--
* First published in `Hood's Magazine', March, 1845, No. III., vol. iii.,
pp. 237-239, under the title `The Tomb at St. Praxed's (Rome, 15--)'.

"This poem and `The Flight of the Duchess' were sent by Browning
to help make up the numbers of the magazine while Hood lay dying."
-- Furnivall's `Bibliography of Robert Browning', p. 48.
--



The dying Bishop pleads with his natural sons that they give him
the sumptuous tomb they stand pledged to, -- such a tomb
as will excite the envy of his old enemy Gandolf, who cheated him out
of a favorite niche in St. Praxed's Church, by dying before him,
and securing it for his tomb.

It is not necessary to suppose that the natural sons are present.
His, perhaps, delirious mind is occupied with the precious
marbles and stones and other luxuries he has loved to much,
and with his old rival and enemy, Gandolf.

John Ruskin, in his `Modern Painters' (Vol. IV., chap. XX.,
Section 32), remarks: --


"Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence he writes
of the Middle Ages; always vital, right, and profound;
so that in the matter of art, . . .there is hardly a principle