We should have felt of that rowdy gathering little but the sensation of which Mr.Henley writes-- "Praise the generous gods for giving, In this world of sin and strife, With some little time for living, Unto each the joy of life," the thought that every wise man has when looking at a Bank Holiday crowd at Margate.
To ask why Browning enjoyed this perverse and fantastic style most would be to go very deep into his spirit indeed, probably a great deal deeper than it is possible to go.

But it is worth while to suggest tentatively the general function of the grotesque in art generally and in his art in particular.

There is one very curious idea into which we have been hypnotised by the more eloquent poets, and that is that nature in the sense of what is ordinarily called the country is a thing entirely stately and beautiful as those terms are commonly understood.

The whole world of the fantastic, all things top-heavy, lop-sided, and nonsensical are conceived as the work of man, gargoyles, German jugs, Chinese pots, political caricatures, burlesque epics, the pictures of Mr.Aubrey Beardsley and the puns of Robert Browning.

But in truth a part, and a very large part, of the sanity and power of nature lies in the fact that out of her comes all this instinct of caricature.