I kiss you now, dear Ottima, now and now! 
    This way?  Will you forgive me—­be once more
    My great queen?

At that moment Pippa passes by, singing: 

    The year’s at the spring
    And day’s at the morn;
    Morning’s at seven;
    The hill-side’s dew-pearled;
    The lark’s on the wing;
    The snail’s on the thorn;
    God’s in his heaven—­
    All’s right with the world!

Something in it smites Sebald’s heart like a hammer of God.  He repents, but in the cowardice of repentance curses her.  That baseness I do not think Browning should have introduced, no, nor certain carnal phrases which, previously right, now jar with the spiritual passion of repentance.  But his fury with her passes away into the passion of despair—­

    My brain is drowned now—­quite drowned:  all I feel
    Is ... is, at swift recurring intervals,
    A hurry-down within me, as of waters
    Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit: 
    There they go—­whirls from a black fiery sea!

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