, and every wave and wind seems singing out
the same:

"All in one chorus--what the master-word
They take up? Hark! 'There are no gods, no gods!
Glory to GOD--who saves Euripides!'"

. . . There she is, Wild-Pomegranate-Flower, Balaustion--and Triumphant
Woman. What other man has given us this?--and even Browning only here.
Nearly always, for man's homage, woman must in some sort be victim: she
must suffer ere he can adore. But Balaustion triumphs, and we hail
her--and we hail her poet too, who dared to make her great not only in
her love, but in her own deep-hearted, ardent self.

"This mortal shall put on individuality." Of all men Browning most
wished women to do that.

FOOTNOTES:

[94:1] I follow Browning's spellings throughout.

[96:1] The character of Balaustion is wholly imaginary.

[96:2] A town of the island of Rhodes.

[101:1] In the _Apology_, she tells "the second supreme adventure": her
interview with Aristophanes, and the recital to him of the _Herakles_ of
Euripides.

[106:1] Euripides died at the Court of Archelaus, King of Macedonia.

[117:1] Browning never finished his translation of this splendid song.

V

POMPILIA

IN "THE RING AND THE BOOK"

I said, in writing of Balaustion: "Nearly always, for man's homage,
woman must in some sort be victim: she must suffer ere he can adore."

I should have said that this _has been_ so: for the tendency to-day is
to demonstrate rather the power than the weakness of woman. True that in
the "victim," that weakness was usually shown to be the very source of
that power: through her suffering not only she, but they who stood
around and saw the anguish, were made perfect. That this theory of the
outcome of suffering is an eternal verity I am not desirous to deny; but
I do deplore that, in literature, women should be made so
disproportionately its exemplars; and I deplore it not for feminist
reasons alone. Once we regard suffering in this light of a supreme
uplifting influence, we turn, as it were, our weapons against
ourselves--we exclaim that men too suffer in this world and display the
highest powers of endurance: why, then, do they so frequently, in their
imaginative works, present themselves as makers of women's woes? For
women make men suffer often; yet how relatively seldom men show this!
Thus, paradoxically enough, we may come to declare that it is to
themselves that men are harsh, and to us generous. "Chivalry from
wo