particular character, in whose mouth exquisite turns of phrase and
delicate felicities of rhythm would be inappropriate. He will not _let
himself go_ in the way of easy floridity, as writers may whose themes
are more "ideal." And where many writers would attempt merely to
simplify and sweeten verse, he endeavours to give it fuller
expressiveness, to give it strength and newness. It follows that
Browning's verse is not so uniformly melodious as that of many other
poets. Where it seems to him necessary to sacrifice one of the two,
sense or sound, he has never hesitated which to sacrifice. But while he
has certainly failed in some of his works, or in some passages of them,
to preserve the due balance, while he has at times undoubtedly
sacrificed sound too liberally to the claims of sense, the extent of
this sacrifice is very much less than is generally supposed. The notion,
only too general, expressed by such a phrase as "his habitual rudeness
of versification" (used by no unfavourable _Edinburgh_ reviewer in 1869)
is one of the most singularly erroneous perversions of popular prejudice
that have ever called for correction at the hands of serious criticism.

Browning is far indeed from paying no attention, or little, to metre and
versification. Except in some of his later blank verse, and in a few
other cases, his very errors are just as often the result of hazardous
experiments as of carelessness and inattention. In one very important
matter, that of rhyme, he is perhaps the greatest master in our
language; in single and double, in simple and grotesque alike, his
rhymes are as accurate as they are ingenious. His lyrical poems contain
more structural varieties of form than those of any preceding English
poet, not excepting Shelley. His blank verse at its best is more vital
in quality than that of any modern poet. And both in rhymed and in blank
verse he has written passages which for almost every technical quality
are hardly to be surpassed in the language.