted. Yet, she is the life and support of all who are with
her; even a certain gladness breaks forth in her, and she secures for
all posterity the intellectual record of Athenian life and the images,
wrought to vitality, of some of the greater men of Athens. So we possess
her completely. Her life, her soul, its growth and strength, are laid
before us. To follow her through these two poems is to follow their
poetry. Whenever we touch her we touch imagination. _Aristophanes'
Apology_ is illuminated by Balaustion's eyes. A glimpse here and there
of her enables us to thread our way without too great weariness through
a thorny undergrowth of modern and ancient thought mingled together on
the subject of the Apology.

In _Balaustion's Adventure_ she tells her tale, and reci