e sympathy with the fortunes of mankind. Nay, from
her lofty station she is the teacher of truth and love and justice, in
splendid prophecy. It is with an impassioned exaltation, worthy of Sibyl
and Pythoness in one, of divine wisdom both Roman and Greek, that she
cries to the companions of her voyage words which embody her soul and
the soul of all the wise and loving of the earth, when they act for men;
bearing their action, thought and feeling beyond man to God in man--

Speak to the infinite intelligence,
Sing to the everlasting sympathy!

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVI

_THE RING AND THE BOOK_

When Browning published _The Ring and the Book_, he was nearly fifty
years old. All his powers (except those which create the lyric) are used
therein with mastery; and the ease with which he writes is not more
remarkable than the exultant pleasure which accompanies the ease. He
has, as an artist, a hundred tools in hand, and he uses them with
certainty of execution. The wing of his invention does not falter
through these twelve books, nor droop below the level at which he began
them; and the epilogue is written with as much vigour as the prologue.
The various books demand various powers. In each book the powers are
proportionate to the subject; but the mental force behind each exercise
of power is equal throughout. He writes as well when he has to make the
guilty soul of Guido speak, as when the innocence of Pompilia tells her
story. The gain-serving lawyers, each distinctly isolated, tell their
worldly thoughts as clearly as Caponsacchi reveals his redeemed and
spiritualised soul. The parasite of an aristocratic and thoughtless
society in _Tertium Quid_ is not more vividly drawn than the Pope, who
has left in his old age the conventions of society behind him, and
speaks in his silent chamber face to face with God. And all the minor
characters--of whom there are a great number, ranging from children to
old folk, from the peasant to the Cardinal, through every class of
society in Italy--are drawn, even when they are slashed out in only
three lines, with such force, certainty, colour and life that we know
them better than our friends. The variousness of the product would seem
to exclude an equality of excellence in drawing and invention. But it
does not. It reveals and confirms it. The poem is a miracle of
intellectual power.

This great length, elaborate detail, and the repetition