easiest to do, it is evident that there must be more difficulty in doing
it (for it requires a certain exertion) than in merely letting the mind
lie at rest, accepting and absorbing. And the difficulty is increased
when we remember another of Browning's characteristics, closely allied
to this, and, indeed, resulting from it: his preference for the unusual
and complex rather than the simple and ordinary. People prefer to read
about characters which they can understand at first sight, with which
they can easily sympathise. A dramatist, who insists on presenting them
with complex and exceptional characters, studies of the good in evil and
the evil in good, representations of states of mind which are not
habitual to them, or which they find it difficult to realise in certain
lights, can never obtain so quick or so hearty a recognition as one who
deals with great actions, large and clear characters, familiar motives.
When the head has to be exercised before the heart, there is chilling of
sympathy.

Allied to Browning's originality in temper, topic, treatment and form,
is his originality in style; an originality which is again due, in large
measure, to the same prevailing cause. His style is vital, his verse
moves to the throbbing of an inner organism, not to the pulsations of a
machine. He prefers, as indeed all true poets do, but more exclusively
than any other poet, sense to sound, thought to expression. In his
desire of condensation he employs as few words as are consistent with
the right expression of his thought; he rejects superfluous adjectives,
and all stop-gap words. He refuses to use words for words' sake: he
declines to interrupt conversation with a display of fireworks: and as a
result it will be found that his finest effects of versification
correspond with his highest achievements in imagination and passion. As
a dramatic poet he is obliged to modulate and moderate, sometimes almost
to vulgarise, his style and diction for the proper expression of some