66 66 and 66 that formed a part of his plan of preparation for his life work, going to Russia, Germany, and Italy. Belonging to the time between the appearance of "Pauline Paracelsus" we know of only four short poems that were published. These appeared in "Fox's Monthly Repository." Two of them were afterward introduced, one into "Pippa Passes" as the song "A King lived Long Ago," and the other into James Lee's Wife," as the stanzas quoted in Under the Cliff." The other two were the "Madhouse Cells," two very remarkable poems, one "Johannes Agricola in Meditation," an expression of the madness of religious fanaticism in the character of the great Antinomian, the other, "Porphyria's Lover," an expression of the madness of love. Though in his later style as regards subject and treatment, they are singularly lucid in expression and pure in versification. "Paracelsus" appeared in 1835. It is dramatic in form and gives the story of the life of that celebrated empiric, mostly in dialogue between himself and his friend Festus, for the other two characters have little to say. Like "Pauline" and "Sordello," which soon followed, it is a study of the development of a soul, showing Paracelsus at significant points in his career. It begins with the lofty ambition to execute "God's great commission" by discovering the true secret of life for men: I can devote myself; I have a life To give; I, singled out for this, the One! Think, think; the wide East, where old Wisdom sprung, The bright South, where she dwelt; the hopeful All are passed o'er-it lights on me! 'Tis time And he is confident of the end, because so sure of the divine sending: Be sure they sleep not whom God needs! Nor fear These pedants strive to learn and teach; Black Arts, And next, on the verge of despair, he sees the mistake of seeking only to know, and excluding love; then his success, which seems to his friend a glorious consummation, is to himself a failure, coming, as it does, from the alloy of charlatanry that he has allowed to mingle with the honest endeavor to realize his high dreams: Yet constituted thus, and thus endowed, I failed; I gazed on power till I grew blindOn power; I could not take my eyes from that. And yet he believes that in some sense he has "attained," since he has come to know that there will arrive a third and better spirit among them -one devoted to both knowledge and love. "Paracelsus" met with little favor from either book-buyers or book-reviewers; but a long and enthusiastic article on it in the "Examiner," by John Forster, led to a life-long friendship between author and reviewer. Another friendship, formed at about the same time, led Mr. Browning to write his next dramas with a view to presentation on the stage. This was his friendship with William C. Macready, whom he met at a dinner given by the Rev. W. J. Fox late in 1835. The actor took a violent fancy to the young poet, invited him to spend the following New Year's Day at his house at Elstree, read "Paracelsus," and suggested that its author should write a drama for him to play. Accordingly, "Strafford was written, and was presented at Covent Garden Theatre, May 1, 1837. Macready took the principal part, and Miss Helen Faucit that of Lady Carlisle. It was played to good houses, and was well received; but the leading actors were poorly supported, and the finances of the theatre were in a ruinous condition; and so the piece was withdrawn after five representations. It was revived at the Standard Theatre in 1886, with moderate success. The motif of "Strafford" is the devotion of the minister to his king-a kind of devotion that the Stuarts found so easy to inspire and so easy also to forget. In the preface to the first edition, the author says the portraits are faithful to history as he understands it, Lady Carlisle's part only being imaginary; and Mrs. Orr, in her " Handbook," tells us that he afterward regarded his conception of her as having been confirmed by a very recent historian of the reign of Charles I. The drama was published, after its presentation on the stage, by the Longmans. son. Two other tragedies, written within the next three years, were designed for the stage, but no manager was found to bring them out, and they were not published till 1842 and 1843. The first, "King Victor and King Charles," is founded on an incident in the history of Sardinia in 1730-'31 -the abdication of Victor II. in favor of his son Charles, and his subsequent attempt to resume the throne. The four characters are drawn with great strength, particularly the selfish, cunning, and unscrupulous old king and his affectionate, sensitive, and upright but vacillating The other play was " The Return of the Druses," a spirited drama, first named "Mansoor the Hierophant." The scene is laid in the fifteenth century, in an island of the Southern Sporades colonized by the Druses of Lebanon, but governed by a prefect appointed by the Knights Hospitallers of Rhodes. The play is founded on the belief of the Druses in successive incarnations of God; the hero, Djabal, who aspires to be the deliverer of his people from the persecutions of the prefect, conceives the idea of arousing their enthusiasm by leading them to think that at this hour of their need the Supreme has been incarnated in him: When suddenly rose Djabal in the midst, The character of Anael, the girl beloved by Djabal, is drawn with great delicacy and fineness of touch in the struggle of her love and her religious feeling. To the same period belongs the lyrical drama, or masque, "Pippa Passes," pub |