Browning's genial violence continually produced strokes which only
needed a little access of oddity or extravagance to become grotesque. He
probably inherited a bias in this direction; we know that his father
delighted in drawing grotesque heads, and even "declared that he could
not draw a pretty face."[104] But his grotesqueness is never the mere
comic oddness which sometimes assumes the name. It is a kind of
monstrosity produced not by whimsical mutilations, but by a riot of
exuberant power. And he has also a grave and tragic use of the
grotesque, in which he stands alone. He is, in fact, by far the greatest
English master of grotesque. _Childe Roland_, where the natural bent of
his invention has full fling, abounds with grotesque traits which,
instead of disturbing the romantic atmosphere, infuse into it an
element of strange, weird, and uncanny mirth, more unearthly than any
solemnity; the day shooting its grim red leer across the plain, the old
worn-out horse with its red, gaunt, and colloped neck a-strain; or, in
_Paracelsus_, the "Cyclops-like" volcanoes "staring together with their
eyes on flame," in whose "uncouth pride" God tastes a pleasure. Shelley
had recoiled from the horrible idea of a host of these One-eyed
monsters;[105] Browning deliberately invokes it. But he can use
grotesque effects to heighten tragedy as well as romance. One source of
the peculiar poignancy of the _Heretic's Tragedy_ is the eerie blend in
it of mocking familiarity and horror.

[Footnote 104: H. Corkran, _Celebrities and I_.]

[Footnote 105: Cf. Locock, _Examination of the Shelley MSS. in the
Bodleian_, p. 19. At the words "And monophalmic (_sic_) Polyphemes who
haunt the pine-hills, flocked," the writing becomes illegible and the
stanza is left incomplete. Mr Forman explains the breaking-off in the
same way.]