failed to convey what was done and given, but the substance is this. Crushed under the dead weight of the life about her, and weary of its vanity, the lady had revealed to her, with mystic passion and promise, the vision of a true, keen, full life—a life of free activity, of heroic deeds and generous passions and sustaining love. Her soul had longed for this. She found new life in the mere vision of it, sprang to meet it, threw off the vain life about her, and left it for ever.

Only part of the message that had this great result is given, music being the medium for the rest. These are the ideas that got into words. She finds her race, proves her power and her right to share in its tasks, is taken to its heart, and made one with it in love, honour, and duty. She sees that love, the love of those who live for great common ends, is the only good in the world. She sees that it is power as well— power so great that if any two hearts and wills were to become really one, and alive with some true purpose, they would do more than has yet been done in the world. And in this new life she is offered just and warm regards, praise and blame, never indifference. And when age comes, rich in memories, and the past is reviewed, and all its good gathered at the last, another life will dawn beyond the dark, and the soul pass to the scope of that. Then the words cease.

This is the heart of the romance. And you ask, did it ever happen? or was the soul its sphere, and moral passion its medium? What matters ? This

was and is the "way of life," the only way of escape from a life that has gone to formality, worship of custom, selfish sentimentalism, pride, and show of sense, and that has no love, service, or sacrifice in it.

The "story" does not go much farther. The lady left the castle, beautiful and glad now, and the huntsman, as if enchanted, helped her to go, and in going, with the frank humanity that had won him from the first, she left him a plait of her hair. He has heard nothing of her since, and yet her memory has been the romance of his life, more so than his love and marriage; and in his last years, his wife and children being dead, he is going to seek her.

Now, is this poem an allegory? or a romance without moral design? a study, say, of certain types of character in romantic forms of them, and in circumstances fitted for them? I should not call it an allegory-that is not Browning's mode; and yet, if we say that dramatic statement of spiritual truth has been a mode of his art, the difference is not great. The characters are types, we must admit, and the poem becomes quite mystical, and even the peasant hears a wondrous music. He stands for common sense, the duke for false culture, and the duchess for the higher spirit and passion-so some have read it. It seems to me that this goes beyond the design of the poet, and the matter of the poem. I have above indicated certain dramatic and moral points of the poem, and need only add that it contrasts the free yet earnest life, a life at once natural and spiritual, with a

formal, external life, a life of pompous and selfish routine and isolation. The lady, by nature and race, is formed to hate the one and seek the other; the duke to do the contrary. All experience and the promise of life is to the first, death in life to the other. And I fancy the poet had an eye to certain "revivals" and "mediævalisms" that were making a vain effort to become a "way of life" to Englishmen about the date of this poem (1845).

"Childe Roland" was first published in 1855, and has, I believe, been a puzzle to most readers since. A study of madness, says an injured reader, with some tendency to produce it.

Shall we, then, regard the poem as a pure phantasy, and nothing more? If we do, how shall we take it, and what value could it have? Much still, I should say, as the expression of a series of emotions, or the invention of a series of images that depict these, and so suggest certain experiences of the soul. But how is this? It is hard, I judge, for most of us to understand how a poet may express himself in images and metres simply, stating his emotions and perceptions in concrete imagery. The poet has spoken of "Childe Roland as a pure romance made in that sense, and we shall take it first in that way.

But how did the poem arise in the poet's fancy? and what were its primary suggestions? First, there is the line from Edgar's song in "Lear"—a line that seems to have haunted the poet's mind, insisting on interpretation: "Childe Rowland to the dark tower

came." That line is from an old ballad, and takes us back dimly to heroic legends. And I should think the tragic situation in Lear wrought on the poet's fancy. Edgar sings that song in the awful scene on the heath and before the hovel. King Lear is his Childe Rowland, and the tower, both blind and dark, was the madness to which Lear was coming. Other points in the picture, and things entering into its composition, are mentioned by Dr. Furnivall—the gaunt figure of a red horse on a piece of tapestry in Mr. Browning's house, which kept staring at him, and a picture seen at Paris. As to the tower, two statements are made-Corfe Castle, and a tower among certain mountains in Italy. None of these items may seem of much importance, but they give a clue to the nature of the poem through its composition. And as you read the poem you will see how these images, with the emotions they touched, have formed a striking picture.

The "hero" of the adventure is the speaker, so he has survived" the dark tower." As a knight, he had gone round the world to carry out the task laid on him. Many had tried and failed, and that seems likely to be his fate. He has even got to a point at which failure would be a relief. It is the dull twilight of a dreary day. He comes on a hoary cripple, with a look of malice, who points out a path. He has no confidence that the path is right, but takes it, caring only that somehow his quest should end. He is in such weariness that he seems cut off even from those

who have failed, and left to seek vainly alone. And the whole scene looks the shadow of his despair. The very sun "leers" at him as it sets. But so much he knows the "tower" is somewhere in the tract. So he took the plain, and as soon as he had done so the path behind seemed gone, and he was bound to his fate; he must go on if only because there was nothing else to do. And on he went, through a scene starved, base, and dead, hardly a blade and not a creature, save one stiff blind horse, with every bone astare." This horse seemed so wretched he could not help hating it; it must be wicked to be in such misery. It was all so bad he shut his eyes to seek comfort out of memory and the past, but there was no comfort that way. All those once with him who have failed come back, and to avoid the past he takes the path again. It grew darker, drearier, and all seemed so dead that he longed for anything—an owl or a bat, even, if only it had life or motion. He came on something in motion-a restless, spiteful little river, that seemed a curse to everything near it, and whose presence only gave new horror to the scenery. It was a relief to get away from it. Surely something better must come. But no; a worse tract, full of horrid, shadowy struggle, like "wild cats in a red-hot iron cage," base, cruel, vain. And the very ground was evil; not only waste, but hideous. This to bear, and the end far off as ever, and neither desire nor aim left! But here came another crisis. A great black bird went past, and as he looked up, thinking even