Ruskin has some important words in his "Modern Painters" upon this poem: "I know no other piece of modern English, prose or poetry, in which there is so much told as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit,--its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin. It is nearly all I said of the central Renaissance in thirty pages in 'The Stones of Venice,' put into as many lines, Browning's being also the antecedent work. The worst of it is that this kind of concentrated writing needs so much solution before the reader can fairly get the good of it, that people's patience fails them, and they give the thing up as insoluble."
In studying the argument the reader should note the many sudden changes in almost every phrase, especially at first. For example,
"Nephews--sons mine ... ah God, I know not!"
And so he continues: "She is dead beside," and
"Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace."
This must be given with much saliency in order to show that it is the chief point he has in mind and the purpose of his bringing them together. Most of the other sayings are only dramatic asides, which, however, must be strongly emphasized as indicative of his character.
Note the expression of his hate in "Old Gandolf cozened me," though he fought tooth and nail to save his niche. But still, his enemy had secured the south corner:
"He graced his carrion with, God curse the same!"
Yet he accepts the result, and feels that his niche is not so bad:
"One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side."
"Onion-stone" and "true peach" are, of course, in direct opposition. Then he tells the great secret of his life, how he has hidden a great lump of
"... lapis lazuli, Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape,"
and where it can be found to place between his knees on the monument. And in this he shall have a great triumph over his enemy--
"For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst!"
After this outbreak of selfishness and envy he resumes the conventional whine:
"Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years."
Suddenly, with a totally different inflection, he returns to the thought of his tomb:
"Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black-- 'Twas ever antique-black I meant!"