that of the Russian consul-general, marks the fascination exercised by
young Browning upon men of antecedents, race, and social standing widely
different from his own. Count Amédée de Ripert Monclar was a French
royalist and refugee; he was also an enthusiastic student of history.
Possibly he recognised an affinity between the vaguely outlined dreams
of Pauline's lover and those of the historic Paracelsus; and he may well
have thought that the task of grappling with definite historic material
would steady the young poet's hand. We could applaud the acuteness of
the suggestion with more confidence had not the Count had an unlucky
afterthought, which he regarded as fatal, to the effect that the story
of Paracelsus, however otherwise adapted to the creator of Pauline's
lover, was entirely destitute of a Pauline. There was no opening for
love. But Pauline, with all her warm erotic charms and her sparkling
French prose, was the most unsubstantial and perishable thing in the
poem which bore her name: she and the spirit which begot her had
vanished like a noisome smoke, and Browning threw himself with
undiminished ardour upon the task of interpreting a career in which the
sole sources of romance and of tragedy appeared to be the passion for
knowledge and the arrogance of discovery.

For it is quite clear that, whatever criticisms Browning finally brought
to bear upon Paracelsus, his attitude towards him, at no time hostile,
was at the outset rather that of a literary champion, vindicating a man
of original genius from the calumnies of ignorance and dulness. This
view, then rather unusual, was a very natural one for him to take,
Paracelsus being among the many keen interests of the elder Browning.[5]
It is a strange mistake to suppose, with a recent very ingenious
commentator, that Browning, eager to destroy the fallacy of intellectual
pride, singled out Paracelsus as a crucial example of the futilities of
intellect. On the contrary, he filled his annotations with documentary