So far it may be said to represent a type.

But it scarcely comes under the range of this chapter.
But _Up in a Villa, down in the City_, is so vivid a representation of all that pleased a whole type of the city-bred and poor nobles of Italy at the time when Browning wrote the _Dramatic Lyrics_ that I cannot omit it.

It is an admirable piece of work, crowded with keen descriptions of nature in the Casentino, and of life in the streets of Florence.

And every piece of description is so filled with the character of the "Italian person of quality" who describes them--a petulant, humorous, easily angered, happy, observant, ignorant, poor gentleman--that Browning entirely disappears.

The poem retains for us in its verse, and indeed in its light rhythm, the childlikeness, the _naivete_, the simple pleasures, the ignorance, and the honest boredom with the solitudes of nature--of a whole class of Italians, not only of the time when it was written, but of the present day.