James Thomson

“ I turn its medicinable leaves In London now till, as in Florence erst, A spirit laughs and leaps through every limb, And lights my eye, and lifts me by the hair. Letting me have my will again with these — How title I the dead alive once more? ”

“ He never thinks but at full speed; and the rate of his thought is to that of another man's as the speed of a railway to that of a waggon, or the speed of a telegraph to that of a railway." And it should be noted that these analogies, like all that are genuine, imply more truths than the naked terms express; imply more than the mere statements of comparative rates of mental speed. In ordinary cases we are apt to judge, and judge correctly, that tongue or pen runs the more swiftly the less weight it carries ”

“ The interest is to be purely psychological, but of psychology living, not dead ; as with Balzac, the analysis by its unrelenting intensity and subtlety, sustained and impelled by an imagination no less intense, develops into vital synthesis ; in each of the ten following sections Browning, having penetrated to the inmost soul of his creature, from that centre commands both soul and body to his service in complete self-revelation ”

“ Caponsacchi comes next : —
' Man and priest — could you comprehend the coil! — In days when that was rife which now is rare. "THE RING AND THE BOOK" 473 Then a soul sighs its lowest and its last After the loud ones, — so much breath remains Unused by the four-days'-dying ; for she lived Thus long, miraculously long, 'twas thought, Just that Pompilia might defend herself. How she endeavoured to explain her life. Then since a Trial ensued, a touch o' the same To sober us, flustered with frothy talk. And teach our common sense its helplessness. ”

“ Indeed, one may remark of Browning and 47^ CRITICAL STUDIES his Pompilia, as of Dante and his Beatrice, that when- ever she is brought in, however austere or terrible or vile the surroundings, immediately an ineffable sweet- ness, a Divine tenderness, suffuses and thrills the verse. The marvellous power and insight of the two Guido sections have been equally acknowledged. The excellent critic of the Westminster Review gave his verdict against the couple devoted to the lawyers ; "the malt is the best in England, but the beer is bad." ”

“ Giovambattista o* the Battini, Fisc, Pompilia's patron by the chance of the hour, 474 CRITICAL STUDIES To-morrow her persecutor, — composite, he, As becomes who must meet such various calls- How the Fisc vindicates Pompilia's fame." Then we have the manner of the judgment of the Pope on the appeal : — " Then must speak Guido yet a second time, Satan's old saw being apt here — skin for skin. All that a man hath will he give for life. While life was graspable and gainable, free To bird-like buzz her wings round Guide's brow. ”

“ This poem, which, when I first studied it, grew beyond me and above me more and more with the profoundly impressive suggestion, still overawing, of a vast Gothic cathe- dral no single generation could accomplish ; which, at the most grudging estimate, is an achievement whereon, "itself by itself solely," even a mighty artist could be content to challenge the ages, secure of a noble fame ”

“ The persistent repetition is as that of the smith's hammer-strokes welding the red-hot iron into shape, or rather as that of the principal theme in a great Beethoven fugue, growing ever more and more potent and predominant as its vast capabilities are more and more developed through countless intricate variations, and transmuta- tions of time and key and structure and accompani- ment. ”

“ It lives, If precious be the soul of man to man." 472 CRITICAL STUDIES It lives, and is likely to live as long as any master- work of our generation. First we are to hear how Half- Rome, with a typical worthy for its mouthpiece, found for Guido much excuse. Then how to the other Half-Rome, Pompilia seemed a saint and martyr both. ”

“ In the dedication of "Sordello," written twenty- five years after the poem itself. Browning says : " The historical decoration was purposely of no more importance than a background requires ; and my stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul ; little else is worth study." ”