Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/274

248 248 THE HOMELINESS OF BROWNING said that it differed from the work of the figures behind in being — not the sudden exceptional song of a man touched to ecstasy, but just the voice of a giant speaking. At once, as a consequence, came an almost purely- mechanical difficulty. When men saw poetry passing up to her lectern they had grown accustomed to assume a certain portly mental attitude ; the mere sight of verse was enough (is still perhaps in some places) to set the mind involuntarily swaying with a certain grave formality, and the eager quest and recovery and directness of thought stepping with a conversa- tional swing knocked this for a moment out of time. But it was scarcely more than a physiological difficulty, a matter of optical deportment; it was never a mis- alliance of matter and form, nor yet the diviner difficulty of thought supernaturally swift. It was simply that the voice was more frank and convivial than the mood which its environment summoned up. The reader's eye wanted time to readjust itself — nothing more. The interval has been granted it, and now it falls into step automatically. And there you have one of the simpler ways in which Browning's friendly humanity made him seem bizarre. And helping it, scarcely less superficial, there was another difficulty, half-dead too by now, which ought to be mentioned and dismissed. Sibrandus Schafne- burgensis ; Johannes Ceutonicus ; Mic. Toxetis, Ono- mastica; Her. Tom. Agrippa, De Occult Philosoph. Consternation may well have seized plain minds when they saw poetry sprinkled with names like these. But we know now (it is the mocking conclusion which heavy research now finds itself facing askance) that these titles really testify, not to anything monstrous or fantastic in the way of learning, but to a kind of fireside simplicity and homeliness. They are only the names young Browning picked out of the books that