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 For Browning is an impersonal poet. Like Homer and Shakespeare, his dramatic power is so great that we lose sight of him altogether. He does not describe; he creates. He does not act before us; but he erects his stage, and presently his puppets perform upon it. His verse is rough and harsh, because he will be the master of it. He drags and forces the language to do his bidding. He presses verbs and adjectives to do service which have never before worked for mortal bard. He wants a word, and scorning the customary hack who has worked so long and worked for so many, he looks about to find a better, and having found him, he makes him come along and do his work. Thus it is that, even in his best pieces, we are conscious from time to time of a jolt. He is like a driver who drives furiously over rough ground: driving not for pleasure, but because work has to be done. If you want to float lazily on a summer sea, there is Tennyson; if you would glide down the stream without an effort, there is Byron; if you would drive along a smooth road, and admire the hedges on either hand, there is Pope. But if you are not afraid of hard work, rough work, tough work, go with Browning, and follow him while he clears the jungle of thoughts, aims, motives, and passions, and shows you a human heart as poet never showed before.

Browning is not, of course, popular. Popularity he flung to the winds years ago, when he first began to write. We suppose that he must long since have ceased even to desire that really worthless thing—the admiration of the million. True, he aimed at theatrical success; but though his play of 'Strafford' was put on the stage with every possible care, and the principal part taken by Kemble himself, it was a complete failure. His dramas have vigour, clearness of plot, strong accentuation of character, and rapid action. But one feels, on reading one after the other, that they are utterly unsuited for acting. The reason we believe to be their deficiency in tenderness. It is Browning's chief failing. Sympathy he must have, because he sees so deeply; but it is sympathy of a sort all his own. It does not lead him to be tender. It is the sympathy which comes from knowledge, and not 'that which springs from the feeling of possible partnership in misfortune or remorse. It is the pity of a strong man for the weak, mingled with a little contempt. But this is fatal to dramatic success. On the stage, above all we must be human.