-- 845. I have seen: i.e., in imagination, while telling the story.
884. What age had Methusalem: the old man forgets his Bible.
906. He also must be such a lady’s scorner: he who is such a poor judge of horses and wines.
910. Orson the wood-knight (Fr. ‘ourson’, a small bear): twin-brother of Valentine, and son of Bellisant. The brothers were born in a wood near Orleans, and Orson was carried off by a bear, which suckled him with her cubs. When he grew up, he became the terror of France, and was called “The Wild Man of the Forest”. Ultimately he was reclaimed by his brother Valentine, overthrew the Green Knight, his rival in love, and married Fezon, daughter of the duke of Savary, in Aquitaine.--‘Romance of Valentine and Orson’ (15th cent.). Brewer’s ‘Reader’s Handbook’ and ‘Dictionary of Phrase and Fable’.
I said--Then, dearest, since ‘tis so, Since now at length my fate I know, Since nothing all my love avails, Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails, Since this was written and needs must be-- My whole heart rises up to bless Your name in pride and thankfulness! Take back the hope you gave,--I claim Only a memory of the same, --And this beside, if you will not blame, Your leave for one more last ride with me.
-- St. 1. Browning has no moping melancholy lovers. His lovers generally reflect his own manliness; and when their passion is unrequited, they acknowledge the absolute value of love to their own souls. As Mr. James Thomson, in his ‘Notes on the Genius of Robert Browning’, remarks (‘B. Soc. Papers’, Part II., p. 246), “Browning’s passion is as intense, noble, and manly as his intellect is profound and subtle, and therefore original. I would especially insist on its manliness, because our present literature abounds in so-called passion which is but half-sincere or wholly insincere sentimentalism, if it be not thinly disguised prurient lust, and in so-called pathos which is maudlin to nauseousness. The great unappreciated poet last cited { George Meredith} has defined passion as ‘noble strength on fire’; and this is the true passion of great natures and great poets; while sentimentalism is ignoble weakness dallying with fire; . . . Browning’s passion is of utter self-sacrifice, self-annihilation, self-vindicated by its irresistible intensity. So we read it in ‘Time’s Revenges’, so in the scornful condemnation of the weak lovers in ‘The Statue and the Bust’, so in ‘In a Balcony’, and ‘Two in the Campagna’, with its