gloried in these
moments of disclosure; now they served to emphasise the normal illusion.
"Ah me!" sounds the note of the proem to the second series, scornful and
sad:--

"Ah me!
So ignorant of man's whole,
Of bodily organs plain to see--
So sage and certain, frank and free,
About what's under lock and key--
Man's soul!"

The volume called _Jocoseria_ (1883) contains some fine things, and
abounds with Browning's invariable literary accomplishment and metrical
virtuosity, but on the whole points to the gradual disintegration of his
genius. "Wanting is--what?" is the significant theme of the opening
lyric, and most of the poetry has something which recalls the "summer
redundant" of leaf and flower not "breathed above" by vitalising
passion. Compared with the _Men and Women_ or the _Dramatis Personae_,
the _Jocoseria_ as a whole are indeed

"Framework which waits for a picture to frame, ...
Roses embowering with nought they embower."

Browning, the poet of the divining imagination, is less apparent here
than the astute ironical observer who delights in pricking the bubbles
of affectation, stripping off the masks of sham, and exhibiting human
nature in unadorned nakedness. _Donald_ is an exposure, savage and
ugly, of savagery and ugliness in Sport; _Solomon and Balkis_ a
reduction, dainty and gay, of these fabled paragons of wisdom to the
dimensions of ordinary vain and amorous humanity. Lilith and Eve unmask
themselves under stress of terror, as Balkis and Solomon at the
compulsion of the magic ring, and Adam urbanely replaces the mask.
Jochanan Hakka-dosh, the saintly prop of Israel, expounds from his
deathbed a gospel of struggle and endurance in which a troubled echo of
the great strain of Ben Ezra may no doubt be heard; but his career is,
as a whole, a half-sad, half-humorous commentary on the vainness of
striving to extend the iron frontiers of mortality. Lover, poet,
soldier, statist have each contributed a part of their lives to prolong
and enrich the saint's: but their fresh idealisms have withered when
grafted upon his sober and sapless brain; while his own garnered wisdom
fares no better when committed to the crude enthusiasm of his disciples.
But twice, in this volume, a richer and fuller music sounds. In the
great poem of _Ixion_, human illusions are still the preoccupying
thought; but they appear as fetters, not as specious masks,