FOOTNOTES:
[126:1] Introduction to the Study of Browning, 1886, p. 152.
[130:1] Abandoning for the moment intermediate events, it was this which moved Guido to the triple murder: for once the old couple and Pompilia dead, with the question of his claim to the dowry still undecided as it was, his child, the new-born babe, might inherit all.
[131:1] Guido's second speech, wherein he tells the truth, in the hope that his "impenitence" may defer his execution.
[131:2] Her dying speech.
[131:3] Browning's summary. Book I.
[137:1] Mrs. Orr, commenting on this passage, says: "The sudden rapturous sense of maternity which, in the poetic rendering of the case, becomes her impulse to self-protection, was beyond her age and culture; it was not suggested by the facts"—for Mrs. Orr, who had read the documents from which Browning made the poem, says: "Unless my memory much deceives me, her physical condition plays no part in the historical defence of her flight. . . . The real Pompilia was a simple child, who lived in bodily terror of her husband, and had made repeated efforts to escape from him." And, as she later adds, though for many readers this character is, in its haunting pathos, the most exquisite of Browning's creations, "for others, it fails in impressiveness because it lacks the reality which habitually marks them." But (she goes on) "it was only in an idealised Pompilia that the material for poetical creation, in this 'murder story,' could have been found." These remarks will be seen partly to agree with some of my own.
[146:1] Her dying speech.
[158:1] How wonderfully is the wistful nature of the girl summed up in these two lines!
[159:1] Caponsacchi uses almost the same words of her: he will "burn his soul out in showing you the truth."