s careers or moods
or moments of love; those which deal with the fine arts--painting,
poetry, music--and with these we may class, as kindred in spirit, that
poem which has for its subject the passionate pursuit of knowledge, _A
Grammarian's Funeral_; and thirdly, those which are connected with
religious thought and feeling, or present scenes from the history of
religions. Two poems may be called descriptive; both are Italian; both
are founded upon a rivalry of contrasts, but one, _Up at a Villa--Down
in the City_, is made up of humorous observations of Italian city and
country life, expressing the mundane tastes and prudent economies of an
Italian person of quality; the other, "_De Gustibus_--," which contrasts
the happy quietudes of English landscape with the passionate landscape
of the South, has romance at the heart of its realism and an ardour of
sentiment underlying its pictorial vividness. _The Patriot_ is again
Italian, suggested perhaps by the swift revolutions and restorations
which Browning had witnessed in Florence, and again it uses with
striking effect the principle of contrast; the patriot who a year ago
had his intoxicating triumph is now on his way to the scaffold. His
year's toil for the good of his people has turned into a year's
misdeeds, his life is a failure; but Browning characteristically wrings
a victory out of defeat; the crowd at the shambles' gate may hoot; it is
better so, for now the martyr can throw himself upon God, the Paymaster
of all his labourers at the close of day. The most remarkable of these
poems, which refuse to take their places in a group, is that forlorn
romance of weary and depressed heroism, _Childe Roland to the Dark Tower
came_. It is in the main a fantaisie of description; but involved with
the descriptive study is a romantic motive. The external suggestions for
the poem were no more than the words from _King Lear_ which form the
title, a tower seen in the Carrara mountains, a painting seen in Paris,
and the figure of a horse in the tapestry of the drawing-room of Casa
Guidi.[64] In his own mind Browning may have put the question: Of all
the feats of knight-errantry which is the hardest? Not to combat with
dragons, or robbers, or salvage men; not to bear down rival champions
in a rapture of battle. Not these, but to cling to a purpose amid all
that depresses the senses at a time when the heart within us is also
failing; to advance where there is nothing to arouse energy by