sworth, Shelley, Tennyson, and Swinburne, sometimes wrote
bad poetry, but whether in any other style except Browning's you could
have achieved the precise artistic effect which is achieved by such
incomparable lyrics as "The Patriot" or "The Laboratory." The answer
must be in the negative, and in that answer lies the whole
justification of Browning as an artist.

The question now arises, therefore, what was his conception of his
functions as an artist? We have already agreed that his artistic
originality concerned itself chiefly with the serious use of the
grotesque. It becomes necessary, therefore, to ask what is the serious
use of the grotesque, and what relation does the grotesque bear to the
eternal and fundamental elements in life?

One of the most curious things to notice about popular aesthetic
criticism is the number of phrases it will be found to use which are
intended to express an aesthetic failure, and which express merely an
aesthetic variety. Thus, for instance, the traveller will often hear
the advice from local lovers of the picturesque, "The scenery round
such and such a place has no interest; it is quite flat." To disparage
scenery as quite flat is, of course, like disparaging a swan as quite
white, or an Italian sky as quite blue. Flatness is a sublime quality
in certain landscapes, just as rockiness is a sublime quality in
others. In the same way there are a great number of phrases commonly
used in order to disparage such writers as Browning which do not in
fact disparage, but merely describe them. One of the most
distinguished of Browning's biographers and critics says of him, for
example, "He has never meant to be rugged, but has become so in
striving after strength." To say that Browning never tried to be
rugged is to say that Edgar Allan Poe never tried to be gloomy, or
that Mr. W.S. Gilbert never tried to be extravagant. The whole issue
depends upon whether we realise the simple and essential fact that
ruggedness is a mode of art like gloominess or extravagance. Some
poems ought to be rugged, just as some poems ought to be smooth. When
we see a drift of stormy and fantastic clouds at sunset, we do not say
that the cloud is beautiful although it is ragged at the edges. When
we see a gnarled and sprawling oak, we do not say that it is fine
although it is twisted. When we see a mountain, we do not say that it
is impressive although it is rugged, nor do we say apologetically that
it never meant to