Regarding Browning I can only say that, although his worshippers are aggressive enough, one readily pardons any person who flies from his poems in disgust.  A learned and enthusiastic editor actually gave “Sordello” up in despair; and even the late Dean Church averred that he did not understand the poem, though he wrote lengthy studies on it.  To my own knowledge there are men and women who do derive intense pleasure from Browning, and they are quite right in expressing their feelings; but they are wrong in attempting to bully the general public into acquiescence.  Certain members of the public say, “Your poet capers round us in a sort of war-dance; he flicks off our hats with some muddled paradox, he leaves a line unfinished and hurts us with a projecting conjunction.  We want him to stop capering and grimacing, and then we shall tell him whether he is good-looking or not.”  I hold that the dissenters are right.  People with the necessary metaphysical faculty may understand and passionately enjoy their Browning, but only too many simple souls have inflicted miserable suffering on themselves by trying to unravel the meaning of verses at which they never should have looked.

The fact is that we persistently neglect all true educational principles in our treatment of literature.  Young minds have to be directed; but in literature, as in mechanics, the tendency of the force is to move along the lines of least resistance.  A dexterous tutor should watch carefully the slightest tendencies and endeavour to find out what kind of discipline his charge can best receive.  As the mind gains power it is certain to exhibit particular aptitudes, and these must be fostered.  In the case of a student who is self-taught the same method must be observed, and a clever reader will soon find out what is most likely to improve him.

To my thinking some of the attempts made to force certain books on young folk are shocking and deplorable; for it must be remembered that in literature, as in the case of bodily nutriment, different foods are required at different times of life.  I have known boys and girls who were forced to read “Rasselas.”  Now that allegorical production came from the mind of a mature, powerful, most melancholy man, and it is intended to show the barren vanity of human wishes.  What an absurd thing to put in the hands of a buoyant youth!  The parents however had heard that “Rasselas” was a great and moral book, whereupon the children must be subjected to unavailing torture.  It maybe said, “Would not your hints tend to make people frivolous?” Certainly not, if my hints are wisely used.  Let it be observed that I merely wish to do away with hypocritical conventions whereby timid men like my correspondent are subjected to extreme misery and a vast waste of intellectual power is inflicted on the world.  Suppose that some ridiculous guardian had taken up the modern notions about scientific culture, and had forced Macaulay to read science alone; should we not have lost the Essays and the History?