His art is shown as truly in irregular verse as in the more formal measures. But the irregular verse suggests a difficulty that may be found by many readers; it is worth considering.
They are told that Browning is one of the greatest poets; they come on something that reminds them of the Ingoldsby Legends—the Tipton Slasher, Rarey drumming on Cruiser, Jane Lamb that we danced with at Vichy—comic rhymes:—ranunculus, 'Tommy make room for your uncle' us, and hundreds more of such offences. Even when there is a less outrageous style, there still remains a great heap of comic poetry, which to many sober and worthy readers is a violent and painful thing. ' Comic poet,' they think, is the next thing to profanity; one does not speak of a comic prophet. Possibly it is people of that sort who are intended in How it strikes a contemporary; the boy's mistake about the poet whom his father called the 'Corregidor':
Would point him out to me a dozen times;
'St—St,' he'd whisper, 'the Corregidor.'
I had been used to think that personage
Was one with lacquered breeches, lustrous belt,
And feathers like a forest in his hat,
Who blew a trumpet and proclaim'd the news,
Announced the bull-fights, gave each church its turn,
And memorized the miracle in vogue.
He had a great observance from us boys;
We were in error; that was not the man.
It is strange, and it is one of the great disappointments in Browning, that he should have made so poor a case for Aristophanes and his Comic Muse, in the book devoted to their Apology. But his own lyrical freedom is that Muse's gift, abundantly
And make them kiss.
If we must choose, the poem shall be Waring, a poem more personal than many of Browning's, springing from a suggestion in his own life like those that set Wordsworth on his
