lines which must have been suggested to Browning by verses, briefer and more intense, in Webster's
Duchess of Malfi. Even Ottima, lifted by her love, which purifies itself in wishing to die for her lover, repents.
Not me,—to him, O God, be merciful!
Thus into this cauldron of sin Browning steals the pity of God. We know they will be saved, so as by fire.
Then there is the poem on the story of Cristina and Monaldeschi; a subject too odious, I think, to be treated lyrically. It is a tale of love turned to hatred, and for good cause, and of the pitiless vengeance which followed. Browning has not succeeded in it; and it may be so because he could get no pity into it. The Queen had none. Monaldeschi deserved none—a coward, a fool, and a traitor! Nevertheless, more might have been made of it by Browning. The poem is obscure and wandering, and the effort he makes to grip the subject reveals nothing but the weakness of the grip. It ought not to have been published.
And now I turn to passions more delightful, that this chapter may close in light and not in darkness—passions of the imagination, of the romantic regions of the soul. There is, first, the longing for the mystic world, the world beneath appearance, with or without reference to eternity. Secondly, bound up with that, there is the longing for the unknown, for following the gleam which seems to lead us onward, but we know not where. Then, there is the desire, the deeper for its constant suppression, for escape from the prison of a worldly society, from its conventions and maxims of morality, its barriers of custom and rule, into liberty and unchartered life. Lastly, there is that longing to discover and enjoy the lands of adventure and romance which underlies and wells upwards through so much of modern life, and which has never ceased to send its waters up to refresh the world. These are romantic passions. On the whole, Browning does not often touch them in their earthly activities. His highest romance was beyond this world. It claimed eternity, and death was the entrance into its enchanted realm. When he did bring romantic feeling into human life, it was for the most part in the hunger and thirst, which, as in Abt Vogler, urged men beyond the visible into the invisible. But now and again he touched the Romantic of Earth. Childe Roland, The Flight of the Duchess, and some others, are alive with the romantic spirit.
But before I write of these, there are a few lyrical poems, written in the freshness of his youth, which are steeped in the light of the story-telling world; and might be made by one who, in the morning of imagination, sat on the dewy hills of the childish world. They are full of unusual melody, and are simple and wise enough to be sung by girls knitting in the sunshine while their lovers bend above them. One of these, a beautiful thing, with that touch of dark fate at its close which is so common in folk-stories, is hidden away in Paracelsus. "Over the sea," it begins:
Over the sea our galleys went,
With cleaving prows in order brave