Take such an example as "Caliban upon Setebos," a wonderful poem designed to describe the way in which a primitive nature may at once be afraid of its gods and yet familiar with them.
Caliban in describing his deity starts with a more or less natural and obvious parallel between the deity and himself, carries out the comparison with consistency and an almost revolting simplicity, and ends in a kind of blasphemous extravaganza of anthropomorphism, basing his conduct not merely on the greatness and wisdom, but also on the manifest weaknesses and stupidities, of the Creator of all things.
Then suddenly a thunderstorm breaks over Caliban's island, and the profane speculator falls flat upon his face-- "Lo! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos! 'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip, Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape!" Surely it would be very difficult to persuade oneself that this thunderstorm would have meant exactly the same thing if it had occurred at the beginning of "Caliban upon Setebos." It does not mean the same thing, but something very different; and the deduction from this is the curious fact that Browning is an artist, and that consequently his processes of thought are not "scientific in their precision and analysis." No criticism of Browning's poems can be vital, none in the face of the poems themselves can be even intelligible, which is not based upon the fact that he was successfully or otherwise a conscious and deliberate artist.

He may have failed as an artist, though I do not think so; that is quite a different matter.

But it is one thing to say that a man through vanity or ignorance has built an ugly cathedral, and quite another to say that he built it in a fit of absence of mind, and did not know whether he was building a lighthouse or a first-class hotel.
Browning knew perfectly well what he was doing; and if the reader does not like his art, at least the author did.

The general sentiment expressed in the statement that he did not care about form is simply the most ridiculous criticism that could be conceived.

It would be far nearer the truth to say that he cared more for form than any other English poet who ever lived.