Joseph Arnould to Robert Browning, 25 April 1850: 'I have read re-read marked learned & [italics]]really[end italics] inwardly digested your last Poem [...] Well then I must say quite honestly that though your master hand has never dashed on the canvas the colours of poetry more grandly [...] yet, [italics]as a whole[end italics], it is less satisfactory to me than some of your earlier inspirations: call me limited, narrow, academic what you will, but I cannot quite like the grotesque, wonderful inventive & ingenious as it is of your opening; & then not so much on the ground of any mere individual dislike on my own part, as from the feeling that it may be a stumbling block to so many weaker brethren in the critic world'.