wning sets in the mouth of silence?

IV. EVENING; NIGHT: THE ENDING OF THE DAY

Our interest now centres again upon Pippa--partly because the Evening
and Night episodes are little touched by other feminine influence, but
also (and far more significantly) because the dramatic aspect of the
work here loses nearly all of its peculiar beauty. The story, till now
so slight yet so consummately sufficient, henceforth is involved with
"plot"--that natural enemy of spontaneity and unity, and here most
eminently successful in blighting both. Indeed, the lovely simplicity of
the earlier plan seems actually to aid the foe in the work of
destruction, by cutting, as it were, the poem into two or even three
divisions: first, the purely lyric portions--those at the beginning and
the end--where Pippa is alone in her room; second, the Morning and Noon
episodes, where the dramas are absolutely unconnected with the passing
girl; third, these Evening and Night scenes, where, on the contrary, all
is forced into more or less direct relation with the little figure whose
most exquisite magic has hitherto resided in the fusion of her complete
personal loneliness with her potent influence upon the lives and
characters of those who hear her sing.

Mr. Chesterton claims to have been the first to point out "this gross
falsification of the whole beauty of _Pippa Passes_"--a glaring
instance, as he says, of the definite literary blunders which Browning
could make. But though that searching criticism were earliest in
declaring this, I think that few of us can have read the poem without
being vaguely and discomfortably aware of it. From the moment of the
direct introduction of Bluphocks[68:1] (whose very name, with its dull
and pointless punning, is an offence), that sense of over-ingenuity, of
"tiresomeness," which is the prime stumbling-block to whole-hearted
Browning worship, becomes perceptible, and acts increasingly upon our
nerves until the Day is over, and Pippa re-enters her "large, mean, airy
chamber."

+ + + + +

On her return to Asolo from Orcana, she passes the ruined turret wherein
Luigi and his mother--those Third Happiest Ones whom in her thoughts she
had not been able to separate--are wont to talk at evening. Some of the
Austrian police are loitering near, and with them is an Englishman,
"lusty, blue-eyed, florid-complexioned"--one Bluphocks, who is on the
watch in a double capacity. He is to point o