A grotesquely idle legend of the habits of the "Corregidor" flourishes among the good folks of Valladolid; the speaker himself, who desires to do him justice, is a plain, shrewd, but unimaginative observer ("I never wrote a line of verse, did you ?"), and makes us acquainted with everything but the inner nature of the man.

We see the corregidor in the streets, in his chamber, at his frugal supper and "decent cribbage" with his maid, but never at his verse.

We see the alert objective eye of this man with the "scrutinizing hat," who "stood and watched the cobbler at his trade, ...
If any beat a horse, you felt he saw, If any cursed a woman, he took note,"-- and all this, for Browning, went to the making of the poet, but we get no inkling of the process itself.

Browning had, in his obscure as in his famous days, peculiar opportunities of measuring the perversities of popular repute.

Later on, in the heyday of his renown, he chaffed its critical dispensers in his most uproarious vein in _Pacchiarotto_.