are what Goethe calls `schwankende Gestalten', mere "wavering images".

--
* 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 "A Blot in 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