imes;

a "grey ultimate decrepitude," yet visited by the spiritual fire which
touches a soul whose robe of flesh is worn thin; not unassailed by
doubts as to the justice of his final decision, but assured that his
part is confidently to make the best use of the powers with which he has
been entrusted; young of heart, if also old, in his rejoicing in
goodness and his antipathy to evil.

_The Ring and the Book_ is a great receptacle into which Browning
poured, with an affluence that perhaps is excessive, all his powers--his
searchings for truth, his passion, his casuistry, his feeling for
beauty, his tenderness, his gift of pity, his veiled memories of what
was most precious in the past, his hopes for the future, his worldly
knowledge, his unworldly aspirations, his humour, such as it was, robust
rather than delicate. Could the three monologues which tell how in
various ways it strikes a Roman contemporary have been fused into a
single dialogue, could the speeches of the two advocates have been
briefly set over, one against the other, instead of being drawn out at
length, we might still have got the whole of Browning's mind. But we
must take things as we find them, and perhaps a skilled writer knows his
own business best. Never was Browning's mastery in narrative displayed
with such effect as in Caponsacchi's account of the flight to Rome,
which is not mere record, but record winged with lyrical enthusiasm.
Never was his tenderness so deep or poignant as in his realisation of
the motherhood of Pompilia. Never were the gropings of intellect and the
intuitions of the spirit shown by him in their weakness and their
strength with such a lucid subtlety as in the deliberations and
decisions of the Pope. The whole poem which he compares to a ring was
the ring of a strong male finger; but the posy of the ring, and the
comparison is again his own, tells how it was a gift hammered and filed
during the years of smithcraft "in memoriam"; in memory and also with a
hope.

The British Public, whom Browning addresses at the close of his poem,
and who "liked him not" during so many years, now when he was not far
from sixty went over to his side. _The Ring and the Book_ almost
immediately passed into a second edition. The decade from 1869 onwards
is called by Mrs Orr the fullest period in Browning's life. His social
occupations and entertainments both in London and for a time as a
visitor at country-houses became more numerous and absor