pirit, unless we embrace them or wrestle
with them."

To return from this digression to the charge against Browning
of obscurity. And, first, it should be said that Browning has
so much material, such a large thought and passion capital,
that we never find him making a little go a great way,
by means of EXPRESSION, or rather concealing the little by means of
rhetorical tinsel. We can never justly demand of him what the Queen
in `Hamlet' demands of Polonius, "more matter with less art".
His thought is wide-reaching and discursive, and the motions
of his mind rapid and leaping. The connecting links of his thought
have often to be supplied by an analytic reader whose mind
is not up to the required tension to spring over the chasm.
He shows great faith in his reader and "leaves the mere rude
explicit details", as if he thought,

"'tis but brother's speech
We need, speech where an accent's change gives each
The other's soul." *

--
* `Sordello'.
--

A truly original writer like Browning, original, I mean,
in his spiritual attitudes, is always more of less difficult
to the uninitiated, for the reason that he demands of his reader
new standpoints, new habits of thought and feeling; says, virtually,
to his reader, Metanoei^te; and until these new standpoints are taken,
these new habits of thought and feeling induced, the difficulty,
while appearing to the reader at the outset, to be altogether objective,
will really be, to a great extent, subjective, that is,
will be in himself.

Goethe, in his `Wahrheit und Dichtung', says:--

"Wer einem Autor Dunkelheit vorwerfen will, sollte erst sein eigenes
Innere besuchen, ob es denn da auch recht hell ist. In der Daemmerung
wird eine sehr deutliche Schrift unlesbar." *

--
* He who would charge an author with obscurity, should first look
into his own mind, to know whether it is quite clear there.
In the dusk a very distinct handwriting becomes illegible.
--

And George Henry Lewes, in his `Life of Goethe', well says:--

"A masterpiece excites no sudden enthusiasm; it must be studied much
and long, before it is fully comprehended; we must grow up to it,
for it will not descend to us. Its emphasis grows with familiarity.
We never become disenchanted; we grow more and more awe-struck
at its infinite wealth. We discover no trick, for there is none
to discover. Homer, Shakespeare, Raphael, Beethoven, Moz