BOOKS.

MR. BROWNING'S NEW POEM..

THE last two cantos in this second volume constitute together and in their contrast., what seem to us Mr. Browning's greatest poetic achievement. At least, we can remember nothing which has at once so much force and fire, and also so much of the subtlety of intellectual dratua,—intellectual rendering, that is, by Mr. Browning himself of his own study of the characters of others,—in ally other of his writings. "The flight of the duchess' itself is not so rich and eloquent as the defence poured out by Caponsacchi of the murdered Pompilia, nor is the "soliloquy in the Spanish cloister" so expressive of the spite of venomous cunning, as Count Guido's Franceschini's defence of himself and malignant insinuations against his wife and her parents and Caponsacchi. Of course, there is an obvious defect in dramatic keeping, in putting into the mouth of a man just fresh from the torture, so astute, elaborate, and ecclesiastical a dissertation on the evidence which had been produced ; to which it may be added that, except as to passion and force, the style (i.e., in construction and illustration) of Count Guido Franceschini is scarcely to be distinguished from that of the Canon Caponsacchi. But this is always so with Mr. Browning. He aims only at giving a complete reflexion of his various characters in his own forms of thought, and as lie aims only at this, the mere circumstances of putting a subtle speech of 2,000 lines into the mouth of a man fresh from the torture is no falsification of the artistic intentiou,—which is, to give the drift of his defence, supposed to be confided to Mr. Browning, just as his poetic confidant may deem most effective. We confess that we see little that is new or telling in the first canto of this volume, which may be called the cynical-critical, or cultivated Roman drawingroom view of the murder. It is, on the whole, with a little more hesitation and ostentatious affectation of wisdom and impartiality, the same as time view first given under the title of 'half-home's;' i.e., it is favourable to Count Guido, and adds but little of any kind, dramatic or otherwise, to our view of the tragedy. Not so, however, the statement of the murderer and of the murderer's great antagonist. We know scarcely anything in modern poetry finer than the contrast between the shifty ecclesiastical intrigue, the rat-like voracity and cunning, the craft formed and trained in the attempt to squeeze promotion out of bishops and cardinals, in a word, the half-tricky, half-subtle Pharisaism of the Tuscan Count, who had been familiar with the Roman Courts all his life and knew the worst side at least of every judge before him, and the passionate despair of the ardent young priest who, summoned back to Rome to bear that Pompilia was dying by the dagger of her husband, throws all reserve to the winds, pours out his own loathing of his early life of fashionable frivolity, describes the awakening of a divine nature in him through the influence of Pompilia's saintly sweetness and purity, and tells in burning words the story of Guido's loathsome attempt to force his wife into infidelity, of her flight to Rome under his own protection, and of the words which fell from her from time to time during the journey, stamped as they are on the face of the different landscapes and different skies which his eye happened to take in as they were uttered. Mr. Browning's picture of this passionate human love stirring in the heart of a fashionable, frivolous, and dissipated, but still noble unspoiled nature, and awakening it at one and the same time to the holiness of the priest's desecrated faith and calling, and to the unearthly beauty of her whom he could not but halflove with earthly rapture and half adore with a worship very like the true Catholic cultus of the Madonna, is to our minds the finest effort of our author's genius. But it would scarcely produce the effect it does upon us did it not so immediately succeed the exposition of the venomous and cunning sleight-of-mind with which Count Guido tries to persuade his judges that wounded honour and burning shame have instigated all his own coldly and craftily calculated actions towards his wife and her parents, and have left him with a good and quiet conscience even after the

triple murder. As we follow the intellectual writhings of Count Guido's ingenious special pleadings, which skilfully evade the most critical tests of his guilt, aml make it their aitn, instead, to put the judges off the scent and convince them beyond refutation of his wife's guilt, trusting that if he can manage that, the palliation of Ills own guilt must follow as a natural consequence, we almost for the time lose the meaning of the words truth' and 'falsehood,' and seem to sink lower and lower into an abyss and labyrinth of verbal distinctions and simulated passions, with only a glimmer here and there of genuine Satanic spite to remind us of where we are. And when we pass from this nightmare world of tortuous qualifications and distinctions to the burning passion of Caponsacchi's contempt for himself and worship of the purity and innocence which first taught him what his priesthood meant, the change is like waking from an oppressive dream to the bluest air and brightest sun of the year.

Take, for instance, the following in illustration of Count Guido's ingenious and crafty but, on the whole, very shallow cunning. One o6 his proofs against his wife is a letter which she was asserted to have sent to her brother-in-law, the Abate, in Rome, after her putative parents had left her and Arezzo for Rome, charging them with having counselled her to be unfaithful to her husband, and to follow them to Rome as soon as she could with any lover whom she could persuade to escort her thither ; — to which the reply on her side was that she could neither read nor write, and that the letter in question was written by her husband, who guided her hand over the pencilled accusations, she herself being quite ignorant of the contents. On this evidence of the letter, and its genuineness or forgery, Count Guido assures his judges that he does not care to argue that matter ; he is quite willing even to assume the view most unfavourable to himself,—that he actually did guide her hand, and give the significance to that which she only mechanicallysigned. Which may be the truer view, is not worth discussing, he says. lie will take the situation his adversaries attribute, and beat them even with the weapons which they put into his hands,—show that he was performhuga pious act in making his wife abjura her malignant parents, and expose and denounce their wicked advice, and after this fashion he tries to distract attention altogether from the question of the yell4filleneSS of the letter—on which alone its value as evidence depends,—hoping to confuse the mind of his judges by throwing out a cloud of suggestions to prove that even if no genuine evidence of his wife's belief, it was a perfectly pious and politic manoeuvre on his part to extricate his wife from the evil influences of her parents. This is the passage :— " Why, here's the,—word for word so much, no more,— Avowal she made, her pure spontaneous speech To my brother the Abate at first blush, Ere the good impulse had began to fade—

So did she make confession for the pair, So pour forth praises in her own behalf.

Ay, the false letter!' interpose my lords—

The simulated writing,-1 was a trick : You traced the signs, she merely marked the same, The product was not hers, bat yours.' Alaek, I want no more impulsion to tell truth From the other trick, the torture inside there !

I confess all—let it be understood—

And deny nothing! If I battle you so, Can so fence, in the plenitude of right, That my poor lathen dagger puts aside

Each pass o' the Bilboa,,beats you all the same,—

What matters inefficiency of blade ?

Mine and not hers the letter,—conceded, lords!

Impute to we that practice l—take as proved I taught my wife her duty, made her see What it behoved her see and say and do, Feel in her heart and with her tongue declare, And, whether sluggish or recalcitrant, Forced her to take the right step, I myself Marching in mere marital rectitude!

And who finds fault here, say the tale be true ?

Would not my lords commend the priest whose zeal Seized on the sick, morose or moribund,

By the palsy-smitten finger made it cross

His brow correctly at the critical time ?— Or answered for the inarticulate babe At baptism, in its stead declared the faith, And saved what else would perish unprofessed ?"

Was there ever a more striking dramatic feat of hollow and shallow ecclesiastical cunning? That last plausible appeal to sacerdotal ideas of external acts of grace (opera opera to) would alone photograph the subtle but shallow artifice of the man. Let us give, as a contrast to this, the Canon's passionate account of the few things Pompilia said to him in the carriage on the journey to Rome; of the pain it gave him when she assumed that he was doing for her only what his love for some sister or mother had taught him the tenderness and insight to do; of the pain it gave him when she appealed to him as a mere priest, and not as one who felt personally for her; of the delight it gave him when she said something which implied a study of his face and a sympathy with him so instinctive and profound that she could hear him when he did not speak, and see his face when it was dark : — "She said,—a long while later in the day, When I had let the silence be,—abrupt'Have you a mother ?'—' She died, I was born." A sister then ?'—' No sister.'—' Who was it— What woman were you used to serve this way, Be kind to, till I called you and you came ?' I did not like that word."

"At eve we hoard the angelus: she turned ' I told you I can neither read nor write. My life stopped with the play-time ; I will learn,

If I begin to live again : but you—

Who are a priest--wherefore do you not read The service at this hour ? Read Gabriel's song, The lesson, and then read the little prayer To Raphael, proper for us travellers!' I did not like that, neither, but I read."

"When she woke at last, I answered the first look—' Scarce twelve hours more, Then, Rome ! There probably was no pursuit, There cannot now be peril: bear up brave!

Just some twelve hours to press through to the prize—

Then no more of the terrible journey!" Then, No more o' the journey !' if it might but last ! Always, my life long, thus to journey still !

It is the interruption that I dread,—

With no dread, ever to be here and thus !

Never to see a face nor hear a voice!

Yours is no voice ; you speak when you are dumb; Nor face, I see it in the dark. I want No face nor voice that change and grow unkind.'

That I liked, that was tho best thing she said."

Those confessions in the mouth of the young priest, and the words of the hunted and tortured girl which give rise to them, are among the finest touches of Mr. Browning's genius.

The sustained passion of Caponsacchi's speech is even more striking and of course far more taking than the sustained artificial cunning, broken only by flashes of malignity, of Guido's. The former's vehement exposure of the low worldliness of the judges, his abrupt change of mood to vehement gratitude to them for letting him tell the truth of Pompilia at all, his final confession of the despair and hope which fill him as he broods over the imminent death of Polopilia,—are all in the highest key of eloquence, and of that peculiar kind of eloquence suited to his feverish passion, to his ascetic calling. How fine is this sudden transition from invective to pity and sympathy !—

" I have done with being judged.

I stand here guiltless in thought, word, and deed, To the point that I apprise you,—in contempt For all misapprehending ignorance

0' the human heart, much more the mind of Christ,—

That I assuredly did bow, was blessed By the revelation of Pompilia. There!

Such is the final fact I fling you, Sirs,

To mouth and mumble and misinterpret : there !

The priest's in love,' have it the vulgar way!

Unpriest rile, rend the rags o' the vestment, do— Degrade deep, disenfranchise all you dare—

Remove me from the midst, no longer priest

And fit companion for the like of you—

Your gay Abati with the well-turned log And rose i' the hat-rim ; Canons, cross at neck And silk mask in the pocket of the gown ; Brisk bishops, with the world's musk still unbrushed From the rochet ; I'll no more of these good things: There's a crack somewhere, something that's unsound I' the rattle! "For Pompilia—be advised, Build churches, go pray ! You will find me there, I know, if you come,—and you will come, I know.

Why, there's a judge weeping! Did not I say

You were good and true at bottom ? You see the truth—

I am glad I helped you : she helped me just so."

And the concluding passage, in which Caponsaceld passionately hints what earth might be with Pornpilia by his side, what even it might be without her, if but the divine spirit to which she has awakened him could be ever seen at work in the little things as well as the great things of life, and then ends with an ejaculation of despair, is of the finest order of poetry

Sirs, I am quiet again. You see, we are

So very pitiable, she and I, Who had conceivably been otherwise.

Forget distemperature and idle heat !

Apart from truth's sake, what's to move so much?

Pompilia will be presently with God ; I am, on earth, as good as out of it, A relegated priest ; when exile ends,

I mean to do my duty and live long.

She and I are mere strangers now : but priests Should study passion ; how else cure mankind,

Who come for help in passionate extremes?

I do but play with an imagined life Of who, unfettered by a vow, unblessed

By the higher call,—since you will have it so,—

Leads it companioned by the woman there.

To live, and see her learn, and learn by her,

Out of the low obscure and petty world—

Or only see one purpose or one will Evolve themselves i' the world, change wrong to right To have to do with nothing but the true, The good, the eternal—and these, not alone In the main current of the general life,

But small experiences of every day,

Concerns of the particular hearth and home : To learn not only by a comet's rush,

But a rose's birth,—not by the grandeur, God—

But the comfort, Christ. All this, how far away ! Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream !

Just as a drudging student trims his lamp. Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the place Of Roman, Grecian; draws the patched gown close, Dreams, Thus should I fight, save or rule the world !'

Then smilingly, contentedly, awakes To the old solitary nothingness. So I, from such communion, pass content . .

0 great, just, good God ! Miserable me !"

But one artistic criticism has suggested itself on the general plan of the book in reading this volume, namely,—is not the truth too exclusively on one side to justify the manifold aspect in which it is the plan of the book to delineate it ? We scarcely see the advantage of the multiplied forms of the pleadings when the truth appears to be, not between the various representations of it, but almost wholly in one of them. Surely Mr. Browning could have given us in this case the pure gold of "the ring," almost without the alloy, if he had given Count Guide's, and Canon Caponsacchi's, and Porripilia's versions of the matter only, with the old Pope's final judgment upon it ? It may be, however, that this criticism is premature, and will be rebutted by the third or fourth volume. At present the "tertium quid" seems to us to be at best " quid nimis."