ABSTRACT
But Mr. Browning’s occasional obscurity-or shall we say carelessness of explanation?—is not the only reason why he lacks that popularity which so great a poet ought to have in his own country. Mr. Browning has lived the greater part of his literary life in Italy. The colouring of his mind and the colouring of his work are alike Italian. It is Italian life that he has so skilfully analysed; it is Italian scenery and accessories which form the background for his vivid dramatic pictures. If Mr. Browning had studied England and English character as faithfully and successfully as he has studied Italy and Italian character, his position as an English poet would have been other than it now is. So different is the material on which he has chosen to expend his poetical labour from all that we see around us, that we cannot regard the result otherwise than as a mere artistic product. Behind our admiration of such a poem as the Morte d’Arthur, Maud, or In Memoriam, there lies the distinct consciousness that the poet who speaks to us is one of ourselves, breathing the same atmosphere of inarticulate longing and tender hope, of unrest, and indignation, and wonder over the things that are. We are inclined to believe, however, that no poet ever lived who so accurately reflected the spirit of his time as Mr. Tennyson has done-it is his individual gift. And there is this further consideration, that genius has a wonderful selective
Passes could never have been written in England. It is easier to believe this than that Mr. Browning has paid the heavy price of a restricted audience for the merely personal pleasure of living in a more comprehensible climate, under brighter skies, and among more picturesque and less conventional people than England offered him.
