and pebbles of hard language which he spits forth, so to say, in the face of "the prejudicate and peremptory reader" whose ears he belabours with "very bitter words," and with words not less turgid than were hurled by Pistol at the head of the recalcitrant and contumelious Mistress Tearsheet: nor assuredly had the poet much right to expect that they would be received by the profane multitude with more reverence and humility than was the poetic fury of "such a fustian rascal" by that "honest, virtuous, civil gentlewoman,"
The charge of obscurity is perhaps of all charges the likeliest to impair the fame or to imperil the success of a rising or an established poet. It is as often misapplied by hasty or ignorant criticism as any other on the roll of accusations; and was never misapplied more persistently and perversely than to an eminent writer of our own time. The difficulty found by many in certain of Mr. Browning's works arises from a quality the very reverse of that which produces obscurity properly so called. Obscurity is the natural product of turbid forces and confused ideas; of a feeble and clouded or of a
