They were a
part of the poet's choice of vocation, and he was fully aware of
them:--
"Mr. Browning might say, as his wife said in an early preface, I
never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry, nor leisure for
the hour of the poet--as indeed he has himself said, to much the same
effect, in a letter printed many years ago: I never pretended to
offer such literature as should be a substitute for a cigar or a game
at dominoes to an idle man."
"Moreover, while a writer who deals with [48] easy themes has no
excuse if he is not pellucid to a glance, one who employs his
intellect and imagination on high and hard questions has a right to
demand a corresponding closeness of attention, and a right to say
with Bishop Butler, in answer to a similar complaint: 'It must be
acknowledged that some of the following discourses are very abstruse
and difficult, or, if you please, obscure; but I must take leave to
add that those alone are judges whether or no, and how far this is a
fault, who are judges whether or no, and how far it might have been
avoided--those only who will be at the trouble to understand what is
here said, and to see how far the things here insisted upon, and not
other things, might have been put in a plainer manner.
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