de ses
levres serait une divulgation sacrilege. Ce silence mysterieux la
spiritualise et la rattache par un dernier lien au monde eternel."]

Chapter XIV

Problem and Narrative Poems

_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_, which appeared in December 1871, four
months after the publication of _Balaustions Adventure_, was written by
Browning during a visit to friends in Scotland. His interest in modern
politics was considerable, but in general it remained remote from his
work as a poet. He professed himself a liberal, but he was a liberal who
because he was such, claimed the right of independent judgment. He had
rejoiced in the enfranchisement of Italy. During the American Civil War
he was strongly on the side of the North, as letters to Story, written
when his private grief lay heavy upon him, abundantly show. He was at
one time a friend of the movement in favour of granting the
parliamentary suffrage to women, but late in life his opinion on this
question altered. He was as decidedly opposed to the proposals for a
separate or subordinate Parliament for Ireland as were his friends
Carlyle and Tennyson and Matthew Arnold. After the introduction of the
Home Rule Bill he could not bring himself, though requested by a friend,
to write words which would have expressed or implied esteem for the
statesman who had made that most inopportune experiment in
opportunism[112] and whose talents he admired. Yet for a certain kind of
opportunism--that which conserves rather than destroys--Browning
thought that much might fairly be said. To say this with a special
reference to the fallen Emperor of France he wrote his _Prince
Hohenstiel-Schwangau_.

Browning's instinctive sympathies are not with the "Saviour of Society,"
who maintains for temporary reasons a tottering edifice. He naturally
applauds the man who builds on sure foundations, or the man who in order
to reach those foundations boldly removes the accumulated lumber of the
past. But there are times when perhaps the choice lies only between
conservation of what is imperfect and the attempt to erect an airy
fabric which has no basis upon the solid earth; and Browning on the
whole preferred a veritable _civitas hominum_, however remote from the
ideal, to a sham _civitas Dei_ or a real Cloudcuckootown. "It is true,
that what is settled by custom, though it be not good, yet at least it
is fit; and those things, which have long gone together, are as it were
confederate within the