Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/477

Rh any certainly the track of an intelligence which moves with such incessant rapidity, or even to realise with what spider-like swiftness and sagacity his building spirit leaps and lightens to and fro and backward and forward, as it lives along the animated line of its labour, springs from thread to thread, and darts from centre to circumference of the glittering and quivering web of living thought, woven from the inexhaustible stores of his perception, and kindled from the inexhaustible fire of his imagination. He never thinks but at full speed; and the rate of his thought is to that of another man's as the speed of a railway to that of a waggon, or the speed of a telegraph to that of a railway. It is hopeless to enjoy the charm or to apprehend the gist of his writings except with a mind thoroughly alert, an attention awake at all points, a spirit open and ready to be kindled by the contact of the writer's: we have but to come with an open and pliant spirit, untired and undisturbed by the work or the idleness of the day, and we cannot but receive a vivid and active pleasure in following the swift and fine radiations, the subtle play and keen vibration of its sleepless fires; and the more steadily we trace their course the more surely do we see that these forked flashes of fancy and changing lights of thought move unerringly around one centre, and strike straight in the end to one point."

Now, if Mr. Swinburne is right, as in my judgment he certainly is, the dominant qualities he has affirmed will naturally be most conspicuous in Browning's greatest work. Let us now go back to the Book:—

'Romana Homicidiorum—nay, Better translate—'A Roman murder-case: Position of the entire criminal cause Of Guido Franceschini, nobleman, With certain Four the cut-throats in his pay, Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to death By heading or hanging as befitted ranks, At Rome on February Twenty-two, Since our salvation Sixteen Ninety-eight: Wherein it is disputed if, and when,