ABSTRACT
This book displays Mr. Browning’s well-known qualities, not at the prime, indeed, and height of his achievement, but nowhere markedly below its average. Some critics have already gone far afield in quest of the title-so far even as to a Dutch or German Swertzius, whose name Sterne might have placed beside that of Slawkenbergius in Tristram Shandy. Jocoseria, however, as a title, needs no commentary; it only invites the casual remark that, when we have exhausted the rather middling humour of two title pieces upon Adam and the Queen of Sheba, the remaining poems in this volume, with the further exception of an apologetic Envoy, are serious. ‘Ixion’, indeed, is grimly, powerfully tragic. After a lyrical introduction, a dim but graceful invocation to love considered as the final bloom on life, Mr. Browning opens with a vigorous, humane, dramatic tale of the Scotch Highlands called ‘Donald.’ Sharp and keen, he here thrusts the blade of a true story, more trenchant than satire or than sermon, into the sophistries whereby sportsmen are wont to palliate the brutalities and cruelties of their amusements. This poem-the best, I think, as it certainly is the clearest, in the book-ought not to be spoiled by description or quotation. It should be read with glowing cheek and a beating heart.
