presumed, though it is somewhat difficult to imagine, that he prided
himself on such rhymes as the following in _Pacchiarotto_:--

"The wolf, fox, bear, and monkey,
By piping advice in one key--
That his pipe should play a prelude
To something heaven-tinged not hell-hued,
Something not harsh but docile,
Man-liquid, not man-fossil."

This writing, considered as writing, can only be regarded as a kind of
joke, and most probably Browning considered it so himself. It has
nothing at all to do with that powerful and symbolic use of the
grotesque which may be found in such admirable passages as this from
"Holy Cross Day":--

"Give your first groan--compunction's at work;
And soft! from a Jew you mount to a Turk.
Lo, Micah--the self-same beard on chin
He was four times already converted in!"

This is the serious use of the grotesque. Through it passion and
philosophy are as well expressed as through any other medium. But the
rhyming frenzy of Browning has no particular relation even to the
poems in which it occurs. It is not a dance to any measure; it can
only be called the horse-play of literature. It may be noted, for
example, as a rather curious fact, that the ingenious rhymes are
generally only mathematical triumphs, not triumphs of any kind of
assonance. "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," a poem written for children,
and bound in general to be lucid and readable, ends with a rhyme which
it is physically impossible for any one to say:--

"And, whether they pipe us free, from rats or from mice,
If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise!"

This queer trait in Browning, his inability to keep a kind of demented
ingenuity even out of poems in which it was quite inappropriate, is a
thing which must be recognised, and recognised all the more because as
a whole he was a very perfect artist, and a particularly perfect
artist in the use of the grotesque. But everywhere when we go a little
below the surface in Browning we find that there was something in him
perverse and unusual despite all his working normality and
simplicity. His mind was perfectly wholesome, but it was not made
exactly like the ordinary mind. It was like a piece of strong wood
with a knot in it.

The quality of what, can only be called buffoonery which is under
discussion is indeed one of the many things in which Browning was more
of an Elizabethan than a Victorian. He was like the Elizabethans in
t