en_, mere "wavering images."

[Footnote 28: One account says 'Childe Roland' was written in three
days; another, that it was composed in one. Browning's rapidity in
composition was extraordinary. "The Return of the Druses" was written in
five days, an act a day; so, also, was the "Blot on the 'Scutcheon."]

Montaigne, in one of his essays, says that to stop gracefully is sure
proof of high race in a horse: certainly to stop in time is imperative
upon the poet. Of Browning may be said what Poe wrote of another, that
his genius was too impetuous for the minuter technicalities of that
elaborate _art_ so needful in the building up of monuments for
immortality. But has not a greater than Poe declared that "what
distinguishes the artist from the amateur is _architectonike_ in the
highest sense; that power of execution which creates, forms, and
constitutes: not the profoundness of single thoughts, not the richness
of imagery, not the abundance of illustration." Assuredly, no "new
definition" can be an effective one which conflicts with Goethe's
incontrovertible dictum.

But this much having been admitted, I am only too willing to protest
against the uncritical outcry against Browning's musical incapacity.

A deficiency is not incapacity, otherwise Coleridge, at his highest the
most perfect of our poets, would be lowly estimated.

"Bid shine what would, dismiss into the shade
What should not be--and there triumphs the paramount
Surprise o' the master." ...

Browning's music is oftener harmonic than melodic: and musicians know
how the general ear, charmed with immediately appellant melodies,
resents, wearies of, or is deaf to the harmonies of a more remote, a
more complex, and above all a more novel creative method. He is, among
poets, what Wagner is among musicians; as Shakspere may be likened to
Beethoven, or Shelley to Chopin. The common assertion as to his
incapacity for metric music is on the level of those affirmations as to
his not being widely accepted of the people, when the people have the
chance; or as to the indifference of the public to poetry generally--and
this in an age when poetry has never been so widely understood, loved,
and valued, and wherein it is yearly growing more acceptable and more
potent!

A great writer is to be adjudged by his triumphs, not by his failures:
as, to take up Montaigne's simile again, a famous race-horse is
remembered for its successes and not for the races whi