--


4. The use of the dative, or indirect object, without "to" or "for".

Such datives are very frequent, and scarcely need illustration.
The poet has simply carried the use of them beyond the present
general usage of the language. But there's a noticeable one
in the Pope's Monologue, in `The Ring and the Book', vv. 1464-1466:
The Archbishop of Arezzo, to whom poor Pompilia has applied,
in her distress, for protection against her brutal husband,
thinks it politic not to take her part, but send her back to him
and enjoin obedience and submission. The Pope, in his Monologue,
represents the crafty Archbishop as saying, when Pompilia cries,
"Protect me from the wolf!"

"No, thy Guido is rough, heady, strong,
Dangerous to disquiet: let him bide!
He needs some bone to mumble, help amuse
The darkness of his den with: so, the fawn
Which limps up bleeding to my foot and lies,
-- Come to me daughter! -- thus I throw him back!"

i.e., thus I throw back [to] him the fawn which limps up bleeding
to my foot and lies. The parenthesis, "Come to me, daughter",
being interposed, and which is introduced as preparatory
to his purpose, adds to the difficulty of the construction.

There are, after all, but comparatively few instances
in Browning's poetry, where these features of his diction