ABSTRACT
The people parleyed with are Bernard de Mandeville, Daniel Bartoli, Christopher Smart, George Bubb Dodington, Francis Furini, Gerard de Lairesse, and Charles Avison-a heterogeneous group, some members of it not very familiar to us! The ‘parleying’ that will, we think, best please the mere exoteric reader is the one with Gerard de Lairesse, the painter and critic who in the plenitude of his powers was struck blind. In it are descriptive passages of extraordinary excellence-passages which Mr. Browning alone, perhaps, could have written.…
We are by no means sure that poets in creating imaginary characters will in future times continue to think it worth their while to christen them after the characters of history, calling them Thomas a Becket, Mary Stuart, Paracelsus, Sordello, Bernard de Mandeville, and what not. We are by no means sure that they will always consider themselves justified in doing so. They have, no doubt, the highest authority for this kind of dramatic art-the very highest; but then as regards Mr. Browning, he sets himself to spurning authority in art. As Carlyle has said, the mere facts of history have a special and peculiar preciousness of their own just because they are facts and not poetic fancies about facts. However, this is too large a question to be discussed here. And after all Mr. Browning has again given us a book which will add to the wealth of English poetry, and if in the above remarks we have glanced with any excess of severity at what seem to us defects in his style, it is we who have cause to regret it; for assuredly, whatever may be his exact place in the poetry of the world, it is a high place somewhere among the immortals.
