This is not the truth; and Tennyson did not
intend it for the truth. It is simply the result of the lack of
something militant, dogmatic and structural in him: whereby he could not
be trusted with the trail of a very long literary process without
entangling himself like a kitten playing cat's-cradle.
Browning, as above suggested, got on much better with eccentric and
secluded England because he treated it as eccentric and secluded; a
place where one could do what one liked. To a considerable extent he did
do what he liked; arousing not a few complaints; and many doubts and
conjectures as to why on earth he liked it. Many comparatively
sympathetic persons pondered upon what pleasure it could give any man to
write _Sordello_ or rhyme "end-knot" to "offend not." Nevertheless he
was no anarchist and no mystagogue; and even where he was defective, his
defect has commonly been stated wrongly. The two chief charges against
him were a contempt for form unworthy of an artist, and a poor pride in
obscurity. The obscurity is true, though not, I think, the pride in it;
but the truth about this charge rather rises out of the truth about the
other.
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