Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Robert Browning: How to Know Him by William Lyon Phelps
page 58 of 384 (15%)
classically and intelligibly.... One strip Cools your lip.... One
bottle Clears your throttle." In _Pacchiarotto_, he calls to critics:

And, what with your rattling and tinkling,
Who knows but you give me an inkling
How music sounds, thanks to the jangle
Of regular drum and triangle?
Whereby, tap-tap, chink-chink, 'tis proven
I break rule as bad as Beethoven.
"That chord now--a groan or a grunt is't?
Schumann's self was no worse contrapuntist.
No ear! or if ear, so tough-gristled--
He thought that he sung while he whistled!"

Browning felt that there was at times a certain virtue in mere
roughness: that there were ideas, which, if expressed in harsh phrase,
would make a deeper impression, and so be longer remembered. The
opening stanza of _The Twins_ was meant to emphasise this point:

Grand rough old Martin Luther
Bloomed fables--flowers on furze,
The better the uncouther:
Do roses stick like burrs?

Such a theory may help to explain the powerful line in _Rabbi Ben
Ezra_:

Irks care the cropfull bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

Of course Browning's theory of poetry does not justify or explain
DigitalOcean Referral Badge