ndscape symbolism and the history of some dark
emprise, the real nature of which is altogether undiscoverable. "Count
Gismond," again, is the story of a combat in the lists at Aix in
Provence, in which a knight vindicates a lady's honour with his lance,
and slays her traducer at her feet. But this is a dramatic monologue
like any other, and only accidentally mediaeval. "The Heretic's Tragedy:
A Middle Age Interlude," is mediaeval without being romantic. It
recounts the burning, at Paris, A.D. 1314, of Jacques du Bourg-Molay,
Grand Master of the Templars; and purports to be a sort of canticle, with
solo and chorus, composed two centuries after the event by a Flemish
canon of Ypres, to be sung at hocktide and festivals. The childishness
and devout buffoonery of an old miracle play are imitated here, as in
Swinburne's "Masque of Queen Bersabe." This piece and "Holy Cross Day"
are dramatic, or monodramatic, grotesques; and in their apprehension of
this trait of the mediaeval mind are on a par with Hugo's "Pas d'armes du
Roi Jean" and "La Chasse du Burgrave." But Browning's mousings in the
Middle Ages after queer freaks of conscience or passion were occasional.
If any historical period, more than another, had special interest for
him, it was the period of the Italian Renaissance. Yet Ruskin said:
"Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence he writes of the Middle
Ages."

Among Mrs. Browning's poems, which, it needs hardly be said, are not
prevailingly "Gothic," there are three interesting experiments in ballad
romance: "The Romaunt of the Page," "The Lay of the Brown Rosary," and
"The Rime of the Duchess May." In all of these she avails herself of the
mediaeval atmosphere, simply to play variations on her favourite theme,
the devotedness of woman's love. The motive is the same as in poems of
modern life like "Bertha in the Lane" and "Aurora Leigh." The vehemence
of this nobly gifted woman, her nervous and sometimes almost hysterical
emotionalism, are not without a disagreeable quality. With greater range
and fervour, she had not the artistic poise of the Pre-Raphaelite
poetess, Christina Rossetti. In these romances, as elsewhere, she is
sometimes shrill and often mannerised. "The Romaunt of the Page" is the
tale of a lady who attends her knight to the Holy Land, disguised as a
page, and without his knowledge. She saves his life several times, and
finally at the cost of her own. A prophetic accompaniment or