rom the corresponding stanza of the cited version.

170. _Corporal Trim_. In Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_.

173. _Christopher North_. John Wilson, of _Blackwood's Magazine_.

ROBERT BROWNING

The reviews of Browning's poems are singularly uninteresting from a
historical standpoint. There is usually a protest against the obscurity
of the poetry and a plea that the author should make better use of his
manifest genius. For details concerning these reviews, see the
bibliography of Browning in Nicoll and Wise's _Literary Anecdotes of the
Nineteenth Century_. The list there given is extensive, but does not
include several of the reviews mentioned below.

The early poems were so abstruse that the critics were unable to make
sport of them as they did in the case of Wordsworth, Byron, Tennyson,
and the rest; and when Browning finally deigned to write within range of
the average human intellect, that particular style of reviewing had lost
favor. His earliest publication, _Pauline_ (1832) was well received by
W.J. Fox in _Monthly Repository_, and in the _Athenaeum_. _Tait's
Edinburgh Magazine_ called it a "piece of pure bewilderment." See also
the brief notice in the _Literary Gazette_, 1833, p. 183. _Paracelsus_
(1835) had a similar experience; the reprint from the _Athenaeum_, 1835,
p. 640, is fairly characteristic of the rest, among which are the
articles in the _Monthly Repository_, 1835, p. 716; the _Christian
Remembrancer_, XX, p. 346, and the reviews written by John Forster for
the _Examiner_, 1835, p. 563, and the _New Monthly Magazine_, XLVI
(289-308).

Neither the favorable review of _Sordello_ (1840) in the _Monthly Rev._,
1840, II, p. 149, nor the partly appreciative article in the _Athenaeum_,
1840, p. 431, seems to warrant the well-known anecdotes relating the
difficulties of Douglas Jerrold and Tennyson in attempting to understand
that poem. The _Athenaeum_ gave the poet sound advice, especially in
regard to the intentional obscurity of his meaning. That this admonition
was futile may be gathered from the _Saturday Review's_ article (I, p.
69) on _Men and Women_ (1855) published fifteen years after _Sordello_.
The critic reverted to the earlier style, and produced one of the most
readable reviews of Browning. Whatever may be the final verdict yet to
be passed upon Browning's poetic achievement, the fact remains that the
contemporary reviews from first to last deplored in his work a
deliberate obscurity which w