The method, at all events, has an interest of its own, a strength of
its own, a grandeur of its own. If you do not like it, you must leave
it alone. You are fond, you say, of romantic poetry; well, then, take
down your Spenser and qualify yourself to join 'the small transfigured
band' of those who are able to take their Bible-oaths they have read
their 'Faerie Queen' all through. The company, though small, is
delightful, and you will have plenty to talk about without abusing
Browning, who probably knows his Spenser better than you do. Realism
will not for ever dominate the world of letters and art--the fashion
of all things passeth away--but it has already earned a great place:
it has written books, composed poems, painted pictures, all stamped
with that 'greatness' which, despite fluctuations, nay, even reversals
of taste and opinion, means immortality.

But against Mr. Browning's later poems it is sometimes alleged that
their meaning is obscure because their grammar is bad. A cynic was
once heard to observe with reference to that noble poem 'The
Grammarian's Funeral,' that it was a pity the talented author had ever
since allowed himself to remain under the delusion that he had not
only buried the grammarian, but his grammar also. It is doubtless true
that Mr. Browning has some provoking ways, and is something too much
of a verbal acrobat. Also, as his witty parodist, the pet poet of six
generations of Cambridge undergraduates, reminds us:

'He loves to dock the smaller parts of speech,
As we curtail the already curtailed cur.'

It is perhaps permissible to weary a little of his _i_'s and
_o_'s, but we believe we cannot be corrected when we say that
Browning is a poet whose grammar will bear scholastic investigation