he nude, with a discourse
concerning evolution), Painting again (the modern _versus_ the
mythological in art), Music, and, if we add the epilogue, the Invention
of Printing--these are the successive themes of Browning's _Parleyings_,
and they are important and interesting themes. Unfortunately the method
of discussion is neither sufficiently abstract for the lucid exposition
of ideas, nor sufficiently concrete for the pure communication of poetic
pleasure. Abstract and concrete meet and take hands or jostle, too much
as skeleton and lady might in a _danse Macabre_. The spirit of
acquiescence--strenuous not indolent acquiescence--with our intellectual
limitations is constantly present. Does man groan because he cannot
comprehend the mind outside himself which manifests itself in the sun?
Well, did not Prometheus draw the celestial rays into the pin-point of a
flame which man can order, and which does him service? Is the fire a
little thing beside the immensity in the heavens above us?

Little? In little, light, warmth, life are blessed--
Which, in the large, who sees to bless?

Or again--it is Christopher Smart, who triumphs for once so
magnificently in his "Song to David," and fails, with all his
contemporaries, in the poetry of ambitious instruction. And why? Because
for once he was content with the first step that poetry should take--to
confer enjoyment, leaving instruction--the fruit of enjoyment--to come
later. True learning teaches through love and delight, not through
pretentious didactics,--a truth forgotten by the whole tribe of
eighteenth century versifiers. And once more--does Francis Furini paint
the naked body in all its beauty? Right! let him study precisely this
divine thing the body, before he looks upward; let him retire from the
infinite into his proper circumscription:

Only by looking low, ere looking high,
Comes penetration of the mystery.

So also with our view of the mingled good and evil in the world; perhaps
to some transcendent vision evil may wholly disappear; perhaps we shall
ourselves make this discovery as we look back upon the life on earth.
Meanwhile it is as men that we must see things, and even if evil be an
illusion (as Browning trusts), it is a needful illusion in our
educational process, since through evil we become aware of good. Thus at
every point Browning accepts here, as in _Ferishtah's Fancies_, a
limited provisional knowledge as sufficient for our present ne