human
but did not venture to ignore him, and gossiped eagerly about his private life. He himself, mingling freely, an ever-welcome guest, in the choicest London society, had the air of having accepted the world as cordially as it on the whole accepted him. Yet barriers remained. Poems like the _Red-cotton Night-cap Country_, the _Inn Album_, and _Fifine_ had alienated many whom _The Ring and the Book_ had won captive, and embarrassed the defence of some of Browning's staunchest devotees. Nobody knew better than the popular diner-out, Robert Browning, how few of the men and women who listened to his brilliant talk had any grip upon his inner mind; and he did little to assist their insight. The most affable and accessible of men up to a certain point, he still held himself, in the deeper matters of his art, serenely and securely aloof. But it was a good-humoured, not a cynical, aloofness, which found quite natural expression in a volley of genial chaff at the critics who thought themselves competent to teach him his business. This is the main, at least the most dominant, note of _Pacchiarotto_. It is like an aftermath of _Aristophanes' Apology_. But the English poet scarcely deigns to defend his art. No beautiful and brilliant woman is there to put him on his mettle and call out his chivalry. The mass of his critics are roundly made game of, in a boisterously genial sally, as
gpt
officiously concerned at his excess of
human
_Pacchiarotto_ is a whimsical tale of a poor painter who came to grief in a Quixotic effort to