... with these two, who shape their course by the light of their own souls, the authorised exponents of morality play a secondary and for the most part a sorry part. The old Pope mournfully reflects that his seven years' tillage of the garden of the Church has issued only in the "timid leaf and the uncertain bud," while the perfect flower, Pompilia, has sprung up by the wayside ... — Robert Browning • C. H. Herford