Both teach, both learn detestability!
Kiss him the kiss, Iscariot! Pay that back,
That smatch o' the slaver blistering on your lip --
By the better trick, the insult he spared Christ --
Lure him the lure o' the letters, Aretine!
Lick him o'er slimy-smooth with jelly-filth
O' the verse-and-prose pollution in love's guise!
The cockatrice is with the basilisk!
There let him grapple, denizens o' the dark,
Foes or friends, but indissolubly bound,
In their one spot out of the ken of God
Or care of man for ever and ever more!"

Browning has distinctly indicated the standard by which
he estimates art-work, in the closing paragraph of his Essay
`On the Poet objective and subjective; on the latter's aim;
on Shelley as man and poet'.

"I would rather," he says, "consider Shelley's poetry as a sublime
fragmentary essay towards a presentment of the correspondency
of the universe to Deity, of the natural to the spiritual,
and of the actual to the ideal, than I would isolate
and separately appraise the worth of many detachable portions
which might be acknowledged AS UTTERLY PERFECT IN A LOWER
MORAL POINT OF VIEW, UNDER THE MERE CONDITIONS OF ART.
It would be easy to take my stand on successful instances
of objectivity in Shelley: there is the unrivalled `Cenci'; there is
the `Julian and Maddalo' too; there is the magnificent `Ode to Naples':
why not regard, it may be said, the less organized matter
as the radiant elemental foam and solution, out of which would have