But against Mr. Browning’s later poems it is sometimes alleged that their meaning is obscure because their grammar is bad.  A cynic was once heard to observe with reference to that noble poem ’The Grammarian’s Funeral,’ that it was a pity the talented author had ever since allowed himself to remain under the delusion that he had not only buried the grammarian, but his grammar also.  It is doubtless true that Mr. Browning has some provoking ways, and is something too much of a verbal acrobat.  Also, as his witty parodist, the pet poet of six generations of Cambridge undergraduates, reminds us:—­

     He loves to dock the smaller parts of speech,
     As we curtail the already cur-tailed cur.”

It is perhaps permissible to weary a little of his i’s and o’s, but we believe we cannot be corrected when we say that Browning is a poet whose grammar will bear scholastic investigation better than that of most of Apollo’s children.

A word about ‘Sordello.’  One half of ‘Sordello,’ and that, with Mr. Browning’s usual ill-luck, the first half, is undoubtedly obscure.  It is as difficult to read as ‘Endymion’ or the ‘Revolt of Islam,’ and for the same reason—­the author’s lack of experience in the art of composition.  We have all heard of the young architect who forgot to put a staircase in his house, which contained fine rooms, but no way of getting into them.  ‘Sordello’ is a poem without a staircase.  The author, still in his twenties, essayed a high thing.  For his subject—­

                  “He singled out
     Sordello compassed murkily about
     With ravage of six long sad hundred years.’”

He partially failed; and the British public, with its accustomed generosity, and in order, I suppose, to encourage the others, has never ceased girding at him because forty-two years ago he published at his own charges a little book of two hundred and fifty pages, which even such of them as were then able to read could not understand.

End of Volume IV.