Regarding Browning I can only say that, although his worshippers are
aggressive enough, one readily pardons any person who flies from his
poems in disgust. A learned and enthusiastic editor actually gave
"Sordello" up in despair; and even the late Dean Church averred that
he did not understand the poem, though he wrote lengthy studies on it.
To my own knowledge there are men and women who do derive intense
pleasure from Browning, and they are quite right in expressing their
feelings; but they are wrong in attempting to bully the general public
into acquiescence. Certain members of the public say, "Your poet
capers round us in a sort of war-dance; he flicks off our hats with
some muddled paradox, he leaves a line unfinished and hurts us with a
projecting conjunction. We want him to stop capering and grimacing,
and then we shall tell him whether he is good-looking or not." I hold
that the dissenters are right. People with the necessary metaphysical
faculty may understand and passionately enjoy their Browning, but only
too many simple souls have inflicted miserable suffering on themselves
by trying to unravel the meaning of verses at which they never should
have looked.
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