... "Paolo Santo Croce
Murdered his mother also yestereve,
And he is fled: she shall not flee at least!"
The elder son of the Marchesa, Onofrio Marchese dell' Oriolo, was arrested on the strength of an ambiguous scrap of writing, which appeared to implicate him in his brother's guilt; and subjected in prison to such a daily and day-long examination on the subject of this letter, that his mind gave way, and the desired avowal was extracted from him. He confessed to having implied, under reserves and conditions which practically neutralized the confession, his assent to his mother's death. He was beheaded accordingly; and the Governor of Rome, Taverna, who had conducted the inquisition, was rewarded by a Cardinal's hat. Other motives were, however, involved in the proceeding than the Pope's quickened zeal for justice. He had entrusted the case to his nephew, Cardinal Aldobrandini; and it was known that the Cardinal and the Marchese had courted the same lady, and the latter unwisely flaunted the possession of a ring which was his pledge of victory.
This story, with other details which I have not space to give, was taken from a contemporary Italian chronicle, of which some lines are literally transcribed.
The heretic of "THE HERETIC'S TRAGEDY" was Jacques du Bourg-Molay, last Grand Master of the Order of Knights Templars, and against whom preposterous accusations had been brought. This "Jacques," whom the speaker erroneously calls "John," and who might stand for any victim of middle-age fanaticism, was burned in Paris in 1314; and the "Interlude," we are told, "would seem to be a reminiscence of this event, as distorted by two centuries of refraction from Flemish brain to brain." The scene is carried on by one singer, in a succession of verses, and by a chorus which takes up the last and most significant words of each verse; the organ accompanying in a plagal cadence,[[85]] which completes its effect. The chant is preceded by an admonition from the abbot, which lays down its text: that God is unchanging, and His justice as infinite as His mercy; and singer and chorus both denounce the impious heresy of "John:" who admitted only the love, and sinned the "Unknown Sin," in his confidence in it. How the logs are fired; how the victim roasts; amidst what hideous and fantastic torments the damned soul "flares forth into the dark" is quaintly and powerfully described.
ROMANTIC POEMS.
The prevalence of thought in Mr. Browning's poetry has created in many minds an impression that he is more a thinker than a poet: that his poems not only are each inspired by some leading idea, but have grown up in subservience to it; and those who hold this view both do him injustice as a poet, and underrate, however unconsciously, the intellectual value of what his work conveys. For in a poet's imagination, the thought and the thing—the idea and its image—grow up at the same time; each being a different aspect of the other.[[86]] He sees, therefore, the truths of Nature, as Nature herself gives them; while the thinker, who conceives an idea first, and finds an illustration for it afterwards, gives truth only as it presents itself to the human mind—in a more definite, but much narrower form. Mr. Browning often treats his subject as a pure thinker might, but he has always conceived it as a poet; he has always seen in one flash, everything, whether moral or physical, visible or invisible, which the given situation could contain.[[87]] This fact may be recognized in many of the smaller poems, which, for that reason, I shall find it impossible to class; but it is best displayed in a couple of longer ones, which I have placed under the head "Romantic." They are distinct from the majority of the "Dramatic Romances," although included in them. For with these the word "romantic" denotes an imaginary experience, which may be frankly supernatural, as in "The Boy and the Angel;" or only improbable, as in "Mesmerism;" or semi-historical and local, as in "In a Gondola;" or simply human, and possible anywhere and anywhen, as in "The Last Ride Together;" or in "Dîs aliter Visum," and "James Lee's Wife," which might be classed with them. I am now using it to mark certain cases, in which the author's imagination has not brought itself to the test of any consistent experience, but simply presents us with certain groups of material and mental—of real and ideal possibilities, which we may each interpret for ourselves. They occur in
"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)
"The Flight of the Duchess." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)[[88]]