Here we light on a trait in Browning of which Mr. Chesterton most happily speaks--his use of "homely and practical images . . . allusions, bordering on what many would call the commonplace," in which he "is indeed true to the actual and abiding spirit of love," and by which he "awakens in every man the memories of that immortal instant when common and dead things had a meaning beyond the power of any dictionary to utter." Mr. Chesterton, it is true, speaks of this "astonishing realism" in relation to Browning's love-poetry, and _Pippa Passes_ is not a love-poem; but the insight of the comment is no less admirable when we use it to enhance a passage such as this. Who has not caught the sunbeam asleep in the mere washhand basin as water was poured out for the mere daily toilet--and felt that heartening gratitude for the symbol of captured joy, which made the instant typic and immortal? For these are the things that all may have, as Pippa had. The ambushing of that beam and the ordering it, in her sweet wayward imperiousness, to ". . . grow together on the ceiling. That will task your wits!" --is one of the most enchanting moments in this lovely poem. The sunbeam settles by degrees (I wish that she had not been made to term it, with all too Browningesque agility, "the radiant cripple"), and finally lights on her Martagon lily, which is a lily with purple flowers. . . . Here again, for a moment, she ceases to be the lyrical child, and turns into the Browning (to cite Mr. Chesterton again) to whom Nature really meant such things as the basket of jelly-fish in _The Englishman in Italy_, or the stomach-cyst in _Mr. Sludge the Medium_--"the monstrosities and living mysteries of the sea." To me, these lines on the purple lily are not only ugly and grotesque--in that kind of ugliness which "was to Browning not in the least a necessary evil, but a quite unnecessary luxury, to be enjoyed for its own sake"--but are monstrously (more than any other instance I can recall) unsuited to the mind from which they are supposed to come. "New-blown and ruddy as St. Agnes' nipple, Plump as the flesh-bunch on some Turk-bird's poll!" One such example is enough. We have once more been deprived of Pippa, and got nothing really worth the possession in exchange. But Pippa is quickly retrieved, with her gleeful claim that _she_ is the queen of this glowing blossom, for is it not she who has guarded it from harm? So it may laugh through her window at the tantalised bee (are there travelling bees in Italy on New-Year's Day? But this is Midsummer Day!), may tease him as much as it likes, but must ". . . in midst of thy glee, Love thy Queen, worship me!" There will be warrant for the worship-- ". . . For am I not, this day, Whate'er I please? What shall I please to-day? * * * * *