circumstance, he gives her words, and feelings to express through them,
which only the French _mievre_ can justly describe. He does not, in
short, reveal her as she is, but only as others see her--and, among
those others, not himself.

In Browning this might seem the stranger because he was so wholly
untouched by cynicism; but here we light upon a curious paradox--the
fact that the more "worldly" the writer, the better can he (as a general
rule and other things being equal) display this type. It may be that
such a writer can regard it analytically, can see what are the elements
which make it up; it may be that the deeper reverence felt for it by the
idealist is precisely that which draws him toward exaggeration--that his
fancy, brooding with closed eyes upon the "thing enskied and sainted,"
thus becomes inclined to mawkishness . . . it _may_ be, I say, but at
the bottom of my heart I do not feel that that is the explanation. One
with which I am better satisfied emerges from a line of verse already
quoted:

"For each man kills the thing he loves";

and the man most apt for such "killing" is precisely he who appraises
most shrewdly the thing he kills. As the cool practised libertine is
oftenest attracted by the immature girl, so the ardent inexperienced man
of any age will be drawn to the older woman; and the psychology of this
matter of everyday experience is closely akin to the paradox in artistic
creation of which I now speak.

Browning, who saw woman so clearly as a creature with her definite and
justified demand upon life, saw, by inevitable consequence, that for
woman to "depart from innocence" (again, in the conventional sense of
the words) is not her most significant error; and this conviction
necessarily reacted upon his presentment of those in whom such purity is
the most salient quality--a type of which, as I have said, the poet is
bound to attempt the portrayal. Browning's instinctive questioning of
the "man-made" value then betrays itself--he exaggerates, he loses
grasp, for he is singing in a mode not native to his temperament.

+ + + + +

The character of Mildred in _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ is a striking
example of this. She is a young girl who has been drawn by her innocent
passion into complete surrender to her lover. He, after this surrender,
seeks her in marriage from her brother, who stands in the place of both
parents to the orphan girl. The brother consent