into chemistry; from chemistry he ascends to physics; from physics to metaphysics; from metaphysics to theology from the purely utilitarian, if not vulgar, topics with which it began to the airiest heights of mystical philosophy. The book contains every subject from tar-water to the Trinity."Arthur Balfour: Essay published in the "National Review," March or April, 1883.

In “Fifine-at-the-Fair" Browning but touched evil to pity it. The outcast woman was considered as the necessary blot of civilisation when Browning drew her into the open in "Fifine-at-the-Fair," and pleaded for her with the virtuous woman, and stated the case for her in the name of Humanity. For the bold championship of woman's right to purity in "Fifine-at-the-Fair," for his introduction of this problem of civilisation, for his mere touch of pitch in the opening lines of "Fifine-at-theFair," he was branded as treating wantonly the subject of conjugal love, than which no charge could have been more lying and foolish. For this sympathy with the problem of the outcast woman, Gladstone almost fell from his pedestal, in the chivalrous attempt to champion her cause. He but suffered a temporary wave of ignorant misapprehension, but Browning paid dearly for it. For those who passed on the lie of sensualism as essence of the poem of "Fifine-at-the-Fair," who claimed that here conjugal infidelity was excused by Browning, the whole symbolism of this piece of his work is lost. If ignorantly, through want of apprehension; or wilfully, through disinclination to read so long a poem-then is the critic in a dilemma each horn of which is sharper than the other.

CHAPTER IX

"PACCHIAROTTO, AND HOW HE WORKED IN DISTEMPER"

Browning to his critics, May, 1876-Explosive temperRetaliatory mood Personal confessions Secrecy Optimism-Insight of readers necessary-Blindness of critics-Miss Barrett's opinion of critics of 1846-Art the heritage of all-Truth the compulsion of Art Love the poet's theme-Mystic approval-Mystic apprehensions of divinity of Christ-Patriotism-Poem written to raise funds for starving people of Paris-100 from Cornhill for poem "Hervé Riel "-Truth-glimpsing-Parting word to critics-For rough palates, rough vintage-Refined palates, delicate wine.

THE series called "Pacchiarotto, and How he Worked in Distemper," was published in 1876. It has utterances put into the mouth of the old Italian painter Giacomo Pacchiarotto, who took reform for his motto.

It begins with a Prologue of mystic import, presenting the faith that it is possible to divine happenings and gain freedom for the soul outside the body's wall of flesh, giving a paradoxical maxim for gaining freedom:

"Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing

That's spirit: though cloistered fast, soar free."

The speaker is in an explosive temper; he is in a retaliatory mood; he resents the critics who are under his window this May Day, and flings back their gibes, and laughs out his laugh at them:

Of goose
heel

born to cackle and waddle and bite at man's

As goose wont is: clear cackle is easily uttered.'

The poet puts his indignation into the utterance of the old painter, who was famous for his frescoes. He was

insurrectionary to popular ideas, this old painter, and relates some of the experiences that happened to him in consequence. The heart of man, he said, was stubborn, so he worked for his own pleasure, filling his walls with frescoes to suit himself. He was one of the spare horses, the upsetter of the regular team. He was driven to loathsome sheltering, starved to commoner frame of mind. He had learnt his lesson from an experience beside a corpse in his hiding-place, but things seldom go well at rehearsal," he knows.

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He turns on his critics with turbulent words, threatens indignities to them. They would clean his chimneys; they say he ought to consume his own smoke. He bids them be off, or fare as Socrates is said to have fared at the hands of Xantippe.

The poems comprising the Pacchiarotto Series are: "At the Mermaid"; "House"; "Shop"; "Pisgah Sights"; "Fears and Scruples"; "Natural Magic "; Magical Nature"; "Hervé Riel"; 'Hervé Riel"; "Bifurcation"; "Numpholeptos"; "Appearances"; "St. Martin's Summer"; "A Forgiveness"; "Cenciaga"; "Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial"; "Epilogue."

"At the Mermaid" is a monologue uttered in the Mermaid Tavern in the midst of the critical company wont to gather there, and under the influence of “sherris” the speaker relaxes a little and confides to his audience that he has a secret. But he is not going to give it to them:

"Here's the work I hand this scroll,
Yours to take or leave: as duly
Mine remains the unproffered soul."

Is he Shakespeare's successor? they ask him. lists, my name is Ben," is the reply.

"Scio

And is he unhappy? Does he suffer Byronic " WeltSchmerz"? He replies with a contemptuous quotation of Biblical origin. Does he find earth grey? "Know this," he replies :

In "Shop" he deplores the bread-and-butter work of life; he pities the being who knows nothing else but business and the "money chink." He wants the spirit of man to have its freedom from sordid material cares : man should exercise his soul between times, should paint, or rhyme, or, " haply mute, blow out his brains upon the flute." The angel of man is silenced under mere money chink, he is of opinion.

In "House" he asks, shall he sonnet sing about himself as others have done?—

"Unlock my heart with a sonnet key."

No; he will keep his house-front up, till the fall of the frontage permits your feast. On the inside arrangement your praise or blame may be given later. But now :

"Outside should suffice for evidence:
And whoso desires to penetrate
Deeper, must dive by the spirit-sense-
No optics like yours, at any rate!"

he flings at his critics.

You think Shakespeare let you explore his "house with the sonnet key, he says:

"Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!"'

Browning wrote but two sonnets, neither of which was included in his published work-one in early life over the signature of "Z" in the Monthly Repository, in 1834, the other the" Sonnet to Edward Fitzgerald," in 1889.

In the early poems, "Paracelsus" and "Sordello," Browning placed his mystical secret and declared the method his art was to follow :

'The lowest hind should not possess a hope,
A fear, but I'd be by him, saying better

Than he his own heart's language. I would live
For ever in the thoughts I thus explored,
As a discoverer's memory is attached

To all he finds; they should be mine henceforth,
Imbued with me, though free to all before:
For clay, once cast into my soul's rich mine,
Should come up crusted o'er with gems."

Paracelsus, Part II.

"I cannot feed on beauty for the sake of beauty alone," says Paracelsus, "I must know." That scientific mind could not rest with intuition alone of the spirit of man; it must gather human testimony to support it:

"I still must hoard and heap and class all truths
With one ulterior purpose. I must know."

Beyond the literal truths called to give themselves up at the bidding of imaginative truth, as in the old skeleton plays of Shakespeare, draping themselves with new tissue of palpitating flesh and refined nerve and readier muscular response to environment, there is transcendently in Shakespeare and Browning the vital thing that makes the skeleton story alive the living soul speaks through it, the living spirit uses it. Shakespeare took the old story of "Hamlet" and put new material of vital interest to his own time into it. So Browning took cover in the shade of "Sordello," and informed it with the vital spark to light up material of deep moment to mankind's development. Genius knows its task, its duty, its compulsions, as well as its ravishments, its divinities, its internal solace. Says Hamlet:

"This world is out of joint. O cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right.'

"Why hast Thou, he groaned,

Imposed on me a burthen Paul had moaned

And Moses dropped beneath? Much done-and yet
Doubtless that grandest task God ever set

On man, left much to do."

Sordello, Book V.