THE LABORATORY. (PAGE 113.)

This is a little masterpiece in its vividness and condensation.  The passions of hate and jealousy have seldom been so well portrayed.  The time and place are probably France and the sixteenth or seventeenth century.  Berdoe has called attention in his Browning Cyclopaedia, to the number of fine antitheses in the second stanza.

Who are present in the scene?  Who are to be the victims?  Account for the speaker’s patience in stanza iii.  Point out the things that show the intensity of her hate.  Does she display any other feeling than hate and jealousy?

HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD. (PAGE 115.)

Where is the speaker?  What scene is in his imagination?  Trace the growth in his mind of this scene:  in color effects, in the kind of life introduced, in the intensity of the feeling, in the vividness with which he enters into it.  What is the charm in lines 12-14?

UP AT A VILLA—­DOWN IN THE CITY. (PAGE 116.)

4. =Bacchus=.  The Roman god of wine, frequently invoked in the garnishment of Latin and Italian speech.

42. =Pulcinello= is the Italian for clown or puppet, and the prototype of the English Punch.

48, =Dante=, =Boccaccio=, and =Petrarch=.  Italy’s first three great authors.  See a biographical dictionary or encyclopaedia for their dates and their works.

=St. Jerome= (340-420.) One of the fathers of the Roman, church.  He prepared the Latin translation of the Bible known as the Vulgate.

48. =the skirts of St. Paul has reached=.  Has done almost as well as St. Paul.

51. =Our Lady=.  The image of the Virgin Mary.  Observe our hero’s taste and his religions solemnity.

52. =seven swords=, etc.  Representing the seven “legendary sorrows” of the Virgin.  See Berdoe’s Browning Cyclopaedia, or Brewer’s Reader’s Handbook, or Dictionary of Phrase and Fable for the list.

UP AT A VILLA is one of the best humorous poems in the language.  The hero’s desires and sorrows are so naive, his tastes so gravely held, that he provokes our sympathy as well as our laughter.  One of the charms of the poem is the way in which he is made to testify, in spite of himself, to the beauties of the country (as in lines 7-9, 19-20, 22-25, 32-33, 36) and to the monotony or clanging emptiness of the city (as in lines 12-14, 38-54).  Compare lines 8 and 82 with the picture in De Gustibus.

A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI’S. (PAGE 122.)

=Toccata=.  See an unabridged dictionary.

1. =Galuppi=.  Baldassare Galuppi, Venice, 1706-1785, a celebrated musician and prolific composer.

6. =St. Mark’s=.  The famous cathedral of Venice. =Doges ... rings=.  The Doge was chief magistrate of Venice.  The annual ceremony of “wedding the Adriatic” by casting into it a gold ring was instituted in 1174, in commemoration of the victory of the Venetian fleet over Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor of Germany.