Browning's Heroines

some girls by the way. She does nothing, is nothing, but exquisite emotion uttering itself in song-quick lyrical outbursts from her joyous

r lot, Pippa is "human to the red-ripe of the heart." She can threaten fictively her holiday, if it should ill-use her by bringing rain to spoil her enjoyment; but even this intimidation is of the very spirit of confiding love, for her threat is that if rain does fall, she will be

table that Browning, though he acquiesces in the fictive date, yet conveys to us, so definitely that it must be with intention, the effect of summer weather. We find ourselve

lemn hours serene

be in Italy, but as "long blue hours" they cannot, even there, be figured. I maintain that, whatever it may be calle

lovely little town of Northern Italy which Browning loved so well. In that chamber, made vivid to our imagination by virtue of

squander a w

twelve hour

f thy gazes

*

oices or one

*

quander such la

l on Asolo, mi

think in parentheses. The agility and (it were to follow an indulgent fashion to add) the "subtlety" of Browning's mind too often led him into like excesses: I deny the subtlety here, for these clauses are so wholly uninteresting in thought that even as examples I shall not cite them. But their crowning distastefulness is in the certitude we feel that, w

g is forgotten

solemn hours se

not, certainly, in such lovely diction to have been able to express. Thenceforward, until the episodical l

thou must t

s ones are t

holiday, if t

ly Pippa-old

ight, will come

u prove gentle,

gth of thee for

and women th

ho all days a

nty cure particu

one way, if

ngle day, God

rth else, with a

lps me through the

em, like the child she is. They, she declares, are "Asolo's Four Happiest Ones." Each is, in the event, to be vitally influ

Ottima," wife of the old magnate, Luca, who owns

Can rai

omage? all the

on her shrub-ho

ss the closer,

k: how should sh

ry fully to be shown-that Ottima's

f Jules, the young French sculptor. They are to come hom

t care bri

ar selves? 'Tis t

*

and, within eac

easant weather,

-are Luigi, the young aristocrat-patriot, and his mother. Evening is t

er child, unmat

ge, as Luigi

e conte

hould be obscured with m

heerful town

sooner that

es the

rence bad weather can

"that holy and beloved priest," w

olo, his bro

masses prop

-what storm dare

ay, with his own

, nor want the

rs serenely flowing"-for not rain at morning can hurt Ottima with her Sebald, nor at noon the brid

one such misch

htens the next t

silk-winding,

oilet, she is letting some of her precious time slip by fo

oolhardy su

le splash f

ld mock the

basin o

f water ruin

fleet your b

*

gether on t

l task y

mon and dead things had a meaning beyond the power of any dictionary to utter." Mr. Chesterton, it is true, speaks of this "astonishing realism" in relation to Browning's love-poetry, and Pippa Passes is not a love-poem; but the insight of the comment is no less admirable when we use it to enhance a passage such as this. Who has not caught the

together on

l task y

ceases to be the lyrical child, and turns into the Browning (to cite Mr. Chesterton again) to whom Nature really meant such things as the basket of jelly-fish in The Englishman in Italy, or the stomach-cyst in Mr. Sludge the Medium-"the monstrosities and living mysteries of the sea." To me, these lines on the p

ruddy as St.

h-bunch on some T

ore been deprived of Pippa, and got nothin

not she who has guarded it from harm? So it may laugh through her window at the tantalised bee (are there trav

midst of

Queen, wo

e warrant fo

am I not,

se? What shall

*

ll day-and it

e pleasures, am ca

iest Four i

linquished baby-game of Let's-pretend; but is grown-up in this-that she

love me, as the

than Ottima,

d the great st

for shrubs, al

Sebald steals,

ile old Luca ye

would Pippa gain, were she in truth great haughty Ottima? She would but "give abundant cause for prate." Ottima, bold,

in the little

rst dream

ve-there's bett

"defy the scoffer"; it shall

I not be the

Ott

er-girl arrive-"if you call it seeing her,"

. one

pure cheek and bl

ll except the

ntrives those l

t was sh

ver close

ide to look at a

emember, Jules!

ed, flower-like

h would fray the

*

ever grant he

s her real fir

not env

that exquisite reserve, the little work-girl has a moment's pang of pity

us were wond

hows herself to be at any rate pure innocence. It could not be envy, s

or if yo

take or t

do you thi

new love to

lapped me round f

r of losing i

, men learn to h

ts' love can l

"Son and Mother, gentle pair," who commune at eve

Luigi! If

ther's face-my

e each came. And just because, thus ignorant, she cannot truly figur

ome to that, b

God

t he will bless the home of his dea

beats, those eye

all men! I, to

holy and bel

ready has the proof of having chosen rightly, already seems to share i

ranks the s

on this earth ex

puppets, be

re is no la

mall events": none exceeds

Luigi and his mother, not even the holy and beloved priest

ach, and see t

being just as

, and dear to

*

res "so mightily" for her one day, but still insiste

rass path g

e-wood, blind

swallow

icala dar

red ca

the whole region she is famed, leaves the "large mean airy ch