r have occasion to notice the false
impression of Mr. Browning's genius which this circumstance creates.
Details, which with realists of a narrower kind would give only a
physical impression of the scene described, serve in his case to build
up its mental impression. They create a mental or emotional atmosphere
which makes us vaguely feel the intention of the story as we travel
through it, and flashes it upon us as we look back. In "Red Cotton
Night-cap Country" (as we shall presently see) he dwells so
significantly on the peacefulness of the neighbourhood in which the
tragedy has occurred, that we feel in it the quiet which precedes the
storm, and which in some measure invites it. In one of the Idyls, "Ivan
Ivanovitch," he begins by describing the axe which will strike off the
woman's head, and raising a vague idea of its fitness for any possible
use. In another of them, "Martin Relph," the same process is carried on
in an opposite manner. We see a mental agony before we know its
substantial cause; and we only see the cause as reflected in it "Ned
Bratts," again, conveys in its first lines the sensation of a
tremendously hot day in which Nature seems to reel in a kind of riotous
stupefaction; and the grotesque tragedy on which the idyl turns, becomes
a matter of course. It would be easy to multiply examples.

Mr. Browning's verse is also subordinate to this intellectual theory of
poetic art. It is uniformly inspired by the principle that sense should
not be sacrificed to sound: and this principle constitutes his chief
ground of divergence from other poets. It is a case of
divergence--nothing more: since he is too deeply a musician to be
indifferent to sound in verse, and since no other poet deserving the
name would willingly sacrifice sense to it. But while all agree in
admitting that sense and sound in poetry are the natural complement of
each other, each will be practically more susceptible to one than to the
other, and will unconsciously seek it at the expense of the other. With
all his love for music, Mr. Browning is more susceptible to sense than
to sound. He values though more than expression; matter, more than form;
and, judging him from a strictly poetic point of view, he has lost his
balance in this direction, as so many have lost it in the opposite one.
He has never ignored beauty, but he has neglected it in the desire for
significance. He has never meant to be rugged, but he has become so, in
the exercise of