As air to walk abroad; 'How otherwise?' asked he."

With the "wild men" Halbert and Hob it is the spell of a sudden memory
which makes an abrupt rift between the men they have seemed to be and
the men they prove. Browning in his earlier days had gloried in these
moments of disclosure; now they served to emphasise the normal illusion.
"Ah me!" sounds the note of the proem to the second series, scornful and
sad:--

"Ah me!
So ignorant of man's whole,
Of bodily organs plain to see--
So sage and certain, frank and free,
About what's under lock and key--
Man's soul!"

The volume called _Jocoseria_ (1883) contains some fine things, and
abounds with Browning's invariable literary accomplishment and metrical
virtuosity, but on the whole points to the gradual disintegration of his
genius. "Wanting is--what?" is the significant theme of the opening
lyric, and most of the poetry has something which recalls the "summer
redundant" of leaf and flower not "breathed above" by vitalising
passion. Compared with the _Men and Women_ or the _Dramatis Personæ_,
the _Jocoseria_ as a whole are indeed

"Framework which waits for a picture to frame, ...
Roses embowering with nought they embower."

Browning, the poet of the divining imagination, is less apparent here
than the astute ironical observer who delights in pricking the bubbles