the play of Alkestis to the Euripides-loving townsfolk.  After a brief reminiscence of the adventure, which has gained her (besides life, and much fame, and the regard of Euripides) a lover whom she is shortly to marry, she repeats, for her friends, the whole play, adding, as she speaks the words of Euripides, such other words of her own as may serve to explain or help to realise the conception of the poet.  In other words, we have a transcript or re-telling in monologue of the whole play, interspersed with illustrative comments; and after this is completed Balaustion again takes up the tale, presents us with a new version of the story of Alkestis, refers by anticipation to a poem of Mrs. Browning and a picture of Sir Frederick Leighton, and ends exultantly:—­

      “And all came—­glory of the golden verse,
      And passion of the picture, and that fine
      Frank outgush of the human gratitude
      Which saved our ship and me, in Syracuse,—­
      Ay, and the tear or two which slipt perhaps
      Away from you, friends, while I told my tale,
      —­It all came of the play which gained no prize! 
      Why crown whom Zeus has crowned in soul before?”

It will thus be seen that the “Transcript from Euripides” is the real occasion of the poem, Balaustion’s adventure, though graphically described, and even Balaustion herself, though beautifully and vividly brought before us, being of secondary importance.  The “adventure,” as it has been said, is the amber in which Browning has embalmed the Alkestis.  The play itself is rendered in what is rather an interpretation than a translation; an interpretation conceived in the spirit of the motto taken from Mrs. Browning’s Wine of Cyprus:—­

      “Our Euripides, the human,
        With his droppings of warm tears,
      And his touches of things common
        Till they rose to touch the spheres.”

Browning has no sympathy with those who impute to Euripides a sophistic rather than a pathetic intention; and it is conceivable that the “task” which Lady Cowper imposed upon him was to show, by some such method of translation and interpretation, the warm humanity, deep pathos, right construction and genuine truth to nature of the drama.  With this end in view, Browning has woven the thread of the play into a sort of connected narrative, translating, with almost uniform literalness of language, the whole of the play as it was written by Euripides, but connecting it by comments, explanations, hints and suggestions; analyzing whatever may seem not easily to be apprehended, or not unlikely to be misapprehended; bringing out by a touch or a word some delicate shade of meaning, some subtle fineness of idea or intention.[42] A more creative piece of criticism can hardly be found, not merely in poetry, but even in prose.  Perhaps it shares in some degree the splendid fault of creative criticism by occasionally lending, not finding, the noble qualities which we are certainly made to see in the work itself.