Chapter 2 THE CENTURY'S END PROMISE OF PEACE

Passing onward from this mid-century phase of Browning's interest in what I have called the battle of the mind and the spirit, we find him in his later poems taking up the subject in its broader aspects, more as he treated it in "Paracelsus," yet with a marked difference in temper. God is no longer conceived of merely as a divine creator, joying in the wonder and beauty of his creations. The ideal of the artist has been modified by the observation of the thinker and the feeling induced by human rather than by artistic emotion.

Life's experiences have shown to the more humanly conscious Browning that the problem of evil is not one to be so easily dismissed. The scientist may point out that evil is but lack of development, and the lover and artist may exult when he sees the wonderful processes of nature and mind carrying forward development until he can picture a time when the evil shall become null and void, but the human, feeling being sees the misery and the unloveliness of evil. It does not satisfy him to know that it is lack of development or the outcome of lack of development, nor yet that it will grow less as time goes on he ponders the problem, "why is evil permitted, how is it to be harmonized with the existence of a universe planned upon a scheme which he believes to be the outcome of a source all-powerful and all-loving!"

About this problem and its corollary, the conception of the infinite, Browning's latter-day thought revolves as it did in his middle years about the basis of religious belief.

It is one of the strange freaks of criticism that many admirers of Browning's earlier work have failed to see the importance of his later poems, especially "Ferishtah's Fancies," and "The Parleyings," not only as expressions of the poet's own spiritual growth, but as showing his mental grasp of the problems which the advance of nineteenth-century scientific thought brought to the fore in the last days of the century.

The date at which various critics have declared that Browning ceased to write poetry might be considered an index of the time when that critic's powers became atrophied. No less a person than Edmund Gosse is of the opinion that since 1868 the poet's books were chiefly valuable as keeping alive popular interest in him, and as leading fresh generations of readers to what he had already published. Fortunately it has long been admitted that Homer sometimes nods, though not with such awful effect as was said to attend the nods of Jove. Hence, in spite of Mr. Gosse's undoubted eminence as a critic, we may dare to assume that in this particular instance he fell into the ancient and distinguished trick of nodding.

If Mr. Gosse were right, it would practically put on a par with a mere advertising scheme many poems which have now become household favorites. Take, for example, "Hervé Riel." Think of the blue-eyed Breton hero whom all the world has learned to love through Browning, tolerated simply as an index finger to "The Pied Piper of Hamelin." Take, too, such poems, as "Donald." This man's dastardly sportsmanship is so vividly portrayed that it has the power to arouse strong emotion in strong men, who have been known literally to break down in the middle of it through excess of feeling; "Ivan Ivanovitch," in which is embodied such fear and horror that weak hearts cannot stand the strain of hearing it read; the story of the dog Tray, who rescued a drowning doll with the same promptitude as he did a drowning child-at the relation of whose noble deeds the eyes of little children grow eager with excitement and sympathy. And where is there in any poet's work a more vivid bit of tragedy than "A Forgiveness?"

And would not an unfillable gap be left in the ranks of our friends of the imaginative world if Balaustion were blotted out?-the exquisite lyric girl, brave, tender and with a mind in which wisdom and wit are fair play fellows.

As Carlyle might say, "Verily, verily, Mr. Gosse, thou hast out-Homered Homer, and thy nod hath taken upon itself very much the semblance of a snore."

These and many others which might be mentioned since the date when Mr. Gosse autocratically put up the bars to the poet's genius are now universally accepted. There are others, however, such as "The Red Cotton Night-cap Country," "The Inn Album," "Aristophanes' Apology," "Fifine at the Fair," which are liable at any time to attacks from atrophied critics, and among these are the groups of poems which are to form the center of our present discussion.

Without particularizing either critics or criticism it may be said that criticism of these poems divides itself into the usual three branches-one which objects to their philosophy, one which objects to their art, one which finds them difficult of comprehension at all. This last criticism may easily be disposed of by admitting it is in part true. The mind whose highest reaches of poetic inspiration are ministered unto by such simple and easily understandable lyrics as "Twinkle, twinkle, little star," might not at once grasp the significance of the Parleying with George Bubb Dodington. Indeed, it may be surmised that some minds might sing upon the starry heights with Hegel and fathom the equivalence of being and non-being, and yet be led into a slough of despond by this same cantankerous George.

But a poetical slough of despond may be transfigured in the twinkling of an eye-after a proper amount of study and hard thinking-into an elevated plateau with prospects upon every side, grand or terrible or smiling.

Are we never to feel spurred to any poetical pleasure more vigorous than dilly-dallying with Keats while we feast our eyes upon the wideness of the seas? or lazily floating in a lotus land with Tennyson, perhaps, among the meadows of the Musketaquid, in canoes with silken cushions? Beauty and peace are the reward of such poetical pleasures. They fall upon the spirit like the "sweet sound that breathes upon a bank of violets, stealing and giving odor," but shall we never return from the land where it is always afternoon? Is it only in such a land as this that we realize the true power of emotion? Rather does it conduce to the slumber of emotion, for progress is the law of feeling as it is the law of life, and many times we feel-yes, feel-with tremendous rushes of enthusiasm like climbing Matterhorns with great iron nails in our shoes, with historical and arch?ological and philosophical Alpen-stocks in our hands, and when we reach the summit what unsuspected beauties become ours!

Then let us hear no more of the critic who wishes Browning had ceased to write in 1868 or at any other date. It may be said of him, not as of Whitman, "he who reads my book touches a man," but "he who reads my poems from start to finish grasps the life and thought of a century."

There will be no exaggeration in claiming that these two series of poems form the keystone to Browning's whole work. They are like a final synthesis of the problems of existence which he has previously portrayed and analyzed from myriad points of view in his dramatic presentation of character and his dramatic interpretations of spiritual moods.

In "Pauline," before the poet's personality became more or less merged in that of his characters, we obtain a direct glimpse of the poet's own artistic temperament, and may literally acquaint ourselves with those qualities which were to be a large influence in moulding his work.

As described by himself, the poet of "Pauline" was

"Made up of an intensest life,

Of a most clear idea of consciousness

Of self, distinct from all its qualities,

From all affections, passions, feelings, powers;

And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all:

But linked in me to self-supremacy,

Existing as a center to all things,

Most potent to create and rule and call

Upon all things to minister to it."

This sense of an over-consciousness is the mark of an objective poet-one who sympathizes with all the emotions and aspirations of humanity-interprets their actions through the light of this sympathy, and at the same time keeps his own individuality distinct.

The poet of this poem discovers that he can no longer lose himself with enthusiasm in any phase of life; but what does that mean to a soul constituted as his? It means that the way has been cleared for the birth of that greater, broader love of the fully developed artist soul which, while entering into sympathy with all phases of life, finds its true complement only in an ideal of absolute Love.

This picture of the artist aspiring toward the absolute by means of his large human sympathy may be supplemented by the theory of man's relation to the universe involved in "Paracelsus" as we have seen.

From this point in his work, Browning, like the Hindu Brahma, becomes manifest not as himself, but in his creations. The poet whose portrait is painted for us in "Pauline" is the same poet who sympathetically presents a whole world of human experiences to us, and the philosopher whose portrait is drawn in "Paracelsus" is the same who interprets these human experiences in the light of the great life theories therein presented.

But as the creations of Brahma return into himself, so the human experiences Browning has entered into artistic sympathy with return to enrich his completed view of the problems of life, when, like his own Rabbi Ben Ezra, he reaches the last of life for which the first was planned in these "Fancies" and "Parleyings."

Though these two groups of poems undoubtedly express the poet's own mature conclusions, they yet preserve the dramatic form. Several things are gained in this way: First, the poems are saved from didacticism, for the poet expresses his opinions as an individual, and not in his own person as a seer, trying to implant his theories in the minds of disciples. Second, variety is given and the mind stimulated by having opposite points of view presented, while the thought is infused with a certain amount of emotional force through the heat of argument.

It has frequently been objected, not only of these poems, but upon general grounds, that philosophical and ethical problems are not fit subjects for treatment in poetry. There is one point which the critic of ?sthetics seems in danger of never realizing-namely, that the law of evolution is differentiation, in art as well as in cosmic, organic, and social life. It is just as prejudiced and unforeseeing in these days to limit poetry to this or that kind of a subject, or to say that nothing is dramatic which does not deal with immediate action, as it would have been for Homer to declare that no poem would ever be worthy the name that did not contain a catalogue of ships.

These facts exist! We have dramas dealing merely with action, dramas in which character development is of prime importance; dramas wherein action and character are entirely synchronous; and those in which the action means more than appears upon the surface, like Hauptmann's "Sunken Bell," or Ibsen's "Master Builder"; then why not dramas of thought and dramas of mood when the brain and heart become the stage of action instead of an actual stage.

Surely such an extension of the possibilities of dramatic art is a development quite natural to the intellectual ferment of the nineteenth century. As the man in "Half Rome" says, "Facts are facts and lie not, and the question, 'How came that purse the poke o' you?' admits of no reply."

By using the dramatic form, the poet has furthermore been enabled to give one a deep sense of the characteristics peculiar to the century. The latter half of Victorian England in its thought phases lives just as surely in these poems as Renaissance Italy in its art phases in "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Andrea del Sarto," and the rest; and this is true though the first series is cast in the form of Persian fables and the second in the form of "Parleyings" with worthies of past centuries.

It may be worth while for the benefit of the reader not thoroughly familiar with these later poems to pass quickly in review the problems in them upon which Browning bends his poet's insight.

Nothing bears upon the grounds of moral action more disastrously than blind fatalism, and while there have been many evil forms of this doctrine in the past there has probably been none worse than the modern form, because it seems to have sanction in the scientific doctrines of the conservation of energy, the persistence of heredity, and the survival of the fittest. Even the wise and the thoughtful with wills atrophied by scientific phases of fatalism allow themselves to drift upon what they call the laws of development, possessing evidently no realizing sense that the will of man, whether it be in the last analysis absolutely free or not, is a prime factor in the working of these laws. Such people will hesitate, therefore, to throw in their voices upon either side in the solution of great national problems, because, things being bound to follow the laws of development, what matters a single voice! Such arguments were frequently heard among the wise in our own country during the Cuban and Philippine campaigns. Upon this attitude of mind the poet gives his opinion in the first of "Ferishtah's Fancies," "The Eagle." It is a strong plea for the exercise of those human impulses that lead to action. The will to serve the world is the true force from God. Every man, though he be the last link in a chain of causes over which he had no control, can, at least, have a determining influence upon the direction in which the next link shall be forged. Ferishtah appears upon the scene, himself, a fatalist, leaving himself wholly in God's hands, until he is taught by the dream God sent him that man's part is to act as he saw the eagle act, succoring the helpless, not to play the part of the helpless birdlings.

Another phase of the same thought is brought out in "A Camel Driver," where the discussion turns upon punishment. The point is, if, as Ferishtah declares, the sinner is not to be punished eternally, then why should man trouble himself to punish him? Universalist doctrines are here put into the mouth of Ferishtah, and not a few modern philanthropists would agree with Ferishtah's questioners that punishment for sins (the manifestations of inherited tendencies for which the sinners are not responsible) is no longer admissible. Ferishtah's answer amounts to this. That no matter what causes for beneficent ends may be visible to the Divine mind in the allowance of the existence of sin, nor yet the fact that Divine love demands that punishment shall not be eternal; man must regard sin simply from the human point of view as absolute evil, and must will to work for its annihilation. It follows then that the punishing of a sinner is the means by which he may be taught to overcome the sin. There is the added thought, also, that the suffering of the conscience over the subtler sins which go unpunished is all the hell one needs.

Another doctrine upon which the nineteenth-century belief in progress as the law of life has set its seal is that of the pursuit of happiness, or the striving for the greatest good of the whole number in which oneself is not to be excluded. With this doctrine Browning shows himself in full sympathy in "Two Camels," wherein Ferishtah contends that only through the development of individual happiness and the experiencing of many forms of joyousness can one help others to happiness and joyousness, while in "Plot Culture" the enjoyment of human emotion as a means of developing the soul is emphasized.

The relation of good and evil in their broader aspects occupy the poet's attention in others of this group. Nineteenth-century thought brought about a readjustment of these relations. Good and evil as absolutely definable entities gave place to the doctrine that good and evil are relative terms, a phrase which we sometimes forget must be understood in two ways: first, that good and evil are relative to the state of society in which they exist. What may be good according to the ethics of a Fejee Islander would not hold in the civilized society of to-day. This is the evil of lack of development which in the long run becomes less. On the other hand, there is the evil of suffering and pain which it is more difficult to reconcile with the idea of omnipotent power. In "Mihrab Shah," Browning gives a solution of this problem in consonance with the idea that were it not for evil we should not have learned how to appreciate the good, to work for it, and, in doing so, bring about progress.

To his pupil, worried over this problem, Ferishtah points out that evil in the form of bodily suffering has given rise to the beautiful sentiments of pity and sympathy. Having proved in this way that good really grows out of evil, there is still the query, shall evil be encouraged in order that good may be evolved? "No!" Ferishtah declares, man bound by man's conditions is obliged to estimate as "fair or foul right, wrong, good, evil, what man's faculty adjudges as such," therefore the man will do all he can to relieve the suffering or poor Mihrab Shah with a fig plaster.

The final answers, then, which Browning gives to the ethical problems which grew out of the acceptance of modern scientific doctrines are, in brief, that man shall use that will-power of which he feels himself possessed-the power really distinguishing him from the brute creation-in working against whatever appears to him to be evil; while that good for which he shall work is the greatest happiness of all.

In the remaining poems of the group we have the poet's mature word upon the philosophical doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, a doctrine which received the most elaborate demonstration from Herbert Spencer in many directions. It is insisted upon in "Cherries," "The Sun," in "A Bean Stripe also Apple Eating," and especially in that remarkable poem, "A Pillar at Sebzevar." That knowledge fails is the burden of these poems. Knowledge the golden is but lacquered ignorance, as gain to be mistrusted. Curiously enough, this contention of Browning's has been the cause of most of the criticisms against him as a thinker, yet the deepest thinkers of to-day as well as many in the past have held the opinion in some form or another that the intellect was unable to solve the mysterious problems of the universe. Even the metaphysicians who build their unstable air castles on à priori ideas declare these ideas cannot be matters of mere intellectual perception, but must be intuitions of the higher reason. Browning, however, does not rest in the mere assertion that the intellect fails. From this truth, so disconcerting to many, he draws immense comfort. Though intellectual knowledge be mistrusted as gain, it is not to be mistrusted as means to gain, for through its very failure it becomes a promise of greater things.

"Friend," quoth Ferishtah in "A Pillar of Sebzevar,"

"As gain-mistrust it! Nor as means to gain:

Lacquer we learn by: cast in firing-pot,

We learn-when what seemed ore assayed proves dross

Surelier true gold's worth, guess how purity

I' the lode were precious could one light on ore

Clarified up to test of crucible.

The prize is in the process: knowledge means

Ever-renewed assurance by defeat

That victory is somehow still to reach."

For men with minds of the type of Spencer's this negative assurance of the Infinite is sufficient, but human beings as a rule will not rest satisfied with such cold abstractions. Though Job said thousands of years ago, "Who by searching can find out God," mankind still continues to search. They long to know something of the nature of the divine as well as to be assured of its existence. In this very act of searching Browning declares the divine becomes most directly manifest.

From the earliest times of which we have any record man has been aspiring toward God. Many times has he thought he had found him, but with enlarged perceptions he discovered later that what he had found was only God's image built up out of his own human experiences.

This search of man for the divine is described with great power and originality in the Fancy called "The Sun," under the symbol of the man who seeks the prime Giver that he may give thanks where it is due for a palatable fig. This search for God, Browning calls love, meaning by that the moving, aspiring force of the whole universe in its multifarious manifestations, from the love that goes forth in thanks for benefits received, through the aspiration of the artist toward beauty, of the lover toward human sympathy, even of the scientist toward knowledge, to the lover of humanity like Ferishtah, who declares, "I know nothing save that love I can, boundlessly, endlessly."

The poet argues from this that if mankind has with ever-increasing fervor aspired toward a God of Love, and has ever developed toward broader conceptions of human love, it is only reasonable to infer that in his nature God has some attribute which corresponds to human love, though it transcend our most exalted imagining of it.

At the end of the century a book was written in America in which an argument similar to this was used to prove the existence of God. This book was "Through Nature to God," by John Fiske, whose earlier work, "Cosmic Philosophy," did much to familiarize the American reading public with the evolutionary philosophy of Spencer.

Fiske claimed that his theory was entirely original, yet no one familiar with the thought of Browning could fail to see the similarity of their points of view. Fiske based his proof upon analogies drawn from the evolution of organic life in following out the law of the adjustment of inner to outer relations. For example, since the eye has through ?ons of time gradually adjusted itself into harmony with light, why should not man's search for God be the gradual adjustment of the soul into harmony with the infinite spirit? This adjustment, as Browning expresses it, is that of human love to divine love.

Herbert Spencer

Other modern thinkers, notably Schleiermacher in Germany and Shaftsbury in England, have placed the basis of religious truth in feeling. The idea is thus not a new one. Yet in Browning's treatment of it the conception has taken on new life, partly because of the intensity of conviction with which it is expounded in these later poems, and partly because of its having been so closely knit into the scientific thought of the century.

Optimistically the thought is finally rounded out in "A Bean Stripe also Apple Eating," in which Ferishtah argues that life in spite of the evil in it seems to him on the whole good. He cannot believe that evil is not meant to serve a good purpose since he is so sure that God is infinite in love.

From all this it will be seen that Browning accepts with Spencerians the negative proof of God growing out of the failure of intellect to grasp the realities underlying all phenomena, but adds to it the positive proof based upon emotion. The true basis of belief is the intuition of God that comes from the direct revelation of feeling in the human heart, which has been at once the motive force of the search for God and the basis of a conception of the nature of God.

It was a stroke of genius on the part of the poet to present such problems in Persian guise, for Persia stands in Zoroastrianism for the dualism which Ferishtah with his progressive spirit decries in his recognition of the part evil plays in the development of good, and through Mahometanism for the Fatalism Ferishtah learned to cast from him. The Persian atmosphere is preserved throughout not only by the introduction constantly of Persian allusions traceable to the great Persian epic, "The Shah Nameh," but by the telling of fables in the Persian manner to point the morals intended.

With the exception of the first Fancy, derived from a fable of Bidpai's, we have the poet's own word that all the others are inventions of his own. These clever stories make the poems lively reading in spite of their ethical content. Ferishtah is drawn with strong strokes. Wise and clever he stands before us, reminding us at times of Socrates-never at a loss for an answer no matter what bothersome questions his pupils may propound.

If we see the thoughtful and brilliant Browning in the "Fancies" proper, we perhaps see even more clearly the emotional and passionate Browning in the lyrics which add variety and an unwonted charm to the whole. This feature is also borrowed from Persian form, an interesting example of which has been given to English readers in Edwin Arnold's "Gulistan" or "Rose Garden" of the poet Sa'di. Indeed Browning evidently derived the hint for his humorous prologue in which he likens the poems to follow to an Italian dish made of ortolans on toast with a bitter sage leaf, symbolizing sense, sight, and song from Sa'di's preface to the "Rose Garden," wherein he says, "Yet will men of light and learning, from whom the true countenance of a discourse is not concealed, be well aware that herein the pearls of good counsel which heal are threaded on strings of right sense; that the bitter physic of admonition is constantly mingled with the honey of good humor, so that the spirits of listeners grow not sad, and that they remain not exempt from blessings of acceptance."

A further interest attaches to these lyrics because they form a series of emotional phases in the soul-life of two lovers whom we are probably justified in regarding as Mr. and Mrs. Browning. One naturally thinks of them as companion pictures to Mrs. Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese." In these the sunrise of a great love is portrayed with intense and exalted passion, while the lyrics in "Ferishtah's Fancies" reflect the subsequent development of such a love, through the awakening of whole new realms of feeling, wherein love for humanity is enlarged criticism from the one beloved welcome; all the little trials of life dissolved in the new light; and divine love realized with a force never before possible.

Do we not see a living portrait of the two poets in the lyric "So the head aches and the limbs are faint?" Many a hint may be found in the Browning letters to prove that Mrs. Browning with just such a frail body possessed a fire of spirit that carried her constantly toward attainment, while he, with all the vigor of splendid health, could with truth have frequently said, "In the soul of me sits sluggishness." These exquisite lyrics, which, whether they conform to Elizabethan models or not, are as fine as anything ever done in this form, are crowned by the epilogue in which we hear the stricken husband crying out to her whom twenty years earlier he had called his "lyric love," in a voice doubting, yet triumphing in the thought that his lifelong optimism is the light radiating from the halo which her human love had irised round his head.

No more emphatic way than the interspersion of these emotional lyrics could have been chosen to bring home the poet's conviction of the value of emotion in finding a positive basis for religious belief.

In the "Parleyings" the discussions turn principally upon artistic problems and their relation to modern thought. Four out of the seven were inspired by artist, poet or musician. The forgotten worthies whom Browning rescued from oblivion make their appeal to him upon various grounds that connect them with the present.

Bernard de Mandeville evidently caught Browning's fancy, because in his satirical poem, "The Grumbling Hive," he forestalled, by a defence of the Duke of Marlborough's war policy, the doctrine of the relativity of good and evil. This subject, though so fully treated in the "Fancies," still continued to fascinate Browning, who seemed to feel the need of thinking his way through all its implications. Fresh interest is added in this case because the objector in the argument was the poet's contemporary Carlyle, whose well-known pessimism in regard to the existence of evil is graphically presented.

Browning clenches his side of the argument with an original and daring variation upon the Prometheus myth led up to by one of the most magnificent passages in the whole range of his poetry, and probably the finest example anywhere in literature of a description of nature as interpreted by the laws of cosmic evolution. A comparison of this passage with the one in "Paracelsus" brings out very clearly the exact measure of the advance in the poet's thought during the fifty years between which they were written-1835 and 1887. While in the "Paracelsus" passage it is the thought of the joy in the creator's soul for his creations, and the participation of mankind in this joy of progression while pleasure climbs its heights forever and forever, which occupies the poet's mind, in the later passage, there is no attempt at a definite conception of the divine nature. Force represented in the sunlight is described as developing life upon the earth. The thrill of this life-giving power is felt by all things, and is unquestioningly accepted and delighted in.

"Everywhere

Did earth acknowledge Sun's embrace sublime

Thrilling her to the heart of things: since there

No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew,

No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew

Glad through the inrush-glad nor more nor less

Than, 'neath his gaze, forest and wilderness,

Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread,

The universal world of creatures bred

By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise."

Man alone questions. His mind reaches out for knowledge of the cause; he would know its nature. Man's mind will not give any definite answer to this question. But Prometheus offered an artifice whereby man's mind is satisfied. He drew sun's rays into a focus plain and true. The very sun in little: made fire burn and henceforth do man service. Denuded of its scientific and mystical symbolism, Browning thus makes the Prometheus myth teach his favorite doctrine, namely, that the image of love formed in the human heart by means of the burning glass supplied by sense and feeling is a symbol of infinite love.

Daniel Bartoli, a Jesuit of the seventeenth century who is dyed and doubly dyed in superstition, is set up by Browning in the next poem simply to be knocked down again upon the ground that all the legendary saints he worshipped could not compare with a real woman the poet knows. The romantic story of the lady is told in Browning's most fascinating narrative style, so rapid and direct that it has all the force of a dramatic sketch. The heroine's claim upon the poet's admiration consists in her recognition of the sacredness of love, which she will not dishonor for worldly considerations, and finding her betrothed incapable of attaining her height of nobleness, she leaves him free.

This story bears upon the poet's philosophy as it reflects his attitude toward human love, which he considers so clearly a revelation that any treatment of it not absolutely noble and true to the highest ideals is a sin against heaven itself.

George Bubb Dodington is the black sheep of these later poems. He gives the poet an opportunity to let loose all his subtlety and sarcasm, while the reader may exercise his wits in discovering that the poet assumes to agree with Dodington in his doubtful doctrine of serving the state with an eye always upon his own private welfare, and pretends to criticise him only for his method of attaining his ends. His method is to disclaim that he works for any other good than that of the State-a proposition so preposterous in his case that nobody would believe it. The poet then presents what purports to be the correct method of successful statesmanship-namely, to pose as a superior being endowed with the divine right to rule, treating everybody as his puppet, and entirely scornful of any criticisms against himself. If he will adopt this attitude he may change his tactics every year and the people, instead of suspecting his sincerity, will think that he has wise reasons beyond their insight for his changes. The poem is a powerful, intensely cynical argument against the imperialistic temper and in favor of liberal government. This means for the individual not only the right but the power to judge for himself, instead of being obliged to depend, because of his own inefficiency, upon the leadership of the over-man, whose intentions are unfortunately too seldom to be trusted.

The poet called from the shades by Browning, Christopher Smart, is celebrated in the world of criticism for having only once in his life written a great poem. The eulogies upon the beauties of "The Song of David" might not be echoed by all lay readers of poetry; nor is it of any moment whether Browning actually agreed with the conclusions of the critics, since the episode is used merely as a text for discussing the problem of beauty versus truth in art. Should the poet's province be simply to record his vision of the beauty and the strength of nature and the universe-visions which come to him in moments of inspiration such as that which came once to Christopher Smart? Browning answers the question characteristically with his feet upon the earth. The visions of poets should not be considered as ends in themselves, but as material to be used for greater ends.

The poet should find his inspiration in the human heart, and climb to heaven by its means, not investigate the heavens first. Diligently must he study mankind, and teach as man may through his knowledge.

In "Francis Furini" the subject is the nude in art. The keynote is struck by the poet's declaring he will never believe the tale told by Baldinicci that Furini ordered all his pictures in which there were nude figures burned. He expresses his indignation at the tale vigorously at some length, showing plainly his own sympathies.

The passage in the poem bearing more especially upon the present discussion is the lecture by Furini imagined by the poet to have been delivered before a London audience. It is a long and recondite speech in which the scientific and the intuitional methods of arriving at truth are compared. While the scientific method is acknowledged to be of value, the intuitional method is claimed as by far the more important.

A philippic against Greek art and its imitation is delivered by the poet in the "Parleying with Gerard de Lairesse," whom he makes the scapegoat of his strictures, on the score of a book Lairesse wrote in which was described a walk through a Dutch landscape when every feature was transmogrified by classic imaginings.

To this good soul, an old sepulcher struck by lightning became the tomb of Phaeton, and an old cartwheel half buried in the sand near by, the Chariot of the Sun.

In a spirit of bravado Browning proceeds to show what he himself could make of a walk provided he condescended to illuminate it by classic metaphor and symbol, and a remarkable passage is the result. It occupies from the eighth to the twelfth stanza. It is meant to be in derision of a grandiloquent, classically embroidered style but so splendid is the language, so haunting the pictures, the symbolism so profound that it is as if a God were showing some poor weakling mortal how not to do it-and through his omniscience must perforce create something wondrously beautiful. The double feeling produced in reading this passage only adds to its interest. After thus classicizing in a manner that might make Euripides, himself, turn green with envy, he nonchalantly remarks:

"Enough, stop further fooling," and to show how a modern poet greets a landscape he flings in the perfectly simple and irresistible little lyric:

"Dance, yellows, and whites and reds."

The poet's strictures upon classicism are entirely consonant with his philosophy, placing as he does the paramount importance on living realities, "Do and nowise dream," he exclaims:

"Earth's young significance is all to learn;

The dead Greek love lies buried in its urn

Where who seeks fire finds ashes."

The "Parleying" with Charles Avison is more a poem of moods than any of the others. The poet's profound appreciation of music is reflected in his claiming it as the highest artistic expression possible to man. Sadness comes to him, however, at the thought of the ephemeralness of its forms, a fact that is borne in on him because of the inadequateness of Avison's old march styled "grand." He finally emerges triumphantly from this mood of sadness through the realization that music is the most perfect symbol of the evolution of spirit, of which the central truth-

"The inmost care where truth abides in fulness"-

as Paracelsus expresses it, remains always permanent, while the form is ever changing, but though ever changing it is of absolute value to the time when the spirit found expression in it. Furthermore, in any form once possessing beauty, by throwing one's self into its historical atmosphere the beauty may be regained.

The poem has, of course, a still larger significance in relation to all forms of truth and beauty of which every age has had its living, immortal examples, the "broken arcs" which finally will make the perfect round, each arc perfect in itself, and thus the poet's final p?an is joyous, "Never dream that what once lived shall ever die."

The prologue of this series of poems prefigures the thought in a striking dialogue between Apollo and the Fates wherein the Fates symbolize the natural forces of life, behind which is Zeus or divine power; Apollo's light symbolizes the glamour which hope and aspiration throw over the events of human existence, without actually giving any assurance of its worth, and the wine of Bacchus symbolizes feeling, by means of which a perception of the absolute is gained. Man's reason, guided by the divine, accepts this revelation through feeling not as actual knowledge of the absolute which transcends all intellectual attempts to grasp it, but as a promise sufficiently assuring to take him through the ills and uncertainties of life with faith in the ultimate triumph of beauty and good.

The epilogue, a dialogue between John Fust and his friends, brings home the thought once more in another form, emphasizing the fact that there can be no new realm of actual, palpable knowledge opened up to man beyond that which his intellect is able to perceive. Once having gained this knowledge of the failure of intellectual knowledge to solve what Whitman calls the "strangling problems" of life, man's part is to follow onward through ignorance.

"Dare and deserve!

As still to its asymptote speedeth the curve,

So approximates Man-Thee, who reachable not,

Hast formed him to yearningly

Follow thy whole

Sole and single omniscience!"

It will be seen from this review of the salient points enlarged upon by Browning in these last groups of poems that he has deliberately set himself to harmonize the intellectual and the intuitional aspects of human consciousness. He has sought to join the hands of mind and spirit. The artistic exuberance of Paracelsus is supplemented by spiritual fervor. To the young Browning, the beauty of immortal, joyous life pursuing its heights forever was as a radiant vision, to the Browning who had grappled with the strangling problems of the century this beauty was not so distinctly seen, but its reality was felt with all the depth of an intensely spiritual nature-a nature moreover so absolutely fearless, that it could unflinchingly confront every giant of doubt, or of disillusionment which science in its pristine egotism had conjured up, saying "Keep to thine own province, where thou art indeed powerful; to the threshold of the eternal we may come through thy ministrations, but the consciousness of divine things cometh through the still small voice of the heart."

Thus, while he accepted every law relating to phenomena which science has been able to formulate, he realized the futility of resting in a primal, wholly dehumanized energy, that is, something not greater but less than its own outcome, humanity. He was incapable of any such absurdity as Clifford's dictum that "Reason, intelligence and volition are properties of a complex which is made up of elements, themselves not rational, not intelligent, not conscious." Since Clifford's time, the marked differences between the processes of a psychic being like man, and the processes of nature have been so fully recognized and so carefully defined by psychologists that Browning's insistence upon making man the center whence truth radiates has had full confirmation.

Theodore Merz has summed up these psychological conclusions in regard to the characteristics peculiar to man as distinguished from all the rest of the universe in the following words:

"There are two properties with which we are familiar through common sense and ordinary reflection as belonging especially to the phenomena of our inner self-conscious life, and these properties seem to lie quite beyond the sphere and the possibilities of the ordinary methods of exact research.

"As we ascend in the scale of human beings we become aware that they exhibit a special kind of unity which cannot be defined, a unity which, even when apparently lost in periods of unconsciousness, is able to reestablish itself by the wonderful and indefinable property called 'memory'-a center which can only be very imperfectly localized-a together which is more than a mechanical sum; in fact we rise to the conception of individuality, that which cannot be divided and put together again out of its parts.

"The second property is still more remarkable. The world of the inner processes which accompany the higher forms of nervous development in human beings is capable of unlimited growth and it is capable of this by a process of becoming external: it becomes external, and, as it were, perpetuates itself in language, literature, science and art, legislation, society, and the like. We have no analogue of this in physical nature, where matter and energy are constant quantities and where the growth and multiplication of living matter is merely a conversion of existing matter and energy into special altered forms without increase or decrease in quantity. But the quantity of the inner thing is continually on the increase; in fact, this increase is the only thing of interest in the whole world."

Thus the modern psychologist and the poet who in the early days of the century said the soul was the only thing worth study join hands.

The passage already referred to in "Francis Furini" presents most explicitly the objective or intellectual method and the subjective or intuitional method of the search for truth.

Furini is made to question-

"Evolutionists!

At truth I glimpse from depths, you glance from heights,

Our stations for discovery opposites,

How should ensue agreement! I explain."

He describes, then, how the search of the evolutionist for the absolute is outside of man. "'Tis the tip-top of things to which you strain." Arriving at the spasm which sets things going, they are stopped, and since having arrived at unconscious energy, they can go no further, they now drop down to a point where atoms somehow begin to think, feel, and know themselves to be, and the world's begun such as we recognize it. This is a true presentation of the attitude of physicists and chemists to-day, the latter especially holding that experiment proves that in the atoms themselves is an embryonic form of consciousness and will. From these is finally evolved at last self-conscious man. But after all this investigating on the part of the evolutionist what has been gained? Of power-that is, power to create nature or life, or even to understand it-man possesses no particle, and of knowledge, only just so much as to show that it ends in ignorance on every side. This is the result of the objective search for truth. But begin with man himself, and there is a fact upon which he can take a sure stand, his self-consciousness-a "togetherness," as Merz says, which cannot be explained mathematically by the adding up of atoms; and furthermore an inborn certainty that whatever is felt to be within had its rise or cause without: "thus blend the conscious I, and all things perceived in one Effect." Through this subjective perception of an all-powerful cause a reflex light is thrown back upon all that the investigations of the intellect have accomplished. The cause is no longer simply blind energy, but must itself be possessed of gifts as great and still greater than those with which the soul of man is endowed. The forces at work in nature thus become instinct with wonder and beauty, the good and evil of life reveal themselves as a means used by absolute Power and Love for the perfecting of the soul which made to know on and ever must know

"All to be known at any halting stage

Of [the] soul's progress, such as earth, where wage

War, just for soul's instruction, pain with joy,

Folly with wisdom, all that works annoy

With all that quiets and contents."

To sum up-our investigations into Browning's thought show him to be a type primarily of the mystic. Mysticism in its most pronounced forms regards the emotions of the human mind as supreme. The mystic, instead of allowing the intellectual faculty to lead the way, degrades it to an inferior position and makes it entirely subservient to the feelings. In some moods Browning seems almost to belong to this pronounced type; for example, when he says in "A Pillar at Sebzevar," "Say not that we know, rather that we love, therefore we know enough."

David Strauss

It must be remembered, however, that he is not in either class of the supernatural mystic, one of which supposes truth to be gained by a fixed supernatural channel, the other that it is gained by extraordinary supernatural means. On the contrary, truth comes to Browning in pursuance of a regular law or fact of the inward sensibility, which may be defined in his case as a mode of intuition. His intuition of God, as we have seen, is based upon the feeling of love both in its human and its abstract aspects.

But this is not all. Upon the intellectual side Browning accepted the conclusions of scientific investigation as far as phenomena were concerned, and while he denied its worth in giving direct knowledge of the Absolute, he recognized it as useful because of its very failure in strengthening the sense of the existence of a power transcending human conception. "What is our failure here but a triumph's evidence of the fulness of the days?" And, furthermore, with mystic love already in our hearts, all knowledge that the scientist may bring us of the phenomena of nature and life only adds immeasurably to our wonder and awe of the power which has brought these things to pass, thus "with much more knowledge" comes "always much more love."

Once more, the poet's mysticism is tempered by a tinge of idealism. There are several passages in his poems, notably one already quoted from Furini, which show him to have had a perception of God directly through his own consciousness by means of what the idealist calls the higher reason. His perception, for instance, that whatever takes place within the consciousness had its rise without and that this external origin emanates from God is the idealist's way of arriving at the absolute.

Thus we see that into Browning's religious conceptions enter the intuitions of the artistic consciousness as illustrated in Paracelsus where God is the divine artist joying in his creations, the intuitions of the intellect which finds in the failure of knowledge to probe the secrets of the universe the assurance of a transcendent power beyond human ken, the intuition of the higher reason which affirms God is, and the intuitions of the heart which promise that God is love, through whom is to come fulfilment of all human aspirations toward Beauty, Truth, and Love in immortality.

If these are all points which have been emphasized, now by one, now by another, of the vast array of thinkers who have crowded the past century, there is no one who to my knowledge has so completely harmonized the various thought tendencies of the age, and certainly none who has clothed them in such a wealth of imaginative and emotional illustration.

In these last poems Browning appears to borrow an apt term from Whitman, as the "Answerer" of his age. In them he has unquestioningly accepted the knowledge which science has brought, and, recognizing its relative character, has yet interpreted it in such a way as to make it subserve the highest ideals in ethics, religion, and art. Far from reflecting any degeneration in Browning's philosophy of life, these poems place on a firmer basis than ever thoughts prominent in his poetry from the first, while adding to these the profounder insight into life which life's experiences had brought him.

The subject matter and form are no less remarkable than their thought. The variety in both is almost bewildering. Religion and fable, romance and philosophy, art and science all commingled in rich profusion; everything in language-talk almost colloquial, dainty lyrics full of exquisite emotion, and grand passages which present in sweeping images now the processes of cosmic evolution, now those of spiritual evolution, until it seems as if we had indeed been conducted to some vast mountain height, whence we can look forth upon the century's turbulent seas of thought, into which flows many a current from the past, while suspended above between the sea and sky, like the crucifix in Simons's wonderful symbolic picture of the Middle Ages, is the mystical form of divine love and joy which Browning has made symbolic of the nineteenth century.

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