ABSTRACT
Yet a few words, and I have done. For, as I wrote this, many times angry indignant words came to my lips, which stopped my writing till I could be quieter. For I suppose, reader, that you see whereabouts among the poets I place Robert Browning; high among the poets of all time, and I scarce know whether first, or second, in our own: and it is a bitter thing to me to see the way in which he has been received by almost everybody; many, having formed a certain theory of their own about him, from reading, I suppose, some of the least finished poems among the Dramatic Lyrics, make all facts bend to this theory, after the fashion of theory-mongers: they think him, or say they think him, a careless man, writing down anyhow anything that comes into his head. Oh truly! ‘The Statue and the Bust’ shows this! or the soft solemn flow of that poem, ‘By the Fireside’, Paracelsus-that, with its wonderful rhythm, its tender sadness, its noble thoughts, must have been very easy to write, surely!
