ins to answer; for the last words glow with a fire which of
itself dispels the chill wind. A faith founded upon love had for
Browning a surer guarantee than any founded upon reason; it was secured
by that which most nearly emancipated men from the illusions of
mortality, and enabled them to see things as they are seen by God.

The _Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day_ (1887)
is a more laboured and, save for one or two splendid episodes, a less
remarkable achievement than _Ferishtah_. All the burly diffuseness which
had there been held in check by a quasi-oriental ideal of lightly-knit
facility and bland oracular pithiness, here has its way without stint,
and no more songs break like the rush of birds' wings upon the dusty air
of colloquy. Thrusting in between the lyrics of _Ferishtah_ and
_Asolando_, these _Parleyings_ recall those other "people of importance"
whose intrusive visit broke in upon "the tenderness of Dante." Neither
their importance in their own day nor their relative obscurity, for the
most part, in ours, had much to do with Browning's choice. They do not
illustrate merely his normal interest in the obscure freaks and
out-of-the-way anomalies of history. The doings of these "people" had
once been "important" to Browning himself, and the old man's memory
summoned up these forgotten old-world friends of his boyhood to be
championed or rallied by their quondam disciple. The death of the
dearest friend of his later life, J. Milsand, in 1886, probably set
these chords vibrating; the book is dedicated to his memory. Perhaps the
_Imaginary Conversations_ of an older friend and master of Browning's,
one even more important in Browning's day and in ours than in his own,
and the master of his youth, once more suggested the scheme. But these
_Parleyings_ are conversations only in name. They are not even
monologues of the old brilliantly dramatic kind. All the dramatic zest
of converse is gone, the personages are the merest shadows, nothing is
seen but the old poet haranguing his puppets or putting voluble
expositions of his own cherished dogmas into their wooden lips. We have
glimpses of the boy, when not yet able to compass an octave, beating
time to the simple but stirring old march of Avison "whilom of Newcastle
organist"; and before he has done, the memory masters him, and the
pedestrian blank verse breaks into a hymn "rough, rude, robustious,
homely heart athrob" to Pym the "man of men." Or