deed, Mr. Browning may be charged with not sufficiently trapping the gullies of Guido's uncircumcised imagination. cision as the crowning effort of his life. The ripe observation and mature wisdom with which he characterizes the persons of the drama, and at the same time delivers himself of a multitude of religious, moral, political, and even artistic theories, makes his speech a model of Mr. Browning's lyricodidactic style. The poet himself speaks behind the mask. It is not however that the poet becomes Romanized, but the Pope becomes tinctured with his presenter, as we have already sufficiently seen. In this canto of the poem, consequently, Mr. Browning's whole circle of teaching, feeling, and criticism may be most conveniently studied. He will be found to possess great unity of principle. It is not only in human characters that he contrasts the gush of nature with the creeping contrivances of art. He exhibits a general scepticism, not about the observed laws, but about deduced precepts and conventional rules of morals, politics, and economy. He includes in the same condemnation premeditated proofs, prepared speeches, made-up marriages, codified rules, regulated education, and routine in general. He enforces his argument by examples of the fail In contrast with the cold reason and active conventionality of Guido, we have the nature and passion of Pompilia, his wife, and Caponsacchi, her deliverer. Each, either devoid of education or ill-educated, puts to shame the artificial power of education by the natural flow of right feeling and instinct. The woman exhibits this in her innocence and ignorance; the man, in the midst of the frivolities and wild-oats sowing of courtly Italian life. They are both essentially lyrical characters; and in obedience to the lyrical law, they both lack active originating power, but sit down in a boat, without oars or sails, to be luckily wafted over the wild waters of life by the breezes of good feeling and the gales of passionate instinct. Hence they lack striking individuality. Mr. Browning tells us miles more about them than we are told about Hotspur or Cordelia; yet they come miles behind Hotspur and Cordelia in definiteness, dramatic energy, and elevation of individual character. They neither of them flash upon the reader; he has to gather their characters from a multi-ure of special contrivances. The clergy are tude of sayings or doings or sufferings. He has to credit them with what they tell him of their own feelings and intentions, and to believe them chiefly because their features are so handsome, and their countenances so open. Nevertheless they are real characters; and the cumulative, painfully heaped up conceptions of them which we gradually agglomerate in our minds become, if not grand outlines, at least grand patches of massive and yet subtle colour. They constitute the masculine and feminine ideals of the poet; and there is great pathos and lyrical power in the monologue and sallies of Caponsacchi, explaining how, like Prince Hal, he lived amidst pleasures which he loved not, and how he was saved from them by a sudden passion. But there is more pathos when Pompilia, like a dying swan, intones the plain song of her life, and gives the history of her weary walk with Guido, and her exciting run with Caponsacchi. The story is a convenient one for a man who can put together last speeches, and knows that in the world to humanize mankind; yet it was not the clergy who objected to the torture chamber. The seminary and the monastery should wean priests from the world, and harden them for their sharp duties; yet in Mr. Browning's poem it is the regularly educated priests who timidly follow the world, while the "irregular noble scapegrace," the man who should be a priest but is a desultory lover and poet, alone rushes from the ball-room to the battle-field at the call of duty. The physician falls sick, the lawyer cheats, the divine is damned, and the aimless saunterer finds health, success, and salvation. The politic And cunning statesman, that believes he fath oms The counsels of all kingdoms on the earth, In the astutest villains he puts such a mixture of the fool as brings to nought the knave. In the extremely moderate Roman jurisprudence he exhibits the mild flame of justice, hidden under the bushel of that plausible desire to avoid disputes which is the palladium of all establishments, and which drives them to let souls perish rather than themselves lose credit; and he shows how the intemperate sallies of those who are right are always matters of righteous blame for those who are temperately and methodically wrong. Nature against art is a central thought with him; but in his view the fine arts are nature. After those described, the two most prominent speakers in the poem are two Roman advocates, of whom one argues for Guido and one for Pompilia. For each his brief is his rule of faith. This is an offence as great in the poet's eyes as a marriage of convenience. One is the unpardonable sin against passion, the other against truth. Guido sins in one way, and is foiled; the advocates in another, and become ludicrous. Each, with his piebald language, his forensic quotations, his oratorical conceit, his jealousy of his opponent, his childish arguments, fitter for Euphues than for an advocate, becomes, however tedious, a comic and burlesque personage. One of them, the lean bachelor Bottini, blue-eyed, bright-haired, treble-voiced, screaming where a slow coach would be upset or stopped. It carries him on in such wise that he is content only half to understand, to forgive more than he takes in, and to retain but a little of that which passes through his ears. If there were not positive evidence to the contrary, Mr. Browning might be considered a careless poet, bestowing ample pains on amassing his materials, but little on their organization. But whatever trouble he may take he evidently lacks the power to give any great unity to the multifariousness of his farrago. Loaded as his pictures are with details, they can only please at a considerable distance. He writes a symphony carefully, and scores it for an orchestra of "saltbox, tongs, and bones." A minute critic might ask in vain for a plausible defence of line after line of his verse. He must be read running, and read with the eye more than with the ear. To read him aloud, or to let the ear pore over his verse is mortal. But to the intelligence he repays minute study. He presents a boundless chaos of accidental knowledge. The wide horizon of dim distance teeming with suggestions of facts outside the action of seems painted after Chaucer's pardoner. the poem gives it an air of reality, life, These are the persons who are dramatically domesticity, and truthfulness, such as we are brought out. The rest have only an exist-conscious of in Homer and Shakespeare. ence in the narrative. These more unde- It is as plausible as a letter from home or a fined characters have a great range, from police report in the newspaper. Yet the the neutral tints of the Comparini to the laboured accumulation of appropriate allublack, scarlet, and yellow of Guido's family. sions is sometimes rather overdone. In A number of them are twin brothers or sis-reading his lines also we perpetually arouse ters with men or women in Mr. Browning's former poems, many of whom seem to have missed their vocation in appearing where they did. They would certainly have been more at home in The Ring and the Book than where their premature birth has placed "in heights of head As, in his modest studio, all alone, strains Both eyes shut, like the cockerel that would crow," them. Among the materials of the poem would be the place to discuss the minute realism of the poet, his theory of rhythm, his grammar, his style, as distinct and special in verse as Mr. Carlyle's in prose, his felicitous power of working at once upon contradictory models, consciously copying Euripides but producing something even more like Eschylus, and, in attempts to advance beyond the most advanced of the Greek dramatists, falling back upon the mythical beginnings of the Greek drama. His great virtue is that he has an impetus, a rush, which, to a great extent, hides his contradictory faults. It carries the reader over pages of "prose swell'd to verse, verse loitering into prose," over sheets where thoughts lie jumbled together, close packed and without room to move. It carries him over pitfalls of grammar, over empty holes and hard stones, fleeting and impalpable memories of the great poets of the reign of James I. But there is at least one of them who knew how in a few paragraphs to anticipate many of Mr. Browning's chief characteristics. The Old City Captain in Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster does not say much. But what he does say is so richly streaked with peculiar metaphor, that he reminds one very strongly of Mr. Browning. When, at the head of the insurgent apprentices, he catches and threatens the Spanish prince, he speaks the purest Browningese- “Nay, My beyond-sea-sir, we will proclaim you: Thou tender heir apparent to a church-ale, The difference is that the burlesque of ters than in their differences of expression. Each of them is saturated with his profession. His lawyers speak in terms of the pleas and bench; his divines in those of the pulpit and the schools; and his nobles are all heralds. All are vexed with an itch of making metaphors corresponding to the circumstances of their lives. Hence the style is rather a pudding-stone of dialects, all formed on the same principle, but out of different materials, than a smooth amalgam in which all the materials are made fluid, and worked up into the one comprehensive and dignified language of the cultivated man. There is enough of observation, learning, humour, wit, wisdom, but little charm; "nihil hic nisi carmina desunt." Yet there is more to admire than to forgive in Mr. Browning. Like Plato he is a poet because he is a poetical philosopher, though it may be a question whether his philosophy does not tend to strangle his poetry. His power may be guessed by the opposition he has encountered. Smashers clip gold, not copper. But to some his very power is repulsive. There are still many wise men, and men of taste, who would have their teeth drawn or toes amputated rather than read him. And those who can appreciate him are often so struck with the multifariousness of his merits in detail that, without appraising him higher than he deserves, they are apt in criticising him to raise expectations which the reading of his poems will fail to satisfy. and of speech. These men find the arms of their adversaries effectually strengthened by the Papacy, and their own efforts confounded by reproaches which it justifies; but they seldom acknowledge that the causes of their weakness are in Rome. Sooner or later they almost always renounce or silence their convictions. Rather than definitely contradict the utterances of the Pope, or publicly censure his acts, they devote themselves to force or to veil his meaning. They shrink from a direct antagonism, and refuse to let the cause of the Pope be separated from their own. Their dread of a collision, and their obtrusive submissiveness, encourage the enterprise of those whose desire is to promote the Papal authority. Men who succumb in order to avoid the Index cannot be expected to reject what is proposed as an article of faith. If they will not resist a Roman congregation acting in the name of the Pope, they are not likely to resist an ecumenical council claiming to represent the Church. It is thought at Rome that, by declaring the Pope infallible, the independent action of the liberal party may be arrested, and the troubles of internal discussion averted for the future. This infallibility is already a received doctrine with a considerable fraction of the Catholics. In the Commission to which the question was submitted at Rome, in preparation for the Council, only one dissentient vote was given. Among the Jesuits it has long prevailed; and the Jesuits being now in power, and recognised exponents of the Pope's own sentiments, the moment is propitious to make their doctrine triumph. For the ideas of the Encyclical and Syllabus of 1864, by which Pius IX. desired to remodel ART. V.—THE POPE AND THE COUNCIL.* society, have not commanded general assent. [COMMUNICATED.] THE attempt to establish the infallibility of the Pope by decree of a General Council is a phase of controversy which the internal disputes of the Church of Rome have made almost inevitable. The Catholic opposition in its several forms, national in Italy, scientific in Germany, liberal in France, has uniformly been directed against one or other of the Papal claims. Amongst the Catholics there are numbers who earnestly condemn the despotism of the Popes, their asserted superiority to all human law, civil and ecclesiastical, the exclusiveness with which they profess themselves sole interpreters of the Divine law, their systematic warfare against freedom of conscience, of science, * Der Papst und das Concil. Von Janus. (Leipzig: Steinacker.) The mind of Europe moves in other orbits; and nation after nation breaks away from the fetters of the canon law. It is hoped that the Pope's words will be heard with more deference if they are enforced by severer penalties. Obedience or excommunication would be a formidable alternative to the Catholics. The calculation is that it may yet be possible to recover by authority what has not been preserved by reason, and to restore, at one stroke, an influence which is waning, and a spirit that has passed away. There is no doubt that many of the bishops will be glad if the dogma of infallibility is not submitted to the Council. A book by a French prelate is announced to appear shortly, which proves that the authority and example of Bossuet are not lost upon his countrymen. The German bishops, meeting at Fulda the other day, agreed that union lies in the reformation of those defects which have been introduced by fraud and malice during many ages of credulity and ignorance. If anything can ruin the system which exalts so high the claims and privileges of the Pope, it is such an exposure of the methods and the motives that have reared it. The author evidently is prepared for the worst. He thinks it conceivable that the Council may err as well as the Pope, and may proclaim as a dogma what is false. The encroachments of the Papacy have left so little independence to the episcopate that the testimony of the bishops is no security for their Church. Their oath of office binds them to preserve and to increase the rights, honours, privileges, and authority of the Pope; they are no longer competent to restrict those rights and authorities, or to resist the proposal to increase them. "Since the time of Gregory VII. the Papal power has weighed upon the Councils far more heavily than the imperial influence of old. When the prospect of a General Council was discussed in the sixteenth century, half Europe justly demanded two conditions, that it should not be held at Rome, or even in Italy, and that the bishops should be released from their oath of obedience. The new Council will be held not only in Italy, but at Rome itself. That alone is decisive. | It proves that, whatever the course of the Council may be, there is one quality that can never be assigned to it, the quality of true freedom" (p. 448). That is the reply of men versed in all the knowledge of their Church to the anxious question which has been so often asked; and it is not likely that the Council will produce anything more significant than such a declaration of opinion. Catholicism has never taken up stronger ground. Both among Protestants and Greeks there are men in whose eyes the later forms of Papal domination are the one unpardonable fault of Rome. It has always been objected to the Gallican theology that it gave to the bishops what it took from the Pope, and attributed infallibility to the supreme ecclesiastical authorities. But here it is asserted that grave dogmatic error, imposed by authority and accepted without resistance, may long overcloud the Church; that the Papacy has taught false doctrines, and has made their adoption the test of orthodoxy; that it has excommunicated men who were right, while Rome was wrong; that it has been most potent and active in seducing consciences and leading souls astray; that it has obliterated the divine idea and the patristic doctrine of the Primacy. Understood in this way, and purified from those defects which have proceeded from the arbitrary power usurped by Rome, Catholicism would recover an ample portion of its sway. It will lose at least as much if these detected superstitions are solemnly affirmed. The project has been so long and carefully prepared, and so publicly proclaimed, that the attempt to withdraw it would be ruin. The chronic malady has become acute; and a serious crisis is at hand. Procrastination cannot avert it; and no one can tell whether the ideas of the book which is before us are shared by numbers sufficient to prevail. In the Preface it is stated that they were held by the most eminent men of Catholic Germany in the last generation; and this is true so far as regards their general spirit, their notion of the Church, their practical aspirations, and their moral tone. In this sense the work is the manifesto of a great party, and expresses opinions that are widely spread. But the evidence, the reasoning, the material basis, are in great part new. Many of the investigations were never made before; and the results were not all so clear and so certain as they now are. They are established by many facts which no one knew, and which it was no reproach to be ignorant of; so that the work retains the character of conciliation towards those whose opinions it directly refutes. It constitutes so great an advance in knowledge that it supplies them with some excuse for their errors, and a refuge from the imputation of bad faith. The author himself has been led by this circumstance into error. It has caused him to underrate the gravity of the charges in which his adversaries are involved. After exposing the fraudulent machinations by which the absolutist theory was set up, he proceeds to assume the sincerity of its advocates. He constantly speaks of the Jesuits, without any qualification, as supporters of the opinions in question. He seems to be utterly unaware that he thereby fixes on the whole Order the stigma of mendacity. It is useless to pretend that, after the progress of learning made known the spurious origin of the documents which are the basis of the modern Roman theory, the theory itself was sincerely believed in by educated men. The power of the modern Popes is retained by the same arts by which it was won. A man is not honest who accepts all the Papal decisions in questions of morality, for they have often been distinctly immoral; or who approves the conduct of the Popes in engrossing power, for it was stained with perfidy and falsehood; or who is ready to alter his convictions at their command, for nitely, and with deeper learning, facts which were already known. The great problem is to explain how it came to pass that the ancient constitution of the Church was swept away, and another system substituted, contrary to it in principle, in spirit, and in action, and by what gradations the present claims arose. of the Church, is the most brilliant and the newest thing in the volume. The Councils became passive instruments in the hands of the Pope, and silently registered his decrees at the General Council of Vienne. Clement v. stated that he summoned only a few selected prelates, and informThe history of this transfor-ed them that whoever dared to speak, withmation is the great achievement of the out being called on by the Pope, incurred book. Each step in the process, prolonged excommunication. The Papal absolutism. through centuries, is ascertained and ac- was practically established when it was counted for; and nothing is left obscure forced on the divines by the same arts. A where the greater part was till now un- series of forged passages from the Greek known. The passage from the Catholicism Fathers came into existence, by which it of the Fathers to that of the modern Popes appeared that the Pope was recognised as was accomplished by wilful falsehood; and infallible by the Eastern Church in the the whole structure of traditions, laws, and fourth century. Urban IV. communicated doctrines that support the theory of infalli- them to St. Thomas Aquinas, who conbility, and the practical despotism of the structed the doctrine, as it afterwards Popes, stands on a basis of fraud. flourished, on the proofs thus supplied. He was deceived by the invention of a false tradition; and his great name spread and estab lished the delusion. At length men became aware that the decay of religion and the lamentable evils and abuses in the Church were caused by the usurpations of Rome. At Constance it was proclaimed that the supreme legislative and judicial authority, and the last appeal in matters of faith, belonged to the Council; and thus the belief and discipline of the Church were restored to what they had been before the forgeries began. The decrees were accepted by the Pope and by succeeding Councils; but it was a transitory reform. In the conflict with Protestantism the notion of unbounded power and unfailing orthodoxy was wrought up to the highest pitch at Rome. Cardinal Cajetan called the Church the slave of the Pope. Innocent iv. had declared that every priest was bound to obey him, even in unjust things; and Bellarmine asserted that if a Pope should prescribe vice and prohibit virtue, the Church must believe him. "Si autem papa erraret præcipiendo vitia, vel prohibendo virtutes, teneretur Ecclesia credere vitia esse bona et virtutes mala, nisi vellet contra conscientiam peccare." Gregory VII. had claimed to inherit the sanctity as well as the faith of Peter; and Innocent x. professed that God had made the Scriptures clear to him, and that he felt himself inspired from above. The present volume traces the progress of the theory, and its influence on religion and society, down to the sixteenth century, and shows with careful detail how much it contributed to the schism of the East, to the divisions of Western Christendom, to the corruption of morality, the aggravation of tyranny, and the fanatical persecution of witchcraft and heresy, and how the only hope of Christian The great change began in the middle of the ninth century, with a forgery which struck root so deep that its consequences survive, though it has been discovered and exposed for three centuries. About one hundred decretals of carly pontiffs, with acts of Councils and passages from the Fathers, were composed and published in France. The object of their author was to liberate the bishops from the authority of metropolitans and of the civil government, by exalting the power of the Pope, in whom he represented all ecclesiastical authority as concentrated. He placed the final criterion of orthodoxy in the word of the Pope, and taught that Rome would always be true to the faith, and that the acts of Councils were inoperative and invalid without Papal confirmation. The effect was not what he intended. At Rome the ground had long been prepared by interpolations in St. Cyprian, and by the fictitious biographies of early Popes which bear the name of Anastasius; and the advantage supplied by the Frankish prelate was eagerly seized. Nicolas 1. declared that the originals of these texts were preserved in the Papal archives; and the bishops found themselves reduced to the position of dependants and delegates of the Pope. When Gregory VII. undertook to impose his new system of government on the Church, he, as well as the able and unscrupulous men who helped him, made all available use of pseudo-Isidore, and added such further fictions and interpolations as the new claims required. These accumulated forgeries, with more of his own making, were inserted by Gratian in the compilation which became the text-book of canon law. The exposure of the devices by which the Gregorian system obtained acceptance, and a spurious code supplanted the authentic law |