THE LABORATORY. (PAGE 113.)

This is a little masterpiece in its vividness and condensation. The
passions of hate and jealousy have seldom been so well portrayed. The
time and place are probably France and the sixteenth or seventeenth
century. Berdoe has called attention in his _Browning
Cyclopaedia_, to the number of fine antitheses in the second stanza.

Who are present in the scene? Who are to be the victims? Account for
the speaker's _patience_ in stanza iii. Point out the things that
show the intensity of her hate. Does she display any other feeling
than hate and jealousy?

HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD. (PAGE 115.)

Where is the speaker? What scene is in his imagination? Trace the
growth in his mind of this scene: in color effects, in the kind of
life introduced, in the intensity of the feeling, in the vividness
with which he enters into it. What is the charm in lines 12-14?

UP AT A VILLA--DOWN IN THE CITY. (PAGE 116.)

4. =Bacchus=. The Roman god of wine, frequently invoked in the
garnishment of Latin and Italian speech.

42. =Pulcinello= is the Italian for clown or puppet, and the prototype
of the English Punch.

48, =Dante=, =Boccaccio=, and =Petrarch=. Italy's first three great
authors. See a biographical dictionary or encyclopaedia for their dates
and their works.

=St. Jerome= (340-420.) One of the fathers of the Roman, church.
He prepared the Latin translation of the Bible known as the
_Vulgate_.

48. =the skirts of St. Paul has reached=. Has done almost as well as
St. Paul.

51. =Our Lady=. The image of the Virgin Mary. Observe our hero's taste
and his religions solemnity.

52. =seven swords=, etc. Representing the seven "legendary sorrows"
of the Virgin. See Berdoe's _Browning Cyclopaedia_, or Brewer's
_Reader's Handbook_, or _Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_ for
the list.

UP AT A VILLA is one of the best humorous poems in the language. The
hero's desires and sorrows are so _naive_, his tastes so gravely
held, that he provokes our sympathy as well as our laughter. One of
the charms of the poem is the way in which he is made to testify, in
spite of himself, to the beauties of the country (as in lines 7-9,
19-20, 22-25, 32-33, 36) and to the monotony or clanging emptiness of
the city (as in lines 12-14, 38-54). Compare lines 8 and 82 with the
picture in _De Gustibus_.

A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S. (PAGE 122.)

=Toccata=. See an unabridged dictionary.

1. =Galuppi=. Baldassare Galuppi,