ruin. More deeply yet the voice impressed upon him the use of the former life's paradoxes, its intuitions and ignorance, its spirit and sense, its truth and fable. But the man tried yet another choice, and this time chose love, admittedly only the show of it, yet precious for the memory of what love was. At this, his Judge, instead of relenting, answered, more austerely than ever, that Love was the very thing that had mixed in all his former life's concerns, and yet the very thing he could not believe God capable of was the Love of Christ. Then the man, whose every choice had crumbled, prayed Christ to restore to him the semblance of the old life of uncertainty and probation, for the sake of its hope. At this point, the vision passed away, and he was back in the life he had learned to prize. This is the explanation of his conviction that worldly gifts, accepted for their own sake, are unsatisfying, and that warfare and doubt are precious, compared with what might be.

Men and Women, 1855, is a collection of great short poems, chiefly dramatic monologues. The poems are fifty in number, exclusive of the dedication or One Word More. Men and Women was published in two volumes, the second commencing at Andrea del Sarto, and in the following order.

Love among the Ruins (Vol. VI.) describes the glory and pomp of a long dead capital, as contrasted with the present silence of its site. A pair of lovers keep their tryst in the single turret left standing, and

Browning considers it more worthily occupied than in its proud days.

A Lover's Quarrel (Vol. VI.) recounts how happily and easily two lovers passed their time three months ago (January, 1853) when snow-drifts kept them prisoners. They used to play like children, and it passes the man's comprehension that a word can now have sundered them, nullifying their past. It is the harder to bear with spring coming on. If only it were November, the very bareness and coldness of the world would bring them together in a reconciliation which is very easily imaginable.

Evelyn Hope (Vol. VI.) is a poem of the tenderness and love felt by a man of middle age for a young girl, who dies at sixteen. She was not aware of this love, but she is to be, when she awakens in some other life, and, for remembrance, the man folds a leaf into her hand. Evelyn Hope is the poem of the unmarried, and should be read in connection with Cristina, as giving the other side of love's shield.

Up at a Villa-Down in the City (Vol. VI.) is an amusing contrast, as drawn 'by an Italian Person of Quality,' between the boredom of his country residence and the alluring but ruinous life 'in the citysquare.' The mental calibre of the person of quality is humorously self-revealed.

A Woman's Last Word (Vol. VI.) contains the story of a woman who is striving to conform her ideal to a man's requirements. While sorrowfully acknowledg

ing their mutual misunderstanding, she decides to sink her individuality for the sake of the man's love. To contend with him may imperil love, and is therefore as foolish as if two birds were to quarrel while a hawk was watching them.

Fra Lippo Lippi (Vol. IV.) is first of the great monologues grown out of My Last Duchess and the dramas, and is one of Browning's finest poems. It is, among other things, Lippo Lippi's plea for naturalism in art. The biographical materials, as with Andrea and Old Pictures in Florence, are in Vasari, and to look from his biographies to the poems is a lesson in appreciating imaginative literature. Browning's Friar is a flesh-and-blood reality. He is a man of free and merry manners, whose head got inside a cowl by mistake, and a painter who is keenly observant, and resolute in depicting healthful beauty. The man recruits the painter with the perpetual reminder, amid the monastery's bones and nimbus preachments, that

"The world and life's too big to pass for a dream.” ‘Hulking Tom' is Masaccio, and 'Brother Lorenzo,' a monk of the order of Camaldoli, is the Don Lorenzo of Vasari.

A Toccata of Galuppi's (Vol. VI.) is a dramatic reverie on eighteenth century Venice. The reverie, taking the form of an imaginary conversation with the dead Venetian composer, is coloured, or rather achromatised by one of his capriccios. Galuppi's music reflects the element of dissatisfaction in the frivolous life around

it. The people who liked to listen to it have disappeared and left no trace. Their day was an empty one, and doubtless they deserved extinction. At the same time, it is a painful reflection that all their grace and beauty were so vain.

By the Fireside (Vol. VI.) represents a husband's quiet talk, prospect and retrospect, with his wife. The different epochs of his life are strung, like beads, on a thread of love. Before him lie age and the study of Greek, behind him, youth, Italy, and the declaration of his love, made during an Alpine walk. Every feature of that scene was priceless, and seemed to thrill up to a climax, the spoken word which broke down the barrier between the pair, and tested the man's worth and his life's purpose in one supreme opportunity.

Any Wife to any Husband (Vol. VI.) is a dying woman's lament that a man's constancy to a memory is so much more likely to waver than a woman's would be. She would fain believe that her husband will rank no other woman beside her in his heart, that absence will be no sorer trial to him than it would be to her-but she knows otherwise, and her last word expresses this pathetic certainty.

An Epistle of Karshish (Vol. IV.) relates, from an Arab physician's point of view, the impression made upon him by Lazarus, the raised from the dead. The contrast between the physician's quaint preconceptions and the awe-inspiring uniqueness of Lazarus is most striking. The Jew's belief in his 'curer' being God,

has made an extraordinary impression on the other's fervent Eastern nature, albeit Karshish professes to look his case' from the materialistic standupon point. The realisation of the altered mind and conduct of Lazarus is deeply imaginative. An Epistle is charged with Browning's favourite religious evidence, the uses of uncertainty. 'Premature full

growth' unmans Lazarus.

Mesmerism (Vol. V.) is a description of a feat of 'willing.' First, the lover wills into his presence the image or simulacrum of the girl he loves, and then, by eager concentration of intent, he draws herself, her real presence, into the room. Mesmerism ends with abjuring the use of an uncomprehended, unmeasured power.

A Serenade at the Villa (Vol. VI.) is an instance of Browning's power of absolute fusion of the aspects of nature with the imaginations of a man's heart. The serenader hopes his worshipping words were noted, but fears that his lady only declared his song the last element of tiresomeness in oppressive weather.

My Star (Vol. VI.) is a lover's allegory. His 'star' (a favourite term with Browning for untouched perfectness), having revealed herself to him, no outside commendation of her is needed to ratify his love.2

Instans Tyrannus (Vol. V.), like Time's Revenges, represents an ugly trait of humanity. Here it is the 1 Cp. In Memoriam, xxxi.

2 Contrast with this personal expression a dramatic passage in opposition to its sentiment in Fifine at the Fair, XI. 243-244.