Thus, for instance, the traveller will often hear the advice from local lovers of the picturesque, "The scenery round such and such a place has no interest; it is quite flat." To disparage scenery as quite flat is, of course, like disparaging a swan as quite white, or an Italian sky as quite blue.

Flatness is a sublime quality in certain landscapes, just as rockiness is a sublime quality in others.

In the same way there are a great number of phrases commonly used in order to disparage such writers as Browning which do not in fact disparage, but merely describe them.

One of the most distinguished of Browning's biographers and critics says of him, for example, "He has never meant to be rugged, but has become so in striving after strength." To say that Browning never tried to be rugged is to say that Edgar Allan Poe never tried to be gloomy, or that Mr.W.S.Gilbert never tried to be extravagant.

The whole issue depends upon whether we realise the simple and essential fact that ruggedness is a mode of art like gloominess or extravagance.