is vile--you will
be rejoiced to holla from the house-top)--will go on, or rather go
off, lightening, and will be--oh, where _will_ they be half a dozen years
hence?

Meantime praise what you can praise, do me all the good you can, you and
Mr. Fox (as if you will not!) for I have a head full of projects--mean
to song-write, play-write forthwith,--and, believe me, dear Miss Flower,
Yours ever faithfully, Robert Browning.

By the way, you speak of 'Pippa'--could we not make some arrangement
about it? The lyrics _want_ your music--five or six in all--how say you?
When these three plays are out I hope to build a huge Ode--but 'all
goeth by God's Will.'

The loyal Alfred Domett now appears on the scene with a satirical poem,
inspired by an impertinent criticism on his friend. I give its first two
verses:

On a Certain Critique on 'Pippa Passes'.

(Query--Passes what?--the critic's comprehension.)

Ho! everyone that by the nose is led,
Automatons of which the world is full,
Ye myriad bodies, each without a head,
That dangle from a critic's brainless skull,
Come, hearken to a deep discovery made,
A mighty truth now wondrously displayed.

A black squat beetle, vigorous for his size,
Pushing tail-first by every road that's wrong
The dung-ball of his dirty thoughts along
His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies--
Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering trouble,
Against a mountain he can neither double
Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free,
Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he
Takes it into his horny head to swear
There's no such thing as any mountain there.

The writer lived to do better things from a literary point of view; but
these lines have a fine ring of youthful indignation which must have
made them a welcome tribute to friendship.

There seems to have been little respectful criticism of 'Pippa Passes';
it is less surprising that there should have been very little of
'Sordello'. Mr. Browning, it is true, retained a limited number of
earnest appreciators, foremost of whom was the writer of an admirable
notice of these two works, quoted from an 'Eclectic Review' of 1847, in
Dr. Furnivall's 'Bibliography'. I am also told that the series of poems
which was next to appear was enthusiastically greeted by some poets
and painters of the pre-Raphaelite school; but he was now entering on
a period of general neglect, which cove