Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial, a grotesque and humorously-told “reminiscence of A.D. 1670,” is, up to stanza 35, the versification of an anecdote recorded by Baldinucci, the artist and art critic (1624-1696), in his History of Painters.  The incident with which it concludes is imaginary.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 51:  The jocose vindictiveness with which Browning returns again and again to the assault of the bad grammar and worse rhetoric of Byron’s once so much belauded address to the ocean is very amusing.  The above is only one out of four or five instances.]

[Footnote 52:  It is worth comparing A Forgiveness with a poem of very similar motive by Leconte de Lisle:  Le Jugement de Komor (Poemes Barbares).  Each is a fine example of its author, in just those qualities for which both poets are eminent:  originality and subtlety of subject, pregnant picturesqueness of phrase and situation, and grimly tragic power.  The contrast no less than the likeness which exists between them will be evident on a comparison of the two poems.]

[Footnote 53:  In reference to the title Cenciaja, and the Italian proverb which follows it, Ogni cencio vuol entrare in bucato, Browning stated, in a letter to Mr. H.B.  Forman (printed in his Shelley, 1880, ii. 419), that “‘aia’ is generally an accumulative yet depreciative termination:  ’Cenciaja’—­a bundle of rags—­a trifle.  The proverb means, ‘Every poor creature will be pressing into the company of his betters,’ and I used it to deprecate the notion that I intended anything of the kind.”]

25.  THE AGAMEMNON OF AESCHYLUS.

    [Published in October, 1877 (Poetical Works, 1889, Vol. 
    XIII. pp. 259-357).]

Browning prefaces his transcript of the Agamemnon with a brief introduction, in which he thus sets forth his theory of translation:—­

“If, because of the immense fame of the following Tragedy, I wished to acquaint myself with it, and could only do so by the help of a translator, I should require him to be literal at every cost save that of absolute violence to our language.  The use of certain allowable constructions which, happening to be out of daily favour, are all the more appropriate to archaic workmanship, is no violence:  but I would be tolerant for once,—­in the case of so immensely famous an original,—­of even a clumsy attempt to furnish me with the very turn of each phrase in as Greek a fashion as English will bear:  while, with respect to amplifications and embellishments, anything rather than, with the good farmer, experience that most signal of mortifications, ’to gape for AEschylus and get Theognis.’  I should especially decline,—­what may appear to brighten up a passage,—­the employment of a new word for some old one—­[Greek:  phonos], or [Greek:  megas], or [Greek:  telos], with its congeners, recurring four times