ABSTRACT
The present volume is no such gift as was Dramatis Personae. It contains several interesting poems, and one-‘Numpholeptos’—in Mr. Browning’s best manner. There is, of course, throughout the whole, the presence of a vigorous personality; we can tumble and toss even in the rough verse of Pacchiarotto as we do in a choppy sea on which the sun is a-shine, and which invigorates while itnot always agreeably-bobs our head, and dashes down our throat. But of the highest qualities of Mr. Browning’s genius obtaining adequate expression-such as they obtained in Men and Women, and in Dramatis Personae-there is less than we had looked for in this volume of miscellaneous pieces. Its speciality, as compared with preceding volumes, is that it contains not a little running comment by Mr. Browning upon himself and his own work, together with a jocular-savage reply to his unfriendly critics. In the Epilogue the poet informs us that those who expect from him, or from any poet, strong wine of verse which is also sweet demand the impos sible. Sweet the strong wine shall be; but riot until it has lain mellowing till the century’s close:
Mighty and mellow are never mixed, Though mighty and mellow be born at once. Sweet for the future-strong for the nonce.
