Browning did not like spiritualism to be mentioned for many years.
Robert Browning was unquestionably a thoroughly conventional man.
There are many who think this element of conventionality altogether regrettable and disgraceful; they have established, as it were, a convention of the unconventional.

But this hatred of the conventional element in the personality of a poet is only possible to those who do not remember the meaning of words.

Convention means only a coming together, an agreement; and as every poet must base his work upon an emotional agreement among men, so every poet must base his work upon a convention.

Every art is, of course, based upon a convention, an agreement between the speaker and the listener that certain objections shall not be raised.

The most realistic art in the world is open to realistic objection.