And so he passes through a postern into the garden beneath her windows. Then Giovanni follows broodingly along the same street from the drug-seller's; is met by couriers searching for him with torches, who tell him of a rising in the subject city of Pesaro which he must come instantly to quell; whereat the old warrior awakes in him, and with a few fierce words of command and sudden preparation he is away. Next follows the scene which is the masterpiece of the play, not for vehemence or stormy power, but for a degree of impassioned delicacy and imaginative tact for which Dante himself might have praised and smiled upon his follower. It is upon the famous arbour scene, no less, that Mr. Phillips has now the daring to venture. In the hush just before dawn, Francesca comes out into her garden, attended by her maid, from the chamber where she cannot rest. With lamp and book beside her, she seeks, her maid dismissed, to refresh her spirits in the solitude and coolness of the dawn.

Franc. Better than tossing in that vacant room

Is this cool air and fragrance ere the dawn.

Where is the page which I had reached? Ah, here!
Now let me melt into an ancient woe.

[Begins to read. Enter PAOLO softly.

Pao. Francesca !

Franc.

Paolo! I thought you now

Gone into battle dim, far, far away.

Pao. And seems it strange that I should come, then?
Franc.

It seems that it could not be otherwise.

Pao. I went indeed; but some few miles from hence
Turned, and could go no further. All this night

About the garden have I roamed and burned.

And now, at last, sleepless and without rest,
I steal to you.

Franc.

Sleepless and without rest!
Pao. It seemed that I must see your face again,
Then nevermore; that I must hear your voice,
And then no more; that I must touch your hand,
Once. No one stirs within the house; no one
In all this world but you and I, Francesca.
We two have to each other moved all night.
Franc. I moved not to you, Paolo.
Pao.
But night
Guided you on, and onward beckoned me.
What is that book you read? Now fades the last
Star to the East: a mystic breathing comes:
And all the leaves once quivered, and were still.
Franc. It is the first, the faint stir of the dawn.
Pao. So still it is that we might almost hear

The sigh of all the sleepers in the world.
Franc. And all the rivers running to the sea.
Pao. What is 't you read?

Franc.
It is an ancient tale.
Pao. Show it to me. Is it some drowsy page
That reading low I might persuade your eyes

VOL. XLVI-No. 274

No.

3 R

Already was a wife, and he who loved

Was her own husband's dear familiar friend.
Pao. Was it so long ago?

But to mutilate such a scene by quotation is a sin. This poet has the secret of beautifully sustained and modulated emotion, of maintaining throughout a whole scene a varied, progressive, unflagging dramatic thrill; a secret which should make his work a godsend to the stage artist capable of truly feeling and interpreting it. The dialogue presently breaks off into an alternate reading to each other by the two lovers from the book. The text they read is not taken from the crude original romance of Lancelot, but invented by Mr. Phillips with a beauty of feeling, an instinct in the broken, trembling pauses of the verse, which it is hard to praise in terms that shall not seem superlative. Enough that the feat, which to any sensitive reader of Dante must beforehand have seemed impossible and forbidden, is accomplished, and the arbour scene, leading up to the fatal kiss, is worthily rewritten.

The fourth act opens with the return of Giovanni from his expedition, on the evening of the second day following the last events. He has crushed the rebels at Pesaro, and comes home taking it for granted that he will find news of Paolo's death.

Ne'er did I strike and hew as yesterday—

And that armed ghost of Paolo by me rode.

Pressing his retainers with questions, he finds that there is no such news as he expects. Next he learns from Lucrezia (who of course has known nothing of the intended suicide) that Paolo has reappeared in his brother's house, instead of going off, as he had given out, to the wars. With that Giovanni's relenting mood is over in the fury of the moment, he thinks of his brother as a deliberate traitor, whose announced departure and declared preference of death to dishonour have been mere play-acting.

But yet he will not execute the doom until he can justify it to all men by showing that he has found the pair together in the hour of guilt. Wondering fiercely how this can be done, he receives from Lucrezia, still bitter-true' to him as ever, the hint to give out that he must return instantly to the camp, and then, making only a feint of such departure, lurk at hand until the fatal opportunity occurs. The hint is taken; Giovanni, before his feigned second departure, recommending Francesca with a bitter covert raillery to the loyal care of his brother Paolo. Francesca, feeling the toils of passion and of calamity closing in about her, beseeches him in vain not to go. Left alone, and trembling at the knowledge that Paolo is at hand. longing for admission into her presence, Francesca throws herself upon Lucrezia with a passionate appeal, as of a child to its mother, for pity and help in her perplexity. This appeal touches the latent, long-pent springs of maternity in Lucrezia's heart. With a sudden revulsion, and a wild outburst of hysterical vehemence, she clasps Francesca to her as the late-found child of all her empty dreams and longings. This, to my mind, is the most difficult and crucial passage of the play. Lucrezia's outburst is magnificently conceived and written but considering what has gone before, seeing the treacherous part she has just been instigating Giovanni to play, is such an extremity of revulsion wholly credible? Much may be allowed in consideration of the vehement and fitful impulsiveness of the Italian nature. In representation everything, almost, would depend upon the power of the actresses to carry away their audience and to make the scene convincing. Supposing this point carried, there is no doubt about the rest. The tragedy marches to its issue with a continual advance both of poetical fire and dramatic intensity. Remembering the trap she has helped to lay, Lucrezia in an agony goes out to find and intercept Giovanni, quieting Francesca the while with a pretext of some necessary duty. Francesca, left alone in the chamber with her maid, hears the step of Paolo in the garden

A sad step, and it goeth to and fro

hears his voice calling her name and pleading for admission; refuses him once and again; till at last, Lucrezia still tarrying, she can resist no more, and suffers him to enter. He comes in (to use the Scotch expression for which there is no synonym) fey; in a whirl of reckless passion, gaiety, and confidence, the fit prelude to the doom that is about to fall. His presence and mood fire Francesca, and there ensues a scene of passion sustained, modulated, varied (to revert to our former expressions), and wrought to a climax with the inspiration and the art of genius. At the end, in a passage of triumphantly impassioned declamation, the lover foresees and exults in that doom for himself and Francesca which Dante has related as a witness to the after world.

Pao.
O God, Thou seest us Thy creatures bound
Together by that law which holds the stars
In palpitating cosmic passion bright;

What can we fear, we two?

By which the very sun enthrals the earth,

And all the waves of the world faint to the moon.
Even by such attraction we two rush
Together through the everlasting years.
Us, then, whose only pain can be to part,
How wilt Thou punish? For what ecstasy
Together to be blown about the globe!
What rapture in perpetual fire to burn
Together!-where we are is endless fire.
There centuries shall in a moment pass,
And all the cycles in one hour elapse !

Still, still together, even when faints Thy sun,
And past our souls Thy stars like ashes fall,
How wilt Thou punish us who cannot part?

The lovers go out; the maid returns and finds the chamber empty. To her enters Lucrezia, distracted from having searched in vain for the hidden Giovanni: in a hurried dialogue of question, desperate half-hint, and alarmed reply, she communicates to the girl her own agony of suspense at what may be happening: leads her to the curtains through which the lovers have passed out: and at that moment a hand appears opening them from the other side. It is the hand of Giovanni: Lucrezia and he confront each other in a dreadful pause. She notices that there is blood upon his hand; 'tis not my blood,' he says, and with the words all is known and all is over. He breaks from his unnatural calm into a nervous frenzy; wildly summons all the servants of the house to bring lights, to pass into the nuptial chamber, and to bear thence on one bier two whom they shall find lying together. They go to obey him; and the drama from this pitch of distraction and calamity is brought, beautifully, classically, to a quiet and reconciling close. Pacing to and fro while the servants are about their errand in the inner chamber. Giovanni cries,

The curse, the curse of Cain!

A restlessness has come into my blood,
And I begin to wander from this hour
Alone for evermore.

Luc. (rushing to him). Giovanni, say
Quickly some light thing, lest we both go mad!
Gio. Be still! A second wedding here begins
And I would have all reverent and seemly:
For they were nobly born, and deep in love.
Enter blind ANGELA slowly.

Ang. Will no one take my hand? Two lately dead

Rushed past me in the air. O! are there not

Many within this room all standing still?

What are they all expecting?

Enter SERVANTS bearing in PAOLO and FRANCESCA dead upon a litter.

[A pause... The SERVANTS set down the litter. Luc. (going to litter). I have borne one child, and she has died in youth! Gio. (going to litter). Not easily have we three come to this,

We three who now are dead. Unwillingly

They loved, unwillingly I slew them. Now

I kiss them on the forehead quietly.

[He bends over the bodies and kisses them on the forehead. He is shaken. Luc. What ails you now?

Gio.

She takes away my strength.

I did not know the dead could have such hair.
Hide them! They look like children fast asleep!

[The bodies are reverently covered over.

Quotations and summaries of argument can, however, give no adequate conception of the sustained movement and imaginative vitality of a work like this. Let us only rejoice that we have among us a young poet capable of such work, and hope that it may be the earnest of much more of equal excellence to come.

SIDNEY COLVIN.