standing and the inaccuracy of human opinion and judgment. This
is the common note of his highest work; hard thought and reason
illustrating themselves in dramatic circumstance, and the thought
and reason are not wholly fused, they exist apart and irradiate with
far-shooting beams the moral confusion of the tragedy. This is, at any
rate, emphatically true of _The Ring and the Book_. The fulness
and variety of creation, the amplitude of the play and shifting of
characters and motive and mood, are absolutely unforced, absolutely
uninterfered with by the artificial exigencies of ethical or
philosophic purpose. There is the purpose, full-grown, clear in
outline, unmistakeable in significance. But the just proprieties of
place and season are rigorously observed, because Mr. Browning, like
every other poet of his quality, has exuberant and adequate delight in
mere creation, simple presentment, and returns to bethink him of the
meaning of it all only by-and-by. The pictures of Guido, of Pompilia,
of Caponsacchi, of Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, of Pope
Innocent, are each of them full and adequate, as conceptions of
character in active manifestation apart from the truth which the whole
composition is meant to illustrate, and which clothes itself in this
most excellent drama.

The scientific attitude of the intelligence is almost as markedly
visible in Mr. Browning as the strength of his creative power. The
lesson of _The Ring and the Book_ is perhaps as nearly positive as
anything poetic can be. It is true that ultimately the drama ends in
a vindication of what are called the ways of God to man, if indeed
people are willing to put themselves off with a form of omnipotent
justice which is simply a partial retribution inflicted on the
monster, while torture and butchery fall upon victims more or
less absolutely blameless. As if the fact of punishment at length
overtaking the guilty Franceschini were any vindication of the justice
of that assumed Providence, which had for so long a time awarded
punishment far more harsh to the innocent Pompilia. So far as you
can be content with the vindication of a justice of this less than
equivocal quality, the sight of the monster brought to the

"Close fetid cell,
Where the hot vapour of an agony,
Struck into drops on the cold wall, runs down
Horrible worms made out of sweat and tears,"--

may in a sense prove satisfactory enough. But a man must be