chews upon his worldly success and extracts its acrid juices.  This is not the romantic melancholy of youth, which dreams of infinite things, but the pain of manhood, which feels the limitations of life, which can laugh at the mockery of attainment, which is sensible of the shame that dwells at the heart of glory, yet which already has begun to hanker after the mean delights of the world, and cannot dispense with the sorry pleasures of self-degradation.  The kind, calm Pastor of Einsiedeln sees at first only the splendour that hangs around the name of his early comrade, the hero of his hopes.  And Paracelsus for a while would forbear with tender ruth to shatter his friend’s illusion, would veil, if that were possible, the canker which has eaten into his own heart.  But in the tumult of old glad memories and present griefs, it ceases to be possible; from amid the crew of foolish praisers he must find one friend having the fidelity of genuine insight; he must confess his failure, and once for all correct the prophecy of Michal that success would come and with it wretchedness—­

    I have not been successful, and yet am
    Most miserable; ’tis said at last.

A certain manly protectiveness towards Festus and Michal, with their happy Aennchen and Aureole in the quiet home at Einsiedeln, remains to Paracelsus; there is in it now more than a touch of “the devotion to something afar from the sphere of our sorrow.”

When, driven from Basil as a quack amid the hootings of the crowd, Paracelsus once again “aspires”; but it is from a lower level, with energy less certain, and with a more turbid passion.  Upon such soiled and draggled wings can he ever soar again?  His strength is the strength of fever; his gaiety is wild and bitter; he urges his brain with artificial stimulants.  And he, whose need was love, has learnt hatred and scorn.  In his earlier quest for truth he had parted with youth and joy; he had grown grey-haired and lean-handed before the time.  Now, in his new scheme of life, he will not sever truth from enjoyment; he will snatch at the meanest delights; before death comes, something at least shall thus be gained.  And yet he has almost lost the capacity for pleasures apart from those of a wolfish hunger for knowledge; and he despises his baser aims and his extravagant speeches.  Could life only be begun anew with temperate hopes and sane aspirings!  But he has given his pledges and will abide by them; he must submit to be hunted by the gods to the end.  Before he parts from Festus at the Alsatian inn, a softer mood overtakes him.  Blinded by his own passion, Paracelsus has had no sense to divine the sorrow of his friend, and Festus has had no heart to obtrude such a sorrow as this.  Only at the last moment, and in all gentleness, it must be told—­Michal is dead.  In Browning’s earliest poem Pauline is no more than a name and a shadow.  The creator of Ottima and Colombe, of Balaustion and Pompilia had much to tell of womanhood.  Michal occupies, as is right, but a small space in the history of Paracelsus, yet her presence in the poem and her silent withdrawal have a poignant influence.  We see her as maiden and hear of her as mother, her face still wearing that quiet and peculiar light