[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—May I point out
that in writing of Robert Browning's obscurity as " conscious " Mrs. Williams-Ellis appears to be under a misapprehension ? His own words are explicit : "I never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics have supposed" (see Hall Griffin's and my Life, 1910, page 802). I believe his obscurity to be due in part, as Mr. Thomas Sharp suggests, to his lack of academic training, in part to his gift of expression being apt to lag behind the rapid flow of his ideas. This defect is seen, of course, at its worst and widest in Sordello ; and it is not too much to say that the adverse comments which that work elicited made him endeavour to correct it. He succeeded ; for in what may be called his best period, from Pippo Passes to Balaustion's Adventure, there is very little need to complain of obscurity.
The small measure of attention which Sordello now attracts in comparison with others of Browning's poems is but one of many indications that obscurity in poetry is a defect. Let me cite a respected living authority. The Poet Laureate has written thus of Gerard Hopkins's verse : "Almost all of his poems are injured by a natural eccentricity, a love for subtlety and uncommonness" (Poets and Poetry of the Century, by Alfred Miles, p. 163). I am bound to say, in passing, that the selections from Hopkins which there follow strike me as crystal-clear compared with the enigmas of Sitwellism. Do we not need to recur to the admonition of Dr. Bridges' great master, Milton, that poetry should be "simple, sensuous and impassioned " ? Great poets are read in spite, not because of their obscurity. If lesser ones fail to express themselves lucidly, they can hardly expect more than a momentary glance. Nor can I think, with Mrs. Williams- Ellis, that the obscurity of one age becomes pellucid to the next. Gray was not really obscure ; it merely pleased Dr. Johnson to assert that he was. But will Mrs. Williams- Ellis seriously maintain, on reflection, that young people of to-day can read and understand Sordello with ease ? I submit that there never was, is not, and never will be a single reader to whom it has not presented, does not, and will not
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