To this fact I would trace the rise and flourishing of Browning Societies in considerable abundance, during the late Victorian Era, especially near Boston. The enterprise of reading and understanding Browning presented itself as an affair too large and difficult for the intellectual capital of any private person. Corporations were formed, stock companies of intelligence were promoted, for the purpose of working the field of his poetry. The task which daunted the solitary individual was courageously undertaken by phalanxes and cheerfully pursued in fellowship. Thus the obscurity, alleged or actual, of the poet’s writing, having been at first a hindrance, afterward became an advertisement to his fame. The charm of the enigma, the fascination of solving riddles, the pleasure of understanding something which other people at least professed to be unable to understand, entered distinctly into the growth of his popularity. A Browning cult, a Browning propaganda, came into being and toiled tremendously. One result of the work of these clubs and societies is already evident: they have done much to remove the cause which called them into being. It is generally recognized that a considerable part of Browning’s poetry is not really so difficult after all. It can be read and enjoyed by any one whose mind is in working order. Those innocent and stupid Victorians were wrong about it. We alert and sagacious George-the-Fifthians need some tougher poetry to try our mettle. So I suppose the Browning Societies, having fulfilled their function, will gradually fade away,—or perhaps transfer their attention to some of those later writers who have put obscurity on a scientific basis and raised impenetrability to a fine art. Meantime I question whether all the claims which were made on behalf of Browning in the period of propaganda will be allowed at their face value. For example, that _The Ring and the Book_ is “the greatest work of creative imagination that has appeared since the time of Shakespeare,”[10] and that _A Grammarian’s Funeral_ is “the most powerful ode in English, the mightiest tribute ever paid to a man,”[11] and that Browning’s “style as it stands is God-made, not Browning-made,”[12] appear even now like drafts on glory which must be discounted before they are paid. Nor does it seem probable that the general proposition which was sometimes advanced by extreme Browningites, (and others,) to the effect that all great poetry _ought_ to be hard to read, and that a poem which is easy cannot be great, will stand the test of time. Milton’s _Comus_, Gray’s _Elegy_, Wordsworth’s _Ode on the Intimations of Immortality_, Shelley’s _Skylark_, Keats’ _Grecian Urn_, and Tennyson’s _Guinevere_ cannot be reduced to the rank of minor verse by such a formula.