that
sprightly and popular comedy shall be remembered.

In his graphic and condensed version of the tale, Browning has used a
poet's licence to heighten the effect and increase the piquancy of the
narrative. The poem is written in _ottava rima_, but, very singularly,
there is not one double rhyme from beginning to end. It is difficult to
see why Browning, a finer master of grotesque compound rhymes than
Byron, should have so carefully avoided them in a metre which, as in
Byron's hands, owes no little of its effect to a clever introduction of
such rhymes. The lines (again of set purpose, it is evident) overlap one
another without an end-pause where in Italian it is almost universal,
namely, after the sixth line. The result of the innovation is far from
successful: it destroys the flow of the verse and gives it an air of
abruptness. Of the liveliness, vivacity and pungency of the tale, no
idea can be given by quotation: two of the stanzas in which the moral is
enforced, the two finest, perhaps, in the poem, are, however, severable
from their context:--

"Who knows most, doubts most; entertaining hope,
Means recognizing fear; the keener sense
Of all comprised within our actual scope
Recoils from aught beyond earth's dim and dense.
Who, grown familiar with the sky, will grope
Henceforward among groundlings? That's offence
Just as indubitably: stars abound
O'erhead, but then--what flowers made glad the ground!

So, force is sorrow, and each sorrow, force:
What then? since Swiftness gives the charioteer
The palm, his hope be in the vivid horse
Whose neck God clothed with thunder, not the steer
Sluggish and safe! Yoke Hatred, Crime, Remorse,
Despair: but ever 'mid the whirling fear,
Let, through the tumult, break the poet's face
Radiant, assured his wild slaves win the race!"

The poem is followed by an exquisite Epilogue, one of the most
delicately graceful and witty and tender of Browning's lyrics. The
briefer Prologue is not less beautiful:--

"Such a starved bank of moss
Till, that May-morn,
Blue ran the flash across:
Violets were born!

Sky--what a scowl of cloud
Till, near and far,
Ray on ray split the shroud:
Splendid, a star!

World--how it walled about
Life with disgrace
Till God's own smile came out:
That was th