s and capes, and midmost glimmers one
Like tarnished gold, and what they say is doubt,
And what they think is fear, and what suspends
The breath in them is not the plaster-patch
Time disengages from the painted wall
Where Rafael moulderingly bids adieu,
Nor tick of the insect turning tapestry
To dust, which a queen's finger traced of old;
But some word, resonant, redoubtable,
Of who once felt upon his head a hand
Whereof the head now apprehends his foot."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 44: The name _Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ is formed from Hohen
Schwangau, one of the castles of the late king of Bavaria.]

[Footnote 45: James Thomson on _The Ring and the Book_.]

[Footnote 46: I find in a letter of Browning, which Mrs Orr has printed
in her _Life and Letters of Browning_ (1891), a reference to "what the
editor of the _Edinburgh_ calls my eulogium on the Second Empire--which
it is not, any more than what another wiseacre affirms it to be--'a
scandalous attack on the old constant friend of England'--it is just
what I imagine the man might, if he pleased, say for himself."]

20. FIFINE AT THE FAIR.

[Published in 1872 (_Poetical Works_, Vol. XI. pp. 211-343).]

_Fifine at the Fair_ is a monologue at once dramatic and philosophical.
Its arguments, like those of _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_, are part
truth, part sophistry. The poem is prefaced by a motto from Moliere's
_Don Juan_, in which Donna Elvira suggests to her husband, with a bitter
irony, the defence he ought to make for himself. Don Juan did not take
the hint. Browning has done so. The genesis of the poem and the special
form it has assumed are further explained by the following passage from
Mrs. Orr:--

"Mr. Browning was, with his family, at Pornic, many years
ago, and there saw the gypsy who is the original of Fifine.
His fancy was evidently set roaming by her audacity, her
strength--the contrast which she presented to the more
spiritual types of womanhood; and this contrast eventually
found expression in a poetic theory of life, in which these
opposite types and their corresponding modes of attraction
became the necessary complement of each other. As he laid
down the theory, Mr. Browning would be speaking in his own
person. But he would turn into someone else in the act of
working it out--for it insensibly carried with it a plea for
yielding to thos