owever, find this
compensated by an increased clearness of the sense. On page 131 (page
152, first edition) there is an improved manipulation of the simile of
the dwarf palm; and four lines before the last one on page 147 (page
171, first edition) lighten up the thought. So there are eight lines
placed to advantage after "Sordello, wake!" on page 152 (page 176). But,
on the whole, what Mr. Browning first imagined cannot be tampered with,
and he must generously trust the elements of his own fine genius to do
justice to his thought with all people who would not thank him to
furnish an interpreter.

One day we argued earnestly for Browning with a man who said it was
fatal to the poetry that it needed an argument, and that he did not want
to earn the quickening of his imagination by the sweat of his brow,--he
could gather the same thought and beauty in less break-neck places,--all
the profit was expended in mental gymnastics,--in short,

"The man can't stoop
To sing us out, quoth he, a mere romance;
He'd fain do better than the best, enhance
The subjects' rarity, work problems out
Therewith: now, you're a bard, a bard past doubt,
And no philosopher; why introduce
Crotchets like these? fine, surely, but no use
In poetry,--which still must be, to strike,
Eased upon common sense; there's nothing like
Appealing to our nature!"

Find the rest of Mr. Average's argument on page 67.

These objections to the poetry of Mr. Browning, which the dense,
involved, and metaphysical treatment of "Sordello" first suggested to
the public, are made to apply to all his subsequent writings. We concede
that "Sordello" over-refines, and that, after reading it, "who _would_
has heard Sordello's story told," but who would not and could not has
probably not heard it. The very time of the poem, which is put several
centuries back amid the scenery of the Guelph and Ghibelline feuds, as
if to make the struggle of a humane and poetic soul to grow, to become
recognized, to find a place and purpose, seem still more premature,
puzzles the reader with remote allusions, with names that belong to
obscure Italian narrative, with motives and events that require
historical analysis. The poem is impatient with those very things which
make the environment of the bard Sordello, and treats them in curt
lines. A character is jammed into a sentence, like a witch into a
snuff-box, the didactic parts grow metaphysical, and t