eo and the shame-stricken Vittoria
refresh and purify the tragic atmosphere of the poem by the passing
presence of their virtues. The shallow and fiery nature of the fair
White Devil herself is a notable example of the difference so accurately
distinguished by Charlotte Bronte between an impressionable and an
impressible character. Ambition, self-interest, passion, remorse, and
hardihood alternate and contend in her impetuous and wayward spirit. The
one distinct and trustworthy quality which may always be reckoned on is
the indomitable courage underlying her easily irritable emotions. Her
bearing at the trial for her husband's murder is as dexterous and
dauntless as the demeanor of Mary Stuart before her judges. To Charles
Lamb it seemed "an innocence-resembling boldness"; to Mr. Dyce and Canon
Kingsley the innocence displayed in Lamb's estimate seemed almost
ludicrous in its misconception of Webster's text. I should hesitate to
agree with them that he has never once made his accused heroine speak in
the natural key of innocence unjustly impeached: Mary's pleading for her
life is not at all points incompatible in tone with the innocence which
it certainly fails to establish--except in minds already made up to
accept any plea as valid which may plausibly or possibly be advanced on
her behalf; and the arguments advanced by Vittoria are not more evasive
and equivocal, in face of the patent and flagrant prepossession of her
judges, than those put forward by the Queen of Scots. It is impossible
not to wonder whether the poet had not in his mind the actual tragedy
which had taken place just twenty-five years before the publication of
this play: if not, the coincidence is something more than singular. The
fierce profligacy and savage egotism of Brachiano have a certain energy
and activity in the display and the development of their motives and
effects which suggest rather such a character as Bothwell's than such a
character as that of the bloated and stolid sensualist who stands or
grovels before us in the historic record of his life. As presented by
Webster, he is doubtless an execrable ruffian: as presented by history,
he would be intolerable by any but such readers or spectators as those
on whom the figments or the photographs of self-styled naturalism
produce other than emetic emotions. Here again the noble instinct of the
English poet has rectified the aesthetic unseemliness of an ignoble
reality. This "Brachiano" is a far