inst the Jews;
when proclaimed emperor, left his son Titus to continue the war.

24-33. his ardent scientific interest has caused him
to brave all dangers.

49. The Syrian runagate: perhaps I'm writing for nothing
in trusting my letter to him.

60. Thou hadst: wouldst have.
Zoar: one of the "cities of the plain", S. E. of the Dead Sea
(Gen. 19:22).

65-78. Though he's deeply impressed with the subject, he approaches it
with extreme diffidence, writing to the "all-sagacious" Abib.

82. exhibition: used in its medical sense of administering a remedy.

103. fume: vaporish fancy.

106. As saffron tingeth: Chaucer uses "saffron" metaphorically
as a verb:--

"And in Latyn I speke a wordes fewe,
To saffron with my predicacioun,
And for to stire men to devocioun."--`The Pardoner's Prologue'.

113. Think, could WE penetrate by any drug.

141, 142. "Browning has drawn the portraiture of one to whom
the eternal is sensibly present, whose spirit has gained prematurely
absolute predominance: . . .and the result is. . .a being
`Professedly the faultier that he knows God's secret,
while he holds the thread of life' (vv. 200, 201). Lazarus therefore,
while he moves in the world, has lost all sense of proportion
in things about him, all measure of and faculty of dealing with that
which sways his fellows. He has no power or will to win them
to his faith, but he simply stands among men as a patient witness
of the overwhelming reality of the divine: a witness whose authority
is confessed, even against his inclination, by the student of nature,
who turns again and again to the phenomenon which he affects
to disparage.

"In this crucial example Browning shows how the exclusive dominance
of the spirit destroys the fulness of human life, its uses and powers,
while it leaves a passive life, crowned with an unearthly beauty.
On the other hand, he shows in his study of Cleon that
the richest results of earth in art and speculation,
and pleasure and power, are unable to remove from life the desolation
of final gloom. . . . The contrast is of the deepest significance.
The Jewish peasant endures earth, being in possession of heaven:
the Greek poet, in possession of earth, feels that heaven,
some future state,

`Unlimited in capability
For joy, as this is in desire for joy',

is a necessity for man; but no,

`Zeus has not yet revealed it; and alas,
He must have done so, were