And quench its speed in the slushy sand.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And the blue spirt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!”
This is the landscape of the drama.
A second result of Browning’s preoccupation with dramatic psychology is the close concentration and “alleged obscurity” of his style. Here again I evade the critical question whether the obscurity is real, or whether it is only a natural and admirable profundity to which an indolent reviewer has given a bad name. That is a question which Posterity must answer. But for us the fact remains that some of his poetry is hard to read; it demands close attention and strenuous effort; and when we find a piece of it that goes very easily, like The Pied Piper of Hamelin, How They brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, Hervé Riel, or the stirring Cavalier Tunes, we are conscious of missing the sense of strain which we have learned to associate with the reading of Browning.
One reason for this is the predominance of curiosity over harmony in his disposition. He tries to express the inexpressible, to write the unwritable. As Dr. Johnson said of Cowley, he has the habit “of pursuing his thoughts to the last ramifications, by which he loses the grandeur of generality.” Another reason is the fluency, the fertility, the haste of his genius, and his reluctance, or inability, to put the brakes on his own productiveness.