and, with the latter, a scrupulous respect for the mere means
as well as for that to which they conduce. The poet who does not love words
for themselves, as an artist loves any chance colour upon his palette,
or as the musician any vagrant tone evoked by a sudden touch
in idleness or reverie, has not entered into the full inheritance
of the sons of Apollo. The writer cannot aim at beauty,
that which makes literature and art, without this heed --
without, rather, this creative anxiety: for it is certainly not enough,
as some one has said, that language should be used merely
for the transportation of intelligence, as a wheelbarrow carries brick.
Of course, Browning is not persistently neglectful of this
fundamental necessity for the literary artist. He is often
as masterly in this as in other respects. But he is not always,
not often enough, alive to the paramount need. He writes with
"the verse being as the mood it paints:" but, unfortunately,
the mood is often poetically unformative. He had no passion
for the quest for seductive forms. Too much of his poetry
has been born prematurely. Too much of it, indeed, has not died
and been born again -- for all immortal verse is a poetic resurrection.
Perfect poetry is the deathless part of mortal beauty.
The great artists never perpetuate gross actualities,
though they are the supreme realists. It is Schiller, I think,
who says in effect, that to live again in the serene beauty of art,
it is needful that things should first die in reality.
Thus Browning's dramatic method, even, is sometimes disastrous in its untruth,
as in Caliban's analytical reasoning -- an initial absurdity,
as Mr. Berdoe has pointed out, adding epigrammatically,
`Caliban is a savage, with the introspective powers of a Hamlet,
and the theology of an evangelical Churchman.' Not only Caliban,
but several other of Browning's personages (Aprile, Eglamour, etc.)