ABSTRACT
We think that, notwithstanding a few harsh rhymes and awkward words (the above astonishing line about ‘the bell therein to hitch’ among others), which will we, nill we, we are obliged to accept from Mr. Browning-his wayward toll and tribute, to be paid by all whom he carries along the great and nobly flowing river of song-we have read few things finer than this grand ballad, if so it may be called. The peasant’s rude, primitive, but noble sense of justice, unreflecting, unhesitating, contrasts in the most forcible way with the fluttering frenzy of the woman, her brain sharpened by need to every subterfuge of casuistry, the desperate skill of self-defence. The poet knows better than to leave in us any emotions of pity for the ignoble creature who can anticipate the sweetness of life’s after years after the tragedy she has lived through; and the calm of the executioner is noble, not cruel, as it might so easily have been made to appear. Thus once more the foundation of story, not original, and something too horrible for ordinary treatment, is ennobled by the new element in it, the new setting and moral. Any possible reproach as to the absence of invention shown in the choice of these old tales is thus met and extinguished in the most noble way.
