on the decriers of that supreme art which aims at painting men and women as God made them. Gerard de Lairesse (born at Liege, in Flanders, 1640; died at Amsterdam 1711; famed not only for his pictures, but for his Treatise on the Art of Painting, composed after he had become blind) gives his name to a discussion on the artistic interpretation of nature, its change and advancement, and the deeper and truer vision which has displaced the mythological fancies of earlier painters and poets.  The parleying with Charles Avison (born at Newcastle, 1710; died there, 1770), the more than half forgotten organist-composer, embodies an inquiry, critical or speculative, into the position and function of music.  All these poems are written in decasyllabic rhymed verse, with varied arrangement of the rhymes.  They are introduced by a dialogue between Apollo and the Fates, and concluded by another between John Fust and his friends, both written in lyrical measures, both uniting deep seriousness of intention with capricious humour of form; the one wild and stormy as the great “Dance of Furies” in Gluck’s Orfeo; the other quaint and grimly and sublimely grotesque as an old German print. Gerard de Lairesse contains a charming little “Spring Song” of three stanzas; and Charles Avison a sounding train-bands’ chorus, written to the air of one of Avison’s marches.

The volume as a whole is full of weight, brilliance, and energy; and it is not less notable for its fineness of versification, its splendour of sound and colour, than for its depth and acuteness of thought and keen grasp of intricate argument.  Indeed, the quality which more than any other distinguishes it from Browning’s later work is the careful writing of the verse, and the elaborate beauty of certain passages.  Much of Browning’s later work would be ill represented by a selection of the “purple patches.”  His strength has always lain, but of late has lain much more exclusively, in the ensemble.  Here, however, there is not merely one passage of more than a hundred and fifty lines, the like of which (I do not say in every sense the equal, but certainly the like of which) we must go back to Sordello or to Paracelsus to find; but, again and again, wherever we turn, we meet with more than usually fine and impressive passages, single lines of more than usually exquisite quality.  The glory of the whole collection is certainly the “Walk,” or description, in rivalry with Gerard de Lairesse, of a whole day’s changes, from sunrise to sunset.  To equal it in its own way, we must look a long way back in our Browning, and nowhere out of Browning.  Where all is good, any preference must seem partial; but perhaps nothing in it is finer than this picture of morning.