Our Euripides the human,
    With his droppings of warm tears.

“If the Alkestis is not the masterpiece of the genius of Euripides,” wrote Paul de Saint-Victor, “it is perhaps the masterpiece of his heart."[110]

Balaustion herself, not a rose of “the Rosy Isle” but its wild-pomegranate-flower, since amid the verdure of the tree “you shall find food, drink, odour all at once,” is Hellenic in her bright and swift intelligence, her enthusiasm for all noble things of the mind, the grace of every movement of her spirit, her culture and her beauty.  The atmosphere of the poem, which encircles the translation, is singularly luminous and animating; the narrative of the adventure is rapid yet always lucid; the verse leaps buoyantly like a wave of the sea.  Balaustion tells her tale to the four Greek girls, her companions, amid the free things of nature, the overhanging grape vines, the rippling stream,

    Outsmoothing galingale and watermint,
    Its mat-floor,

and in presence of the little temple Baccheion, with its sanctities of religion and of art.  By a happy and original device the transcript of the Alkestis is much more than a translation; it is a translation rendered into dramatic action—­for we see and hear the performers and they are no longer masked—­and this is accompanied with a commentary or an interpretation.  Never was a more graceful apology for the function of the critic put forward than that of Balaustion: 

     ’Tis the poet speaks: 
    But if I, too, should try and speak at times,
    Leading your love to where my love, perchance,
    Climbed earlier, found a nest before you knew—­
    Why, bear with the poor climber, for love’s sake!

Browning has not often played the part of a critic, and the interpretation of a poet’s work by a poet has the double value of throwing light upon the mind of the original writer and the mind of his commentator.

The life of mortals and the life of the immortal gods are brought into a beautiful relation throughout the play.  It is pre-eminently human in its grief and in its joy; yet at every point the divine care, the divine help surrounds and supports the children of earth, with their transitory tears and smiles.  Apollo has been a herdsman in the service of Admetos; Herakles, most human of demigods, is the king’s friend and guest.  The interest of the play for Browning lay especially in three things—­the pure self-sacrifice of the heroine, devotion embodied in one supreme deed; and no one can heighten the effect with which Euripides has rendered this; secondly, the joyous, beneficent strength of Herakles, and this Browning has felt in a peculiar degree, and by his commentary has placed it in higher relief; and thirdly, the purification and elevation through suffering of the character of Admetos; here it would be rash to assert that Browning has not divined the intention of Euripides, but certainly he has added something