In the passage, which he cites from Sordello, to illustrate
the "crowded note-book style", occurs the following parenthesis: --

"(To be by him themselves made act,
Not watch Sordello acting each of them.)"

"What the parenthesis means," he says, "I have not
the most distant notion. Mr. Browning might as well have said,
`to be by him her himself herself themselves made act', etc.,
for any vestige of meaning I attach to this curious mob
of pronouns and verbs. It is exactly like the short notes of a speech
intended to be interpreted afterwards by one who had heard
and understood it himself." *

--
* `Essays Theological and Literary'. Vol. II., 2d ed., rev. and enl.,
p. 175.
--

At first glance, this parenthesis is obscure; but the obscurity
is not due to its being "exactly like the short notes of a speech",
etc. It is due to what the "obscurity" of Mr. Browning's language,
as language, is, in nine cases out of ten, due, namely,
to the COLLOCATION of the words, not to an excessive economy
of words. He often exercises a liberty in the collocation of his words
which is beyond what an uninflected language like the English
admits of, without more or less obscurity. There are difficult
passages in Browning which, if translated into Latin, would present
no difficulty at all; for in Latin, the relations of words
are more independent of their collocation, being indicated by