Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/483

"THE RING AND THE BOOK" 467 But, the truth being thus grasped and gained — grasped as by an eagle's talons, gained as by an eagle's swoop — the whole drama clearly revealed to him on the very night of the day which brought him the book, the poet did not at once set his hand to the work of unfolding it : — " Far from beginning with you London folk, I took my book to Rome first, tried truth's power On likely people. ' Have you met such names ? Is a tradition extant of such facts? Your law-courts stand, your records frown a-row : What if I rove and rummage ? ' — ' Why, you'll waste Your pains and end as wise as you began ! ' Every one snickered : ' names and facts thus old Are newer much than Europe news we find Down in to-day's Diario. Records, quotha ? Why the French burned them, what else do the French ? The rap-and-rending nation ! ' " He likewise, as he tells us toward the end of the work, searched in vain for any record of the subse- quent fate of Pompilia's infant, Gaetano, who, six months after the execution, was decreed heir to his father Guido and to the putative maternal grand- parents, and put under the guardianship of one Domenicho Tighetti, chosen by Pompilia herself ere she died of her wounds ; and by the same decree her fame was thoroughly established in law. Not till he came to London did Browning take pen in hand, with Italy as clear in the eye of his mind as if present to his bodily eyes : well may Mr. Swinburne note " the inexhaustible stores of his per- ception " with " the inexhaustible fire of his imagina- tion." As we read in the opening section : —