`Pauline' and `Paracelsus', a very fair `ex-pede-Herculem' estimate
might have been made of the possibilities which he has since
so grandly realized.






III. Mr. Browning's "Obscurity".



It was long the FASHION -- and that fashion has not yet passed away
-- with skimming readers and perfunctory critics to charge Mr. Browning
with being "wilfully obscure, unconscientiously careless,
and perversely harsh."

There are readers and readers. One class, constituting, perhaps,
not more than one-tenth of one per cent, or a thousandth part
of the whole number, "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest";
the remaining ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent,
through a habit of loose and indiscriminate reading, are unequal to
the sustained concentration of mind demanded by the higher poetry,
the language of which is characterized by a severe economy
of expression -- a closeness of texture, resulting from
the elliptical energy of highly impassioned thought.

Reading is, perhaps, more superficial at the present day
than it ever was before. There is an almost irresistible temptation