You come i' the happy interval of peace,
The favourable weariness from war:
Prolong it!-artfully, as if intent

On ending peace as soon as possible.
Quietly so increase the sweets of ease
And safety, so employ the multitude,
Put hod and trowel so in idle hands,
So stuff and stop the wagging jaws with bread,
That selfishness shall surreptitiously

Do wisdom's office, whisper in the ear
Of Hohenstiel-Schwangau, there's a pleasant feel
In being gently forced down, pinioned fast
To the easy arm-chair by the pleading arms
O' the world beseeching her to there abide
Content with all the harm done hitherto,
And let herself be petted in return,
Free to re-wage, in speech and prose and verse,
The old unjust wars, nay-
in verse and prose
And speech,-to vaunt new victories, as vile
A plague o' the future. so that words suffice
For present comfort.

Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau is not over-clear; still an attentive and patient. reader may generally hope, with some trouble, to discover the meaning. This is not so easy with Browning's next poem, Fifine at the Fair. Comparing this production with his enigmatic Sordello, the Saturday Review caustically observed: "Neither Oedipus nor Daniel could have interpreted Sordello, unless they had consulted the same books, whatever they may be, from which Mr. Browning must have derived his knowledge of an obscure passage in Italian history; but a reader who should combine the energy of youth with the tolerance of age, and the sagacious industry of Scaliger or Bentley with the microscopic acuteness of a modern German metaphysician, might perhaps after ten readings comprehend the purpose and the language of Fifine." The poem consists of a Prologue (entitled Amphibian), a long philosophical monologue, or series of reflexions, uttered by the husband of a certain Elvire, whether for her edification or simply as a relief to himself is not very clear, and an Epilogue, called the Householder. Fifine, or Josephine, who has almost nothing to do with the

poem to which she gives a title, is a dancing-girl in a mountebank's show at the fair of Pornic in Brittany, and unwittingly suggests to Elvire's philosopher-husband, either directly or indirectly, that stream of reflexions which he continues to pour out for about two thousand lines. The Prologue, which is much more readable than the rest of the poem, describes a swimmer floating in a tranquil sea, and looking up at a butterfly hovering above him, while he reflects that neither could abide in the other's sphere without something which, like death, should entirely change their being. The sea here represents the region of passion and thought, the true element of the poet, intermediate between earthly and spiritual life, and the butterfly is an emblem of the disembodied soul:

Can the insect feel the better

For watching the uncouth play
Of limbs that slip the fetter,
Pretend as they were not clay?

Undoubtedly I rejoice

That the air comports so well
With a creature which had the choice
Of the land once. Who can tell?

What if a certain soul

Which early slipped its sheath,
And has for its home the whole
Of heaven, thus look beneath,

Thus watch one who, in the world,
Both lives and likes life's way,

Nor wishes the wings unfurled

That sleep in the worm, they say?

But sometimes when the weather
Is blue, and warm waves tempt
To free oneself of tether,
And try a life exempt

From worldly noise and dust,

In the sphere which overbrims
With passion and thought,-why, just
Unable to fly, one swims!

By passion and thought upborne,
One smiles to oneself,-"They fare
Scare better, they need not scorn
Our sea, who live in the air!'

Emancipate through passion
And thought, with sea for sky,
We substitute, in a fashion,
For heaven,-poetry:

Which sea, to all intent,
Gives flesh such noon-disport
As a finer element

Affords the spirit-sort.

Whatever they are, we seem :
Imagine the thing they know;
All deeds they do, we dream;
Can heaven be else but so?

The whole of the poem (including the Prologue), we are told by a critic, is an illustration of Mr. Browning's text, "that the life of man is a life of error lived by the help of truth, a life of falsehood which implies the need and capacity for reality, a life of illusion grounded and fulfilled in some ultimate perception of true being, a life of endless yearning after that which always eludes and yet always inspires us." Accepting this interpretation, we proceed to add, that Elvire and her husband go forth, arm in arm, to visit the fair, where besides a "chimneyed house on wheels" and such like, they see an

Ape of many years and much adventure, grim

And grey, with pitying fools who find a joke in him.
Or, best, the human beauty, Mimi, Toinette, Fifine,
Tricot fines down if fat, padding plumps up if lean,
Ere shedding petticoat, modesty, and such toys,

They bounce forth, squalid girls transformed to gamesome boys.

Fifine is presented to us as a type of the sensual earthly woman, as Elvire is the impersonation of intellect, refinement, and mortality struggling on to immortality. But Fifine, mean as she is, "the Pariah of the North, the European Nautch", has her place in creation; for just as a grain of sand at a given angle may reflect the rays of the sun,

No creature's made so mean

But that some way it boasts, could we investigate

Its supreme worth.

Fifine's raison d'être being thus established, the tolerant philosopher-husband continues:

Well then, thus much confessed, what wonder if there steal
Unchallenged to my heart the force of one appeal

She makes, and justice stamp the sole claim she asserts?
So absolutely good is truth, truth never hurts

The teller, whose worst crime gets somehow grace, avowed.
To me that silent pose and prayer proclaimed aloud
"Know all of me outside, the rest be emptiness
For such as you. I call attention to my dress,
Coiffure, outlandish features, and memorable limbs,
Piquant entreaty, all that eye-glance overskims.

Does this much pleasure? Then repay the pleasure-put
The price i' the tambourine. Do you seek farther? Tut!
I'm just my instrument-sound hollow, mere smooth skin
Stretched o'er gilt framework, I rub-dub, nought else within—
Always for such as you. If I have use elsewhere,

If certain bells, now mute, can jingle, need you care?
Be it enough, there's truth i' the pleading, which comports
With no word spoken out in colleges or courts,

Since all I plead is, "Pay for just the sight you see,
And give no credit to another charm in me.'

The Epilogue to this strange, enigmatical poem is called the Householder; and here the house stands for the human body or earthly life. The householder is dispirited and discontented, when a woman - spirit announces herself, and gently rebukes his impatience and petulance. The reader will be surprised to find, that this part of the poem can be regarded as no more than half-serious :

Savage, I was sitting in my house, late, lone:
Dreary, weary with the long day's work:
Head of me, heart of me, stupid as a stone:
Tongue-tied now, now blaspheming like a Turk;

When, in a moment, just a knock, call, cry,

Half a pang and all a rapture, there again were we

"What, and is it really you again?" quoth I.

"I again; what else did you expect?" quoth She.

"Never mind, hie away from this old house,

Every crumbling brick embrowned with sin and shame.
Quick, in its corners ere certain shapes arouse-

Let them, every devil of the night, lay claim.

Make and mend, rap and rend, for me-Good-bye!
God be their guard from disturbance at their glee,
Till, crash, comes down the carcase in a heap," quoth I.
"Nay, but there's a decency required," quoth She.

"Ah, but if you knew how time has dragged, days, nights,
All the neighbour talk with man and maid--such men!
All the fuss and trouble of street sounds, window sights;
All the worry of flapping door and echoing roof; and then
All the fancies. Who were they had leave, dared try
Darker arts that almost struck despair in me!
If you knew but how I dwelt down here!" quoth I.
"And was I so better off up there?" quoth She.

"Help and get it over! Reunited to his wife,

(How draw up the paper lets the parish people know?)
Lies M. or N. departed from this life,

Day the this or that, month and year the so and so.
What i' the way of final flourish? Prose, verse? Try!
Affliction sore long time he bore, or what is it to be?
Till God did please to grant him ease-Do end," quoth I.
"I end with-Love is all and Death is nought," quoth She.

The study of Fifine at the Fair has been recommended by one reviewer as a species of mental gymnastics. "The stimulus to thought", he says, "is in itself valuable, as a difficult or inaccessible Alpine summit furnishes an attraction to mountain climbers."

It is with a deep feeling of relief, that we turn from Fifine and Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, to show what Browning can do as a lyrical poet, when he chooses to descend from his shadowy Pegasus, and adapt himself to the comprehension of ordinary readers:

HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS1) FROM GHENT TO AIX.

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he,

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three:

Good speed! cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
Speed! echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

1) Probably the news of the revolution of 1539.