Let a man who does not read poetry
take up a volume of Familiar Quotations, and he will find page after
page of lines and phrases which he knows by heart--from Tennyson,
Milton, Wordsworth--things made familiar to him not by the poets, but by
the men whom the poets educated, and who adopted their speech. Of
Browning he will know not a word. And yet Browning's poetry is full of
words that glow and smite, and which have been burnt into and struck
into the most influential minds of the last fifty years.
But Browning's phrases are almost impossible to remember, because they
are speech not reduced to poetry. They do not sing, they do not carry.
They have no artificial buoys to float them in our memories.
It follows from this uncompromising nature of Browning that when, by the
grace of inspiration, the accents of his speech do fall into rhythm, his
words will have unimaginable sweetness. The music is so much a part of
the words--so truly spontaneous--that other verse seems tame and
manufactured beside his.
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