ABSTRACT
This poet is, I believe, a great problem to the critics. One who would receive the high imaginings and divinations of genius by some direct and easy process, and through a clear and pleasant medium, would be perplexed and half-angered by him at the first reading, at least. There is often about his poetry a dimness and a density which result from the depth of his thought and the affluence of his fancy. His darkest places are, after all, ‘sun-dropped shades,’ where the beauty is deeper and richer for the partial obscurity. His style is often singularly involved, dreamy and mystical; but he is never meaningless. Sometimes, amid his most unformed and mystical language, comes a happy, lucid expression, a bright rift, a sudden revealing of heaven through clouds and shadows-verbal felicities, pleasant surprises of humour, delicious turns of sentiment, and soft yet masterly touches of pathos, which would summon smiles to the sternest lip, or from the coldest and most philosophical heart roll away the stone which shuts down the fountain of tears. Browning has been called unmusical, and, judged by common rules, I suppose his verse lacks melody; but for me, there is always in it a sort of spiritual harmony, which overrules the mere word-sound, and renders him one of the most musical of poets.
