have gone off: Mr. M. hardly knows whether he shall ever venture again,
&c. &c., and in short begs to decline even inspecting, &c. &c.

I called on Saunders and Otley at once, and, marvel of marvels,
do really think there is some chance of our coming to decent terms --

I shall know at the beginning of next week, but am not over-sanguine.
You will `sarve me out'? two words to that; being the man you are,

you must need very little telling from me, of the real feeling I have
of your criticism's worth, and if I have had no more of it,

surely I am hardly to blame, who have in more than one instance
bored you sufficiently: but not a particle of your article

has been rejected or neglected by your observant humble servant,
and very proud shall I be if my new work bear in it

the marks of the influence under which it was undertaken --
and if I prove not a fit compeer of the potter in Horace

who anticipated an amphora and produced a porridge-pot.
I purposely keep back the subject until you see my conception

of its capabilities -- otherwise you would be planning a vase
fit to give the go-by to Evander's best crockery, which my cantharus

would cut but a sorry figure beside -- hardly up to the ansa.
But such as it is, it is very earnest and suggestive --

and likely I hope to do good; and though I am rather scared
at the thought of a FRESH EYE going over its 4,000 lines --

discovering blemishes of all sorts which my one wit cannot avail to detect,
fools treated as sages, obscure passages, slipshod verses,

and much that worse is, -- yet on the whole I am not much afraid of the issue,
and I would give something to be allowed to read it some morning to you --

for every rap o' the knuckles I should get a clap o' the back, I know.
I have another affair on hand, rather of a more popular nature, I conceive,

but not so decisive and explicit on a point or two -- so I decide
on trying the question with this: -- I really shall NEED your notice,

on this account; I shall affix my name and stick my arms akimbo;
there are a few precious bold bits here and there, and the drift and scope

are awfullyradical -- I am `off' for ever with the other side,
but must by all means be `on' with yours -- a position once gained,

worthier works shall follow -- therefore a certain writer*
who meditated a notice (it matters not laudatory or otherwise) on `Pauline'

in the `Examiner', must be benignant or supercilious as he shall choose,
but in no case an idle spectator of my first appearance on any stage

(having previously only dabbled in private theatricals)
and bawl `Hats off!' `Down in front!' &c., as soon as I get to the proscenium;

and he may depend that tho' my `Now is the winter of our discontent'
be rather awkward, yet there shall be occasional outbreaks of good stuff --

that I shall warm as I get on, and finally wish `Richmond at the bottom
of the seas,' &c. in the best style imaginable.

--
* Mr. John Stuart Mill.

--
Excuse all this swagger, I know you will, and

==
(The signature has been cut off; evidently for an autograph.)

Mr. Effingham Wilson was induced to publish the poem, but more, we understand,
on the ground of radical sympathies in Mr. Fox and the author

than on that of its intrinsic worth.
The title-page of `Paracelsus' introduces us to one of the warmest friendships

of Mr. Browning's life. Count de Ripert-Monclar was a young French Royalist,
one of those who had accompanied the Duchesse de Berri

on her Chouan edition" target="_blank" title="n.远征；探险；迅速">expedition, and was then, for a few years,
spending his summers in England; ostensibly for his pleasure,

really -- as he confessed to the Browning family -- in the character
of private agent of communication between the royal exiles

and their friends in France. He was four years older than the poet,
and of intellectual tastes which created an immediate bond of union

between them. In the course of one of their conversations,
he suggested the life of Paracelsus as a possible subject for a poem;

but on second thoughts pronounced it unsuitable, because it gave no room
for the introduction of love: about which, he added,

every young man of their age thought he had something quite new to say.
Mr. Browning decided, after the necessary study, that he would write a poem

on Paracelsus, but treating him in his own way. It was dedicated,
in fulfilment of a promise, to the friend to whom its inspiration

had been due.
The Count's visits to England entirely ceased, and the two friends

did not meet for twenty years. Then, one day, in a street in Rome,
Mr. Browning heard a voice behind him crying, `Robert!'

He turned, and there was `Amedee'. Both were, by that time, married;
the Count -- then, I believe, Marquis -- to an English lady, Miss Jerningham.

Mrs. Browning, to whom of course he was introduced, liked him very much.*
--

* A minor result of the intimacy was that Mr. Browning
became member, in 1835, of the Institut Historique,

and in 1836 of the Societe Francaise de Statistique Universelle,
to both of which learned bodies his friend belonged.

--
Mr. Browning did treat Paracelsus in his own way; and in so doing

produced a character -- at all events a history -- which,
according to recent judgments, approached far nearer to the reality

than any conception which had until then been formed of it.
He had carefully collected all the known facts of the great discoverer's life,

and interpreted them with a sympathy which was no less
an intuition of their truth than a reflection of his own genius upon them.

We are enabled in some measure to judge of this by a paper entitled
`Paracelsus, the Reformer of Medicine', written by Dr. Edward Berdoe

for the Browning Society, and read at its October meeting in 1888;
and in the difficulty which exists for most of us of verifying

the historical data of Mr. Browning's poem, it becomes a valuable guide to,
as well as an interesting comment upon it.

Dr. Berdoe reminds us that we cannot understand the real Paracelsus
without reference to the occult sciences so largely cultivated in his day,

as also to the mentalatmosphere which produced them;
and he quotes in illustration a passage from the writings

of that Bishop of Spanheim who was the instructor of Paracelsus,
and who appears as such in the poem. The passage is a definition

of divine magic, which is apparently another term for alchemy;
and lays down the great doctrine of all mediaeval occultism,

as of all modern theosophy -- of a soul-power equally operative
in the material and the immaterial, in nature and in the consciousness of man.

The same clue will guide us, as no other can, through what is apparently
conflicting in the aims and methods, anomalous in the moral experience,

of the Paracelsus of the poem. His feverish pursuit,
among the things of Nature, of an ultimate of knowledge,

not contained, even in fragments, in her isolated truths;
the sense of failure which haunts his most valuable attainments;

his tampering with the lower or diabolic magic, when the divine has failed;
the ascetic exaltation in which he begins his career; the sudden awakening

to the spiritual sterility which has been consequent on it;
all these find their place, if not always their counterpart, in the real life.

The language of Mr. Browning's Paracelsus, his attitude towards
himself and the world, are not, however, quite consonant

with the alleged facts. They are more appropriate to an ardent explorer
of the world of abstract thought than to a mystical scientist pursuing

the secret of existence. He preserves, in all his mental vicissitudes,
a loftiness of tone and a unity of intention, difficult to connect,

even in fancy, with the real man, in whom the inherited superstitions
and the prognostics of true science must often have clashed with each other.

Dr. Berdoe's picture of the `Reformer' drawn more directly from history,
conveys this double impression. Mr. Browning has rendered him more simple

by, as it were, recasting him in the atmosphere of a more modern time,
and of his own intellectual life. This poem still, therefore, belongs

to the same group as `Pauline', though, as an effort of dramaticcreation,
superior to it.

We find the Poet with still less of dramatic disguise
in the deathbed revelation which forms so beautiful a close to the story.

It supplies a fitter comment to the errors of the dramatic Paracelsus,
than to those of the historical, whether or not its utterance

was within the compass of historicalprobability, as Dr. Berdoe believes.
In any case it was the direct product of Mr. Browning's mind,

and expressed what was to be his permanent conviction.
It might then have been an echo of German pantheistic philosophies.

From the point of view of science -- of modern science at least --
it was prophetic; although the prophecy of one for whom