THIS poem, dated January 23, 1873, was published in the early summer of the same year. Browning had been staying with his sister at St. Aubin, in Normandy, and there met Miss Thackeray, who was to tell a tale of the White Cotton Night-cap Country, but a tragedy then just coming to a culmination in the courts supplied Browning with the more suggestive title which he adopted. Mr. Cooke records:

"In the poem as written the names of the actors and places were correctly given, but when the poem was being revised in proofsheets they were changed from prudential reasons, because the last act in the tragedy occurred only a brief period prior to the writing of the poem.

I

AND So, here happily we meet, fair friend! Again once more, as if the years rolled back And this our meeting-place were just that Rome

Out in the champaign, say, o'er-rioted

By verdure, ravage, and gay winds that war
Against strong sunshine settled to his sleep;
Or on the Paris Boulevard, might it prove,
You and I came together saunteringly,

'Browning submitted the proof-sheets of the poem to his friend Lord Coleridge, then the English Attorney-General, afterwards Chief Justice, who thought that a case of libel might lie for what was said, however improbable such action might be. He accordingly changed the names to fictitious ones. It was the year following this, and the publication of the poem, that the appeal against the judgment in favor of the will of Mellerio was dismissed, and the case finally set at rest in harmony with the conclusion reached by the poet."

In the second edition of her Hand-Book Mrs. Orr gives the correct names, as furnished to her by Browning himself. These names will be found in the notes at the end of this volume.

Even as we met where we have met so oft,
Now meet we on this unpretending beach
Below the little village: little, ay!

But pleasant, may my gratitude subjoin?
Meek, hitherto un-Murrayed bathing-place,
Best loved of seacoast-nookful Normandy!
That, just behind you, is mine own hired
house :

With right of pathway through the field in front,

No prejudice to all its growth unsheaved
Of emerald luzern bursting into blue.

Be sure I keep the path that hugs the wall,
Of mornings, as I pad from door to gate!
Yon yellow what if not wild-mustard
flower?

Admittance of a cataract of light

Beyond attainment through earth's palace

panes

Pinholed athwart their windowed filigree
By twinklings sobered from the sun outside.
Doubtless the High Street of our village here
Imposes hardly as Rome's Corso could:
And our projected race for sailing-boats
Next Sunday, when we celebrate our Saint,
Falls very short of that attractiveness,
That artistry in festive spectacle,

Paris ensures you when she welcomes back
(When shall it be?) the Assembly from Ver-
sailles ;

While the best fashion and intelligence
Collected at the counter of our Mayor
(Dry-goods he deals in, grocery beside)
What time the post-bag brings the news from

Vire,

I fear me much, it scarce would hold its own,

That circle, that assorted sense and wit,
With Five-o'clock Tea in a house we know.

Still, 't is the check that gives the leap its lift.
The nullity of cultivated souls,

Even advantaged by their news from Vire,
Only conduces to enforce the truth
That, thirty paces off, this natural blue
Broods o'er a bag of secrets, all unbroached,
Beneath the bosom of the placid deep,
Since first the Post Director sealed them safe;
And formidable I perceive this fact-
Little Saint-Rambert touches the great sea.
From London, Paris, Rome, where men are

men,

Not mice, and mice not Mayors presumably,
Thought scarce may leap so fast, alight so far.
But this is a pretence, you understand,
Disparagement in play, to parry thrust
Of possible objector: nullity
And ugliness, the taunt be his, not mine
Nor yours,
I think we know the world too

well!
Did you walk hither, jog it by the plain,
Or jaunt it by the highway, braving bruise
From springless and uncushioned vehicle?
Much, was there not, in place and people both,
To lend an eye to? and what eye like yours -
The learned eye is still the loving one!
Our land; its quietude, productiveness,
Is length and breadth of grain-crop, meadow-
ground,

Its orchards in the pasture, farms a-field,
And hamlets on the road-edge, naught you
missed

Of one and all the sweet rusticities!
From stalwart strider by the wagon-side,
Brightening the acre with his purple blouse,
To those dark-featured comely women-folk,
Healthy and tall, at work, and work indeed,
On every cottage doorstep, plying brisk
Bobbins that bob you ladies out such lace!
Oh, you observed! and how that nimble play
Of finger formed the sole exception, bobbed
The one disturbance to the peace of things,
Where nobody esteems it worth his while,
If time upon the clock-face goes asleep,

Oh, better, very best of all the news-
You mean to catch and cage the winged word,
And make it breed and multiply at home
Till Norman idlesse stock our England too?
Normandy shown minute yet magnified
In one of those small books, the truly great,
We never know enough, yet know so well?
How I foresee the cursive diamond-dints, -
Composite pen that plays the pencil too,
As, touch the page and up the glamour goes,
And filmily o'er grain-crop, meadow-ground,
O'er orchard in the pasture, farm a-field,
And hamlet on the road-edge, floats and forms
And falls, at lazy last of all, the Cap
That crowns the country! we, awake outside,
Farther than ever from the imminence
Of what cool comfort, what close coverture
Your magic, deftly weaving, shall surround
The unconscious captive with.

drowse

Be theirs to

Trammelled, and ours to watch the trammeltrick!

Ours be it, as we con the book of books,
To wonder how is winking possible!

All hail, "White Cotton Night-cap Country," then!

And yet, as on the beach you promise book,
On beach, mere razor-edge 'twixt earth and

sea,

I stand at such a distance from the world
That 't is the whole world which obtains regard,
Rather than any part, though part presumed
A perfect little province in itself,

When wayfare made acquaintance first there with.

So standing, therefore, on this edge of things,
What if the backward glance I gave, return
Loaded with other spoils of vagrancy
Than I dispatched it for, till I propose
The question-puzzled by the sudden store
Officious fancy plumps beneath my nose-
"Which sort of Night-cap have you glorified?"

You would be gracious to my ignorance:
What other Night-cap than the normal one?
Old honest guardian of man's head and hair
In its elastic yet continuous, soft,

No less persisting, circumambient gripe, -
Night's notice, life is respited from day!
Its form and fashion vary, suiting so
Each seasonable want of youth and age.
In infancy, the rosy naked ball

Of brain, and that faint golden fluff it bears,
Are smothered from disaster, -nurses know
By what foam-fabric; but when youth suc-
ceeds,

The sterling value of the article

Discards adornment, cap is cap henceforth
Unfeathered by the futile row on row.
Manhood strains hard a sturdy stocking-stuff
O'er well-deserving head and ears: the cone
Is tassel-tipt, commendably takes pride,
Announcing workday done and wages pouched,
And liberty obtained to sleep, nay, snore.
Unwise, he peradventure shall essay
The sweets of independency for once-
Waive its advantage on his wedding-night :
Fool, only to resume it, night the next,
And never part companionship again.
Since, with advancing years, night's solace

Take cotton for the medium, cast an eye This side to comfort, lambswool, or the like, That side to frilly cambric costliness,

And all between proves Night-cap proper." Add

"Fiddle!" and I confess the argument.

Only, your ignoramus here again
Proceeds as tardily to recognize

Distinctions: ask him what a fiddle means,
And "Just a fiddle seems the apt reply.

Yet, is not there, while we two pace the beach, This blessed moment, at your Kensington,

A special Fiddle-Show and rare array

Of all the sorts were ever set to cheek,
'Stablished on clavicle, sawn bow-hand-wise,
Or touched lute-fashion and forefinger-plucked?
I doubt not there be duly catalogued
Achievements all and some of Italy,
Guarnerius, Straduarius, — old and new,
Augustly rude, refined to finicking,
This mammoth with his belly full of blare,
That mouse of music-inch-long silvery wheeze,
And here a specimen has effloresced
Into the scroll-head, there subsides supreme,
And with the tailpiece satisfies mankind.
Why should I speak of woods, grains, stains
and streaks,

The topaz varnish or the ruby gum?
We preferably pause where tickets teach,
"Over this sample would Corelli croon,
Grieving, by minors, like the cushat-dove,
Most dulcet Giga, dreamiest Saraband."
"From this did Paganini comb the fierce
Electric sparks, or to tenuity

Pull forth the inmost wailing of the wire-
No cat-gut could swoon out so much of soul!"

Three hundred violin-varieties

Exposed to public view! And dare I doubt
Some future enterprise shall give the world
Quite as remarkable a Night-cap-show?
Methinks, we, arm-in-arm, that festal day,
Pace the long range of relics shrined aright,
Framed, glazed, each cushioned curiosity,
And so begin to smile and to inspect:

'Pope's sickly head-sustainment, damped with dews

Wrung from the all-unfair fight: such a frame Though doctor and the devil helped their best

Fought such a world that, waiving doctor's help,

Had the mean devil at its service too!
Voltaire's imperial velvet! Hogarth eyed
The thumb-nail record of some alley-phiz,
Then chucklingly clapped yonder cosiness
On pate, and painted with true flesh and blood!
Poor hectic Cowper's soothing sarsnet-stripe!"
And so we profit by the catalogue,

Somehow our smile subsiding more and more,
Till we decline into . . . but no! shut eyes
And hurry past the shame uncoffined here,
The hangman's toilet! If we needs must trench,
For science' sake which craves completeness
still,

On the sad confine, not the district's self,
The object that shall close review may be

...

Well, it is French, and here are we in France:
It is historic, and we live to learn,

And try to learn by reading story-books.
It is an incident of 'Ninety-two,

And, twelve months since, the Commune had the sway.

Therefore resolve that, after all the Whites
Presented you, a solitary Red

Shall pain us both, a minute and no more!
Do not you see poor Louis pushed to front
Of palace-window, in persuasion's name,
A spectacle above the howling mob
Who tasted, as it were, with tiger-smack,
The outstart, the first spurt of blood on brow,
The Phrygian symbol, the new crown of thorns,
The Cap of Freedom? See the feeble mirth
At odds with that half-purpose to be strong
And merely patient under misery!
And note the ejaculation, ground so hard
Between his teeth, that only God could hear,
As the lean pale proud insignificance
With the sharp-featured liver-worried stare
Out of the two gray points that did him stead,
And passed their eagle-owner to the front
Better than his mob-elbowed undersize,
The Corsican lieutenant commented,
"Had I but one good regiment of my own,
How soon should volleys to the due amount
Lay stiff upon the street-flags this canaille !
As for the droll there, he that plays the king,
And screws out smile with a Red night-cap on,
He's done for! somebody must take his place."
White Cotton Night-cap Country: excellent!
Why not Red Cotton Night-cap Country too?
"Why not say swans are black and blackbirds
white,

Because the instances exist? "

you ask.
* Enough that white, not red, predominates.
Is normal, typical, in cleric phrase
Quod semel, semper, et ubique." Here,
Applying such a name to such a land,
Especially you find inopportune,
Impertinent, my scruple whether white
Or red describes the local color best.

Let be," (you say,) "the universe at large
Supplied us with exceptions to the rule,
So manifold, they bore no passing-by,
Little Saint-Rambert has conserved at least
The pure tradition: white from head to heel,
Where is a hint of the ungracious hue?
See, we have traversed with hop, step, and
jump,

From heel to head, the main-street in a trice,
Measured the garment (help my metaphor!)
Not merely criticised the cap, forsooth;
And were you pricked by that collecting-itch,
That pruriency for writing o'er your reds,
'Rare, rarer, rarest, not rare but unique,'
The shelf, Saint-Rambert, of your cabinet,
Unlabelled, - virginal, no Rahab-thread
For blushing token of the spy's success,
Would taunt with vacancy, I undertake!
What, yonder is your best apology,

Pretence at most approach to naughtiness,
Impingement of the ruddy on the blank?
This is the criminal Saint-Rambertese
Who smuggled in tobacco, half-a-pound!