His verses to Shakespeare and his prose commentaries on him too, are models of what self-respecting admiration should be, generous in its praise of excellence, candid in its statement of defects.

They are the kind of compliments that Shakespeare himself, if he had grace enough, must have loved to receive.
Very different from his direct and dignified manner is the closely packed style of Donne, who, Milton apart, is the greatest English writer of the century, though his obscurity has kept him out of general reading.

No poetry in English, not even Browning, is more difficult to understand.

The obscurity of Donne and Browning proceed from such similar causes that they are worth examining together.

In both, as in the obscure passages in Shakespeare's later plays, obscurity arises not because the poet says too little but because he attempts to say too much.