Yet barriers remained.

Poems like the _Red-cotton Night-cap Country_, the _Inn Album_, and _Fifine_ had alienated many whom _The Ring and the Book_ had won captive, and embarrassed the defence of some of Browning's staunchest devotees.

Nobody knew better than the popular diner-out, Robert Browning, how few of the men and women who listened to his brilliant talk had any grip upon his inner mind; and he did little to assist their insight.

The most affable and accessible of men up to a certain point, he still held himself, in the deeper matters of his art, serenely and securely aloof.

But it was a good-humoured, not a cynical, aloofness, which found quite natural expression in a volley of genial chaff at the critics who thought themselves competent to teach him his business.