24.  PACCHIAROTTO, and how he worked in Distemper:  with other poems.

    [Published in July, 1876 (Poetical Works, 1889, Vol.  XIV.
    pp. 1-152).]

Pacchiarotto and other Poems is the first collection of miscellaneous pieces since the Dramatis Personae of 1864.  It is somewhat of an exception to the general rule of Browning’s work.  A large proportion of it is critical rather than creative, a criticism of critics; perhaps it would be at once more correct and concise to call it “Robert Browning’s Apology.” Pacchiarotto, At the “Mermaid", House, Shop and Epilogue, are all more or less personal utterances on art and the artist, sometimes in a concrete and impersonal way, more often in a somewhat combative and contemptuous spirit.  The most important part of the volume, however, is that which contains the two or three monodramatic poems and the splendid ballad of the fleet, Herve Riel.

The first and longest poem, Of Pacchiarotto, and how he worked in Distemper, divides itself into two parts, the first being the humorous rendering of a true anecdote told in Vasari, of Giacomo Pacchiarotto, a Sienese painter of the sixteenth century; and the second, a still more mirthful onslaught of the poet upon his critics.  The story—­

      “Begun with a chuckle,
      And throughout timed by raps of the knuckle,”—­

is funny enough in itself, and it points an excellent moral; but it is chiefly interesting as a whimsical freak of verse, an extravaganza in staccato.  The rhyming is of its kind almost incomparable as a sustained effort in double and triple grotesque rhymes.  Not even in Hudibras, not even in Don Juan, is there anything like them.  I think all other experiments of the kind, however successful as a whole, let you see now and then that the author has had a hard piece of work to keep up his appearance of ease.  In Pacchiarotto there is no evidence of the strain.  The masque of critics, under the cunning disguise of May-day chimney-sweepers:—­

      “’We critics as sweeps out your chimbly! 
      Much soot to remove from your flue, sir! 
      Who spares coal in kitchen an’t you, sir! 
      And neighbours complain it’s no joke, sir! 
      You ought to consume your own smoke, sir!’”—­

this after-part, overflowing with jolly humour and comic scorn, a besom wielded by a laughing giant, is calculated to put the victims in better humour with their executioner than with themselves.  Browning has had to endure more than most men at the hands of the critics, and he takes in this volume, not in this poem only, a full and a characteristically good-humoured revenge.  The Epilogue follows up the pendant to Pacchiarotto.  There is the same jolly humour, the same combative self-assertiveness, the same retort Tu quoque, with a yet more earnest and pungent enforcement.