As the ivy is to the pillar that supports the cornice, so are her words to the Alkestis on which she comments.

That is her charming way.  She also is, like Pompilia, young.  But no contrast can be greater than that between Pompilia at seventeen years of age and Balaustion at fifteen.  In Greece, as in Italy, women mature quickly.  Balaustion is born with that genius which has the experience of age in youth and the fire of youth in age.  Pompilia has the genius of pure goodness, but she is uneducated, her intelligence is untrained, and her character is only developed when she has suffered.  Balaustion, on the contrary, has all the Greek capacity, a thorough education, and that education also which came in the air of that time to those of the Athenian temper.  She is born into beauty and the knowledge of it, into high thinking and keen feeling; and she knows well why she thought and how she felt.  So finely wrought is she by passion and intelligence alike, with natural genius to make her powers tenfold, that she sweeps her kinsfolk into agreement with her, subdues the sailors to her will, enchants the captain, sings the whole crew into energy, would have, I believe, awed and enthralled the pirate, conquers the Syracusans, delights the whole city, draws a talent out of the rich man which she leaves behind her for the prisoners, is a dear friend of sombre Euripides, lures Aristophanes, the mocker, into seriousness, mates herself with him in a whole night’s conversation, and wrings praise and honour from the nimblest, the most cynical, and the most world-wise intellect in Athens.

Thus, over against Pompilia, she is the image of fine culture, held back from the foolishness and vanity of culture by the steadying power of genius.  Then her judgment is always balanced.  Each thing to her has many sides.  She decides moral and intellectual questions and action with justice, but with mercy to the wrong opinion and the wrong thing, because her intellect is clear, tolerant and forgiving through intellectual breadth and power.  Pompilia is the image of natural goodness and of its power.  A spotless soul, though she is passed through hell, enables her, without a trained intellect, with ignorance of all knowledge, and with as little vanity as Balaustion, to give as clear and firm a judgment of right and wrong.  She is as tolerant, as full of excuses for the wrong thing, as forgiving, as Balaustion, but it is by the power of goodness and love in her, not by that of intellect.  Browning never proved his strength more than when he made these two, in vivid contrast, yet in their depths in harmony; both equal, though so far apart, in noble womanhood.  Both are beyond convention; both have a touch of impulsive passion, of natural wildness, of flower-beauty.  Both are, in hours of crisis, borne beyond themselves, and mistress of the hour.  Both mould men, for their good, like wax in their fingers.  But Pompilia is the white rose, touched with faint and innocent colour; and Balaustion is the wild pomegranate flower, burning in a crimson of love among the dark green leaves of steady and sure thought, her powers latent till needed, but when called on and brought to light, flaming with decision and revelation.