The required books of the C. L. S. C. are recommendedby a Council of six. It must, however, be understood thatrecommendation does not involve an approval by theCouncil, or by any member of it, of every principle or doctrinecontained in the book recommended.
The name of Robert Browning has been before the worldnow for fifty years. For the greater part of the time his workhas had so little recognition, that one marvels at his courage ingoing so steadily on with it. His “Pomegranates” have beenproduced year after year, decade after decade, in unfailingabundance; and, while critics have kept paring at the rind, andthe general public has not even asked if there was anythingbeneath it, he has laboured on with unremitting energy, calmlyawaiting the time when “the heart within, blood-tinctured, of aveined humanity,” should be at length discovered. It can scarcelybe said, even yet, that that time has come; but it is coming fast.Already he is something more than “the poet’s poet.” Fewintelligent people now are content to know one of the masterminds of the age simply as the author of “The Pied Piper ofHamelin,” as if that were the only thing he had written worthreading!
That the form in which the thought of Browning is cast isaltogether admirable, is what none but his most undiscriminatingadmirers will assert. It is often, unquestionably, rough andforbidding. But there is strength even in its ruggedness; andin its entire freedom from conventionality there is a charm suchas one enjoys in wild mountain scenery, even though only inlittle patches it may have any suggestion of the garden or thelawn. There are those who have charged the poet with affectationof the uncouth and the bizarre; but careful reading will, wethink, render it apparent that it is rather his utter freedom fromaffectation which determines and perpetuates the peculiaritiesand oddities of his style; that, in fact, the aphorism of Buffon, “leiistyle est l’homme même,” is undoubtedly true as applied to him.It would, of course, be absurd to claim for the pomegranate thebloom and beauty of the peach; but, equally with the other, itis Nature’s gift, and to toss aside a rough-rinded fruit because itneeds to be “cut deep down the middle” before its pulp andjuices can be reached, is surely far from wise. Even hard nutsare not to be despised, if the kernels are good; and as toBrowning’s “nuts,” we have this to say, that not only are theywell worth cracking, but there is in the process excellentexercise for the teeth.
This brings us to the alleg