describes what has been; his hatred has passed.  He sees how small and fanciful it was, and the illustrations he uses to express it tell us that; though they carry with them also the contemptuous intensity of his past hatred.  The swell of the hatred remains, though the hatred is past.  So we are not left face to face with absolute evil, with the corruption hate engenders in the soul.  God has intervened, and the worst of it has passed away.

Then there is the study of hatred in the Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.  The hatred is black and deadly, the instinctive hatred of a brutal nature for a delicate one, which, were it unrelieved, would be too vile for the art of poetry.  But it is relieved, not only by the scenery, the sketch of the monks in the refectory, the garden of flowers, the naughty girls seated on the convent bank washing their black hair, but also by the admirable humour which ripples like laughter through the hopes of his hatred, and by the brilliant sketching of the two men.  We see them, know them, down to their little tricks at dinner, and we end by realising hatred, it is true, but in too agreeable a fashion for just distress.

In other poems of the evil passions the relieving element is pity.  There are the two poems entitled Before and After, that is, before and after the duel. Before is the statement of one of the seconds, with curious side-thoughts introduced by Browning’s mental play with the subject, that the duel is absolutely necessary.  The challenger has been deeply wronged; and he cannot and will not let forgiveness intermit his vengeance.  The man in us agrees with that; the Christian in us says, “Forgive, let God do the judgment.”  But the passion for revenge has here its way and the guilty falls.  And now let Browning speak—­Forgiveness is right and the vengeance-fury wrong.  The dead man has escaped, the living has not escaped the wrath of conscience; pity is all.

    Take the cloak from his face, and at first
      Let the corpse do its worst!

    How he lies in his rights of a man! 
      Death has done all death can. 
    And, absorbed in the new life he leads,
      He recks not, he heeds

    Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike
      On his senses alike,
    And are lost in the solemn and strange
      Surprise of the change.

    Ha, what avails death to erase
      His offence, my disgrace? 
    I would we were boys as of old
      In the field, by the fold: 
    His outrage, God’s patience, man’s scorn
      Were so easily borne!

    I stand here now, he lies in his place;
      Cover the face.