Mr. Herford (_Life of Browning_, p. 94) calls the poem "a great romantic legend" and emphasizes its intensity and boldness of invention. He compares its "horror-world" with that of Coleridge in "The Ancient Mariner." "What 'The Ancient Mariner' is in the poetry of the mysterious terrors and splendors of the sea, that 'Childe Roland' is in the poetry of bodeful horror, of haunted desolation, of waste and plague, ragged distortion, and rotting ugliness in landscape. The Childe, like the Mariner, advances through an atmosphere and scenery of steadily gathering menace." Mr. Chesterton says of the scenery: "It is ... the poetry of the shabby and hungry aspect of the earth itself. Daring poets who wished to escape from the conventional gardens and orchards had long been in the habit of celebrating the poetry of rugged and gloomy landscapes, but Browning is not content with this. He insists on celebrating the poetry of mean landscapes. That sense of scrubbiness in nature, as of a man unshaved, had never been conveyed with this enthusiasm and primeval gusto before." (_Robert Browning_, p. 159.) HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY This poem is the story of an obscure poet in the Spanish city of Valladolid. It brings out his actual life and the townfolk's misinterpretations of it. Reports multiply upon themselves and take new meanings till the harmless poet is generally accounted the King's spy and the real agent of all royal edicts, the town's master, in fact. The interest which, as a poet, he takes in all manifestations of life is popularly supposed to be the alertness of a secret agent of the government. The reams of poetry he writes are transformed into letters of information to the King. Rumor translates the poet's perfectly decent, regular, meager life into secret sybaritic extravagances. 7. _Though none did._ His suit had once been fashionable, but, though still serviceable, was of a sort no longer worn by his fellow townsmen. 25. _The coffee-roaster's brazier._ The coffee is roasted in a dish that is made to revolve over the coals in an open pan or basin. 74. _Beyond the Jewry._ Beyond the Jew's quarter, a squalid portion of the city. 90. _The Corregidor._ The Spanish title for a magistrate. 104. _Here had been._ The poet, misconceived by his generation, poor, and lonely, has yet a great spiritual personality. Men see the old coat. God, the King for whom he works, sees his real nature; hence heavenly guards attend when this man comes to die. 115. _The Prado._ The chief fashionable promenade of Madrid. FRA LIPPO LIPPI Fra Lippo Lippi was born in Florence in 1406. See Vasari's _Lives of the Painters_ for the account of his life on which Browning based his poem. (Vasari's account is quoted in Cooke's _Browning Guide Book_.) 2. _You need not clap your torches._ Throughout this lively dramatic monologue it is important to mark every indication of the words or gestures of the auditors; for instance, in lines 13, 18, 26, etc.