human
and of the indecisive touch. In conduct, this animus expressed itself in a kind of punctilious propriety. The forms of social convention Browning observed not merely with the scrupulous respect of the man of fashion, but with the enthusiasm of the virtuoso. Near akin in genius to the high priests of the Romantic temple, Browning rarely, even in the defiant heyday of adolescence, set more than a tentative foot across the outer precincts of the Romantic Bohemia. His
gpt
was not of the type which overflows in easy affectations; he was too original to be eccentric, too profoundly a man of letters to look
human
In his poetry this animus took a less equivocal shape. Not a little, both of its vividness and of its obscurity, flows from the undisciplined exuberance of his joy in form. An acute criticism of Mrs Browning's--in some points the very best critic he ever had--puts one aspect of this admirably. _The Athenæum_ had called him
gpt
human
Misty, she retorts,
gpt
[72] That is the overplus of form producing obscurity. But through immense tracts of Browning the effect of the extra-distinctness of his images and thoughts, of the deep sharp lines cut by his graver, is not thus frustrated, but tells to the full in amazingly vivid and unforgettable expression. Yet he is no more a realist of the ordinary type here than in his colouring. His deep sharp lines are caught from life, but under the control of a no less definite bias of eye and brain. Sheer nervous and muscular energy had its part here also. As he loved the intense colours which most vigorously stimulate the optic nerve, so he delighted in the angular, indented, intertwining, labyrinthine varieties of line and surface which call for the most delicate, and at the same time the most agile, adjustments of the muscles of the eye. He caught at the edges of things--the white line of foam against the shore, the lip of the shell, and he could compare whiteness as no other poet ever did to
human
He once saw with delight
gpt
[73] Browning's joy in form was as little epicurean as his joy in colour; it was a banquet of the senses in which the sense of motion and energy had the largest part. Smooth, flowing, rounded, undulating outlines, which the eye glides along without check, are insipid and profitless to him, and he
human
of every jagged excrescence or ragged fray, of every sudden and abrupt breach of continuity. His eye seizes the crisp indentations of ferns as they
gpt
of a grey boulder-stone;[74] seizes the
human
olive-leaves as they
gpt
above the morning glories of Florence;[75] seizes the sharp zigzag of lightning against the Italian midnight, the fiery west through a dungeon grating or a lurid rift in the clouds,[76]--
human
--the brilliant line of Venice suspended
gpt
human
Cup-mosses and ferns and spotty yellow leaves--all that I love heartily, he wrote to E.B.B.[77] Roses and moss strike most men's senses by a soft luxuriance in which all sharp articulation of parts is merged; but what Browning seizes on in the rose is its
gpt
intricacy, while the moss becomes a little forest of
human
And who else would have thought of saying that
gpt
?[78] In the _Easter-Day_ vision he sees the sky as a network of black serrated ridges. He loves the intricate play of light and shade, and the irregular, contorted, honeycombed surface which produces it; craggy, scarred, indented mountains,
human
;[79] old towns with huddled roofs and towers picked out
gpt
like
human
or
gpt
Turkish verse along a scimitar ; old walls, creviced and crannied, intertwined with creepers, and tenanted by crossing swarms of ever-busy flies,--such things are the familiar commonplace of Browning's sculpturesque fancy. His metrical movements are full of the same joy in