Readers of philosophy will recognize in this an echo from Descartes. This fact of the human consciousness he further develops into an argument that the painter should paint the human body, just as it was argued the poet should study the human heart. A Philippic against Greek art and its imitation is delivered by the poet in the 'Parleying with Gerard de Lairesse' whom he makes the scape-goat of his strictures, on the score of a book Lairesse wrote in which was described a walk through a Dutch landscape transmogrified by classic imaginings. To this good soul an old sepulchre, struck by lightning became the tomb of Phaeton, and an old cart wheel half buried in the sand near by, the Chariot of the Sun. In a spirit of bravado Browning proceeds to show what he himself could make of a walk provided he condescended to illuminate it by classic metaphor and symbol, and a remarkable passage is the result. It occupies from the eighth to the twelfth stanzas. It is meant to be in derision of the grandiloquent, classically embroidered style but so splendid is the language, so haunting the pictures, the symbolism so profound that it is as if a God were showing some poor weakling mortal how not to do it--and through his omniscience must perforce create something wondrously beautiful. The double feeling one has about this passage only adds to its interest. After thus classicizing in a manner that might make Euripides himself turn green with envy, he nonchalantly remarks-- "Enough, stop further fooling," and to show how a modern poet greets a landscape he flings in the perfectly simple and irresistible little lyric "Dance, yellows, and whites and reds." The poet's strictures upon classicism are entirely in line with his philosophy, placing as it does the paramount importance on living realities. "'Do and no wise dream,' he exclaims 'Earth's young significance is all to learn; The dead Greek lore lies buried in its urn Where who seeks fire finds ashes.'" The 'Parleying with Charles Avison' is more a poem of moods than any of the others. The poet's love for music is reflected in his claiming it as the highest expression possible to man; but sadness comes to him at the thought of the ephemeralness of its forms, a fact that is borne in on him by the inadequateness of Avison's old March styled "grand." He finally makes of music the most perfect symbol of the evolution of spirit of which the central truth remains always permanent, while the form though ever changing is of absolute value to the time when the spirit found expression in it.