he sixteenth
century, he would not have written a poem like 'The Ring and the Book';
and if Edmund Spenser had lived in the nineteenth century he would not
have written a poem like the 'Faerie Queene.'

It is therefore idle to arraign Mr. Browning's later method and style
for possessing difficulties and intricacies which are inherent to it.
The method at all events has an interest of its own, a strength of its
own, a grandeur of its own. If you do not like it you must leave it
alone. You are fond, you say, of romantic poetry; well, then, take down
your Spenser and qualify yourself to join "the small transfigured band"
of those who are able to take their Bible-oaths they have read their
'Faerie Queene' all through. The company, though small, is delightful,
and you will have plenty to talk about without abusing Browning, who
probably knows his Spenser better than you do. Realism will not for ever
dominate the world of letters and art--the fashion of all things passeth
away--but it has already earned a great place: it has written books,
composed poems, painted pictures, all stamped with that "greatness"
which, despite fluctuations, nay, even reversals of taste and opinion,
means immortality.

But against Mr. Browning's later poems it is sometimes alleged that
their meaning is obscure because their grammar is bad. A cynic was once
heard to observe with reference to that noble poem 'The Grammarian's
Funeral,' that it was a pity the talented author had ever since allowed
himself to remain under the delusion that he had not only buried the
grammarian, but his grammar also. It is doubtless true that Mr. Browning
has some provoking ways, and is something too much of a verbal acrobat.
Also, as his witty parodist, the pet poet of six generations of
Cambridge undergraduates, reminds us:--

He loves to dock the smaller parts of speech,
As we curtail the already cur-tailed cur."

It is perhaps permissible to weary a little of his _i_'s and _o_'s, but
we believe we cannot be corrected when we say that Browning is a poet
whose grammar will bear scholastic investigation better than that of
most of Apollo's children.

A word about 'Sordello.' One half of 'Sordello,' and that, with Mr.
Browning's usual ill-luck, the first half, is undoubtedly obscure. It is
as difficult to read as 'Endymion' or the 'Revolt of Islam,' and for the
same reason--the author's lack of experience in the art of composition.
We have all heard of th