ing has shown elsewhere that he can tell a simple anecdote simply,
but he has here seized upon the tale of the glove, not for the purpose
of telling over again what Leigh Hunt had so charmingly and sufficiently
told, but in order to present the old story in a new light, to show how
the lady might have been right and the knight wrong, in spite of King
Francis's verdict and the look of things. The tale, which is very
wittily told, and contains some fine serious lines on the lion, is
supposed to be related by Peter Ronsard, in the position of on-looker
and moraliser; and the character of the narrator, after the poet's
manner, is brought out by many cunning little touches. The poem is
written almost throughout in double rhymes, in the metre and much in the
manner of the _Pacchiarotto_ of thirty years later. It is worth noticing
that in the lines spoken by the lady to Ronsard, and in these alone, the
double rhymes are replaced by single ones, thus making a distinct
severance between the earnestness of this one passage and the cynical
wit of the rest.

The easy mastery of difficult rhyming which we notice in this piece is
still more marked in the strange and beautiful romance named _The Flight
of the Duchess_.[28] Not even in _Pacchiarotto_ has Browning so revelled
in the most outlandish and seemingly incredible combinations of sound,
double and treble rhymes of equal audacity and success. There is much
dramatic appropriateness in the unconventional diction, the story being
put into the mouth of a rough old huntsman. The device of linking
fantasy with familiarity is very curious, and the effect is original in
the extreme. The poem is a fusion of many elements, and has all the
varying colour of a romantic comedy. Contrast the intensely picturesque
opening landscape, the cleverly minute description of the gipsies and
their trades, the humorous naturalness of the Duke's mediaeval
masquerading as related by his unsympathising forester, and, in a higher
key the beautiful figure of the young Duchess, and the serene, mystical
splendour of the old gipsy's chant.

Two poems yet remain to be named, and two of the most perfect in the
book. The little parable poem of _The Boy and the Angel_ is one of the
most simply beautiful, yet deeply earnest, of Browning's lyrical poems.
It is a parable in which "the allegorical intent seems to be shed by the
story, like a natural perfume from a flower;" and it preaches a sermon
on contentment and t