the first place, to say that the Molinists were only Jansenists under another name is almost equivalent with saying that the followers of Lord Cairns are identical with the friends of Mr. Bright. The circumstance of both having given attention to the doctrines of grace, is the sole circumstance in which the Jansenists and the Molinists were at one. The opinions of the Jansenists were as different from those of the Molinists, as the opinions of the late Sir Robert Inglis were from those of the late Mr. Feargus O'Connor. In fact, the very use of the name of "Molinist" by Mr. Browning, throws us into a state of confusion approaching that of his own mind on the point. For there were Molinists and Molinists; the former taking their name from the Jesuit, Louis Molina, whose Concordia was first published at Lisbon in 1588, and whose opinions were the cause of lively discussion under the reigns of Clement VIII. and Paul V.; that is, something like a century before the pontificate of Innocent XII. It cannot be to them that Mr. Browning refers; because they existed long before the Jansenists; they were never condemned by the Church; and perhaps at this moment their doctrine is more prevalent among Catholics, than any other on the subject. We will compassionate Mr. Browning's bewildered ignorance, so far as to assume* that the Molinists he speaks of-more properly Molinosists, belonging to one sect of Quietists-were the followers, not of Louis Molina, but of Michael Molinos; because Quietism was really a question much discussed in Innocent XII.'s reign. But it is highly improbable, to put it mildly, that Innocent, who did not ascend the Pontifical throne until the year 1691, was ignorant of the fact that Michael Molinos had abjured his errors in the year 1687. It is therefore also improbable that the Pope did not know what the "Molinists were; and the whole story wears an air neither of truth nor of happy invention. It is known, however, that the Pope, out of his great respect for the character of Fénélon, proceeded with a slowness in his examination of the qualified Quietism of Les Maximes des Saints, with which the French court was much offended and affected to be much disedified; and we can only suppose that something Mr. Browning has heard or read somewhere in connection with that matter has grown, under the action of his imagination, into what he records. In the Pope's soliloquy (vol. iv.) there are far more monstrous perversions of history and reason, upon the exposure of which it is not our province now to enter. Those passages will be * We may assert it. In vol. i. p. 162, he speaks of " Molinos' sect." VOL. XIII.-NO. XXV. [New Series.] E of great value to Dr. Cumming, whether or not he goes to the Ecumenical Council, and may perhaps eke out the eloquence of some "worthy peer" like Lord Westmeath, in the deliberations of the Lords on the Irish Church Bill. But, as a specimen of the manner in which the Pope is made to talk Browning, we may be permitted to give the following "Call me knave and you get yourself called fool! I live for greed, ambition, lust, revenge; Attain these ends by force, guile : hypocrite To-day, perchance to-morrow recognized The rational man, the type of common sense." Considering the many years which Mr. Browning has spent in Italy, we are not competent to say that his use of "local colour" in his sketches is not generally appropriate and successful, but in the matter of Protestantism his mind seems as much untravelled as his heart. There was no English or Anglo-American colony in Rome at the end of the 17th century, and therefore no appreciable section of Roman society would have talked-as he makes "Half Rome" talk (vol. i. p. 140)-of "Thou shalt not kill" as the "sixth commandment," and "Thou shalt not commit adultery" as the "seventh." He has evidently read up several authorities, not all reliable, for the details of his work on ecclesiastical subjects, and it is strange how so simple a fact as the difference between the Catholic order of the Commandments and the Protestant should have escaped his notice, especially when we know that out of it has arisen the stale charge against us of suppressing one of the precepts of the Decalogue; but this mere toe-nail helps one to take the dimensions of the whole Hercules of misinformation which is his normal state of mind. It is still more discreditable to him to have reproduced (vol. i. p. 24) an extremely silly play upon the names of three remarkable English Catholic Churchmen of our times, which originally-if indeed originality can be predicated of something not more an effort of the brain than sneezing or snoring-came from some of the stupidest of the witlings who write in some of the dullest of the "comic" papers. Passing now from the consideration of Mr. Browning's claims upon the gratitude of Exeter Hall, we will say a few words about the general character of his poetry before proceeding to examine its specific manifestation in his last work. Few English poets, worthy of the name, that ever lived seem to have cultivated so little the art of poetical composition. M. Sainte-Beuve, speaking of the Duke de Broglie, says that "Sa pensée lui naît toute rédigée;" which is true of several other orators and prose writers, not only in France, but elsewhere. It is not true, however, of poets. Many mere rhymesters are gifted with a facile improvisation; but there has never been a great poet, we believe, at least of those controlled by the laws of rhythm and metre, whose spontaneous flow of thought did not require to be poured into a mould of carefully arranged expression. From the very structure of the highest kind of poetry we possess, it is evident that all the great masters of the lyre thought it of the utmost importance to cultivate the mechanism of their art, and thereby enhanced, to a degree that they only could estimate, but at which we can guess, the power and beauty of the thought as it first flashed upon them. Now, Mr. Browning seems to us to labour under either a great delusion or a great mistake. He is under a delusion if he thinks that every thought springs perfectly accoutred from his brain, like Pallas from the brain of Jove. He is under a mistake if he thinks it is of no consequence in what fashion his intellectual bantlings are presented to the world; whether washed or unwashed, dressed or undressed, with limbs decently composed or awkwardly sprawling. We are aware, and various examples indeed sufficiently show, that the highest functions of social or political life can be discharged, not discreditably, without the assistance of hands or feet. Mr. Browning seems to be of opinion that his lines get on equally well with or without the usual number of limbs, or with more than the usual number, and whether or not the limbs they have got are in the right places. What would be thought of the artist who should send a picture or statue to the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, in which picture the "portrait of a gentleman," otherwise painted to perfection, had been left destitute of a nose, or which statue, chiselled in all else with the grace of a Chantrey, had been parsimoniously furnished with but one arm, or too liberally endowed with three? If such a work escaped the rigorous exclusion of the Hanging Committee, could the public, spectatum admissi, refrain from ridiculing and denouncing so preposterous a deformity? It may be that Mr. Browning would haughtily assert himself, like the Emperor Sigismund, superior to the paltry laws to which humbler poets are fain to yield. It may be that he would contend that for him who utters the burden of song with which the divine afflatus fills his soul, no voice is possible but that of the divinity speaking through him. If such were his explanation, it would only remain for us, while acknowledging the great and godlike presence of Apollo, to note with some wonder his sublime indifference to etymology, scorn of syntax, and persecution of prosody. Seriously, it is to us a matter of surprise that, in whatever other respects Mr. Browning's last poem may be superior to those which have preceded it, many of them give proofs of much more care in composition, and contain passages, if not of greater power, certainly of greater finish. The faulty lines in "Paracelsus," for instance, are few; though one does occur now and then to mar the effect of an otherwise fine passage. In such lines as and You first collect how great a spirit he hid, To find the nature of the spirit they boast, one has to make "spirit" spir't, or read the whole as prose. Again, there are lines in which the phrases "envy and hate," and "early and late," must each be read as having only three syllables. It is hard to know what to do with such a line as Regard me and the poet dead long ago, unless we make "poet" pote; the only authority for which pronunciation, as far as we know, is an Irish ditty, in which it is averred that there 66 was no one," not even Fitzjarald the pote, A fit rhyme for the Ram. But these faults are accidental and venial in comparison with the deliberate offences, as we are compelled to regard them, against rhythm, good taste, and even the English language, committed in "The Ring and the Book." The tale of the "Book," as we shall explain more fully further on, is told in a great variety of ways. One of those is what the author calls the Tertium Quid, the way in which the story ran among the " superior social section," supposed to be told by some "man of quality" in "silvery and selectest phrase." Let us give a few samples of the distinguished Tertium Quid's exquisite phraseology:— Go, brother, stand you rapt in the ante-room Of her Efficacity my Cardinal For an hour, he likes to have lord-suitors lounge,- The better horse,-how wise the people's word!— Another : Why not have taken the butcher's son, the boy Another : So Guido rushed against Violante, first (p. 27.) Malorum-increasingly drunk,-which justice done, Very naturally. A few lines more :— The Archbishop of the place knows and assists : Or a farce? Call'st thou this "poetry," good "Master" Browning? To us it reads far more like "prose run mad." It is absurd to defend such writing on the ground of its "realism." Realism, if it means anything, means conformity to reality, and to say that it is in conformity with reality to make an accomplished gentleman, or for that matter any rational person, express himself in dislocated doggerel, is an insult to common sense. Shakespeare and the other great dramatists of the Elizabethan age far better understood how to reproduce the real as well as how to give form to the ideal by their art, when they relieved the measured and poetic language of their principal dramatis persona by the homely but racy prose of the inferior characters. Mr. Browning's genius is essentially dramatic, and many of his best efforts have naturally taken that form. The genuine and high inspiration of much of his poetry is indisputable. He has often great power of thought; generally great vigour, and sometimes great felicity, of expression. In insight and outsight," as he would say himself, the range and force of his imagination are transcendent. Properly disciplined and kept to his proper work, he might have been the Shakespeare of our century. As it is, he is not equal to Tennyson; whom, nevertheless, he as far surpasses in power of conception as he is surpassed by |