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Three more years passed, and the last book which Browning published in his lifetime was Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day, a book which consists of apostrophes, amicable, furious, reverential, satirical, emotional to a number of people of whom the vast majority even of cultivated people have never heard in their lives Daniel Bartoli, Francis Furini, Gerard de Lairesse, and Charles Avison.
Charles Avison, the musician and composer, was organist of St. John's in 1736, and afterwards of St. Nicholas'. It was he to whom Browning referred in the lines "On the list Of worthies, who by help of pipe or wire, Expressed in sound rough rage or soft desire, Thou, whilom of Newcastle, organist." These lines have been carved on his tombstone in St. Andrew's churchyard.
The description of the glory of sunrise in Bernard de Mandeville, the description of the Chapel in Christopher Smart, the praise of a woman's beauty in Francis Furini, the amazing succession of mythological tours de force in Gerard de Lairesse, the delightful picture of the blackcap tugging at his prize, a scrap of rag on the garden wall, amid the falling snow of March, in the opening of Charles Avison these are sufficient evidence of the abounding force of Browning's genius as a poet at a date when he had passed the three score years and ten by half an added decade.
Among the seven hundred subscribers to this venture we find "Mr. Voltaire, historiographer of France," and M. Roubilliac, the great statuary, besides such English celebrities as Gray, Collins, Richardson, Savage, Charles Avison, Garrick, and Mason.
There is of course a propriety in connecting a debate on evil in the world as a means to good with the name of the author of "The Fable of the Bees," there is no impropriety in connecting a study of the philosophy of music with the name of Charles Avison the Newcastle organist; but we do not make acquaintance through the parleyings with either Avison or Mandeville.
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