Life. The entirely new and yet wonderfully profound method of dealing with his themes-even after they have been handled by others, and put away as completely and conclusively dealt with, was admirably pointed out by an English reviewer some years ago. Leigh Hunt has a charming ballad entitled "The Glove and the Lions." One day, while Francis the First and his brilliant court had assembled to sport of the lions in their dread area, far below the royal amphitheatre of seats, De Lorges, a gentleman of the court, had long, with little guerdon of grace, wooed a lady -professing, of course, he was ready not only to die for her—that of course any lover, particularly a soldier, a courtier and a gentleman would do, but to die for her a thousand times. The lady, rather "fast" we suspect, and by no means over-tender of heart, took it into head to test this. She threw her glove down among the lions; and, turning to the knight at her side, looked steadily her wish. De Lorges (what would you have done, reader, under circumstances of a "fix" so imminent?) made his best bow, descended, jumped among the lions with as much sangfroid as man might who would, perhaps, in five minutes find himself hopelessly dilapidated, and returning to the lady's seat with her glove pitched it into her face. As people colloquially put it, he declined to "have anything more to do with her." Leigh Hunt closes his ballad with the royal opinion of the transaction, expressed in rather strong language:

"By God, 'twas rightly done!" King Francis said.

"I am not

Hereupon, "Not so fast," says Mr. Robert Browning, so sure of that, and it may be well to overhaul the matter from the other side. Pour vos beaux yeux, Wooed, Insulted and Rejected of the knight, De Lorges!" And the poet put it with a subtlety that in the Middle Ages would have ranked him as the first of casuists, that surfeited with the knight's lip-homage, say "pestered" with him, though well inclined to love him, she determined on making an experimentum crucis; that successfully done, she resolved to love him with her heart of hearts for ever. As for the lions, why but for the thought of the thing, it was, at worst, but just the death which it was De Lorges' trade to dare.

Besides, she felt complete confidence in his quickness, courage and coolness in the matter of the risk. That the knight's devotion gave way under the trial,-taking him upon his own relation to his mistress, that was shortcoming of his nature, not of hers. But we must refer the reader to the poem, where the case for the lady is marvellously argued, though in the poet's somewhat abrupt elliptical way. Meanwhile, our admission of Browning's motif on the theme notwithstanding, we in common, we fancy with most people, take Leigh Hunt's view of the matter. It was the act of a heartless and cruelly vain woman to show her power over her lover before" the world;" or, even accepting Robert Browning's view of it, after all only the abominable test of a psychological experimentalist in petticoats, making analysis of the stuff a lover was made of. From such ladies, Libera nos Domine.

The volume "Dramatis Persona" (rather a loosely-chosen title for a book of its character,) contains eighteen compositions ; the first, "James Lee," consisting of nine separate poems in the shape of so many episodes. "James Lee" is a story of passion intimated rather than told by so many passages in a life,—perhaps in one day, in one week of a life. Each of these passages constitutes a separate poem. The speaker or singer, whichever you please, is a lady, and the whole is a sort of melodrama of which the theatre is the heart of a loving, lonely-thoughted and despairing woman. The poems are respectively entitled, "At the Window," "By the Fireside," "In the Doorway," "Along the Beach," "On the Cliff," "Under the Cliff," "Among the Rocks,” "Beside the Drawing-Board," "On Deck." "On Deck." Here is the lastnamed and it will serve as a specimen of Robert Browning's characteristic and somewhat abiding form of treatment, in its latest manifestation,—

THERE is nothing to remember in me,
Nothing I ever said with a grace,

Nothing I did that you cared to see,

Nothing I was that deserved a place

In your mind; now, I leave you, set you free.

Conceded! In turn concede to me,

Such things have been as a mutual flame.

Your soul's locked fast; but, love for a key,

You might let it loose, till 1 grew the same
In your eyes, as in mine you stand; strange plea!

For then, then, what would it matter to me

That I was the harsh, ill-favoured one?
We both should be like as pea and pea;
It was ever so since the world begun :
So, let me proceed with my reverie.

How strange it were if you had all me,

As I have all you in my heart and brain,
You, whose least word brought gloom or glee,
Who never lifted the hand in vain

Will hold mine yet, from over the sea!

Strange, if a face, when you thought of me,

Rose like your own face present now,

With eyes as dear in their due degree,

Much such a mouth, and as bright a brow,

Till you saw yourself, while you cried "Tis She!"

Well, you may, or you must, set down to me
Love that was life, life that was love;
A tenure of breath at your lips' decree,

A passion to stand as your thoughts approve,
A rapture to fall where your foot might be.

But did one touch of such love for me.
Come in a word or look of yours,
Whose words and looks will, circling, flee
Round me and round while life endures,
Could I fancy "As I feel, thus feels He;"

Why, fade you might to a thing like me,

And your hair grow these coarse hanks of hair,
And your skir, this bark of a gnarled tree,—

You might turn myself; should I know or care,
When I should be dead of joy, James Lee?

Whatever be its merits or whatever you think of it, you will nowhere, we suspect, reader, find a love-poem of a similar character. As we have said before, of the poet's writings in the general, he has handled the thing in a way altogether peculiar to

himself. And you see what he means.

66

Ah! what a fearful and holy thing, the true all-absorbing love for another of a human soul, however homely its casing. "The Worst of It," and "Too Late," are intimations of passionate passages in life, in the poet's highest manner. "Dis Aliter Visum or Le Byron de Nos Jours" is in a different but equally characteristic style of Browning's. With his knowledge of the human heart's weakness,-his orient affluence and splendour of image, his epigram, his grim humour, his mastery the while of all tender chords in our nature, his worldly idiom when he chooses,—what havoc could the author of Pippa Passes," and of so many startling physical revelations, have made, could he have abased himself to spin "Zadigs" and "Don Juans." But in the broadest and loftiest sense, he is one of the most religious of poets. He is greatest, when in some way or other of his own,-in the most natural manner and yet with exercise of his wonderful art, the creature is brought in direct relation to God. There lies the charm of the finest passages of "Paracelsus" and in his best poems. And because they are alive with this quality as Robert Browning uses it and with solemn serene splendours of his own, and besides as exemplifying his special characteristics as a poet, we regard "Abt Vogler" and "Rabbi Ben Ezra" as the finest poems in the volume. They are warm from the inspiration unrivalled in these days, that produced the "Saul" in the poet's "Bells and Pomegranates." Abt Vogler has been playing on the great musical instrument he invented,—

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,

Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch as when Solomon willed
Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,

Man, brute, reptile, fly,-alien of end and of aim,

Adverse each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep remov'd,

Should rush into sight as he named the ineffable Name,

And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved.

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,
This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise !
Ah, one and all, how they helped, would depart now and now combine,
Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!

And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge into hell,

Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,

Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,

Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.

And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was,

Ay, another and yet another, one crowd with many a crest,
Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,

Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest :

For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,

When a great illumination surprises a festal night—

Outlining round and round Rome's dome from spire to spire)

Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.

"Ignorance is the curse of God;

"

Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to Heaven.'
-SHAKSPERE.

RE mortals-whom the gods have not endowed
With strength to soar above the humble crowd-
Essay to rise from out their meaner state,
Let them remember ICARUS, his fate :
Disdaining earth, with waxen wings he flies
To that great arch, beyond th' ambient skies,
Where JOVE, in majesty upon his throne,
The world directs in wisdom, and alone!
But mark the end of that presuming fool :
High o'er our orb, unfanned by breezes cool,
Too near the Sun the daring youth aspires,
And moves exposed to its devouring fires;
His wings of wax no longer cleave the air,

They melt-he falls with cry of dread despair!

Till, downwards hurled, the wretch lies mangled, crushed * **

Mute scorn succeeds-e'en Pity 's voice is hushed!

Accept the moral ye, earth 's mighty things,
And ne'er attempt a flight with waxen wings.