Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/486

 470 CRITICAL STUDIES we have.*. . . Most excellent, potent, brilliant eyes, swift-darting as the stars, steadfast as the sun ; grey, we said, of the azure-grey colour ; large enough, not of glaring size ; the habitual expression of them vigilance and penetrating sense, rapidity resting on depth." Or, as Heine measures their swiftness in the instance of Napoleon : " The great seven-league boot thoughts wherewith the genius of the Emperor in- visibly overstrode the world ; and I believe that any one of these thoughts would have given a German author ample material for writing his whole life long." Having thus at the very opening let us fully into the secrets of the book, exposed the plot of the tragedy, pourtrayed the leading personages, sketched the course of the trial and appeal, and even re- affirmed emphatically on his own part the final judgment of the Pope ; having, in brief, deliberately sacrificed all that he might have gained by a slowly evolved narrative, the interest of expectancy, surprise, suspense, doubt, fear, terror: what is left for the poet to tell us in the remaining twenty thousand lines? do we not already know the whole drama? Confident in his unparalleled resources. Browning at once proceeds to make us aware how he just begins where an ordinary poet would end. In the second half of the first section he lays before us the countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the por- traits. . . . There was a strong expression of sense and slirewdness in all his lineaments ; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large and of a dark cast, and glowed (I say VneraWy j^/owed) when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men in my time." Burns, though born forty-seven years after Friedrich, overlived him only about ten.
 * But mark, among others, Scott on Burns: "I think his