We may say this, and still not be blind to the faults of the poem.  Many persons agree that they find it too long, and if they find it so, then for them it is too long.  Others, who cannot resist the critic’s temptation of believing that a remark must be true if it only look acute and specific, vow that the disclosure in the first volume of the whole plan and plot vitiates subsequent artistic merit.  If one cannot enjoy what comes, for knowing beforehand what is coming, this objection may be allowed to have a root in human nature; but then two things might perhaps be urged on the other side,—­first, that the interest of the poem lies in the development and presentation of character, on the one hand, and in the many sides which a single transaction offered to as many minds, on the other; and therefore that this true interest could not be marred by the bare statement what the transaction was or, baldly looked at, seemed to be; and, second, that the poem was meant to find its reader in a mood of mental repose, ready to receive the poet’s impressions, undisturbed by any agitating curiosity as to plot or final outcome.  A more valid accusation touches the many verbal perversities, in which a poet has less right than another to indulge.  The compound Latin and English of Don Giacinto, notwithstanding the fan of the piece, still grows a burden to the flesh.  Then there are harsh and formless lines, bursts of metrical chaos, from which a writer’s dignity and self-respect ought surely to be enough to preserve him.  Again, there are passages marked by a coarse violence of expression that is nothing short of barbarous (for instance, ii. 190, or 245).  The only thing to be said is, that the countrymen of Shakespeare have had to learn to forgive uncouth outrages on form and beauty to fine creative genius.  If only one could be sure that readers, unschooled as too many are to love the simple and elevated beauty of such form as Sophocles or as Corneille gives, would not think the worst fault the chief virtue, and confound the poet’s bluntnesses with his admirable originality.  It is certain that in Shakespeare’s case his defects are constantly fastened upon, by critics who have never seriously studied the forms of dramatic art except in the literature of England, and extolled as instances of his characteristic mightiness.  It may well be, therefore, that the grotesque caprices which Mr. Browning unfortunately permits to himself may find misguided admirers, or, what is worse, even imitators.  It would be most unjust, however, while making due mention of these things, to pass over the dignity and splendour of the verse in many places, where the intensity of the writer’s mood finds worthy embodiment in a sustained gravity and vigour and finish of diction not to be surpassed.  The concluding lines of the Caponsacchi (comprising the last page of the second volume), the appeal of the Greek poet in The Pope, one or two passages in the first Guido (e.g. vol. ii., p. 156, from line 1957), and the close of the Pompilia, ought to be referred to when one wishes to know what power over the instrument of his art Mr. Browning might have achieved, if he had chosen to discipline himself in instrumentation.