VI.

Only, there was a way ... you crept
Close by the side, to dodge
Eyes in the house, two eyes except:
They styled their house 'The Lodge.'

VII.

What right had a lounger up their lane?
But, by creeping very close,
With the good wall's help,--their eyes might strain
And stretch themselves to Oes,

VIII.

Yet never catch her and me together,
As she left the attic, there,
By the rim of the bottle labelled 'Ether,'
And stole from stair to stair,

IX.

And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,
We loved, sir,--used to meet:
How sad and bad and mad it was--
But then, how it was sweet!"

_A Likeness_ forms a third, and a good third, to these two fine and
subtle studies of modern English life. It is one of those poems which,
because they seem simple and superficial, and can be galloped off the
tongue in a racing jingle, we are apt to underrate or overlook. Yet it
would be difficult to find a more vivid bit of _genre_ painting than the
three-panelled picture in this single frame.

The three blank verse poems which complete the series of purely dramatic
pieces, _A Death in the Desert, Caliban upon Setebos_ and _Mr. Sludge,
"The Medium"_ are more elaborate than any yet named. They follow, to a
considerable extent, the form of the blank verse monologues which are
the glory of _Men and Women_. Alike in their qualities and defects they
represent a further step in development. The next step will lead to the
elaborate and extended monologues which comprise the greater part of
Browning's later works.

A _Death in the Desert_ is an argument in a dramatic frame-work. The
situation imaged is that of the mysterious death of St. John in extreme
old age. The background to the last utterance of the apostle is painted
with marvellous brilliance and tenderness: every circumstance is
conceived and represented in that pictorial style, in which a word is
equal to a touch of the brush of a great painter. But, delicately as the
circumstances and surroundings are indicated, it is as an argument that
the poem is mainly left to exist. The bearing of this argument on
contemporary theories may to some appear a merit, to others a blemish.
To make the dying John refute Strauss or Renan, handling their
propositions with admirable dialectical skill, is certainly, on the face
of it, somewhat hazardous. But I c