it:

"It lives,
If precious be the soul of man to man."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 60: This is emphasized by the ingenious motto from _King
Lear_: "You, Sir, I entertain you for one of my hundred; only, I do not
like the fashion of your garments: you will say, they are Persian; but
let them be changed."]

[Footnote 61: _Handbook_, p. 321.]

31. PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE OF IMPORTANCE IN THEIR DAY.

[Published in January 1887. _Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol.
XVI., pp. 93-275.]

The method of the _Parleying_ is something of a new departure, and at
the same time something of a reversion. It is a reversion towards the
dramatic form of the monologue; but it is a new departure owing to the
precise form assumed, that of a "parleying" or colloquy of the author
with his characters. The persons with whom Browning parleys are
representative men selected from the England, Holland, and Italy of the
late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The parleying with
_Bernard de Mandeville_ (born at Dort, in Holland, 1670; died in London,
1733; author of _The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public
Benefits_) takes up the optimistic arguments already developed in
_Ferishtah's Fancies_ and elsewhere, and preaches, through the dubious
medium of the enigmatic fabulist, trust in the ordering of the world,
confidence in discerning a "soul of goodness in things evil." _Daniel
Bartoli_ ("a learned and ingenius writer," born at Florence, 1608; died
at Rome, 1685; the historian of the Order of Jesuits) serves to point a
moral against himself, in the contrast between the pale ineffectual
saints of his legendary record and the practically saint-like heroine of
a true tale recounted by Browning, the graphic and brilliant story of
the duke and the druggist's daughter. The parleying with _Christopher
Smart_ (the author of the _Song to David_, born at Shipborne, in Kent,
1722; died in the King's Bench, 1770) is a penetrating and
characteristic study in one of the great poetic problems of the
eighteenth century, the problem of a "void and null" verse-writer who,
at one moment only of his life, sang, as Browning reminds him,

"A song where flute-breath silvers trumpet-clang,
And stations you for once on either hand
With Milton and with Keats."

_George Bubb Dodington_ (Lord Melcombe, born 1691; died 1762) stands as
type of the dishonest politician, and in the course of a