ABSTRACT
Mr. Browning is, and always has been, an etcher, and (we imply no disrespect by using short words) he by no means increased his popularity when he took to writing long poems. Mr. Nettleship1 may say what he likes-and he has a good deal to say-but Sordello always was, and always will be, a failure; while, in his smaller pieces, such as those collected in Men and Women, or Dramatic Lyrics, or Dramatic Romances, Mr. Browning appeals at once to any one who is sufficiently intelligent to attempt to read him. His mistake all through has been to suppose that people will take the trouble to wrestle with difficulties; that because his longer poems are worth understanding, the public would try to understand them. Amongst mathematicians it is recognized that certain men, not always eminent in other respects, have what is known as ‘a knack for problems.’ Mr. Browning’s poetry is to all ordinary forms of art what a problem is to a mathematical demonstration. You have to read it three or four, or it may be even a dozen times, until suddenly-as with those fantastic pictures which, according to the position of the axes of the eye, represent two or more things at once-you focus the whole piece. Of late years Mr. Browning has been vehemently accused of a tendency to write at unpardonable length, and life, it is urged, even for those who have nothing to do but to devote themselves to culture, is too short to allow the requisite attention being paid to a somewhat crabbed narrative spread over 300 pages, simply because it is written by the poet who wrote Porphyrias Lover, and who might, if he pleased, write at any moment something equally short and equally good. In the present volume Mr. Browning returns to his more popular method of working. It is an ungrateful task to compare the later productions of a great man with his earlier efforts, and it is needless to inquire whether ‘Pacchiarotto’ is or is not equal to those shorter poems by which Mr. Browning is best known. There are, however, pieces in this volume which those who know Mr. Browning well, and like him, will not be slow to prize.
