y," and
with no further purpose on the poet's part than the dramatic delineation
of character. _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ is spoken of in a similar
manner as the justification, by reference to the deepest principles of
morality, of compromise, hypocrisy, lying, and a selfishness that
betrays every cause to the individual's meanest welfare. The object of
the poet is "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
self-delusion reconcile itself to itself."

I am not able to accept this as a complete explanation of the intention
of the poet, except with reference to _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._ The
_Prince_ is a psychological study, like _Mr. Sludge the Medium,_ and
_Bishop Blougram_. No doubt he had the interest of a dramatist in the
hero of _Fifine at the Fair_ and in the hero of _Red Cotton Nightcap
Country;_ but, in these poems, his dramatic interest is itself
determined by an ethical purpose, which is equally profound. His meeting
with the gipsy at Pornic, and the spectacle of her unscrupulous audacity
in vice, not only "sent his fancy roaming," but opened out before him
the fundamental problems of life. What I would find, therefore, in
_Fifine at the Fair_ is not the casuistic defence of an artistic and
speculative libertine, but an earnest attempt on the part of the poet to
prove,

"That, through the outward sign, the inward grace allures,
And sparks from heaven transpierce earth's coarsest covertures,--
All by demonstrating the value of Fifine."[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xxviii.]

Within his scheme of the universal good he seeks to find a place even
for this gipsy creature, who traffics "in just what we most pique us
that we keep." Having, in the _Ring and the Book_, challenged evil at
its worst as it manifests itself practically in concrete characters and
external action, and having wrung from it the victory of the good, in
_Fifine_ and in his other later poems he meets it again in the region of
dialectic. In this sphere of metaphysical ethics, evil has assumed a
more dangerous form, especially for an artist. His optimistic faith has
driven the poet into a realm into which poetry never ventured before.
His battle is now, not with flesh and blood, but with the subtler powers