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The caliber of man who could speak of “The Ode to Immortality” as “a most illegible and unintelligible poem,” or who wonders that any man in his senses could put his name to such a rhapsody as “Endymion,” or who dismissed “Prometheus Unbound” with the remark that it was a mélange of nonsense, cockneyism, poverty and pedantry, would hardly be expected to welcome “Sordello” with effusion.

All Browning’s genius seemed to him emphase, cleverness, curiosity, “cockneyism.”

Mr. Guthrie has caught the cockney in the very act of cockneyism, and he has here pilloried him for all time, but wholly without bitterness or rancor.

He was not a coward, if his cockneyism had lured him after snipe; but he was unable to determine what kind of people the Puddlefordians were.

Cockneyism and bad taste have found their way even to Niagara.