The poem “exhibits something of the life of the Scaligers and the Casaubons, of many an early scholar, like Roger Bacon’s friend, Pierre de Maricourt, working at some region of knowledge, and content to labor without fame so long as he mastered thoroughly whatever he undertook” (‘Contemporary Rev.’, iv., 135). But the grammarian was true to one side only of Browning’s philosophy of life. He disregarded the claims of the physical life, and became “soul-hydropic with a sacred thirst”. * -- * “Every lust is a kind of hydropic distemper, and the more we drink the more we shall thirst.”--Tillotson, quoted in ‘Webster’. -- The lyrico-dramatic verse of this monologue is especially noticeable. There is a march in it, exhibiting the spirit with which the bearers of the corpse are conveying it up the mountain-side. An Epistle containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician. Karshish, the Arab physician, has been journeying in quest of knowledge pertaining to his art, and writes to his all-sagacious master, Abib, ostensibly about the specimens he has gathered of medicinal plants and minerals, and the observations he has made; but his real interest, which he endeavors to conceal by passing to matters of greater import to him, as he would have his sage at home believe, is in what he pronounces “a case of mania, subinduced by epilepsy”. His last letter brought his journeyings to Jericho. He is now on his way to Jerusalem, and has reached Bethany, where he passes the night.