Rhyme is generally so used by Browning as not to subserve the true
function of rhyme. It is forced into a sort of superficial conformity,
but marks no epoch in the verse. The clusters of rhymes are clusters
only to the eye and not to the ear. The necessity of rhyming leads
Browning into inversions,--into expansions of sentences beyond the
natural close of the form,--into every sort of contortion. The rhymes
clog and distress the sentences.
As to grammar, Browning is negligent. Some of his most eloquent and
wonderful passages have no grammar whatever. In Sordello grammar does
not exist; and the want of it, the strain upon the mind caused by an
effort to make coherent sentences out of a fleeting, ever-changing,
iridescent maze of talk, wearies and exasperates the reader. Of course
no one but a school-master desires that poetry shall be capable of being
parsed; but every one has a right to expect that he shall be left
without a sense of grammatical deficiency.
The Invocation in The Ring and the Book is one of the most beautiful
openings that can be imagined.
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