The Flight of the Duchess should be read as a development and variation of this theme.
THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT SAINT PRAXED'S. (PAGE [107].)
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Ruskin gives this poem high praise: "Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence he writes of the Middle Ages.... I know no other piece of modern English prose or poetry in which there is so much told, as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit—its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin. It is nearly all that I have said of the central Renaissance, in thirty pages of The Stones of Venice, put into as many lines; Browning's also being the antecedent work."
It is not, however, for its historical accuracy that a poem is mainly to be judged. The full and imaginative portrayal of a[page 254] type, belonging not to one age only, but to human nature, is a greater achievement. And this achievement Browning has undoubtedly performed.
[5]. Old [Gandolf]. Evidently one of the Bishop's colleagues in holy orders, and like him in holiness.
[31]. [onion-stone]. See the dictionary for descriptions of this and other stones named in the poem.
[41]. [olive-frail]. A crate, made of rushes, for packing olives.
[42]. lapis [lazuli]. A very beautiful and valuable blue stone.
[46]. [Frascati]. A town near Rome, celebrated for its villas.