Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/453

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NOTES ON THE GENIUS OF
ROBERT BROWNING
[1]

I.—Browning's Variety and Knowledge.—2. The Charge of Obscurity.—3. The Charge of Harshness, and of Affectation, which really means Naturalness.—4. Browning's Activity and Rapidity.—5. Browning's Manliness.—6. Browning's Vitality.—7. Browning's Christianity.

I. Browning's Variety and Knowledge. Perhaps a reader looking for the first time through Browning's volumes would be first struck by the remarkable number and variety of his works, though these now cover a period of fifty years. On a somewhat closer acquaintance, this reader would surely be impressed with an ever-increasing astonishment at the prodigious amount and variety of knowledge brought to bear upon so vast a range of subjects. I mean not only, nor even mainly, knowledge of literature and art, but also what I may term knowledge of things in general. Marvellous as his acquirements in the former kinds must appear to one who, like myself, is neither scholar nor connoisseur, I am yet more overwhelmed by the immensity of his acquisitions in this other kind, by what Mr. Swinburne has happily summed up as "the inexhaustible stores of his

  1. Read at the Third Meeting of the Browning Society, on Friday, January 27, 1882.

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