_, the companion of _My Last Duchess_, is a vivid little
tale, told with genuine sympathy with the mediaeval spirit. It is almost
like an anticipation of some of the remarkable studies of the Middle
Ages contained in Morris's first and best book of poems, _The Defence of
Guenevere_, published sixteen years later. The mediaeval temper of entire
confidence in the ordeal by duel has never been better rendered than in
these two stanzas, the very kernel of the poem, spoken by the
falsely-accused girl:--

" ... Till out strode Gismond; then I knew
That I was saved. I never met
His face before, but, at first view,
I felt quite sure that God had set
Himself to Satan; who would spend
A minute's mistrust on the end?

He strode to Gauthier, in his throat
Gave him the lie, then struck his mouth
With one back-handed blow that wrote
In blood men's verdict there. North, South,
East, West, I looked. The lie was dead,
And damned, and truth stood up instead."[19]

Of the two aspects of _Queen Worship_, one, _Rudel to the Lady of
Tripoli_, has a mournfully sweet pathos in its lingering lines, and
_Cristina_, not without a touch of vivid passion, contains that personal
conviction afterwards enshrined in the lovelier casket of _Evelyn Hope_.
_Artemis Prologuizes_ is Browning's only experiment in the classic
style. The fragment was meant to form part of a longer work, which was
to take up the legend of Hippolytus at the point where Euripides dropped
it. The project was no doubt abandoned for the same wise reasons which
led Keats to leave unfinished a lovelier experiment in _Hyperion_. It
was in this poem that Browning first adopted the Greek spelling of
proper names, a practice which he has since carried out, with greater
consistency, in his transcripts from AEschylus and Euripides.

Perhaps the finest of the _Dramatic Lyrics_ is the little lyric tragedy,
_In a Gondola_, a poem which could hardly be surpassed in its perfect
union or fusion of dramatic intensity with charm and variety of music.
It was suggested by a picture of Maclise, and tells of two Venetian
lovers, watched by a certain jealous "Three"; of their brief hour of
happiness, and of the sudden vengeance of the Three. There is a brooding
sense of peril over all the blithe and flitting fancies said or sung to
one another by the lovers in their gondola; a sense, however, of future
rather than of