* The date is given in the edition of 1868 as London 185-; in the Tauchnitz selection of 1872, London and Florence 184- and 185-; in the new English edition 184-and 185-. 'Karshook' appeared in 1856 in 'The Keepsake', edited by Miss Power; but, as we are told on good authority, has been printed in no edition or selection of the Poet's works. I am therefore justified in inserting it here. I 'Would a man 'scape the rod?' Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, 'See that he turn to God The day before his death.' 'Ay, could a man inquire When it shall come!' I say. The Rabbi's eye shoots fire-- 'Then let him turn to-day!' II Quoth a young Sadducee: 'Reader of many rolls, Is it so certain we Have, as they tell us, souls?' 'Son, there is no reply!' The Rabbi bit his beard: 'Certain, a soul have _I_-- _We_ may have none,' he sneer'd. Thus Karshook, the Hiram's-Hammer, The Right-hand Temple-column, Taught babes in grace their grammar, And struck the simple, solemn. Among this first collection of 'Men and Women' was the poem called 'Two in the Campagna'. It is a vivid, yet enigmatical little study of a restless spirit tantalized by glimpses of repose in love, saddened and perplexed by the manner in which this eludes it. Nothing that should impress one as more purely dramatic ever fell from Mr. Browning's pen. We are told, nevertheless, in Mr. Sharp's 'Life', that a personal character no less actual than that of the 'Guardian Angel' has been claimed for it. The writer, with characteristic delicacy, evades all discussion of the question; but he concedes a great deal in his manner of doing so. The poem, he says, conveys a sense of that necessary isolation of the individual soul which resists the fusing power of the deepest love; and its meaning cannot be personally--because it is universally--true. I do not think Mr. Browning meant to emphasize this aspect of the mystery of individual life, though the poem, in a certain sense, expresses it. We have no reason to believe that he ever accepted it as constant; and in no case could he have intended to refer its conditions to himself. He was often isolated by the processes of his mind; but there was in him no barrier to that larger emotional sympathy which we think of as sympathy of the soul. If this poem were true, 'One Word More' would be false, quite otherwise than in that approach to exaggeration which is incidental to the poetic form. The true keynote of 'Two in the Campagna' is the pain of perpetual change, and of the conscious, though unexplained, predestination to it. Mr. Browning could have still less in common with such a state, since one of the qualities for which he was most conspicuous was the enormous power of anchorage which his affections possessed. Only length of time and variety of experience could fully test this power or fully display it; but the