art by an
exaggerated instance we should have selected a poem which the chance
of late publication brings us in this new volume. Mr. Browning has
undertaken to describe what may be called _mind in difficulties_--mind
set to make out the universe under the worst and hardest
circumstances. He takes 'Caliban', not perhaps exactly Shakespeare's
Caliban, but an analogous and worse creature; a strong thinking power,
but a nasty creature--a gross animal, uncontrolled and unelevated by
any feeling of religion or duty. The delineation of him will show that
Mr. Browning does not wish to take undue advantage of his readers by a
choice of nice subjects.

'Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best,
Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire,
With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin;
And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush,
And feels about his spine small eft-things course,
Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh;
And while above his head a pompion-plant,
Coating the cave-top as a brow its eye,
Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard,
And now a flower drops with a bee inside,
And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch:

This pleasant creature proceeds to give his idea of the origin of the
Universe, and it is as follows. Caliban speaks in the third person,
and is of opinion that the maker of the Universe took to making it on
account of his personal discomfort:

Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos!
'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon.

'Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match,
But not the stars: the stars came otherwise;
Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that:
Also this isle, what lives, and grows thereon,
And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same.

'Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease:
He hated that He cannot change His cold,
Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish
That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived,
And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine
O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid,
A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave;
Only she ever sickened, found repulse
At the other kind of water, not her life,
(Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun)
Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe,
And in her old bounds buried her despair,
Hating and loving warmth alike: so He.

'Thinketh, He made thereat