169. _The Groves of Blarney_. An old Irish song. A version may be seen
in the _Antiquary_, I, p. 199. The quotation by Lockhart differs
somewhat from the corresponding stanza of the cited version.
170. _Corporal Trim_. In Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_.
173. _Christopher North_. John Wilson, of _Blackwood's Magazine_.
ROBERT BROWNING
The reviews of Browning's poems are singularly uninteresting from a
historical standpoint. There is usually a protest against the obscurity
of the poetry and a plea that the author should make better use of his
manifest genius. For details concerning these reviews, see the
bibliography of Browning in Nicoll and Wise's _Literary Anecdotes of the
Nineteenth Century_. The list there given is extensive, but does not
include several of the reviews mentioned below.
The early poems were so abstruse that the critics were unable to make
sport of them as they did in the case of Wordsworth, Byron, Tennyson,
and the rest; and when Browning finally deigned to write within range of
the average human intellect, that particular style of reviewing had lost
favor.
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