"I will not read the book," it will say, "but I am glad he had it in him." Still it was an artistic failure, and when Browning understood that the public could not comprehend him--and we must remember that he desired to be comprehended, for he loved mankind--he thought he would use his powers in a simpler fashion, and please the honest folk.

So, in the joy of having got rid in _Sordello_ of so many of his thoughts by expression and of mastering the rest; and determined, since he had been found difficult, to be the very opposite--loving contrast like a poet--he wrote _Pippa Passes_.

I need not describe its plan.

Our business is with the women in it.
Ottima, alive with carnal passion, in the fire of which the murder of her husband seems a mere incident, is an audacious sketch, done in splashes of ungradated colour.

Had Browning been more in the woman's body and soul he would not have done her in jerks as he has done.