Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/86

 at all. And so we may be led to consider his form and some of the interests of it; and when we say poetic form what we mean is poetry.

Browning himself admitted that he was difficult. He tried in The Ring and the Book to write easier for the British public—

British Public, you who like me not.

In Pacchiarotto, not without dust and heat, he met his critics and told them his mind—gave them 'nettle-broth', as he says in the Epilogue to the same volume. He sees the critics as a band of chimney-sweeps, dressed up for May Day, coming under his window with music of knuckle-bones and cleavers—

Us critics as sweeps out your chimbly.

They have a grievance against his obscurity:

In the Epilogue, in his parable of the vintage, he seems to admit a good deal of the charges against him. The critics say that his wine is rough; that the true poetic wine has both body and bouquet. In his answer he does not maintain that his poetry has all the qualities. His answer is that he does not believe they really like good wine; they talk about Shakespeare, but do they read him? As for his own vintage, he does not deny that it may be rough; he does not contend that it is both strong and mellow. What he is sure of is that it is strong and sound.

That volume of Pacchiarotto is very interesting for the history of Browning's own poetical life and his fortunes as an author. But it is not altogether pleasant. He does not 'make the malefactor die sweetly', in Dryden's phrase. 'A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging, but to make