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Such volumes as Fifine at the Fair, Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, The Inn Album, Jocoseria, and many others, show how Browning gains steadily in the power of revealing the hidden springs of human action; but he often rambles most tiresomely, and in general his work loses in sustained interest. It is perhaps significant that most of his best work was done under Mrs. Browning's influence.
"Jocoseria," in fact, recalls "Men and Women" rather than the "Fifines," the "Hohenstiel-Schwangaus," and the "Red Cotton Nightcap Countries" of a later and less happily-inspired period.
"Jocoseria," published in 1883, reclaimed many of his earlier admirers, who had been estranged by what they regarded as the extravagance and whimsicality, not to speak of the obscurity and ruggedness, of so many of his later works.
Such at least is the case in 'Martin Relph', and the idealized Russian legend, 'Ivan Ivanovitch'. The grotesque tragedy of 'Ned Bratts' has also its marked psychological aspects, but they are of a simpler and broader kind. The new inspiration slowly subsided through the second series of 'Idyls', 1880, and 'Jocoseria', 1883. In 'Ferishtah's Fancies', 1884, Mr.
Fitz-Gerald Venice Favourite Alpine Retreats Mrs. Arthur Bronson Life in Venice A Tragedy at Saint-Pierre Mr. Cholmondeley Mr. Browning's Patriotic Feeling; Extract from Letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow 'Dramatic Idyls' 'Jocoseria' 'Ferishtah's Fancies'. The catastrophe of La Saisiaz closed a comprehensive chapter in Mr. Browning's habits and experience.
Some of an old man's jests may be found in Jocoseria, some of an old man's imaginative passion in Asolando, and in both volumes, and still more clearly in Ferishtah's Fancies may be seen an old man's spirit of acquiescence, or to use a catch-word of Matthew Arnold, the epoch of concentration which follows an epoch of expansion.
In Jocoseria, which appeared in Browning's seventy-first year , he shows nothing of his boisterous humour, but smiles at our human infirmities from the heights of experience.
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