human
a balanced and tentative affirmation. And he delivers the decision with an oppressive sense that it is but his own. He is
gpt
Athanasius contra mundum ; and he dwells, with a
human
which Athanasius did not inspire, upon the marvellous power of fame. Nay, Athanasius himself has his doubts. Even his sober hope is not a secure possession; but in the gloom of London's November he remembers that he had hoped in the sunset glory of Salève, and
gpt
Fame, there half mockingly played with, and the whole poem is a sarcastic criticism of the worship of Fame. The stories of René Gentilhomme and Paul Desfarges Maillard are told with an immense burly vivacity, in the stanza, and a Browningesque version of the manner, of _Beppo_. Both stories turned upon those decisive moments which habitually caught Browning's eye. Only, in their case, the decisive moment was not one of the revealing crises which laid bare their utmost depths, but a crisis which temporarily invested them with a capricious effulgence. Yet these instantaneous transformations have a peculiar charm for Browning; they touch and fall in with his fundamental ideas of life; and the delicious prologue and epilogue hint these graver analogies in a dainty music which pleasantly relieves the riotous uncouthness of the tale itself. If René's life is suddenly lighted up, so is the moss bank with the