a famous
chapter of the _De Vulgari Eloquio_[102] laid down a fourfold
distinction among words on the analogy of the varying texture of the
hair; enjoining the poet to avoid both the extremes of smoothness and
roughness,--to prefer the "combed" and the "shaggy" to the "tousled" and
the "sleek." All four kinds had their function in the versatile
technique of Browning and Tennyson; but it is safe to say that while
Tennyson's vocabulary is focussed among the "combed" in the direction of
the "sleek," Browning's centres in the "shaggy," verging towards the
"tousled."[103] The utmost sweetness is his when he will; it is the
counterpart of his pure intensity of colouring, and of the lyric
loveliness of his Pippas and Pompilias; but

"All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee,"

though genuine Browning, is not distinctively and unmistakably his, like

"Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?"

[Footnote 102: _De Vulg. Eloq._, ii. 8.]

[Footnote 103: Making allowance, of course, for the more "shaggy" and
"tousled" character of the English vocabulary as a whole, compared with
Italian.]

Browning's genial violence continually produced strokes which only
needed a little access of oddity or extravagance to become grotesque. He
probably inherited a bias in this direction; we know that his father
delighted in drawing grotesque heads, and even "declared that he could
not draw a pretty face."[104] But his grotesqueness is never the mere
comic oddness which sometimes assumes the name. It is a kind of
monstrosity produced not by whimsical mutilations, but by a riot of
exuberant power. And he has also a grave and tragic use of the
grotesque, in which he stands alone. He is, in fact, by far the greatest
English master of grotesque. _Childe Roland_, where the natural bent of
his invention has full fling, abounds with grotesque traits which,
instead of disturbing the romantic atmosphere, infuse into it an
element of strange, weird, and uncanny mirth, more unearthly than any
solemnity; the day shooting its grim red leer across the plain, the old
worn-out horse with its red, gaunt, and colloped neck a-strain; or, in
_Paracelsus_, the "Cyclops-like" volcanoes "staring together with their
eyes on flame," in whose "uncouth pride" God tastes a pleasure. Shelley
had recoiled from the horrible idea of a host of these One-eyed
monsters;[105] Browning deliberately invokes it. But he can use