"And I became aware, scarcely the word escaped my lips, that swift ensued in silence and by stealth, and yet with certitude, a formidable change of the amphitheatre which held the Carnival; _although the human stir continued just the same amid that shift of scene_." (No. CV.) "And where i' the world is all this wonder, you detail so trippingly, espied? My mirror would reflect a tall, thin, pale, deep-eyed personage, pretty once, it may be, doubtless still loving--certain grace yet lingers if you will--but all this wonder, where?" (No. XL.) Here, and in a hundred other such passages, we have the rhythm, if not of the best prose, at least not that of poetry. Will "Fifine" and poems of its kind stand re-reading, re-perusal over and over? That is one of the most definite tests. In the pressure of life can we afford much time to anything but the very best--nay, to the vast mass even of that which closely impinges thereupon? For myself, in the instance of "Fifine," I admit that if re-perusal be controlled by pleasure I am content (always excepting a few scattered noble passages) with the Prologue and Epilogue. A little volume of those Summaries of Browning's--how stimulating a companion it would be in those hours when the mind would fain breathe a more liberal air! As for "Jocoseria,"[24] it seems to me the poorest of Browning's works, and I cannot help thinking that ultimately the only gold grain discoverable therein will be "Ixion," the beautiful penultimate poem beginning-- "Never the time and the place And the loved one altogether;" and the thrush-like overture, closing-- "What of the leafage, what of the flower? Roses embowering with nought they embower! Come then! complete incompletion, O comer, Pant through the blueness, perfect the summer! Breathe but one breath Rose-beauty above, And all that was death Grows life, grows love, Grows love!" [Footnote 24: In a letter to a friend, along with an early copy of this book, Browning stated that "the title is taken from the work of Melander (_Schwartzmann_), reviewed, by a curious coincidence, in the _Blackwood_ of this month. I referred to it in a note to 'Paracelsus.' The two Hebrew quotations (put in to give a grave look to what is mere fun and invention) being translated amount to (1) 'A Collection of Many Lies': and (2), an old saying, 'From Moses to Moses arose none like Moses'......"]