iven by
John's disciple of the place where they were, and the fate of his
companions. This is invented in Browning's most excellent way. It could
not be better done.

The next poem is the _Epistle of Karshish, the Arab Physician_, to his
master, concerning his strange medical experience. The time is just
before the last siege of Jerusalem, and Karshish, journeying through
Jericho, and up the pass, stays for a few days at Bethany and meets
Lazarus. His case amazes him, and though he thinks his interest in it
unworthy of a man of science in comparison with the new herbs and new
diseases he has discovered, yet he is carried away by it and gives a
full account of it to his master.

I do not think that Browning ever wrote a poem the writing of which he
more enjoyed. The creation of Karshish suited his humour and his quaint
play with recondite knowledge. He describes the physician till we see
him alive and thinking, in body and soul. The creation of Lazarus is
even a higher example of the imaginative power of Browning; and that it
is shaped for us through the mind of Karshish, and in tune with it,
makes the imaginative effort the more remarkable. Then the problem--how
to express the condition of a man's body and soul, who, having for three
days according to the story as Browning conceives it lived consciously
in the eternal and perfect world, has come back to dwell in this
world--was so difficult and so involved in metaphysical strangenesses,
that it delighted him.

Of course, he carefully prepares his scenery to give a true semblance to
the whole. Karshish comes up the flinty pass from Jericho; he is
attacked by thieves twice and beaten, and the wild beasts endanger his
path;

A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear,
Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls;
I cried and threw my staff and he was gone,

and then, at the end of the pass, he met Lazarus. See how vividly the
scenery is realised--

I crossed a ridge of short, sharp, broken hills
Like an old lion's cheek-teeth. Out there came
A moon made like a face with certain spots,
Multiform, manifold and menacing:
Then a wind rose behind me. So we met
In this old sleepy town at unaware
The man and I.

And the weird evening, Karshish thinks, had something to do with the
strange impression the man has made on him. Then we are placed in the
dreamy village of Bethany. We hear of its elders, its diseases, its
flowers, it