I seem to overhear a still, small voice asking, But are they worth
doing? or at all events is it the province of art to do them? The
question ought not to be asked. It is heretical, being contrary to the
whole direction of the latter half of this century. The chains binding
us to the rocks of realism are faster riveted every day; and the
Perseus who is destined to cut them is, I expect, some mischievous
little boy at a Board-school. But as the question has been asked, I
will own that sometimes, even when deepest in works of this, the now
orthodox school, I have been harassed by distressing doubts whether,
after all, this enormous labour is not in vain; and, wearied by the
effort, overloaded by the detail, bewildered by the argument, and
sickened by the pitiless dissection of character and motive, have been
tempted to cry aloud, quoting--or rather, in the agony of the moment,
misquoting--Coleridge:

'Simplicity--
Thou better name than all the family of Fame.'

But this ebullition of feeling is childish and even sinful. We must
take our poets as we do our meals--as they are served up to us.
Indeed, you may, if full of courage, give a cook notice, but not the
time-spirit who makes our poets. We may be sure--to appropriate an
idea of the late Sir James Stephen--that if Robert Browning had lived
in the sixteenth century, he would not have written a poem like 'The
Ring and the Book'; and if Edmund Spenser had lived in the nineteenth
century he would not have written a poem like the 'Faerie Queen.'

It is therefore idle to arraign Mr. Browning's later method and style
for possessing difficulties and intricacies which are inherent to it.