process of which that is to be the product; but he finds the process
unaffectedly boring. Without relaxing a whit in the mechanical pursuit
of his end, he views life with much mental detachment, and shows a cool
and not unsympathetic observation of men who pursue other ideals, as
well as an abundance of critical irony towards those who apparently
share his own. An adept in courtly arts, and owing all his successes to
courtly favour, he meets the assiduities of other courtiers with open
contempt. His ends are those of Laertes or Fortinbras, and he is quite
capable of the methods of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; but he regards
ends and methods alike with the sated distaste of Hamlet. By birth and
principle a man of action, he has, even more than most of Browning's men
of action, the curious introspectiveness of the philosophic onlooker. He
"watches his mind," and if he does not escape illusions, recognises and
exposes them with ironical candour. Few of Browning's less right-minded
persons attain final insight at less cost to dramatic propriety than
Berthold when he pronounces his final verdict:--

"All is for the best.
Too costly a flower were this, I see it now,
To pluck and set upon my barren helm
To wither,--any garish plume will do."

_Colombe's Birthday_ was published in 1844 as No. 6 of the _Bells_, but
had for the present no prospect of the stage. Nine years later, however,
the loyal Phelps, who had so doughtily come to the rescue of its
predecessor, put it successfully on the boards of his theatre at
Sadler's Wells.

The most buoyant of optimists has moments of self-mockery, and the
hardiest believer in ideal truth moods in which poetry seems the phantom