JOY IN FORM.
If the popular legend of Browning ignores his passion for colour, it altogether scouts the suggestion that he had a peculiar delight in form.
By general consent he lacked the most ordinary and decent attention to it.

No doubt he is partly responsible for this impression himself.

His ideals of literary form were not altogether those commonly recognised in literature.

If we understand by form the quality of clear-cut outline and sharply defined articulation, there is a sense in which it was one of the most ingrained instincts of his nature, indulged at times with even morbid excess.

Alike in life and in art he hated sloth,--the slovenliness of the "ungirt loin" and of the indecisive touch.