"Moreover, while a writer who deals with [48] easy themes has no
excuse if he is not pellucid to a glance, one who employs his
intellect and imagination on high and hard questions has a right to
demand a corresponding closeness of attention, and a right to say
with Bishop Butler, in answer to a similar complaint: 'It must be
acknowledged that some of the following discourses are very abstruse
and difficult, or, if you please, obscure; but I must take leave to
add that those alone are judges whether or no, and how far this is a
fault, who are judges whether or no, and how far it might have been
avoided--those only who will be at the trouble to understand what is
here said, and to see how far the things here insisted upon, and not
other things, might have been put in a plainer manner.'"

In Mr. Symons's opinion Pippa Passes is Mr. Browning's most perfect
piece of work, for pregnancy of intellect, combined with faultless
expression in a perfectly novel yet symmetrical outline: and he is
very likely right. He is certainly right in thinking Mas they
formerly stood, Mr. Browning's most delightful volumes. It is only
to be regretted [49] that in the later collected edition of the works
those two magical old volumes are broken up and scattered under other
headings. We think also that Mr. Symons in his high praise does no
more than justice to The Ring and the Book. The Ring and the Book is
at once the largest and the greatest of Mr. Browning's works, the
culmination of his dramatic method, and the turning-point more
decisively than Dramatis Personae of his style. Yet just here he
rightly marks a change in Mr. Browning's manner:--

"Not merely the manner of presentment, the substance, and also the
style and versification have undergone a change. I might point to