mselves; whereas new things piece not so well; but
though they help by their utility, yet they trouble by their
inconformity." These words, of one whose worldly wisdom was more
profoundly studied than ever Browning's was, might stand as a motto for
the poem. But the pregnant sentence of Bacon which follows these words
should be added--"All this is true if time stood still." Browning's
pleading is not a merely ingenious defence of the untenable, either with
reference to the general thesis or its application to the French Empire.
He did not, like his wife, think of the Emperor as if he were a paladin
of modern romance; but he honestly believed that he had for a time done
genuine service--though not the highest--to France and to the world. "My
opinion of the solid good rendered years ago," he wrote in September
1863 to Story, "is unchanged. The subsequent deference to the clerical
party in France and support of brigandage is poor work; but it surely is
doing little harm to the general good." And to Miss Blagden after the
publication of his poem: "I thought badly of him at the beginning of his
career, _et pour cause_; better afterward, on the strength of the
promises he made, and gave indications of intending to redeem. I think
him very weak in the last miserable year." It seemed to Browning a case
in which a veritable _apologia_ was admissible in the interests of truth
and justice, and by placing this _apologia_ in the mouth of the Emperor
himself certain sophistries were also legitimate that might help to give
the whole the dramatic character which the purposes of poetry, as the
exposition of a complex human character, required.

The misfortune was that in making choice of such a subject Browning
condemned himself to write with his left hand, to fight with one arm
pinioned, to exhibit the case on behalf of the "Saviour of Society" with
his brain rather than with brain and heart acting together. He was to
demonstrate that in the scale of spiritual colours there is a
respectable place for drab. This may be undertaken with skill and
vigour, but hardly with enthusiastic pleasure. _Prince
Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ is an interesting intellectual exercise, and if
this constitutes a poem, a poem it is; but the theme is fitter for a
prose discussion. Browning's intellectual ability became a snare by
which the poet within him was entrapped. The music that he makes here is
the music of Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha:

So your fugue br