colloquy, which
is really a piece of sardonic irony long drawn out, a mock serious essay
in the way of a Superior Rogues' Guide or Instructions for Knaves,
receives at once castigation and instruction. The parleying with
_Francis Furini_ (born at Florence, 1600; died 1649) deals with its hero
as a man, as artist and as priest; it contains some of Browning's
noblest writing on art; and it touches on current and, indeed, continual
controversies in its splendidly vigorous onslaught on the decriers of
that supreme art which aims at painting men and women as God made them.
_Gerard de Lairesse_ (born at Liege, in Flanders, 1640; died at
Amsterdam 1711; famed not only for his pictures, but for his _Treatise
on the Art of Painting_, composed after he had become blind) gives his
name to a discussion on the artistic interpretation of nature, its
change and advancement, and the deeper and truer vision which has
displaced the mythological fancies of earlier painters and poets. The
parleying with _Charles Avison_ (born at Newcastle, 1710; died there,
1770), the more than half forgotten organist-composer, embodies an
inquiry, critical or speculative, into the position and function of
music. All these poems are written in decasyllabic rhymed verse, with
varied arrangement of the rhymes. They are introduced by a dialogue
between Apollo and the Fates, and concluded by another between John Fust
and his friends, both written in lyrical measures, both uniting deep
seriousness of intention with capricious humour of form; the one wild
and stormy as the great "Dance of Furies" in Gluck's _Orfeo_; the other
quaint and grimly and sublimely grotesque as an old German print.
_Gerard de Lairesse_ contains a charming little "Spring Song" of three
stanzas; and _Charles Avison_ a sounding train-bands' chorus, written to
the air of one of Avison's marches.

The volume as a whole is full of weight, brilliance, and energy; and it
is not less notable for its fineness of versification, its splendour of
sound and colour, than for its depth and acuteness of thought and keen
grasp of intricate argument. Indeed, the quality which more than any
other distinguishes it from Browning's later work is the careful
writing of the verse, and the elaborate beauty of certain passages. Much
of Browning's later work would be ill represented by a selection of the
"purple patches." His strength has always lain, but of late has lain
much more exclusively, in the _ensemble_.