a
merciless intellect; leading gradually up to a crisis only to be matched
by the very finest crises in Browning:--

"Immersed
In thought so deeply, Father? Sad, perhaps?
For whose sake, hers or mine or his who wraps
--Still plain I seem to see!--about his head
The idle cloak,--about his heart (instead
Of cuirass) some fond hope he may elude
My vengeance in the cloister's solitude?
Hardly, I think! As little helped his brow
The cloak then, Father--as your grate helps now!"

The poem is by far the greatest thing in the volume; it is, indeed, one
of the very finest examples of Browning's psychological subtlety and
concentrated dramatic power.[52]

The ballad of _Herve Riel_ which has no rival but Tennyson's _Revenge_
among modern sea-ballads, was written at Croisic, 30th September 1867,
and was published in the _Cornhill Magazine_ for March, 1871 in, order
that the L100 which had been offered for it might be sent to the Paris
Relief Fund. It may be named, with the "Ride from Ghent to Aix," as a
proof of how simply and graphically Browning can write if he likes; how
promptly he can stir the blood and thrill the heart. The facts of the
story, telling how, after the battle of the Hogue, a simple Croisic
sailor saved all that was left of the French fleet by guiding the
vessels into the harbour, are given in the Croisic guide-books; and
Browning has followed them in everything but the very effective end:--

"'Since 'tis ask and have, I may--
Since the others go ashore--
Come! A good whole holiday!
Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!'
That he asked and that he got,--nothing more."

"Ce brave homme," says the account, "ne demanda pour recompense d'un
service aussi signale, qu'un _conge absolu_ pour rejoindre sa femme,
qu'il nomma la Belle Aurore."

_Cenciaja_, the only blank verse piece in the volume, is of the nature
of a note or appendix to Shelley's "superb achievement" _The Cenci_. It
serves to explain the allusion to the case of Paolo Santa Croce
(_Cenci_, Act V. sc. iv.). Browning obtained the facts from a MS. volume
of memorials of Italian crime, in the possession of Sir John Simeon, who
published it in the series of the Philobiblon Society.[53]

_Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial_, a grotesque and
humorously-told "reminiscence of A.D. 1670," is, up to s