Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/488

 472 CRITICAL STUDIES It lives, and is likely to live as long as any master- work of our generation. First we are to hear how Half- Rome, with a typical worthy for its mouthpiece, found for Guido much excuse. Then how to the other Half-Rome, Pompilia seemed a saint and martyr both. Then : — " Hear a fresh speaker ! — neither this nor that Half-Rome aforesaid ; something bred of both : One and one breed the inevitable three. Such is the personage harangues you next ; The elaborated product, tcrtium quid : Rome's first commotion in subsidence gives The curd o' the cream, flower o' the wheat, as it were, And finer sense o' the city. . . . What the superior social section thinks, In person of some man of quality." These choric representatives are no mere abstract voices; they and all their appropriate surroundings are realised, embodied, drawn and coloured with the like precision and clearness, the Uke fulness of characteristic detail, as the real persons and scenes of the drama. These actors follow ; first Count Guido before the governor and judges, doing his best man's service for himself, in the guise of frank confession, wrung from him by — " His limbs' late taste of what was called the cord, Or Vigil-torture more facetiously." Caponsacchi comes next : — In days when that was rife which now is rare.
 * ' Man and priest — could you comprehend the coil! —