I shall never forget the start I gave when, on reading some old book about India, I came across an after-dinner jest of Henry Martyn’s.  The thought of Henry Martyn laughing over the walnuts and the wine was almost, as Robert Browning’s unknown painter says, “too wildly dear;” and to this day I cannot help thinking that there must be a mistake somewhere.

To return to Cellini, and to conclude.  On laying down his Memoirs, let us be careful to recall our banished moral sense, and make peace with her, by passing a final judgment on this desperate sinner; which perhaps after all, we cannot do better than by employing language of his own concerning a monk, a fellow-prisoner of his, who never, so far as appears, murdered anybody, but of whom Cellini none the less felt himself entitled to say:—­

“I admired his shining qualities, but his odious vices I freely censured and held in abhorrence.”

ON THE ALLEGED OBSCURITY OF MR. BROWNING’S POETRY

From ‘Obiter Dicta’

In considering whether a poet is intelligible and lucid, we ought not to grope and grub about his work in search of obscurities and oddities, but should, in the first instance at all events, attempt to regard his whole scope and range; to form some estimate, if we can, of his general purport and effect, asking ourselves for this purpose such questions as these:—­How are we the better for him?  Has he quickened any passion, lightened any burden, purified any taste?  Does he play any real part in our lives?  When we are in love, do we whisper him in our lady’s ear?  When we sorrow, does he ease our pain?  Can he calm the strife of mental conflict?  Has he had anything to say which wasn’t twaddle on those subjects which, elude analysis as they may, and defy demonstration as they do, are yet alone of perennial interest—­

     “On man, on nature, and on human life,”

on the pathos of our situation, looking back on to the irrevocable and forward to the unknown?  If a poet has said, or done, or been any of these things to an appreciable extent, to charge him with obscurity is both folly and ingratitude.

But the subject may be pursued further, and one may be called upon to investigate this charge with reference to particular books or poems.  In Browning’s case this fairly may be done; and then another crop of questions arises, such as:  What is the book about, i.e., with what subject does it deal, and what method of dealing does it employ?  Is it didactical, analytical, or purely narrative?  Is it content to describe, or does it aspire to explain?  In common fairness these questions must be asked and answered, before we heave our critical half-bricks at strange poets.  One task is of necessity more difficult than another.  Students of geometry who have pushed their researches into that fascinating science so far as the fifth proposition of the first book, commonly called the ‘Pons Asinorum’