is all the reality
that is in it. He conceives it as his mission to prove that evil is
"stuff for transmuting," and that there is nought in the world.

"But, touched aright, prompt yields each particle its tongue
Of elemental flame--no matter whence flame sprung,
From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness."

All we want is--

"The power to make them burn, express
What lights and warms henceforth, leaves only ash behind,
Howe'er the chance."[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_.]

He had Pompilia's faith.

"And still, as the day wore, the trouble grew,
Whereby I guessed there would be born a star."

He goes forth in the might of his faith in the power of good, as if he
wished once for all to try the resources of evil at their uttermost, and
pass upon it a complete and final condemnation. With this view, he seeks
evil in its own haunts. He creates Guido, the subtlest and most powerful
compound of vice in our literature--except Iago, perhaps--merely in
order that we may see evil at its worst; and he places him in an
environment suited to his nature, as if he was carrying out an
_experimentum crucis_. The

"Midmost blotch of black
Discernible in the group of clustered crimes
Huddling together in the cave they call
Their palace."[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 869-872.]

Beside him are his brothers, each with his own "tint of hell"; his
mistress, on whose face even Pompilia saw the glow of the nether pit
"flash and fade"; and his mother--

"The gaunt grey nightmare in the furthest smoke,
The hag that gave these three abortions birth,
Unmotherly mother and unwomanly
Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame,
Womanliness to loathing"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 911-915.]

Such "denizens o' the cave now cluster round Pompilia and heat the
furnace sevenfold." While she

"Sent prayer like incense up
To God the strong, God the beneficent,
God ever mindful in all strife and strait,
Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme,
Till at the last He puts forth might and saves."[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_Pompilia_, 1384-1388.]

In these lines we feel the poet's purpose, constant throughout the whole
poem. We know all the while that with him at our side we can travel
safely through the depths of the Inferno--for the flames bend back from
him; and it is only what we e