ge of "crude fact," merely a common and
sordid tale like a hundred others, picked up "at random" from a
rubbish-heap to be subjected to the alchemy of imagination by way of
showing the infinite worth of "the insignificant." Rather, he thought
that on that broiling June day, a providential "Hand" had "pushed" him
to the discovery, in that unlikely place, of a forgotten treasure, which
he forthwith pounced upon with ravishment as a "prize." He saw in it
from the first something rare, something exceptional, and made wondering
inquiries at Rome, where ecclesiasticism itself scarcely credited the
truth of a story which told "for once clean for the Church and dead
against the world, the flesh, and the devil."[51] The metal which went
to the making of the _Ring_, and on which he poured his imaginative
alloy, was crude and untempered, but it was gold. Its disintegrated
particles gleamed obscurely, as if with a challenge to the restorative
cunning of the craftsman. Above all, of course, and beyond all else,
that arresting gleam lingered about the bald record of the romance of
Pompilia and Caponsacchi. It was upon these two that Browning's divining
imagination fastened. Their relation was the crucial point of the whole
story, the point at which report stammered most lamely, and where the
interpreting spirit of poetry was most needed "to abolish the death of
things, deep calling unto deep." This process was itself, however, not
sudden or simple. This first inspiration was superb, visionary,
romantic,--in keeping with "the beauty and fearfulness of that June
night" upon the terrace at Florence, where it came to him.

"All was sure,
Fire laid and cauldron set, the obscene ring traced,
The victim stripped and prostrate: what of God?
The cleaving of a cloud, a cry, a crash,
Quenched lay their cauldron, cowered i' the dust the crew,
As, in a glory of armour like Saint George,
Out again sprang the young good beauteous priest
Bearing away the lady in his arms
Saved for a splendid minute and no more."[52]

[Footnote 49: Cf. II. Corkran, _Celebrities and I_ (R. Browning,
senior), 1903.]

[Footnote 50: It is perhaps not without significance that in the summer
sojourn when _The Ring and the Book_ was planned, Euripides was, apart
from that, his absorbing companion. "I have got on," he writes to Miss
Blagden, "by having a great read at Euripides,--the one b