Of goose, born to cackle and waddle
And bite at man's heel as goose-wont is,
Never felt plague its puny os frontis --
You'd know, as you hissed, spat and sputtered,
Clear `quack-quack' is easily uttered!"

In a letter written to Mr. W. G. Kingsland, in 1868,
Mr. Browning says: --

"I can have little doubt that my writing has been in the main
too hard for many I should have been pleased to communicate with;
but I never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics
have supposed. On the other hand, I never pretended to offer
such literature as should be a substitute for a cigar
or a game at dominoes to an idle man. So, perhaps, on the whole
I get my deserts, and something over -- not a crowd, but a few
I value more." *

--
* `Browning Society Papers', III., p. 344.
--

It was never truer of any author than it is true of Browning,
that `Le style c'est l'homme'; and Browning's style is an expression
of the panther-restlessness and panther-spring of his
impassioned intellect. The musing spirit of a Wordsworth
or a Tennyson he partakes not of.

Mr. Richard Holt Hutton's characterization of the poet's style,
as a "crowded note-book style", is not a particularly happy one.