Themes
The poet as prophet
Wilde's highest praise is religious. Above the merely 'delightful artist' he places 'a force and fervour of mere utterance that has all the wonder of the prophet', and he finds it in Mrs. Browning. Taking her own remark that the poet 'wears better broadcloth, but speaks no more oracles', he makes her the exception: a Sibyl delivering a message, proof that 'the Pythia is not dead', and wiser than Michael Angelo's Sibyl on the Sistine ceiling because she knew that suffering is part of knowledge.
Roughness as art
Wilde defends Mrs. Browning's faults as choices. The old jest that 'She would rhyme moon to table' is fair, he admits, and her rhymes can be monstrous, but 'her ruggedness was never the result of carelessness.' She disliked facile smoothness and 'refused to sandpaper her muse', and her loose assonance brings 'a pleasurable element of surprise.' The paradox that 'In her very rejection of art she was an artist' shows Wilde judging a poet by her intended effect, not by rules.
Poetry and prose
Midway through, Wilde turns from verse to a complaint about English prose. Poetry is 'for our highest moods, when we wish to be with the gods', but prose is 'for our daily bread', and the prose of magazines and newspapers is 'terribly dull and cumbrous'. His one-line verdicts on Carlyle, Pater, Froude, Arnold, Meredith, Lang, Stevenson and Ruskin are among the sharpest things in the piece, and his closing wish that women write more prose returns to the same point.
Tradition and the historical view
Wilde argues that the English underrate tradition: 'we have forgotten how beautiful Echo may be.' Culture and the study of good models can produce admirable work without genius, and he asks that the earlier poetesses be judged from 'the historical standpoint', the only fair one for work not of the highest order. He applies it with a light touch, forgiving Katharine Philips for inventing sentimentality and noting that Mrs. Chapone's Ode to Solitude fills him 'with the wildest passion for society'.