But I do wish he had given more time and trouble to his own art, that we might have had clearer and lovelier poetry.

Perhaps, if he had developed himself with more care as an artist in his own art, he would not have troubled himself or his art by so much devotion to abstract thinking and intellectual analysis.

A strange preference also for naked facts sometimes beset him, as if men wanted these from a poet.
It was as if some scientific demon entered into him for a time and turned poetry out, till Browning got weary of his guest and threw him out of the window.

These reversions to some far off Browning in the past, who was deceived into thinking the intellect the king of life, enfeebled and sometimes destroyed the artist in him; and though he escaped for the best part of his poetry from this position, it was not seldom in his later years as a brand plucked from the burning.

Moreover, he recognised this tendency in himself; and protested against it, sometimes humorously, sometimes seriously.