y reflect that the new, no more than the old, De Lorge will
have won the _heart_ which doubts--and, doubting, flings (or keeps) the
glove.

"Utter the true word--out and away
Escapes her soul." . . .

Gloves flung to lions are not the answer which that enfranchised soul
will give! And so the Lady thought right and did wrong: 'twas _not_ love
set that task to humanity. Even Browning cannot win her our full
pardon; we devote not many kerchiefs to drying this "tear."

II.--DIS ALITER VISUM; OR, LE BYRON DE NOS JOURS

"The gods saw it otherwise." Thus we may translate the first clause of
the title; the second, the reference to Byron, I have never understood,
and I think shall never understand. Of all the accusations which stand
against him, that of letting opportunity in this sort slip by is
assuredly not one. Such "poor pretty thoughtful things" as the lady of
this poem played their parts most notably in Byron's life--to their own
disaster, it is true, but never because he weighed their worth in the
spirit of this French poet, so bitterly at last accused, who meets
again, ten years after the day of his cogitations, the subject of them
in a Paris drawing-room--married, and as dissatisfied as he, who still
is free. Reading the poem, indeed, with Byron in mind, the fancy comes
to me that if it had been by any other man but Browning, it might almost
be regarded as a sidelong vindication of the Frenchman for having
rejected the "poor pretty thoughtful thing." For Byron married
her[224:1]--and in what did it result? . . . But that Browning should in
any fashion, however sidelong, acknowledge Byron as anything but the
most despicable of mortals, cannot for a moment be imagined; he who
understood so many complex beings failed entirely here. Thus, ever in
perplexity, I must abjure the theory of Byronic merit. There lurks in
this poem no hidden plea for abstention, for the "man who
doesn't"--hinted at through compassionate use of his name who made one
of the great disastrous marriages of the world.

+ + + + +

Ten years before this meeting in Paris, the two of the poem had known
one another, though not with any high degree of intimacy, for only twice
had they "walked and talked" together. He was even then "bent, wigged,
and lamed":

"Famous, however, for verse and worse,
Sure of the Fortieth spare Arm-chair"

--that is, the next vacancy at the French Academy, for so illu