drank the good wines of
1855 and of 1864 in the year of the vintages found that they were
strong and needed no keeping to be sweet. Wine-tasters must make
distinctions, and the quality of the yield of 1876 does not entitle it
to be remembered as an extraordinary year.

The poem from which the volume was named tells in verse, "timed by raps
of the knuckle," how the painter Pacchiarotto must needs become a
world-reformer, or at least a city-reformer in his distressed Siena,
with no good results for his city and with disastrous results for
himself. He learns by unsavoury experience his lesson, to hold on by the
paint-brush and maul-stick, and do his own work, accepting the mingled
evil and good of life in a spirit of strenuous--not
indolent--_laissez-faire_, playing, as energetically as a human being
can, his own part, and leaving others to play theirs, assured that for
all and each this life is the trial-time and test of eternity, the
rehearsal for the performance in a future world, and "Things rarely go
smooth at Rehearsal." Browning's joy in difficult rhyming as seen in
this serio-grotesque jingle was great; some readers may be permitted to
wish that many of his rhymes were not merely difficult but impossible.
At a dinner given by Sir Leslie Stephen he met successfully the
challenge to produce a rhyme for "rhinoceros," and for Tennyson's
diversion he delivered himself of an impromptu in which rhymes were
found for "Ecclefechan" and "Craigenputtock." But in rhyming ingenuity
Browning is inferior to the author of "Hudibras," in a rhymer's elegant
effrontery he is inferior to the author of "Don Juan." Browning's
good-humoured effrontery in his rhymes expects too much good-humour from
his reader, who may be amiable enough to accept rough and ready
successes, but cannot often be delighted by brilliant gymnastics of
sound and sense. In like manner it asks for a particularly well-disposed
reader to appreciate the wit of Browning's retort upon his critics: "You
are chimney-sweeps," he sings out in his great voice, "listen! I have
invented several insulting nicknames for you. Decamp! or my housemaid
will fling the slops in your faces." This may appear to some persons to
be genial and clever. It certainly has none of the exquisite malignity
of Pope's poisoned rapier. Perhaps it is a little dull; perhaps it is a
little outrageous.

The Browning who masks as Shakespeare in _At the Mermaid_ disclaims the
ambition of heading a poe