Read it through once

It may be said that the advice given in this poem, Browning has not sufficiently followed in his own poetry. On this point, a writer in the ‘British Quarterly Review’ (Vol. 23, p. 162) justly remarks: “Browning’s thought is always that of a poet. Subtle, nimble, and powerful as is the intellect, and various as is the learning, all is manifested through the imagination, and comes forth shaped and tinted by it. Thus, even in the foregoing passages {cited from ‘Transcendentalism’ and ‘Bishop Blougram’s Apology’}, where the matter is almost as purely as it can be the produce of the mere understanding, it is still evident that the method of the thought is poetic. The notions take the form of images. For example, the poet means to say that Prose is a good and mighty vehicle in its way, but that it is not Poetry; and how does the conception shape itself in his mind? Why, in an image. All at once it is not Prose that is thought about, but a huge six-foot speaking-trumpet braced round with bark, through which the Swiss hunters help their voices from Alp to Alp-- Poetry, on the other hand, being no such big and blaring instrument, but a harp taken to the breast of youth and swept by ecstatic fingers. And so with the images of Boehme and his book, and John of Halberstadt with his magic rose--still a concrete body to enshrine an abstract meaning.”