[Published in March, 1883 (_Poetical Works_, 1889, pp. 165-266).]
The name _Jocoseria_ (mentioned by Browning in its original connection, Melander's "Jocoseria," in the notes to _Paracelsus_) expresses very cleverly the particular nature of the volume, in its close union and fusion of grave and gay. The book is not, as a whole, so intense or so brilliant as the first and second series of _Dramatic Idyls_, but one or two of the shorter poems are, in their way, hardly excelled by anything in either volume.
The longest poem, though by no means the best is the imaginary Rabbinical legend of _Jochanan Hakkadosh_ (John the Saint), which Browning, with a touch of learned quizzicalness, states in his note[57] "to have no better authority than that of the treatise, existing dispersedly, in fragments of Rabbinical writing, [the name, 'Collection of many Lies,' follows in Hebrew,] from which I might have helped myself more liberally." It is written in _terza rima_, like _Doctor_ ---- in the second series of _Dramatic Idyls_, and is supposed to be told by "the Jew aforesaid" in order to "make amends and justify our Mishna." That it may to some extent do, but it seems to me that its effectiveness as an example of the serio-grotesque style would have been heightened by some metre less sober and placid than the _terza rima_; by rhythm and rhyme as audacious and characteristic as the rhythm and the rhymes of _Pietro of Abano_, for instance.
_Ixion_, a far finer poem than _Jochanan Hakkadosh_, is, no doubt, an equally sincere utterance of personal belief. The poem is a monologue, in unrhymed hexameters and pentameters. It presents the old myth in a new light. Ixion is represented as the Prometheus of man's righteous revolt against the tyranny of an unjust God. The poem is conceived in a spirit of intense earnestness, and worked out with great vigour and splendour of diction. For passion and eloquence nothing in it surpasses the finely culminating last lines, of which I can but tear a few, only too barbarously, from their context:--
"What is the influence, high o'er Hell, that turns to a rapture Pain--and despair's murk mists blends in a rainbow of hope? What is beyond the obstruction, stage by stage tho' it baffle? Back must I fall, confess 'Ever the weakness I fled'? No, for beyond, far, far is a Purity all-unobstructed! Zeus was Zeus--not Man: wrecked by his weakness I whirl. Out of the wreck I rise--past Zeus to the Potency o'er him! I--to have hailed him my friend! I--to have clasped her--my love! Pallid birth of my pain,--where light, where light is, aspiring Thither I rise, whilst thou--Zeus, keep the godship and sink!"