The world's good word!--the Institute!
Guizot receives Montalembert!
Eh? Down the court three lampions flare:
Put forward your best foot!
In the list of _Dramatis Personae_, Browning placed _Confessions_
shortly after _A Death in the Desert_, as if to show the enormous
contrast in two death-bed scenes. After a presentation of the last
noble, spiritual, inspired moments of the apostle John, we have
portrayed for us the dying delirium of an old sinner, whose thought
travels back to the sweetest moments of his life, his clandestine
meetings with the girl he loved. The solemn voice of the priest is
like the troublesome buzzing of a fly.
Do I view the world as a vale of tears?
Not much!
Like Matthew Arnold's _Wish_, the brother-doctor of the soul who is
called in
To canvass with official breath
is simply a nuisance in these last minutes of life. The row of
medicine bottles, all useless now for practical purposes, represents
to his fevered eyes the topography of the scene where the girl used
to come running to meet him.
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