. Owing also to the great complexity of the historical
_mise-en-scene_ in which he placed his characters in that poem, he also
became obscure. Had he been an experienced artist he would have left out
at least a third of the thoughts and scenes he inserted. As it was, he
threw all his thoughts and all the matters he had learnt about the
politics, cities, architecture, customs, war, gardens, religion and
poetry of North Italy in the thirteenth century, pell-mell into this
poem, and left them, as it were, to find their own places. This was very
characteristic of a young man when the pot of his genius was boiling
over. Nothing bolder, more incalculable, was ever done by a poet in the
period of his storm and stress. The boundless and to express it, was
never sought with more audacity. It was impossible, in this effort, for
him to be clear, and we need not be vexed with him. The daring, the
rush, the unconsciousness and the youth of it all, are his excuse, but
not his praise. And when the public comes to understand that the
dimness and complexity of _Sordello_ arise from plenteousness not
scarcity of thought, and that they were not a pose of the poet's but the
natural leaping of a full fountain just let loose from its mountain
chamber, it will have a personal liking, not perhaps for the poem but
for Browning. "I will not read the book," it will say, "but I am glad he
had it in him."

Still it was an artistic failure, and when Browning understood that the
public could not comprehend him--and we must remember that he desired to
be comprehended, for he loved mankind--he thought he would use his
powers in a simpler fashion, and please the honest folk. So, in the joy
of having got rid in _Sordello_ of so many of his thoughts by expression
and of mastering the rest; and determined, since he had been found
difficult, to be the very opposite--loving contrast like a poet--he
wrote _Pippa Passes_. I need not describe its plan. Our business is with
the women in it.

Ottima, alive with carnal passion, in the fire of which the murder of
her husband seems a mere incident, is an audacious sketch, done in
splashes of ungradated colour. Had Browning been more in the woman's
body and soul he would not have done her in jerks as he has done. Her
trick of talking of the landscape, as if she were on a holiday like
Pippa, is not as subtly conceived or executed as it should be, and is
too far away from her dominant carnality to be natural. And her