Footnote A: Epilogue to _Asolande_.]

These are fit words to close such a life. His last act is a kind of
re-enlistment in the service of the good; the joyous venturing forth on
a new war under new conditions and in lands unknown, by a heroic man who
is sure of himself and sure of his cause.

But now comes the great difficulty. How can the poet combine such
earnestness in the moral struggle with so deep a conviction of the
ultimate nothingness of evil, and of the complete victory of the good?
Again and again we have found him pronounce such victory to be
absolutely necessary and inevitable. His belief in God, his trust in His
love and might, will brook no limit anywhere. His conviction is that the
power of the good subjects evil itself to its authority.

"My own hope is, a sun will pierce
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;
That, after Last, returns the First,
Though a wide compass round be fetched;
That what began best, can't end worst.
Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst."[B]

[Footnote B: _Apparent Failure_.]

It is the poet himself and not merely the sophistic aesthete of _Fifine_
that speaks:--

"Partake my confidence! No creature's made so mean
But that, some way, it boasts, could we investigate,
Its supreme worth: fulfils, by ordinance of fate,
Its momentary task, gets glory all its own,
Tastes triumph in the world, pre-eminent, alone."

* * * * *

"As firm is my belief, quick sense perceives the same
Self-vindicating flash illustrate every man
And woman of our mass, and prove, throughout the plan,
No detail but, in place allotted it, was prime
And perfect."[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xxix.]

But if so,--if Helen, Fifine, Guido, find themselves within the plan,
fulfilling, after all, the task allotted to them in the universal
scheme, how can we condemn them? Must we not plainly either modify our
optimism and keep our faith in God within bounds, or, on the other hand,
make every failure "apparent" only, sin a phantom, and the distinction
between right and wrong a helpful illusion that stings man to
effort--but an illusion all the same?

"What but the weakness in a Faith supplies
The incentive to humanity, no strength
Absolute, irresistible comforts.
How can man love but what he yearns to help?"[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1649-1652.]

Where is the need, nay, the possibil