diction a directness and energy of movement such as he has left no example of.
But Browning continues:
"And there's the extract, flasked and fine
And priced and saleable at last!
And Hobbs, Nobbs, Stokes and Nokes combine
To paint the future from the past,
Put blue into their line.
Hobbs hints blue,—straight he turtle eats:
Nobbs prints blue,—claret crowns his cup:
Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats,—
Both gorge. Who fished the murex up?
What porridge had John Keats?"[1]
—stanzas in which the artificial form of verse seems merely to incommode that vigour and directness, so eminently characteristic of Browning, both when he writes poetry and when he distorts prose into its semblance and caricature.
Take another instance of this abuse, from Wordsworth:
"Yes, it was the mountain echo,
Solitary, clear, profound,
Answering to the shouting cuckoo
Giving to her sound for sound.
Unsolicited reply
To a babbling wanderer sent;
Like her ordinary cry
Like—but oh, how different!"
These two stanzas enchant the ear, and kindle the mind to joyous receptiveness. But alas! the poet continues much as the genius of the Salvation Army adapts the tune of a successful music hall song to other words.
"Hears not also mortal life?
Hear not we unthinking creatures
Slaves of folly, love, and strife—
Voices of two different natures?
- ↑ Browning's Works, "Popularity," vol. vi., p. 192.
