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COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY.

To write of this wonderful little drama seems unnecessary. It is so direct and obvious it needs no comment, and therefore it is not about the story itself as a story that I wish to offer any remark, but it seems to illustrate one side of Browning's thought in a very remarkable way and of that I may be allowed to speak.

We have here no violent incident (as in Pippa Passes -the Blot on the Scutcheon, or even in reflective Sordello,) no detailed history of a soul's conflict as in Paracelsus, no sophistry as in Bishop Blougram, no evolution of thought as in Saul or Cleon.

We have the simple story of one day, the extent of action in it is confined to the giving and receiving of a letter. The dramatis personæ are a band of courtiers, a waiting-maid, an advocate dusty with hard riding, a prince and a lady. What then is it that holds us enthralled in the story? Simply this, that it is the life of a soul that hangs in the balance: that the arena is moved from the outer to the inward :-that the soul goes through hair-breadth adventures, seems sometimes

in jeopardy altogether, and is triumphant in the end. The whole drama is one of the spirit, and not of the body. The clue to it lies, I think, in the broken exclamation of Valence 'when man perceives.' The story is one of the growth of a true power of seeing, a power which shall correct the imperfect and distorted views of life which we have by nature.

In Berthold the prince, we have the apotheosis of success. The description of his career as given by Valence is that of success sublimated, so lofty, so free from meanness, so refined, that I have heard it quoted as Browning's ideal of manhood. And it needs to have the character of Valence placed beside it, before we can see what Browning's ideal of manhood really is-so subtlely hidden is the blame, even the scorn with which he depicts that which the world calls greatest. The world's success is the

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"Circle premature

Heedless of far gain

"The hundred that's soon hit."

of the Grammarian's Funeral. The same note is struck in this passage though with a touch more irony.

"He gathers earth's whole good into his arms,
Standing, as man now, stately, strong and wise,
Marching to fortune, not surprised by her.
One great aim, like a guiding star, above—
Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift
His manhood to the height that takes the prize;
A prize not near-lest overlooking earth

He rashly spring to seize it—nor remote,
So that he rest upon his path content :
But day by day, while shimmering grows shine,
And the faint circlet prophecies the orb,
He sees so much as, just evolving these,
The stateliness, the wisdom and the strength,
To due completion, will suffice this life,

And lead him at his grandest to the grave."

There is a glamour in the ring of these words which carries us away. Nothing is more wonderful in his poems than the way in which Browning wields language for making impressions. He manipulates words exactly as an artist does colours. The high sounding flow of these words deceives the ear for a moment just as the gifts of fortune of which he is speaking do. Then when we come to examine we find how we have been taken in with the shimmering grows shine and the rest of it.

Man is led at his grandest to the grave! though it cannot be denied he has won beautiful gifts of wisdom, stateliness and strength, which all the world admire, and their due completion will suffice this life. He springs through the night (we mark the significance of that metaphor of night) towards the star of success, his educated faculties enjoying step by step of his upward career. This, for his own good. Mankind seeing him successful credit him with every gift of God and man, endow him in imagination with every virtue he does not possess, while he, free from all such encumbrance does the rest! So every day's success adds to what is he, a solid strength, an aëry might to what encircles him,

that is, makes the unreal fiction which men have elected to worship more firmly seated in their admiration. Until when Emperor his very shadow shall be so watched, his very dress so noted, that nothing by exclusiveness shall seem possible for him 'their typified invincibility.' "Thus shall he go on, greatening, till he ends― The man of men, the spirit of all flesh,

The fiery centre of an earthly world!"

Thus the supremest of exclusiveness is his going on: his greatening: he is the man of men, not the man of God nor ever can be! the man whom men commend for no virtue but success, the spirit of all flesh, the sublimation of all that is lowest, the self-centre,-the convergence of all self-directed effort, the fiery centre of an earthly world. What a picture of narrowing, of dwindling and of ultimate loss. We may compare with this the words of the Grammarian's Funeral,

"That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it:

This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies e'er he knows it.

That low man goes on adding one to one,
His hundred's soon hit:

This high man, aiming at a million,

Misses an unit.

That, has the world here—should he need the next,
Let the world mind him!

This, throws himself on God, and unperplext

Seeking shall find Him.

F

And yet there is something pathetic in this successful man too. This man who believes in no love save the love of power, had learnt his lesson in one brief, wild flash of light in the old time when he was still struggling in the mire and Priscilla left him for a Brabant lord. It is not surprising that he turns 'to plod on the old way, and somewhat wearily,' he must confess.

And in sharp contrast to the coming Emperor stands the nameless advocate, the man whose true vision has come, the man who, as Keats says, in the first version of Hyperion has had purged off, his mind's film,' to whom the miseries of the world are misery and will not let him 'rest, who has learnt a real estimate of things, who will never take Earth for Heaven, or false for true. And this is the thought of the poem. True sight is the truest gift of life, the best that it has to teach us. Berthold's was false sight. Colombe was still purblind, Valence saw. When man perceives' heaven is found. Valence was no philanthropist for the praise or even for the love it could bring him: he only saw that the true life of one is the life of all, and that the rest is death and nothing less. This comes out again and again in his words. He tells Colombe that such men as her courtiers have hidden a source of true dominion from her,

"The lowest, on true grounds,

Be worth more than the highest rule, on false :
Aspire to rule, on the true grounds!"

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