Thoughts hardly to be packed
    Into a narrow act,
    Fancies that broke through language and escaped.

Second, Browning is led from one thing to another by his own mental associations, and forgets that the reader’s associations may be of an entirely different kind.  Third, Browning is careless in his English, and frequently clips his speech, giving us a series of ejaculations.  As we do not quite understand his processes of thought, we must stop between the ejaculations to trace out the connections.  Fourth, Browning’s, allusions are often far-fetched, referring to some odd scrap of information which he has picked up in his wide reading, and the ordinary reader finds it difficult to trace and understand them.  Finally, Browning wrote too much and revised too Little.  The time which he should have given to making one thought clear was used in expressing other thoughts that flitted through his head like a flock of swallows.  His field was the individual soul, never exactly alike in any two men, and he sought to express the hidden motives and principles which govern individual action.  In this field he is like a miner delving underground, sending up masses of mingled earth and ore; and the reader must sift all this material to separate the gold from the dross.

Here, certainly, are sufficient reasons for Browning’s obscurity; and we must add the word that the fault seems unpardonable, for the simple reason that Browning shows himself capable, at times, of writing directly, melodiously, and with noble simplicity.

So much for the faults, which must be faced and overlooked before one finds the treasure that is hidden in Browning’s poetry.  Of all the poets in our literature, no other is so completely, so consciously, so magnificently a teacher of men.  He feels his mission of faith and courage in a world of doubt and timidity.  For thirty years he faced indifference or ridicule, working bravely and cheerfully the while, until he made the world recognize and follow him.  The spirit of his whole life is well expressed in his Paracelsus, written when he was only twenty-two years old: 

    I see my way as birds their trackless way. 
    I shall arrive,—­what time, what circuit first,
    I ask not; but unless God send his hail
    Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow,
    In some time, his good time, I shall arrive;
    He guides me and the bird.  In his good time.

He is not, like so many others, an entertaining poet.  One cannot read him after dinner, or when settled in a comfortable easy-chair.  One must sit up, and think, and be alert when he reads Browning.  If we accept these conditions, we shall probably find that Browning is the most stimulating poet in our language.  His influence upon our life is positive and tremendous.  His strength, his joy of life, his robust faith, and his invincible optimism enter into us, making us different and better men after reading him.  And perhaps the best thing he can say of Browning is that his thought is slowly but surely taking possession of all well-educated men and women.