ar them.

We are not judging Mr. Browning simply from a hasty recent production.
All poets are liable to misconceptions, and if such a piece as
_Caliban upon Setebos_ were an isolated error, a venial and particular
exception, we should have given it no prominence. We have put it
forward because it just elucidates both our subject and the
characteristics of Mr. Browning. But many other of his best known
pieces do so almost equally; what several of his devotees think his
best piece is quite enough illustrative for anything we want. It
appears that on Holy Cross day at Rome the Jews were obliged to listen
to a Christian sermon in the hope of their conversion, though this is,
according to Mr. Browning, what they really said when they came away:

Fee, faw, fum! bubble and squeak!
Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week,
Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough,
Stinking and savoury, smug and gruff,
Take the church-road, for the bell's due chime
Gives us the summons--'t is sermon-time.

Boh, here's Barnabas! Job, that's you?
Up stumps Solomon--bustling too?
Shame, man! greedy beyond your years
To handsel the bishop's shaving-shears?
Fair play's a jewel! leave friends in the lurch?
Stand on a line ere you start for the church.

Higgledy, piggledy, packed we lie,
Rats in a hamper, swine in a stye,
Wasps in a bottle, frogs in a sieve,
Worms in a carcase, fleas in a sleeve.
Hist! square shoulders, settle your thumbs
And buzz for the bishop--here he comes.

And after similar nice remarks for a church, the edified congregation
concludes:

But now, while the scapegoats leave our flock,
And the rest sit silent and count the clock,
Since forced to muse the appointed time
On these precious facts and truths sublime,--
Let us fitly employ it, under our breath,
In saying Ben Ezra's Song of Death.

For Rabbi Ben Ezra, the night he died,
Called sons and sons' sons to his side,
And spoke, 'This world has been harsh and strange;
Something is wrong: there needeth a change.
But what, or where? at the last, or first?
In one point only we sinned, at worst.

'The Lord will have mercy on Jacob yet,
And again in his border see Israel set.
When Judah beholds Jerusalem,
The stranger-seed shall be joined to them:
To Jacob's House shall the Gentiles cleave,
So the Prophet saith and his sons belie