part in the historical
defence of her flight. . . . The real Pompilia was a simple child, who
lived in bodily terror of her husband, and had made repeated efforts to
escape from him." And, as she later adds, though for many readers this
character is, in its haunting pathos, the most exquisite of Browning's
creations, "for others, it fails in impressiveness because it lacks the
reality which habitually marks them." But (she goes on) "it was only in
an idealised Pompilia that the material for poetical creation, in this
'murder story,' could have been found." These remarks will be seen
partly to agree with some of my own.

[146:1] Her dying speech.

[158:1] How wonderfully is the wistful nature of the girl summed up in
these two lines!

[159:1] Caponsacchi uses almost the same words of her: he will "burn his
soul out in showing you the truth."

PART II

[Illustration: THE GREAT LADY]

THE GREAT LADY

"MY LAST DUCHESS," AND "THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS"

For a mind so subtle, frank, and generous as that of Browning, the
perfume which pervades the atmosphere of "high life" was no less obvious
than the miasma. His imagination needed not to free itself of all things
adventitious to its object ere it could soar; in a word, for Browning,
even a "lady" could be a woman--and remain a woman, even though she be
turned to a "great" lady, that figure once so gracious, now so hunted
from the realm of things that may be loved! Of narrowness like this our
poet was incapable. He could indeed transcend the class-distinction, but
that was not, with him, the same as trampling it under foot. And
especially he loved to set a young girl in those regions where material
cares prevail not--where, moving as in an upper air, she joys or suffers
"not for bread alone."

"Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red--
On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,
O'er the breast's superb abundance, where a man might base his
head?"

He could grant her to be "such a lady," yet grant, too, that her soul
existed. True, that in _A Toccata of Galuppi's_,[166:1] the soul _is_
questioned:

"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice
earned.
The soul, doubtless, is immortal--where a soul can be discerned."

But this is not our crude modern refusal of "reality" in any lives but
those of toil and privation. It is rather the sad vision of an