e the problem by referring to the circumstances in which the
idea of the poem arose.

Mr. Browning was, with his family, at Pornic many years ago, and there
saw the gipsy who is the original of Fifine. His fancy was evidently
sent roaming, by her audacity, her strength--the contrast which she
presented to the more spiritual types of womanhood; and this contrast
eventually found expression in a poetic theory of life, in which these
opposite types and their corresponding modes of attraction became the
necessary complement of each other. As he laid down the theory, Mr.
Browning would be speaking in his own person. But he would turn into
someone else in the act of working it out--for it insensibly carried
with it a plea for yielding to those opposite attractions, not only
successively, but at the same time; and a modified Don Juan would grow
up under his pen, thinking in some degree his thoughts, using in some
degree his language, and only standing out as a distinctive character at
the end of the poem. The higher type of womanhood must appear in the
story, at the same time as the lower which is represented by Fifine; and
Mr. Browning would instinctively clothe it in the form which first
suggested or emphasized the contrast. He would soon, however, feel that
the vision was desecrated by the part it was called upon to play. He
would disguise or ward it off when possible: now addressing Elvire by
her husband's mouth, in the terms of an ideal companionship, now again
reducing her to the level of an every-day injured wife; and when the
dramatic Don Juan was about to throw off the mask, the flickering wifely
personality would be extinguished altogether, and the unfaithful husband
left face to face with the mere phantom of conscience which, in one
sense, Elvire is always felt to be. This is what actually occurs; and
only from this point of view can we account for the perpetual
encroaching of the imaginary on the real, the real on the imaginary,
which characterizes the work.

A fanciful prologue, "Amphibian," strikes its key-note. The writer
imagines himself floating on the sea, pleasantly conscious of his bodily
existence, yet feeling unfettered by it. A strange beautiful butterfly
floats past him in the air; her radiant wings can be only those of a
soul; and it strikes him that while the waves are his property, and the
air is hers, hers is true freedom, his only the mimicry of it. He sees
little to regret in this, since imaginat