But when it is clearly understood that Browning’s love of the fantastic in style was a perfectly serious artistic love, when we understand that he enjoyed working in that style, as a Chinese potter might enjoy making dragons, or a mediaeval mason making devils, there yet remains something definite which must be laid to his account as a fault.  He certainly had a capacity for becoming perfectly childish in his indulgence in ingenuities that have nothing to do with poetry at all, such as puns, and rhymes, and grammatical structures that only just fit into each other like a Chinese puzzle.  Probably it was only one of the marks of his singular vitality, curiosity, and interest in details.  He was certainly one of those somewhat rare men who are fierily ambitious both in large things and in small.  He prided himself on having written The Ring and the Book, and he also prided himself on knowing good wine when he tasted it.  He prided himself on re-establishing optimism on a new foundation, and it is to be presumed, though it is somewhat difficult to imagine, that he prided himself on such rhymes as the following in Pacchiarotto:—­

    “The wolf, fox, bear, and monkey,
    By piping advice in one key—­
    That his pipe should play a prelude
    To something heaven-tinged not hell-hued,
    Something not harsh but docile,
    Man-liquid, not man-fossil.”

This writing, considered as writing, can only be regarded as a kind of joke, and most probably Browning considered it so himself.  It has nothing at all to do with that powerful and symbolic use of the grotesque which may be found in such admirable passages as this from “Holy Cross Day":—­

    “Give your first groan—­compunction’s at work;
    And soft! from a Jew you mount to a Turk. 
    Lo, Micah—­the self-same beard on chin
    He was four times already converted in!”

This is the serious use of the grotesque.  Through it passion and philosophy are as well expressed as through any other medium.  But the rhyming frenzy of Browning has no particular relation even to the poems in which it occurs.  It is not a dance to any measure; it can only be called the horse-play of literature.  It may be noted, for example, as a rather curious fact, that the ingenious rhymes are generally only mathematical triumphs, not triumphs of any kind of assonance.  “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” a poem written for children, and bound in general to be lucid and readable, ends with a rhyme which it is physically impossible for any one to say:—­

    “And, whether they pipe us free, from rats or from mice,
    If we’ve promised them aught, let us keep our promise!”

This queer trait in Browning, his inability to keep a kind of demented ingenuity even out of poems in which it was quite inappropriate, is a thing which must be recognised, and recognised all the more because as a whole he was a very perfect artist, and a particularly perfect artist in the use of the grotesque.  But everywhere when we go a little below the surface in Browning we find that there was something in him perverse and unusual despite all his working normality and simplicity.  His mind was perfectly wholesome, but it was not made exactly like the ordinary mind.  It was like a piece of strong wood with a knot in it.