Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/458

442 To name a score of the fifty: "Karshish" and "Cleon," "Andrea del Sarto" and "Fra Lippo Lippi," "A Toccata of Galuppi's," "Bishop Blougram," "In a Balcony," "Childe Roland," "Two in the Campagna," "A Serenade at the Villa," "Memorabilia," "Respectability," "Instans Tyrannus," "Holy Cross Day," "The Statue and the Bust," "Evelyn Hope," "The Guardian Angel," "By the Fireside" (whose Greek promise has already been so amply fulfilled), "Any Wife to any Husband," "One Word More," and, higher than the rest, as its hero was higher than any of the people from the shoulders and upward, the complete "Saul;" these are not only noble in conception and aspiration, they are each in its befitting style consummate in achievement; not one of them unworthy of a great country's greatest living poet. Of the wonderful works that have followed I need not say anything here, not even of that stupendous masterpiece, "The Ring and the Book," concerning which I have recently had the opportunity of saying something elsewhere.

3. Charge of Harshness.—Allied to the common charge of obscurity is that of harshness, variously attributed to negligence, wilfulness, lack of inborn melody and harmony; or, as I have been somewhat surprised to hear pretty often, deliberate affectation, this last evil propensity being made responsible for the obscurity also. As to the negligence and wilfulness, Browning has himself told us that he has always done his best; and I, for one, would take his word, even did I not find it—as I do find it—manifestly confirmed by the sincerity, the earnestness, the