Hugo's _Chatiments_ and
_Napoleon le Petit_, and from Lord Beaconsfield's _couleur de rose_
portrait, in _Endymion_, of the nominally pseudonymous Prince Florestan.
It is neither a denunciation nor a eulogy, nor yet altogether an
impartial delineation. It is an "apology," with much the same object as
those of Bishop Blougram or Mr. Sludge, the Medium: "by no means to
prove black white or white black, or to make the worse appear the better
reason, but to bring a seeming monster and perplexing anomaly under the
common laws of nature, by showing how it has grown to be what it is, and
how it can with more or less of self-illusion reconcile itself to
itself."[45]

The poem is very hard reading, perhaps as a whole the hardest
intellectual exercise in Browning's work, but this arises not so much
from the obscurity of its ideas and phrases as from the peculiar
complexity of its structure. To apprehend it we must put ourselves at a
certain standpoint, which is not easy to reach. The monologue as a whole
represents, as we only learn at the end, not a direct speech to a real
person in England, but a mere musing over a cigar in the palace in
France. It is divided into two distinct sections, which need to be kept
clearly apart in the mind. The first section, up to the line, more than
half-way through, "Something like this the unwritten chapter reads," is
a direct self-apology. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau puts forward what he
represents as his theory of practice. It is founded on the principle of
_laisser-faire_, and resolves itself into conformity: concurrence with
things as they are, with society as it is. He finds existing
institutions, not indeed perfect, but sufficiently good for practical
purposes; and he conceives his mission to be that of a builder on
existing foundations, that of a social conservator, not of a social
reformer: "to do the best with the least change possible." On his own
showing, he has had this single aim in view from first to last, and on
this ground, that of expediency, he explains and defends every act of
his tortuous and vacillating policy. He has had his ambitions and ideals
of giving freedom to Italy, for example, but he has set them aside in
the interests of his own people and for what he holds to be their more
immediate needs. So far the direct apology. He next proceeds to show
what he might have done, but did not, the ideal course as it is held;
commenting the while, as "Sagacity," upon the imaginary