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there can be no hesitation about the verdict. He was faulty in form almost always faultless scarcely ever. Often, indeed, his choice of metre struck a false note from the start; he wrote argument in jerky trochaics, he expressed lyric emotion in blank verse. Such lapses in a man of sure touch in matters of this sort point to some inherent defect in the poet's method. Worse even than this was the over-subtlety of intellect to which we have already referred, and which is at the root of his so-called obscurity. He attempted not only to give the emotive iridescence of the poetic afflatus, but also at the same time to suggest the accompanying inrush of clustering thoughts. The psychology of the poetic afflatus is obscure, but one thing is at least certain about it. Under the inrush of the emotive impulse the poet remains master of his passion, directing it into artistic channels. Browning had this power to the highest, and misused it. He attempted the impossible task of setting forth in verse the totality of impressions, emotional, æsthetic, and intellectual, which his object made upon him. When one reflects on what the totality of impressions on such a nature as Browning's must mean, one recognises the impossibility of the task. To make even an approach to it he had to write in a kind of lyric shorthand,