Throughout the poem, we are conscious, during the evolution of his character, of the presence of these high mystical influences, which, combined with his personal pride, his knightly temper, his delicate culture, form a splendid background for passionate dramatic action. The finest pages in the book, to my taste, are those which describe his lonely vigil in the Gypsy camp, after he has failed in winning back Fedalma, and has pledged his faith to Zarca. Placed under guard, and left to his own stern thoughts, his soul begins to react against the hideous disorder to which he has committed it, to proclaim its kinship with "customs and bonds and laws," and its sacred need of the light of human esteem:-- "Now awful Night, Ancestral mystery of mysteries, came down Past all the generations of the stars, And visited his soul with touch more close Than when he kept that closer, briefer watch, Under the church's roof, beside his arms, And won his knighthood." To be appreciated at their worth, these pages should be attentively read. Nowhere has the author's marvellous power of expression, the mingled dignity and pliancy of her style, obtained a greater triumph. She has reproduced the expression of a mind with the same vigorous distinctness as that with which a great painter represents the expression of a countenance. The character which accords best with my own taste is that of the minstrel Juan, an extremely generous conception. He fills no great part in the drama; he is by nature the reverse of a man of action; and, strictly, the story could very well dispense with him. Yet, for all that, I should be sorry to lose him, and lose thereby the various excellent things which are said of him and by him. I do not include his songs among the latter. Only two of the lyrics in the work strike me as good: the song of Pablo, "The world is great: the birds all fly from me"; and, in a lower degree, the chant of the Zincali, in the fourth book. But I do include the words by which he is introduced to the reader:-- "Juan was a troubadour revived, Freshening life's dusty road with babbling rills Of wit and song, living 'mid harnessed men With limbs ungalled by armour, ready so To soothe them weary and to cheer them sad. Guest at the board, companion in the camp, A crystal mirror to the life around: Flashing the comment keen of simple fact Defined in words; lending brief lyric voice To grief and sadness; hardly taking note Of difference betwixt his own and others'; But, rather singing as a listener To the deep moans, the cries, the wildstrong joys Of universal Nature, old, yet young." When Juan talks at his ease, he strikes the note of poetry much more surely than when he lifts his voice in song:--