nnings of what is, were buried under a cumbrous mass of barbarism
and cruelty. Good elements hidden in horrid accompaniments are the
special theme of grotesque art, and these mediaeval life and legends
afford more copiously than could have been furnished before
Christianity gave its new elements of good, or since modern
civilization has removed some few at least of the old elements of
destruction. A _buried_ life like the spiritual mediaeval was Mr.
Browning's natural element, and he was right to be attracted by it.
His mistake has been, that he has not made it pleasant; that he has
forced his art to topics on which no one could charm, or on which he,
at any rate, could not; that on these occasions and in these poems he
has failed in fascinating men and women of sane taste.

We say 'sane' because there is a most formidable and estimable
_insane_ taste. The will has great though indirect power over the
taste, just as it has over the belief. There are some horrid beliefs
from which human nature revolts, from which at first it shrinks, to
which, at first, no effort can force it. But if we fix the mind upon
them they have a power over us just because of their natural
offensiveness. They are like the sight of human blood: experienced
soldiers tell us that at first men are sickened by the smell and
newness of blood almost to death and fainting, but that as soon as
they harden their hearts and stiffen their minds, as soon as they
_will_ bear it, then comes an appetite for slaughter, a tendency to
gloat on carnage, to love blood, at least for the moment, with a deep
eager love. It is a principle that if we put down a healthy
instinctive aversion, nature avenges herself by creating an unhealthy
insane attraction. For this reason the most earnest truth-seeking men
fall into the worst delusions; they will not let their mind alone;
they force it towards some ugly thing, which a crotchet of argument, a
conceit of intellect recommends, and nature punishes their disregard
of her warning by subjection to the ugly one, by belief in it. Just so
the most industrious critics get the most admiration. They think it
unjust to rest in their instinctive natural horror: they overcome it,
and angry nature gives them over to ugly poems and marries them to
detestable stanzas.

Mr. Browning possibly, and some of the worst of Mr. Browning's
admirers certainly, will say that these grotesque objects exist in
real life, and therefore they ought to be,