the final truth of the matter. Here is the figure of the Ring: pure gold, truth, is unmalleable, but when mixed with alloy, the falsehood and fiction of different personalities, it can be fashioned to a ring, from which the artificer now extracts the alloy and produces "the rondure brave" of pure gold

"Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore."

Now the great point about The Ring and the Book, in studying Browning's life, is the attitude of mind. This willingness nay, this necessity-to see every side, even to champion the worst side, for the golden truth that lurks somewhere in the alloy of falsehood, characterizes most of Browning's work except his purely lyrical or dramatic pieces. Accordingly, he speaks for Fra Lippo Lippi, for Andrea del Sarto, for Bishop Blougram, for Rabbi Ben Ezra, for Abt Vogler, even for the scoundrels, Mr. Sludge and Prince HohenstielSchwangau. After all, says Rabbi Ben Ezra, "that rage was right i' the main." It would be ridiculous to hold that Browning hence agrees with all. It is rather that he believes that the greatest truths of life in its complexity exist, entangled with fiction and falsehood, in every conceivable sort of person; indeed, that it is only with fiction and falsehood that truth is given to us, and that it is the duty of the artist thus to present it, not as an unreal, dissociated ideal.

Towards the end of his life Browning turned more and more to Italy. As early as 1878 he began regularly to spend each autumn there, usually at Asolo or Venice. In the winter of 1887 he suffered from severe, recurring colds, but the next year he returned to England for the winter, and seemed to thrive on the damp cli

mate. The summer of 1889 was particularly happy at Asolo, where he renewed the associations of Pippa Passes, first enjoyed over forty years before. In the following winter, however, he rapidly declined - with age rather than with sickness and died at his son's home, the Palazzo Rezzonico, in Venice. Westminster Abbey claimed his body, but the loyal Venetians put an inscription on the wall of his son's house, with the lines from De Gustibus:

"Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it 'Italy."

Throughout his life Browning was

999

"One who never turned his back but marched breast-forward, Never doubted clouds would break,

Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would tri

umph,

Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,

Sleep to wake."

These lines are in the last poem he wrote. "It almost looks like bragging to say this," he is reported to have remarked, "and as if I ought to cancel it; but it's the simple truth; and as it's true, it shall stand." For his was a fundamental optimism, not the careless joy that is dashed the minute health or projects fail. His spirit was as dauntless as that of the traveler in his Childe Roland; he himself, in this last poem, "put the slughorn to his lips and blew:"

"No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer!

Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
'Strive and thrive!' cry Speed, — fight on, fare ever
There as here!'"

APPENDIX

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

The following table attempts to give merely the chief English authors in connection with the outstanding events of their times. The
period of a writer's activity, rather than the date of his birth, determines his position in the list. Those whose lives are given in the text are
printed in heavy type.

FOURTEENTH CENTURY

AUTHORS

Geoffrey Chaucer, 1340-1400.

John Gower, about 1330-1408.

William Langland, about 1332 to about 1400.
John Wiclif, 1324-1384.

HISTORY

EDWARD III, 1327-1377.

Battle of Crécy, 1346.
Battle of Poitiers, 1356.
RICHARD II, 1377-1399.

Wat Tyler's Insurrection, 1381.

Battle of Chevy Chase (Otterburne), 1388.

HENRY IV, 1399-1413.

Battle of Shrewsbury, 1403.

HENRY V, 1413-1422.

Battle of Agincourt, 1415.

Treaty of Troyes, 1420
HENRY VI, 1422-1461.

Jeanne d'Arc, 1429.

Jack Cade's Rebellion, 1450.

Constantinople taken by the Turks, 1453.
Wars of the Roses, 1455-1485.

EDWARD IV, 1461-1483.

Battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, 1471.

First printing in England, 1474.

Lorenzo de Medici rules in Florence, 1469-1492.

RICHARD III, 1483-1485.

HENRY VII, 1485-1509.

Discovery of America, 1492.

Erasmus comes to England, 1498.