Two poems, and each of them a remarkable poem, are interpretations of music.

One, _Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha_, is a singularly successful _tour de force_, if it is no more.

Poetry inspired by music is almost invariably the rendering of a sentiment or a mood which the music is supposed to express; but here, in dealing with the fugue of his imaginary German composer, Browning finds his inspiration not in the sentiment but in the structure of the composition; he competes, as it were, in language with the art or science of the contrapuntist, and evolves an idea of his own from its complexity and elaboration.

The poem of Italian music, _A Toccata of Galuppi's_, wholly subordinates the science to the sentiment of the piece.

It is steeped in the melancholy of pleasure; Venice of the eighteenth century lives before us with its mundane joys, its transitory passions, its voluptuous hours; and in the midst of its warmth and colour a chill creeps upon our senses and we shiver.