Browning and His Century

During the nineteenth century, which has already receded far enough into the perspective of the past for us to be able to take a comprehensive view of it, the advance guard of the human race found itself in a position entirely different from that ever before occupied by it. Through the knowledge of cosmic, animal, and social evolution gradually accumulated by the laborious and careful studies of special students in every department of historical research and scientific experiment, a broader and higher state of self-consciousness was attained.

Mankind, on its most perceptive plane, no longer pinned its faith to inherited traditions, whether of religion, art, or morals. Every conceivable fact and every conceivable myth was to be tested in the laboratory of the intellect, even the intellect itself was to undergo dissection, with the result that, once for all, it has been decided what particular range of human knowledge lies within the reach of mental perception, and what particular range of human knowledge can be grasped only through spiritual perception.

Such a momentous decision as this in the history of thought has not been reached without a long and protracted struggle extending back into the early days of Christianity, nor, it may be said, is the harmony as yet complete, for there are to-day, and perhaps always will be, human beings whose consciousness is not fully orbed and who either seek their point of equilibrium too entirely in the plane of mind or too entirely in the plane of spirit.

In the early days, before Christianity came to bring its "sword upon earth," there seems to have been little or no consciousness of such a struggle. The ancient Hindu, observing Nature and meditating upon the universe, arrived intuitively at a perception of life and its processes wonderfully akin to that later experimentally proved by the nineteenth century scientist, nor did he have a suspicion that such truth was in any way antagonistic to religious truth. On the contrary, he considered that, by it, the beauty and mystery of religion was immeasurably enhanced, and, letting his imagination play upon his intuition, he brought forth a theory of spiritual evolution in which the world to-day is bound to recognize many elements of beauty and power necessary to any complete conception of religion in the future.

Even the Babylonians made their guesses at an evolutionary theory of the universe. Greek philosophy, later, was permeated with the idea, it having been derived by them perhaps from the Chaldeans through the Ph?nicians, or if the theories of Aryan migrations be correct, perhaps through inheritance from a remote Aryan ancestry.

When Christian thought gained its hold upon the world, the account of creation given in Genesis became so thoroughly impressed upon the minds of men that it was regarded as the orthodox view, rooted in divine revelation, and to question it was to incur the danger of being called an atheist, with its possibly uncomfortable consequences of being martyred.

Strangely enough, the early Church adopted into its fold many pagan superstitions, such as a belief in witchcraft and in signs and wonders, as well as some myths, but this great truth upon which the pagan mind had stumbled, it would have none of.

These two circumstances-the adoption on the part of Christianity of pagan superstitions and its utter repudiation of the pagan guesses upon evolution, carrying within it the germs of truth, later to be unearthed by scientific research-furnished exactly the right conditions for the throwing down of the gauntlet between the mind and the spirit. The former, following intellectual guidance, found itself coming more and more into antagonism with the spirit, not yet freed from the trammels of imagination. The latter, guided by imagination, continued to exercise a mythop?ic faculty, which not only brought it more and more into antagonism with the mind, but set up within its own realm an internecine warfare which has blackened the pages of religious history with crimes and martyrdoms so terrible as to force the conviction that the true devil in antagonism to spiritual development has been the imagination of mankind, masquerading as verity, and not yet having found its true function in art.

Regarded from the point of view of the student of intellectual development, this conflict of two thousand years has the fascination of a great drama of which the protagonist is the mind struggling to free the spirit from its subjection to the evil aspects of the imagination. Great thinkers in the field of science, philosophy, and religion are the dramatis person?, and in the onward rush of this world-drama the sufferings of those who have fallen by the way seem insignificant.

But when the student of history takes his more intimate survey of the purely human aspects of the struggle, heartrending, indeed, become the tragedies resulting from the exercise of human bigotry and stupidity.

Indignation and sorrow take possession of us when we think upon such a spectacle as that of Roger Bacon, making ready to perform a few scientific experiments before a small audience at Oxford, confronted by an uproar in which monks, fellows, and students rushed about, their garments streaming in the wind, crying out, "Down with the magician!" And this was only the beginning of a persecution which ended in his teaching being solemnly condemned by the authorities of the Franciscan order and himself thrown for fourteen years into prison, whence he issued an old and broken man of eighty.

More barbarous still was the treatment of Giordano Bruno, a strange sort of man who developed his philosophy in about twenty-five works, some prose, some poetry, some dialogues, some comedies, with such enticing titles as "The Book of the Great Key," "The Explanation of the Thirty Seals," "The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast," "The Threefold Minimum," "The Composition of Images," "The Innumerable, the Immense and the Unfigurable." His utterances were vague, especially to the intellects of his time, yet not so vague that theology, whether Catholic or Calvinistic, did not at once take fright.

He held that the investigation of nature in the unbiased light of reason is our only guide to truth. He rejected antiquity, tradition, faith, and authority; he exclaimed, "Let us begin by doubt. Let us doubt till we know." Acting upon these principles, he began to unfold again that current of Greek thought which the system imposed by the Church had intercepted for more than a thousand years, and arrived at a conception of evolution prefiguring the modern theories.

He conceived the law of the universe to be unceasing change. "Each individual," he declared, "is the resultant of innumerable individuals; each species is the starting point for the next." Furthermore, he maintained that the perfecting of the individual soul is the aim of all progress.

Tenets so opposite to the orthodox view of special creation and the fall of man could not be allowed to go unchallenged. It is to be remembered that he was a priest in holy orders in the Convent of St. Dominic, and in the year 1576 he was accused by the Provincial of his order of heresy on one hundred and thirty counts. He did not await his trial, but fled to Rome, thence to northern Italy, and became for some years a wanderer. He was imprisoned at Geneva; at Toulouse he spent a year lecturing on Aristotle; in Paris, two years as professor extraordinary in the Sorbonne; three years in London, where he became the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, and influenced the philosophy of both Bacon and Shakespeare. Oxford, however, was unfriendly to his teachings and he was obliged to flee from England also. Then he wandered for five years from city to city in Germany-at one time warned to leave the town, at another excommunicated, at another not even permitted to lodge within the gates. Finally, he accepted the invitation of a noble Venetian, Zuane Mocenigo, to visit Venice and teach him the higher and secret learning. The two men soon quarreled, and Bruno was betrayed by the count into the hands of the Inquisition. He was convicted of heresy in Venice and delivered to the Inquisition in Rome. He spent seven years in its dungeons, and was again tried and convicted, and called upon to recant, which he stoutly refused to do. Sentence of death was then passed upon him and he was burned at the stake on February 17, 1600, on the Campo de' Fiori, where there now stands a statue erected by Progressive Italy in his honor.

His last words were, "I die a martyr, and willingly." Then they cast his ashes into the Tiber and placed his name among the accused on the rolls of the Church. And there it probably still remains, for no longer ago than 1889, when his statue was unveiled on the ninth of June, on the site of his burning, in full view of the Vatican, Pope Leo XIII, it is said, refused food and spent hours in an agony of prayer at the foot of the statue of St. Peter. Catholic, and even Protestant, denunciation of Bruno at this time showed that the smoke from this particular battle in the war of mind with spirit was still far from being laid.

With the fate of Giordano Bruno still fresh in his mind, Galileo succumbed to the demands of the Inquisition and recanted, saying that he no longer believed what he, himself, with his telescope had proved to be true.

"I, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a prisoner and on my knees, and before your Eminences, having before my eyes the Holy Gospel, which I touch with my hands, abjure, curse, and detest the error and the heresy of the movement of the earth."

If this recantation had brought any comfort or peace into his life it might have been hard to forgive Galileo's perjury of himself. His persecution, however, continued to the end. He was exiled from his family and friends, and, even when he had become blind and wasted by sorrow and disease, he was still closely watched lest he might utter the awful heresy that the earth moved.

A hundred years later than this, when Buffon attempted to teach the simple truths of geology, he was deposed from his high position and made to recant by the theological faculty of the Sorbonne. The man who promulgated geological principles, as firmly established to-day as that of the rotation of the earth upon its axis, was forced to write: "I declare that I had no intention to contradict the text of Scripture; that I believe most firmly all therein related about the creation, both as to order of time and matter of fact. I abandon everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which may be contrary to the narrative of Moses."

Such are the more heinous examples of the persecution of the men who discovered the truths of science. To these should be added the wholesale persecution of witches and magicians, for unusual knowledge of any sort ran the chance of being regarded as contrary to biblical teaching and of being attributed to the machinations of the Prince of Darkness.

Every new step made in the direction of scientific truth has had thus to face the most determined opposition. Persecution by torture and death died out, but up to the nineteenth century, and well on through it, denunciation, excommunication, suppression, the loss of honorable positions have all been used as weapons by church or university in the attempt to stamp out whatever it considered dangerous and subverting doctrines of science.

The decisive battle was not to be inaugurated until the latter half of the nineteenth century, with the advent in the field of such names in science as Spencer, Darwin, Tyndall and Huxley, and such names in biblical criticism as Strauss and Renan.

The outposts, it is true, had been won by advancing scientific thought, for step by step the Church had compromised, and had admitted one scientific doctrine after another as not incompatible with biblical truth. But now, not only theology, the imperfect armor in which the spirit had been clothed, was attacked, but the very existence of spirit itself was to be questioned. The thinking world was to be divided into materialists and supernaturalists. Now, at last, mind and spirit, who in the ages long gone had been brothers, were to stand face to face as enemies. Was this mortal combat to end in the annihilation of either, or would this, too, end in a compromise leading to harmony?

At the dawn of this century, in 1812, came into the world its master poetic mind. I say this to-day without hesitation, for no other English poet of the century has been so thoroughly aware of the intellectual tendencies of his century, and has so emotionalized them and brought them before us under the humanly real conditions of dramatic utterance.

It is not surprising, considering this fact, that in his second poem, written in 1835, Browning ventures into the arena and at once tackles the supreme problem of the age, what is to be the relation of mind and spirit?

It is characteristic of the poetic methods, which dominated his work, that he should have presented this problem through the personality of a historical figure who played no inconsiderable part in the intellectual development of his time, though not a man to whom general historians have been in the habit of assigning much space in their pages. Browning, however, as Hall Griffin informs us, had been familiar with the name of Paracelsus from his childhood, of whom he had read anecdotes in a queer book, Wanley's "Wonders of the Little World." Besides, his father's library, wherein as a boy he was wont to browse constantly, contained the Opera Omnia of Paracelsus.

With the confidence of youth and of genius the poet attempts in this poem a solution of the problem. To mind he gives the attribute of knowledge, to spirit the attribute of love.

The poem as a whole does not concern us here except as a background for its final thoughts. In order, however, to put the situation clearly before readers not already familiar with it, I venture to transcribe a portion of a former analysis of my own.

Paracelsus aspires to the acquisition of absolute knowledge and feels born within him the capabilities for attaining this end, and, when attained, it is to be devoted to enlarging the possibilities of man's life. The whole race is to be elevated at once. Man may not be doomed to cope with seraphs, yet by the exercise of human strength alone he hopes man may one day beat God's angels.

He is a revolter, however, against the magical and alchemistic methods of his age, which seek for the welfare of men through the elixir of youth or the philosopher's stone. He especially disclaims such puerile schemes in the passionate moment when he has realized how futile all his lifelong efforts have been. He stands, indeed, at the threshold of a new world. He has a glimmering of the true scientific methods which would discover first the secrets of life's laws, and then use these natural laws to bring about life's betterment, instead of hoping for salvation through the discovery of some magic secret by means of which life's laws might be overcome. Yet he is sufficiently of his own superstitious age to desire and expect fairly magical results from the laws he hopes to discover. The creed which spurs him to his quest is his belief that truth is inborn in the soul, but to set this truth free and make it of use to mankind correspondences in outer nature must be found. An intuitive mind like Paracelsus's will recognize these natural corollaries of the intuition wherever it finds them; and these are what Paracelsus goes forth over the earth to seek and find, sure he will "arrive." One illustration of the results so obtained is seen in the doctrine of the signatures of plants according to which the flowers, leaves, and fruits of plants indicate by their color or markings, etc., the particular diseases they are intended to cure. The real Paracelsus practised medicine upon this theory.

Though such methods are a long distance from those of the modern scientist, who deduces his laws from careful and patient observation of nature, they go a step toward his in seeking laws in nature to correspond to hypotheses born of intuition.

Browning's presentation of the attitude of mind and the place held by Paracelsus in the development of science is exactly in line with the most recent criticisms of this extraordinary man's life. According to these he fluctuated between the systems of magic then prevalent and scientific observation, but always finally threw in the balance of his opinion on the side of scientific ways of working; and above all made the great step from a belief in the influence of nature upon man to that of the existence of parallelisms between nature processes and human processes.

Though he thus opened up new vistas for the benefit of man, he must necessarily be a failure, from his own point of view, with his "India" not found, his absolute truth unattained; and it is upon this side that the poet dwells. For a moment he is somewhat reassured by the apparition of Aprile, scarcely a creature of flesh and blood, more the spirit of art who aspires to love infinitely and has found the attainment of such love as impossible as Paracelsus has found the attainment of knowledge. Both have desired to help men, but Paracelsus has desired to help them rather through the perfecting, even immortalizing, of their physical being; Aprile, through giving man, as he is, infinite sympathy and through creating forms of beauty which would show him his own thoughts and hopes glorified by the all-seeing touch of the artist.

Paracelsus recognizes his deficient sympathy for mankind, and tries to make up for it in his own way by giving out of the fulness of his knowledge to men. The scornful and proud reformer has not, however, truly learned the lesson of love, and verily has his reward when he is turned against by those whom he would teach. Then the old ideal seizes upon him again, and still under the influence of Aprile he seeks in human experience the loves and passions of mankind which he learns through Aprile he had neglected for the ever-illusive secret, but neither does success attend him here, and only on his deathbed does his vision clear up, and he is made to indulge in a prophetic utterance quite beyond the reach of the original Paracelsus.

In this passage is to be found Browning's first contribution to a solution of the great problem. That it is instinct with the idea of evolution has become a commonplace of Browning criticism, a fact which was at least independently or, as far as I know, first pointed out by myself in an early essay upon Browning. At the time, I was reading both Browning and Spencer, and could not but be impressed by the parallelisms in thought between the two, especially those in this seer-like passage and "The Data of Ethics."

Writers whose appreciation of a poet is in direct ratio to the number of exact historical facts to be found in a poem like to emphasize this fact that the doctrine of evolution can be found in the works of Paracelsus. Why not? Since, as we have seen it had been floating about in philosophical thought in one form or another for some thousands of years.

Indeed, it has been stated upon good authority that the idea of a gradual evolution according to law and of a God from whom all being emanates, from whom all power proceeds, is an inherent necessity of the Aryan mind as opposed to the Semitic idea of an outdwelling God and of supernaturalism. Thus, all down the ages the Aryan mind has revolted from time to time against the religious ideas superimposed upon it by the Semitic mind. This accounts for the numerous heresies within the bosom of the Church as well as for the scientific advance against the superstitions of the Church.

Generalizations of this sweeping order are apt to contain only partial truth. It would probably be nearer the whole truth, as we are enabled to-day to trace historical development, to say that, starting with opposite conceptions, these two orders of mind have worked toward each other and the harmonization of their respective points of view, and, furthermore, that this difference in mind belongs to a period prior even to the emergence of the Aryan or the Semitic. Researches in mythology and folklore seem to indicate that no matter how far back one may go in the records of human thought there will be found these two orders of mind-one which naturally thinks of the universe as the outcome of law, and one which naturally thinks of it as the outcome of creation. There are primitive myths in which mankind is supposed to be descended from a primitive ancestor, which may range all the way from a serpent to an oak tree, or, as in a certain Zulu myth, a bed of reeds growing on the back of a small animal. And there are equally primitive myths in which mankind is created out of the trees or the earth by an external agent, varying in importance from a grasshopper to a more or less spiritual being.

Browning did not need to depend upon Paracelsus for his knowledge of evolution. He may not have known that the ancient Hindu in the dim mists of the past had an intuition of the cosmic egg from which all life had evolved, and that he did not know of the theory as it is developed in the great German philosophers we are certain, because he, himself, asseverated that he had never read the German philosophers, but it is hardly possible that he did not know something of it as it appears in the writings of the Greek philosophers, for Greek literature was among the earliest of his studies. He might, for instance, have taken a hint from the speculations of that half mythical marvel of a man, Empedocles, with which the Paracelsus theory of the universe, as it appears in the passage under discussion, has many points of contact.

According to Empedocles, the four primal elements, earth, air, fire and water, are worked upon by the forces of love and discord. By means of these forces, out of the primal elements are evolved various and horrible monstrosities before the final form of perfection is reached. It is true he did not correctly imagine the stages in the processes of evolution, for instead of a gradual development of one form from another, he describes the process as a haphazard and chaotic one. "Many heads sprouted up without necks, and naked arms went wandering forlorn of shoulders, and solitary eyes were straying destitute of foreheads." These detached portions of bodies coming together by haphazard produced the earlier monstrous forms. "Many came forth with double faces and two breasts, some shaped like oxen with a human front, others, again, of human race with a bull's head." However, the latter part of the evolutionary process as described by Empedocles, when Love takes command, seems especially pertinent as a possible source of Browning's thought:

"When strife has reached the very bottom of the seething mass, and love assumes her station in the center of the ball, then everything begins to come together, and to form one whole-not instantaneously, but different substances come forth, according to a steady process of development. Now, when these elements are mingling, countless kinds of things issue from their union. Much, however, remains unmixed, in opposition to the mingling elements, and these, malignant strife still holds within his grasp. For he has not yet withdrawn himself altogether to the extremities of the globe; but part of his limbs still remain within its bounds, and part have passed beyond. As strife, however, step by step retreats, mild and innocent love pursues him with her force divine; things which had been immortal instantly assume mortality; the simple elements become confused by interchange of influences. When these are mingled, then the countless kinds of mortal beings issue forth, furnished with every sort of form-a sight of wonder."

Though evolution was no new idea, it had been only a hypothesis arrived at intuitionally or suggested by crude observations of nature until by perfected methods of historical study and of scientific experimentation proof was furnished of its truth as a scientific verity.

Let us glance at the situation at the time when Paracelsus was published. In 1835 science had made great strides in the direction of proving the correctness of the hypothesis. Laplace had lived and died and had given to the world in mathematical reasoning of remarkable power proof of the nebular hypothesis, which was later to be verified by Fraunhofer's discoveries in spectrum analysis. Lamarck had lived and died and had given to the world his theory of animal evolution. Lyall in England had shown that geological formations were evolutionary rather than cataclysmal. In fact, greater and lesser scientific lights in England and on the continent were every day adding fresh facts to the burden of proof in favor of the hypothesis. It was in the air, and denunciations of it were in the air.

Most interesting of all, however, in connection with our present theme is the fact that Herbert Spencer was still a lad of fifteen, who was independently of Darwin to work out a complete philosophy of evolution, which was to be applied in every department of cosmic, geologic, plant, animal and human activity, but (and this is of special interest) he was not to give to the world his plan for a synthetic philosophy until 1860, and not to publish his "First Principles" until 1862, nor the first instalment of the "Data of Ethics," the fruit of his whole system, until 1879.

Besides being familiar with the idea as it crops out in Greek thought, it is impossible that the young Browning was not cognizant of the scientific attitude of the time. In fact, he tells us as much himself, for when Doctor Wonivall asked him some questions as to his attitude toward Darwin, Browning responded in a letter: "In reality all that seems proved in Darwin's scheme was a conception familiar to me from the beginning."

Entirely familiar with the evolutionary idea, then, however he may have derived it, it is just what might be expected that he should have worked it into Paracelsus's final theory of life. The remarkable thing is that he should have applied its principles in so masterly a fashion-namely, that he should have made a complete philosophical synthesis by bringing the idea of evolution to bear upon all natural, human and spiritual processes of growth twenty-five years before Herbert Spencer, who is regarded on this particular ground as the master mind of the century, gave his synthetic philosophy of evolution to the world.

A momentary glance at the passage in question will make this clear. Paracelsus traces first development as illustrated in geological forms:

"The center-fire heaves underneath the earth,

And the earth changes like a human face;

The molten one bursts up among the rocks,

Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright

In hidden mines, spots barren river beds,

Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask."

Next he touches upon plant life and animal life. The grass grows bright, the boughs are swollen with blooms, ants make their ado, birds fly in merry flocks, the strand is purple with its tribe of nested limpets, savage creatures seek their loves in wood and plain. Then he shows how in all this animal life are scattered attributes foreshadowing a being that will combine them. Then appears primitive man, only half enlightened, who gains knowledge through the slow, uncertain fruit of toil, whose love is not serenely pure, but strong from weakness, a love which endures and doubts and is oppressed. And out of the travail of the human soul as it proceeds from lower to higher forms is finally evolved self-conscious man-man who consciously looks back upon all that has preceded him and interprets nature by means of his own human perceptions. The winds are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout, a querulous mutter or a quick, gay laugh, never a senseless gust, now man is born.

But development does not end with the attainment of this self-consciousness. After this stage has been reached there continues an evolution which is distinctively spiritual, a tendency to God. Browning was not content with the evolution of man, he was prophetic of the final flowering of man in the superman, although he had never heard of Nietszche.

The corollary to this progressive theory of life, a view held by scientific thinkers, is that sin is not depravity, but is merely a lack of development. Paracelsus is therefore made wise to know even hate is but a mask of love, to see a good in evil, a hope in ill-success, to sympathize, even be proud of man's half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim struggles for truth-all with a touch of nobleness despite their error, upward tending all, though weak.

Though there are points of contact between the thought of the true Paracelsus and of Browning, the points of contact between Spencer and Browning are far more significant, for Browning seems intuitively to have perceived the fundamental truths of social and psychic evolution at the early age of twenty-three-truths which the philosopher worked out only after years of laborious study.

We, who, to-day, are familiar with the application of the theory of evolution to every object from a dustpan to a flying machine, can hardly throw ourselves into the atmosphere of the first half of the last century when this dynamic ideal was flung into a world with static ideals. The Christian world knew little and cared less about the guesses of Greek philosophers, whom they regarded when they did know about them as unregenerate pagans. German thought was caviare to the general, and what new thought of a historical or scientific nature made its way into the strongholds of conservatism filled people with suspicion and dread. Such a sweeping synthesis, therefore, as Browning gives of dawning scientific theories in Paracelsus was truly phenomenal. That it did not prove a bone of contention and arouse controversies as hot as those which were waged later around such scientific leaders as Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, and Clifford was probably due to the circumstance that the poem was little read and less understood, and also to the fact that it contained other elements which overlaid the bare presentation of the doctrines of evolution.

So far I have spoken only of the form of the Paracelsus theory of life, but a theory of life to be complete must have soul as well as form. Only in adding the soul side to his theory of life does Browning really give his solution of the problem, what is to be the relation of mind and spirit?

One other point of resemblance is to be noted between the thought of Browning's Paracelsus and Herbert Spencer. They agree that ultimate knowledge is beyond the grasp of the intellect. Neither was this a new idea; but up to the time of Spencer it was taken simply as a negative conclusion. Spencer, however, having found this negation makes it the body of his philosophy-a body so shadowy that many of his critics consider it too ghostly to stand as a substantial basis for philosophical thought. He regards the failure of the intellect to picture the nature of the absolute as the most certain proof that our intuitions of its existence are trustworthy, and upon this he bases all religious aspiration. Like the psalmist, he exclaims, "Who by searching can find out God?"

The attitude of Paracelsus is identical as far as the intellect is concerned. His life, spent in the search for knowledge, had proved it to him. But he does not, like Spencer, make it the body of his philosophy. Through the influence of Aprile he is led to a definite conception of the Infinite as a Being whose especial characteristic is that he feels!-feels unbounded joy in his own creations. This is eminently an artist's or poet's perception of the relation of God to his universe. As Aprile in one place says, "God is the perfect poet, who in his person acts his own creations."

As I have already pointed out, the evil of pain, of decay, of degeneration is taken no account of.

There is the constant passing onward from joy to joy. All the processes of nature from the simplest to the most complex bring, in their turn, a delight to their Creator until man appears, and is not only a joy to his Creator, but is the first in the order of creation to share in the joy of existence, the first to arrive at the full consciousness of beauty. So overwhelming is this consciousness of beauty that man perceives it struggling for expression in the hates and fallacies of undeveloped natures.

All this is characteristic of the artistic way of looking at life. The artist is prone either to ignore the ugly or to transmute it by art into something possessing beauty of power if not of loveliness. What are plays like "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," "Brand" and "Peer Gynt," music like "Tristan and Isolde" or the "Pathetic Symphony," Rodin's statues, but actual, palpable realizations of the fact that hate is but a mask of love, or that human fallacies and human passions have within them the seeds of immense beauty if only there appear the artist who can bring them forth. If this is true of the human artist, how much more is it true of the divine artist in whose shadow, as Pompilia says, even a Guido may find healing.

The optimism of such a theory of existence is intoxicating. Not only does this artist-man look backward and rejoice in all the beauty of past phases of creation, but he looks forward to endless progression in the enjoyment of fresh phases of beauty-"a flying point of bliss remote." This is a universe in which the Prometheus of the old myths is indeed unbound. Mankind is literally free to progress forever upward. If there are some men in darkness, they are like plants in mines struggling to break out into the sunlight they see beyond.

The interesting question arises here, was Browning, himself, entirely responsible for the soul of his Paracelsus theory of life or was there some source beyond him from which he drew inspiration?

It has frequently been suggested that Aprile in this poem is a sort of symbolic representation of Shelley. Why not rather a composite of both Shelley and Keats, the poet of love and the poet of beauty? An examination of the greatest poems of these two writers, "Prometheus Unbound" and "Hyperion," will bring out the elements in both which I believe entered into Browning's conception.

In the exalted symbolism of the "Prometheus Unbound" Shelley shows that, in his view, evil and suffering were not inherent in the nature of things, the tyranny of evil having gained its ascendancy through the persistence of out-worn ideals, such as that of Power or Force symbolized in the Greek idea of Jupiter. Prometheus is the revolting mind of mankind, enslaved by the tyranny of Jupiter, hating the tyrant, yet determined to endure all the tyrant can inflict upon him rather than admit his right to rule. The freeing of Prometheus and the dethronement of Jupiter come through the awakening in the heart of Prometheus of pity for the tyrant-that is, Prometheus has learned to love his enemies as he loves his friends. The remainder of the poem is occupied with showing the effects upon humanity of this universal awakening of love.

In the fine passage where the Spirit of the Earth hears the trumpet of the Spirit of the Hour sound in a great city, it beholds all ugly human shapes and visages which had caused it pain pass floating through the air, and fading still

"Into the winds that scattered them, and those

From whom they passed seemed mild and lovely forms

After some foul disguise had fallen, and all

Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise

And greetings of delighted wonder, all

Went to their sleep again."

And the Spirit of the Hour relates:

"Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled

The abysses of the sky and the wide earth,

There was a change: the impalpable thin air

And the all-circling sunlight were transformed

As if the sense of love dissolved in them

Had folded itself around the sphered world."

In the meantime, the over-souls of humanity-Prometheus, symbolic of thought or knowledge, is reunited to Asia, his spouse, symbolic of Nature or emotion, from whom he has long been separated and together with Asia's sisters, Panthea and Ione-retire to the wonderful cave where they are henceforth to dwell and where their occupations are inspired by the most childlike and exalted moods of the soul.

Before considering the bearing of their life of love and art in the cave upon the character of Aprile let us turn our attention for a moment to a remarkable passage in "Hyperion," which poem was written as far back as 1820. Keats, like Shelley, deals with the dethronement of gods, but it is the older dynasty of Titans-Saturn and Hyperion usurped by Jupiter and Apollo. Shelley's thought in the "Prometheus" is strongly influenced by Christian ideals, but Keats's is thoroughly Greek.

The passing of one series of gods and the coming into power of another series of gods was a familiar idea in Greek mythology. It reflected at once the literal fact that ever higher and higher forces of nature had been deified by them, beginning with crude Nature gods and ending with symbols of the most ideal human attributes, and at the same time that their thought leaned in the direction of interpreting nature as an evolutionary process. Seizing upon this, Keats has presented in the words of the old Titan Oceanus a theory of the evolution of beauty quite as startling as a prophecy of psychological theories upon this subject as Browning's is of cosmic and social theories. Addressing Saturn, Oceanus says:

"We fall by course of Nature's law, not force

Of thunder, or of love....

... As thou wast not the first of powers

So art thou not the last; it cannot be:

From chaos and parental darkness came

Light, the first fruits of that intestine broil,

That sullen ferment, which for wondrous ends

Was ripening in itself. The ripe hour came

And with it light, and light, engendering

Upon its own producer, forthwith touched,

The whole enormous matter into life.

Upon that very hour, our parentage

The Heavens and the Earth were manifest;

Then thou first-born, and we the giant-race,

Found ourselves ruling new and beauteous realms

······

As Heaven and Earth are fairer far

Than chaos and blank darkness, though once chiefs,

And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth

In form and shape compact and beautiful,

In will, in action free, companionship

And thousand other signs of purer life,

So on our heels a fresh perfection treads,

A power more strong in beauty, born of us

And fated to excel us, as we pass

In glory that old darkness: nor are we

Thereby more conquered than by us the rule

Of shapeless chaos. For 'tis the eternal law

That first in beauty should be first in might.

Yea, by that law, another race may drive

Our conquerors to mourn as we do now."

There is in the attitude of Oceanus a magnificent acceptance of this ruthless course of nature reminding one of that taken by such men as Huxley and Clifford in the face of their own scientific discoveries, but one is immediately struck by the absence of love in the idea. An Apollo, no matter what new beauty he may have, himself, to offer, who yet disregards the beauty of Hyperion and calmly accepts the throne of the sun in his stead, does not satisfy us. What unreason it is that so splendid a being as Hyperion should be deposed! As a matter of fact, he was not deposed. He is left standing forever in our memories in splendor like the morn, for Keats did not finish the poem and no picture of the enthroned Apollo is given. Perhaps Keats remembered his earlier utterance, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," and cared for his own Hyperion too much to banish him for the sake of Apollo.

Be that as it may, the points in relation to our subject are that Shelley's emphasis is upon the conservation of beauty, while Keats's emphasis is upon the evolution of new beauty.

In the cave where Prometheus and Asia dwell-the cave of universal spirit-is given forth the inspiration to humanity for painting, poetry and arts, yet to be born, and all these arts return to delight them, fashioned into form by human artists. Love is the ruling principle. Therefore all forms of beautiful art are immortal. Aprile,[1] as he first appears, is an elaboration upon this idea. He would love all humanity with such intensity that he would immortalize in all forms of art-painting, poetry, music-every thought and emotion of which the human soul is capable, and this done he would say:

"His spirits created-

God grants to each a sphere to be its world,

Appointed with the various objects needed

To satisfy its own peculiar want;

So, I create a world for these my shapes

Fit to sustain their beauty and their strength."

In short, he would found a universal art museum exactly like the cave in which Prometheus dwelt. The stress is no more than it is in Shelley upon a search for new beauty, and there is not a hint that a coming beauty shall blot out the old until Aprile recognizes Paracelsus as his king. Then he awakes to the fact that his own ideal has been partial, because he has not been a seeker after knowledge, or new beauty, and in much the same spirit as Oceanus, he exclaims:

"Lo, I forget my ruin, and rejoice

In thy success, as thou! Let our God's praise

Go bravely through the world at last! What care

Through me or thee?"

But Paracelsus had learned a lesson through Aprile which the Apollo of Keats had not learned. He does not accept kingship at the expense of Aprile as Apollo would do at the expense of Hyperion. He includes in his final theory of life all that is beautiful in Aprile's or Shelley's ideal and adds to it all that is beautiful of the Keats ideal. The form of his philosophy is evolutionary, and up to the time of his meeting with Aprile had expressed itself as the search for knowledge. Through Aprile his philosophy becomes imbued with soul, the attributes of which are the spirit of love and the spirit of beauty, one of which conserves and immortalizes beauty, the other of which searches out new beauty.

So, working hand in hand, they become one, while the search for knowledge, thus spiritualized, becomes the search for beauty always inspired by love. The aim of the evolutionary process thus becomes the unfolding of ever new phases of beauty in which God takes endless delight, and to the final enjoyment of which mankind shall attain.

To sum up, Browning's solution of the problem in the Paracelsus theory of life is reached not only through a synthesis of the doctrines of evolution as applied to universal activities, cosmic and human, prophetic, on the one hand, of the most advanced scientific thought of the century, but it is a synthesis of these and of the art-spirit in its twofold aspect of love and beauty as already expressed in the poetry of Shelley and Keats.

It is not in the least probable that Browning set to work consciously to piece together these ideals. That is not the method of the artist! But being familiar to him in the two best beloved poets of his youth, they had sunk into his very being, and welled forth from his own subconsciousness, charged with personal emotion, partly dramatic, partly the expression of his own true feeling at the time, and the result be it said is one of the most inspiring and beautiful passages in English poetry.

Paracelsus

At the end of his life and the end of the century Herbert Spencer, who had spent years of labor to prove the fallacies in all religious dogmas, and who had insisted upon religion's being entirely relegated to intellectually unknowable regions of thought, spoke in his autobiography of the mysteries inherent in life, in the evolution of human beings, in consciousness, in human destiny-mysteries that the very advance of science makes more and more evident, exhibits as more and more profound and impenetrable, adding:

"Thus religious creeds, which in one way or other occupy the sphere that rational interpretation seeks to occupy and fails, and fails the more, the more it seeks, I have come to regard with a sympathy based on community of need: feeling that dissent from them results from inability to accept the solutions offered, joined with the wish that solutions could be found."

Loyal to the last to his determination to accept as knowledge only what the intellect could prove, he never permitted himself to come under the awakening influence of an Aprile, yet like Browning's ancient Greek, Cleon, he longed for a solution of the mystery.

At the dawn of the century, and in his youth, Browning ventured upon a solution. In the remainder of this and the next chapter I shall attempt to show what elements in this solution the poet retained to the end of his life, how his thought became modified, and what relation his final solution bears to the final thought of the century.

In this first attempt at a synthesis of life in which the attributes peculiar to the mind and to the spirit are brought into harmonious relationship, Browning is more the intuitionalist than the scientist. His convictions well forth with all the force of an inborn revelation, just as kindred though much less rational views of nature's processes sprang up in the mind of the ancient Hindu or the ancient Greek.

The philosophy of life herein flashed out by the poet was later to be elaborated fully on its objective or observational side by Spencer-the philosopher par excellence of evolution-and finally, also, of course, on the objective side, to become an assured fact of science through the publication in 1859 of Darwin's epoch-making book, "The Origin of Species," wherein the laws, so disturbing to many at the time, of natural selection and the survival of the fittest were fully set forth.

While the genetic view of nature, as the phraseology of to-day goes, had been anticipated in writers on cosmology like Leibnitz and Laplace, in geology by such men as Hutton and Lyall, and had entered into the domain of embryology through the researches of Von Baer, and while Spencer had already formulated a philosophy of evolution, Darwin went out into the open and studied the actual facts in the domain of living beings. His studies made evolution a certainty. They revealed the means by which its processes were accomplished, and in so doing pointed to an origin of man entirely opposed to orthodox views upon this subject. Thus was inaugurated the last great phase in the struggle between mind and spirit.

Henceforth, science stood completely revealed as the unflinching searcher of truth. Intuition was but a handmaid whose duty was to formulate working hypotheses, to become scientific law if provable by investigation or experiment, to be discarded if not.

The aspects which this battle has assumed in the latter half of the century have been many and various. Older sciences with a new lease of life and sciences entirely new have advanced along the path pointed out by the doctrines of evolution. Battalions of determined men have held aloft the banner of uncompromising truth. Each battalion has stormed truth's citadel only to find that about its inmost reality is an impregnable wall. The utmost which has been attained in any case is a working hypothesis, useful in bringing to light many new objective phenomena, it is true, but, in the end, serving only to deepen the mystery inherent in the nature of all things.

Such a working hypothesis was the earlier one of gravitation whose laws of action were elaborated by Sir Isaac Newton, and by the great mind of Laplace were still further developed with marvelous mathematical precision in his "Méchanique Celeste."

Such another hypothesis is that of the atomic theory of the constitution of matter usually associated with the name of Dalton, though it has undergone many modifications from other scientific thinkers. Of this hypothesis Theodore Merz writes in his history of nineteenth-century scientific thought:

"As to the nature of the differences of the elements, the atomic view gives no information; it simply asserts these differences, assumes them as physical constants, and tries to describe them by number and measurement. The atomic view is therefore at best only a provisional basis, a convenient resting place, similar to that which Newton found in physical astronomy, and on which has been established the astronomical view of nature."

The vibratory theories of the ether, the theories of the conservation of energy, the vitalistic view of life, the theory of parallelism of physical and psychical phenomena are all such hypotheses. They have been of incalculable value in helping to a larger knowledge of the appearances of things, and in the formation of laws of action and reaction, but in no way have they aided in revealing the inner or transcendent realities of the myriad manifestations of nature and life!

During the last half of the century this truth has forced itself with ever increasing power upon the minds of scientists, and has resulted in many divisions among the ranks. Some rest upon phenomena as the final reality; hence materialistic or mechanical views of life. Some believe that the only genuine reality is the one undiscoverable by science; hence new presentations of metaphysical views of life.

During these decades the solid phalanx of religious believers has continued to watch from its heights with more or less of fear the advance of science. Here, too, there has been division in the ranks. Many denounced the scientists as the destroyers of religion; others like the good Bishop Colenso could write such words as these in 1873: "Bless God devoutly for the gift of modern science"; and who ten years earlier had expressed satisfaction in the fact that superstitious belief in the letter of the Bible was giving way to a true appreciation of the real value of the ancient Hebrew Scriptures as containing the dawn of religious light.

From another quarter came the critical students of the Bible, who subjected its contents to the keen tests of historical and arch?ological study. Serene, above all the turmoil, was the small band of genuine philosophers who, like Browning's own musician, Abt Vogler, knew the very truth. No matter what disturbing facts may be brought to light by science, be it man's descent from Anthropoids or a mechanical view of sensation, they continue to dwell unshaken in the light of a transcendent truth which reaches them through some other avenue than that of the mind.

Browning belonged by nature in this last group. Already in "Sordello" his attention is turned to the development of the soul, and from that time on to the end of his career he is the champion of the soul-side of existence with all that it implies of character development-"little else being worth study," as he declared in his introduction to a second edition of the poem written twenty years after its first appearance.

On this rock, the human soul, he takes his stand, and, though all the complex waves of the tempest of nineteenth-century thought break against his feet, he remains firm.

Beginning with "Sordello," it is no longer evolution as applied to every aspect of the universe but evolution as applied to the human spirit which has his chief interest. Problems growing out of the marvelous developments of such sciences as astronomy, geology, physics, chemistry or biology do not enter into the main body of the poet's thought, though there are allusions many and exact which show his familiarity with the growth of these various objective sciences during his life.

During all the middle years of his poetic career the relations of the mind and the spirit seemed to fascinate Browning, especially upon the side of the problems connected with the supernatural bases of religious experience. These are the problems which grew out of that phase of scholarly advance represented by biblical criticism.

Such a poem as "Saul," for example, though full of a humanity and tenderness, as well as of a sheer poetic beauty, which endear it alike to those who appreciate little more than the content of the poem, and to those whose appreciation is that of the connoisseur in poetic art, is nevertheless an interpretation of the origin of prophecy, especially of the Messianic idea, which places Browning in the van of the thought of the century on questions connected with biblical criticism.

At the time when "Saul" was written, 1845, modern biblical criticism had certainly gained very little hearing in England, for even as late as 1862 Bishop Colenso's enlightened book on the Pentateuch was received, as one writer expresses it, with "almost unanimous disapprobation and widespread horror."

Critics of the Bible there had been since the seventeenth century, but they had produced a confused mass of stuff in their attacks upon the authenticity of the Bible against which the orthodox apologists had succeeded in holding their own. At the end of the eighteenth and the dawn of the nineteenth century came the more systematic criticism of German scholars, echoes of whose theories found their way into England through the studies of such men as Pusey. But these, though they gave full consideration to the foremost of the German critics of the day, ranged themselves, for the most part, on the side of orthodoxy.

Eichhorn, one of the first of the Germans to be studied in England, had found a point of departure in the celebrated "Wolfenbüttel Fragments," which had been printed by Lessing from manuscripts by an unknown writer Reimarus discovered in the Wolfenbüttel library. These fragments represent criticism of the sweepingly destructive order, characteristic of what has been called the naturalistic school. Although Eichhorn agreed with the writer of the "Fragments" that the biblical narratives should be divested of all their supernatural aspects, he did not interpret the supernatural elements as simply frauds designed to deceive in order that personal ends might be gained. He restored dignity to the narrative by insisting at once upon its historical verity and upon a natural interpretation of the supernatural-"a spontaneous illumination reflected from antiquity itself," which might result from primitive misunderstanding of natural phenomena, from the poetical embellishment of facts, or the symbolizing of an idea.

Doctor Paulus, in his commentary on the Gospels (1800), carried the idea still farther, and the rationalistic school of Bible criticism became an assured fact, though Kant at this time developed an entirely different theory of Bible interpretation, which in a sense harked back to the older allegorical interpretation of the Bible.

He did not trouble himself at all about the historical accuracy of the narratives. He was concerned only in discovering the idea underlying the stories, the moral gist of them in relation to human development. With the naturalists and the rationalists, he put aside any idea of Divine revelation. It was the moral aspiration of the authors, themselves, which threw a supernatural glamour over their accounts of old traditions and turned them into symbols of life instead of merely records of bona fide facts of history. The weakness of Kant's standpoint was later pointed out by Strauss, whose opinion is well summed up in the following paragraph.

"Whilst Kant sought to educe moral thoughts from the biblical writings, even in their historical part, and was even inclined to consider these thoughts as the fundamental object of the history: on the other hand he derived these thoughts only from himself and the cultivation of his age, and therefore could seldom assume that they had actually been laid down by the authors of these writings; and on the other hand, and for the same reason, he omitted to show what was the relation between these thoughts and those symbolic representations, and how it happened that the one came to be expressed by the other."

The next development of biblical criticism was the mythical mode of interpretation in which are prominent the names of Gabler, Schelling, Bauer, Vater, De Wette, and others. These critics among them set themselves the difficult task of classifying the Bible narratives under the heads of three kinds of myths: historical myths, philosophical myths, and poetical myths. The first were "narratives of real events colored by the light of antiquity, which confounded the divine and the human, the natural and the supernatural"; the second, "such as clothe in the garb of historical narrative a simple thought, a precept, or an idea of the time"; the third, "historical and philosophical myths partly blended together and partly embellished by the creations of the imagination, in which the original fact or idea is almost obscured by the veil which the fancy of the poet has woven around it."

This sort of interpretation, first applied to the Old Testament, was later used in sifting history from myth to the New Testament.

It will be seen that it has something in common with both the previously opposed views. The mythical interpretation agrees with the old allegorical view in so far that they both relinquish historical reality in favor of some inherent truth or religious conception of which the historical semblance is merely the shell. On the other hand it agrees with the rationalistic view in the fact that it really gives a natural explanation of the process of the growth of myths and legends in human society. Immediate divine agency controls in the allegorical view, the spirit of individuals or of society controls in the mythical view.

Neither the out-and-out rationalists nor the orthodox students of the Bible approved of this new mode of interpretation, which was more or less the outcome of the study of the sacred books of other religions. In 1835, however, appeared an epoch-making book which subjected the New Testament to the most elaborate criticism based upon mythical and legendary interpretation. This was the "Life of Jesus, Critically Examined," by Dr. David Friedrich Strauss. This book caused a great stir in the theological world of Germany. Strauss was dismissed from his professorship in the University of Tübingen in consequence of it. Not only this, but in 1839, when he was appointed professor of Church History and Divinity at the University of Zurich, he was compelled at once to resign, and the administration which appointed him was overthrown. This veritable bomb thrown into the world of theology was translated by George Eliot, and published in England in 1846.

Through this translation the most advanced German thought must have become familiar to many outside the pale of the professional scholar, and among them was, doubtless, the poet Browning, if indeed he had not already become familiar with it in the original. When the content and the thought of Browning's poems upon religious subjects are examined, it becomes certain that he was familiar with the whole trend of biblical criticism in the first half of the century and of its effect upon certain of the orthodox churchmen, and that with full consciousness he brought forward in his religious poems, not didactically, but often by the subtlest indirections, his own attitude toward the problems raised in this department of scientific historical inquiry.

Some of the problems which occupied his attention, such as that in "The Death in the Desert," are directly traceable to the influence of Strauss's book. Whether he knew of Strauss's argument or not when he wrote "Saul," his treatment of the story of David and Saul is not only entirely in sympathy with the creed of the German school of mythical interpreters, but the poet himself becomes one of the myth makers in the series of prophets-that is, he takes the idea, the Messianic idea, poetically embellishes an old tradition, making it glow with humanness, throws into that idea not only a content beyond that which David could have dreamed of, but suggests a purely psychical origin of the Messianic idea itself in keeping with his own thought on the subject.

The history of the origin and growth of the Messianic ideal as traced by the most modern Jewish critics claims it to have been a slow evolution in the minds of the prophets. In Genesis it appears as the prophecy of a time to come of universal happiness promised to Abraham, through whose seed all the peoples of the earth shall be blessed, because they had hearkened unto the voice of God. From a family ideal in Abraham it passed on to being a tribal ideal with Jacob, and with the prophets it became a national ideal, an aspiration toward individual happiness and a noble national life. Not until the time of Isaiah is a special agent mentioned who is to be the instrument by means of which the blessing is to be fulfilled, and there we read this prophecy: "There shall sprout forth a shoot from the stem of Jesse, upon whom will rest the spirit of Yahveh, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and strength, of the knowledge and fear of God. He will not judge according to appearance, nor will he according to hearsay. He will govern in righteousness the poor, and judge with equity the humble of the earth. He will smite the mighty with the rod of his mouth, and the wicked with the breath of his lips."

The ideal expressed here of a great and wise national ruler who would bring about the realization of liberty, justice and peace to the Hebrew nation, and not only to them but to all mankind, becomes in the prophetic vision of Daniel a mystic being. "I saw in the visions of night, and behold, with the clouds of heaven came down as a likeness of the son of man. He stepped forward to the ancient of days. To him was given dominion, magnificence and rule. And all the peoples, nations and tongues did homage to him. His empire is an eternal empire and his realm shall never cease."

In "Saul" Browning makes David the type of the prophetic faculty in its complete development. His vision is of an ideal which was not fully unfolded until the advent of Jesus himself-the ideal not merely of the mythical political liberator but of the spiritual saviour, who through infinite love would bring redemption and immortality to mankind. David in the poem essays to cheer Saul with the thought of the greatness that will live after him in the memory of others, but his own passionate desire to give something better than this to Saul awakens in him the assurance that God must be as full of love and compassion as he is. Thus Browning explains the sudden awakening of David, not as a divine revelation from without, but as a natural growth of the human spirit Godward. This new perception of values produces the ecstasy during which David sees his visions, the "witnesses, cohorts" about him, "angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware."

This whole conception was developed by Browning from the single phrase in I Samuel: "And David came to Saul, and stood before him: and he loved him greatly." In thus making David prophesy of an ideal which had not been evolved at his time, Browning indulges in what the biblical critic would call prophecy after the fact, and so throws himself in on the side of the mythical interpreters of the Bible.

He has taken a historical narrative, embellished it poetically as in the imaginary accounts of the songs sung by David to Saul, and given it a philosophical content belonging on its objective side to the dawn of Christianity in the coming of Jesus himself and on its subjective side to his (the poet's) own time-that is, the idea of internal instead of external revelation-one of the ideas about which has been waged the so-called conflict of Science and Religion as it was understood by some of the most prominent thinkers of the latter half of the century. In this, again, it will be seen that Browning was in the van of the thought of the century, and still more was he in the van in the psychological tinge which he gives to David's experience. Professor William James himself could not better have portrayed a case of religious ecstasy growing out of genuine exaltation of thought than the poet has in David's experience.

This poem undoubtedly sheds many rays of light upon the feelings, at the time, of its writer. While he was a profound believer in the spiritual nature and needs of man, he was evidently not opposed to the contemporary methods of biblical criticism as applied to the prophecies of the Old Testament, for has he not himself worked in accord with the light such criticism had thrown upon the origin of prophecy? Furthermore, the poem is not only an instance of his belief in the supremacy of the human spirit, but it distinctly repudiates the Comtian ideal of a religion of humanity, and of an immortality existing only in the memory of others. The Comte philosophy growing out of a material conception of the universe and a product of scientific thought has been one of the strong influences through the whole of the nineteenth century in sociology and religion. While it has worked much good in developing a deeper interest in the social life of man, it has proved altogether unsatisfactory and barren as a religious ideal, though there are minds which seem to derive some sort of forlorn comfort from this religion of positivism-from such hopes as may be inspired by the worship of Humanity "as a continuity and solidarity in time" without "any special existence, more largely composed of the dead than of the living," by the thought of an immortality in which we shall be reunited with the remembrance of our "grandsires" like Tyltyl and Mytyl in Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird."

Here, as always, the poet throws in his weight on the side of the paramount worth of the individual, and of a conception of life which demands that the individual shall have a future world in which to overcome the flaws and imperfections incident to earthly life.

Although, as I have tried to show, this poem undoubtedly bears witness to Browning's awareness to the thought currents of the day, it is couched in a form so dramatic, and in a language so poetic, that it seems like a spontaneous outburst of belief in which feeling alone had played a part. Certainly, whatever thoughts upon the subject may have been stowed away in the subconscious regions of the poet's mind, they well up here in a fountain of pure inspiration, carrying the thought forward on the wings of the poet's own spirit.

Poems reflecting several phases of the turmoil of religious opinion rife in mid-century England are "Christmas Eve" and "Easter Day." Baffling they are, even misleading to any one who is desirous of finding out the exact attitude of the poet's mind, for example, upon the rival doctrines of a Methodist parson and a German biblical critic.

The Methodist Chapel and the German University might be considered as representative of the extremes of thought in the more or less prescribed realm of theology, which largely through the influence of the filtering in of scientific and philosophic thought had divided itself into many sects.

Within the Church of England itself there were high church and low church, broad church and Latitudinarian, into whose different shades of opinion it is not needful to enter here. Outside of the Established Church were the numerous dissenters, including Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, Swedenborgians, Unitarians, and numerous others.

There was one broad line of division between the Established Church and the dissenting bodies. In the first was inherent the ancient principle of authority, while the principle of self-government in matters of faith guided all the dissenters in their search for the light.

It is not surprising that with so many differing shades of opinion within the bosom of the Anglican Church it should, in the earlier half of the century, have lost its grip upon not only the people at large, but upon many of its higher intellects. The principle of authority seemed to be tottering to its fall. In this crisis the Roman Catholic Church exercised a peculiar fascination upon men of intellectual endowment who, fearing the direction in which their intellect might lead them, turned to that church where the principle of authority kept itself firmly rooted by summarily dismissing any one who might question it. It is of interest to remember that at the date when this poem was written the Tractarian Movement, in which was conspicuous the Oxford group of men, had succeeded in carrying over four hundred clergymen and laity into the Catholic Church.

Those who were unafraid followed the lead of German criticism and French materialism, but the large mass of common people found in Methodism the sort of religious guidance which it craved.

To this sect has been attributed an unparalleled influence in the moral development of England. By rescuing multitudes from ignorance and from almost the degradation of beasts, and by fostering habits of industry and thrift, Methodism became a chief factor in building up a great, intelligent and industrious middle-class. Its influence has been felt even in the Established Church, and as its enthusiastic historians have pointed out, England might have suffered the political and religious convulsions inaugurated by the French Revolution if it had not been for the saving grace of Methodism.

Appealing at first to the poor and lowly, suffering wrong and persecution with its founder, Wesley, it was so flexible in its constitution that after the death of Wesley it broadened out and differentiated in a way that made it adaptable to very varied human needs. In consequence of this it finally became a genuine power in the Church and State of Great Britain.

The poem "Christmas Eve" becomes much more understandable when these facts about Methodism are borne in mind-facts which were evidently in the poet's mind, although the poem itself has the character of a symbolic rather than a personal utterance. The speaker might be regarded as a type of the religious conscience of England. In spite of whatever direct visions of the divine such a type of conscience may gain through the contemplation of nature and the revelations of the human heart, its relations to the past cause it to feel the need of some sectarian form of religion-a sort of inherited need to be orthodox in one form or another. This religious conscience has its artistic side; it can clothe its inborn religious instincts in exquisite imaginative vision. Also, it has its clear-sighted reasoning side. This is able unerringly to put its finger upon any flaw of doctrine or reasoning in the forms of religion it contemplates. Hence, Catholic doctrine, which was claiming the allegiance of those who were willing to put their troublesome intellects to sleep and accept authority where religion was concerned, does not satisfy this keen analyzer. Nor yet is it able to see any religious reality in such a myth of Christ rehabilitated as an ethical prophet as the G?ttingen professor constructs in a manner so reminiscent of a passage in Strauss's "Life of Jesus," where he is describing the opinions of the rationalists' school of criticism, that a comparison with that passage is enlightening.

Having swept away completely the supernatural basis of religion, the rationalist is able still to conceive of Jesus as a divine Messenger, a special favorite and charge of the Deity:

"He had implanted in him by God the natural conditions only of that which he was ultimately to become, and his realization of this destiny was the result of his own spontaneity. His admirable wisdom he acquired by the judicious application of his intellectual powers and the conscientious use of all the aids within his reach; his moral greatness, by the zealous culture of his moral dispositions, the restraint of his sensual inclinations and passions, and a scrupulous obedience to the voice of his conscience; and on these alone rested all that was exalted in his personality, all that was encouraging in his example."

The difficulty to this order of mind of the direct personal revelation lies in the fact that it is convincing only to those who experience it, having no basis in authority, and may even for them lose its force.

What then is the conclusion forced upon this English religious conscience? Simply this: that, though failing both from the intellectual and the ?sthetic standpoint, the dissenting view was the only religious view of the time possessing any genuine vitality. It represented the progressive, democratic religious force which was then in England bringing religion into the lives of the people with a positiveness long lost to the Anglican Church. The religious conscience of England was growing through this Methodist movement. This is why the speaker of the poem chooses at last that form of worship which he finds in the little chapel.

While no one can doubt that the exalted mysticism based upon feeling, and the large tolerance of the poem, reflect most nearly the poet's personal attitude, on the other hand it is made clear that in his opinion the dissenting bodies possessed the forms of religious orthodoxy most potent at the time for good.

In "Easter Day," the doubts and fears which have racked the hearts and minds of hundreds and thousands of individuals, as the result of the increase of scientific knowledge and biblical criticism are given more personal expression. The discussion turns principally upon the relation of the finite to the Infinite, a philosophical problem capable of much hair-splitting controversy, solved here in keeping with the prevailing thought of the century-namely, that the finite is relative and that this relativity is the proof of the Infinite.

The boldness of this statement, one such as might be found in the pages of Spencer, is by Browning elaborated with pictorial and emotional power. Only by a marvelous vision is the truth brought home to the speaker that the beauties and joys of earth are not all-sufficient, but that they are in the poet's speech but partial beauty, though through this very limitation they become "a pledge of beauty in its plenitude," gleams "meant to sting with hunger for full light." It is not, however, until this see-er of visions perceives the highest gleam of earth that he is able to realize through the spiritual voice of his vision that the nature of the Infinite is in its essence Love, the supreme manifestation of which was symbolized in the death and resurrection of Christ.

This revelation is nevertheless rendered null by the man's conviction that the vision was merely such "stuff as dreams are made on." At the end as at the beginning he finds it hard to be a Christian.

His vision, which thus symbolizes his own course of emotionalized reasoning, brings hope but not conviction. Like the type in "Christmas Eve," conviction can come to him only through a belief in supernatural revelation. He is evidently a man of broad intellectual endowment, who cannot, as the Tractarians did, lay his mind asleep, and rest in the authority of a church, nor yet can he be satisfied with the unconscious anthropomorphism of the sectarian. He doubts his own reasoning attempts to formulate religious doctrines, he doubts even the revelations of his own mystic states of consciousness; hence there is nothing for him but to flounder on through life as best he can, hoping, fearing, doubting, as many a serious mind has done owing to the nineteenth-century reaction against the supernatural dogmas of Christianity. Like others of his ilk, he probably stayed in the Anglican Church and weakened it through his latitudinarianisms.

A study in religious consciousness akin to this is that of Bishop Blougram. Here we have not a generalized type as in "Christmas Eve," nor an imaginary individual as in "Easter Day," but an actual study of a real man, it being no secret that Cardinal Wiseman was the inspiration for the poem.

Wiseman's influence as a Catholic in the Tractarian movement was a powerful one, and in the poet's dissection of his psychology an attempt is made to present the reasoning by means of which he made his appeal to less independent thinkers. With faith as the basis of religion, doubt serves as a moral spur, since the will must exercise itself in keeping doubt underfoot. Browning, himself, might agree that aspiration toward faith was one of the tests of its truth, he might also consider doubt as a spur to greater aspiration, but these ideals would connote something different to him from what he makes them mean to Blougram. The poet's aspiration would be toward a belief in Omniscient Love and Power, his doubts would grow out of his inability to make this ideal tally with the sin and evil he beholds in life. Blougram's consciousness is on a lower plane. His aspiration is to believe in the dogmas of the Church, his doubts arise from an intellectual fear that the dogmas may not be true. Where Browning seems to miss comprehension of such a nature as Blougram's is in failing to recognize that on his own plane of consciousness genuine feeling and the perception of beauty play at least as large a part in the basis of his faith as utilitarian and instinctive reasoning do. While this poem shows in its references to the scientific theories of the origin of morals and its allusions to Strauss, as well as in the indirect portrayal of Gigadibs, the man emancipated from the Church, how entirely familiar the poet was with the currents of religious and scientific thought, it falls short as a fair analysis of a man who is acknowledged to have wielded a tremendous religious influence upon Englishmen of the caliber of Cardinal Newman, Kingsley, Arnold, and others.

If we leave out of account its connection with a special individual, the poem stands, however, as a delightful study of a type in which is depicted in passingly clever fashion methods of reasoning compounded of tantalizing gleams of truth and darkening sophistication.

The poem which shows most completely the effect of contemporary biblical criticism on the poet is "A Death in the Desert." It has been said to be an attempt to meet the destructive criticism of Strauss. The setting of the poem is wonderfully beautiful, while the portrayal of the mystical quality of John's reasoning is so instinct with religious feeling that it must be a wary reader indeed who does not come from the reading of this poem with the conviction that here, at least, Browning has declared himself unflinchingly on the side of supernatural Christianity in the face of the battering rams of criticism and the projectiles of science.

But if he be a wary reader, he will discover that the argument for supernaturalism only amounts to this-and it is put in the mouth of John, who had in his youth been contemporary with Christ-namely, that miracles had been performed when only by means of them faith was possible, though miracles were probably not what those who believed in them thought they were. Here is the gist of his defence of the supernatural:

"I say, that as a babe, you feed awhile,

Becomes a boy and fit to feed himself,

So, minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth:

When they can eat, babes'-nurture is withdrawn.

I fed the babe whether it would or no:

I bid the boy or feed himself or starve.

I cried once, 'That ye may believe in Christ,

Behold this blind man shall receive his sight!'

I cry now, 'Urgest thou, for I am shrewd

And smile at stories how John's word could cure-

Repeat that miracle and take my faith?'

I say, that miracle was duly wrought

When save for it no faith was possible.

Whether a change were wrought in the shows o' the world,

Whether the change came from our minds which see

Of shows o' the world so much as and no more

Than God wills for his purpose,-(what do I

See now, suppose you, there where you see rock

Round us?)-I know not; such was the effect,

So faith grew, making void more miracles,

Because too much they would compel, not help.

I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ

Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee

All questions in the earth and out of it,

And has so far advanced thee to be wise.

Wouldst thou improve this to re-prove the proved?

In life's mere minute, with power to use the proof,

Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung?

Thou hast it; use it and forthwith, or die!"

The important truth as seen by John's dying eyes is that faith in a beautiful ideal has been born in the human soul. Whether the accounts of the exact means by which this faith arose were literally true is of little importance, the faith itself is no less God-given, as another passage will make clear:

"Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect

He could not, what he knows now, know at first;

What he considers that he knows to-day,

Come but to-morrow, he will find misknown;

Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns

Because he lives, which is to be a man,

Set to instruct himself by his past self;

First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn,

Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind,

Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law.

God's gift was that man should conceive of truth

And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake

As midway help till he reach fact indeed."

The defence of Christianity in this poem reminds one very strongly of the theology of Schleiermacher, a résumé of which the poet might have found in Strauss's "Life of Jesus." Although Schleiermacher accepted and even went beyond the negative criticism of the rationalists against the doctrines of the Church, he sought to retain the essential aspects of positive Christianity. He starts out from the consciousness of the Christian, "from that internal experience resulting to the individual from his connection with the Christian community, and he thus obtains a material which, as its basis of feeling, is more flexible and to which it is easier to give dialectically a form that satisfies science."

Again, "If we owe to him [Jesus] the continual strengthening of the consciousness of God within us, this consciousness must have existed in him in absolute strength, so that it or God in the form of the consciousness was the only operative force within him." In other words, in Jesus was the supreme manifestation of God in human consciousness. This truth, first grasped by means which seemed miraculous, is finally recognized in man's developing consciousness as a consummation brought about by natural means. John's reasoning in the poem can lead to no other conclusion than this.

Schleiermacher's theology has, of course, been objected to on the ground that if this incarnation of God was possible in one man, there is no reason why it should not frequently be possible. This is the orthodox objection, and it is voiced in the comment added by "One" at the end of the poem showing the weakness of John's argument from the strictly orthodox point of view.

With regard to the miracles being natural events supernaturally interpreted-that is an explanation familiar to the biblical critic, and one which the psychologist of to-day is ready to support with numberless proofs and analyses. How much this poem owes to hints derived from Strauss's book is further illustrated by the "Glossa of Theotypas," which is borrowed from Origen, whose theory is referred to by Strauss in his Introduction as follows: "Origen attributes a threefold meaning to the Scriptures, corresponding with his distribution of the human being into three parts, the liberal sense answering to the body, the moral to the soul, and the mystical to the spirit."

On the whole, the poem appears to be influenced more by the actual contents of Strauss's book than to be deliberately directed against his thought, for John's own reasoning when his feelings are in abeyance might be deduced from more than one passage in this work wherein are passed in review the conclusions of divers critics of the naturalist and rationalist schools of thought.

The poem "An Epistle" purports to give a nearly contemporary opinion by an Arab physician upon the miracle of the raising of Lazarus. We have here, on the one hand, the Arab's natural explanation of the miracle as an epileptic trance prolonged some three days, and Lazarus's interpretation of his cure as a supernatural event. Though absolutely skeptical, the Arab cannot but be impressed with the beliefs of Lazarus, because of their revelation of God as a God of Love. Thus Browning brings out the power of the truth in the underlying ideas of Christianity, whatever skepticism may be felt as to the letter of it.

The effect of the trance upon the nature of Lazarus is paralleled to-day by accounts, given by various persons, of their sensations when they have sunk into unconsciousness nigh unto death. I remember reading of a case in which a man described his feeling of entire indifference as to the relations of life, his joy in a sense of freedom and ineffable beauty toward which he seemed to be flying through space, and his disinclination to be resuscitated, a process which his spirit was watching from its heights with fear lest his friends should bring him back to earth. This higher sort of consciousness seems to have evolved in some people to-day without the intervention of such an experience as that of Lazarus or one such as that of the above subject of the Society for Psychical Research.

In describing Lazarus to have reached such an outlook upon life, Browning again ranges himself with the most advanced psychological thought of the century. Hear William James: "The existence of mystical states absolutely overthrows the pretension of non-mystical states to be the sole and ultimate dictators of what we may believe. As a rule, mystical states merely add a supersensuous meaning to the ordinary outward data of consciousness. They are excitements like the emotions of love or ambition, gifts to our spirit by means of which facts already objectively before us fall into a new expressiveness and make a new connection with our active life. They do not contradict these facts as such, or deny anything that our senses have immediately seized. It is the rationalistic critic rather who plays the part of denier in the controversy, and his denials have no strength, for there never can be a state of facts to which new meaning may not truthfully be added, provided the mind ascend to a more enveloping point of view. It must always remain an open question whether mystical states may not possibly be such superior points of view, windows through which the mind looks out upon a more extensive and inclusive world. The difference of the views seen from the different mystical windows need not prevent us from entertaining this supposition. The wider world would in that case prove to have a mixed constitution like that of this world, that is all. It would have its celestial and its infernal regions, its tempting and its saving moments, its valid experiences and its counterfeit ones, just as our world has them; but it would be a wider world all the same. We should have to use its experiences by selecting and subordinating and substituting just as is our custom in this ordinary naturalistic world; we should be liable to error just as we are now; yet the counting in of that wider world of meanings, and the serious dealing with it, might, in spite of all the perplexity, be indispensable stages in our approach to the final fulness of the truth."

The vision of Lazarus belongs to the beatific realm, and the naturalistic Arab has a longing for similar strange vision, though he calls it a madman's, for-

"So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too-

So, through the thunder comes a human voice

Saying, 'O heart I made, a heart beats here!

Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!

Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,

But love I gave thee, with myself to love,

And thou must love me who have died for thee.'"

A survey of Browning's contributions to the theological differences of the mid-century would not be complete without some reference to "Caliban" and "Childe Roland." In the former, the absurdities of anthropomorphism, of the God conceived in the likeness of man, are presented with dramatic and ironical force, but, at the same time, is shown the aspiration to something beyond, which has carried dogma through all the centuries, forward to ever purer and more spiritual conceptions of the absolute. In the second, though it be a purely romantic ballad, there seems to be symbolized the scientific knight-errant of the century, who, with belief and faith completely annihilated by the science which allows for no realm of knowledge beyond its own experimental reach, yet considers life worth living. Despite the complex interpretations which have issued from the oracular tripods of Browning Societies, one cannot read the last lines of this poem-

"Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,

And blew, 'Childe Roland to the dark Tower came'"-

without thinking of the splendid courage in the face of disillusionment of such men of the century as Huxley, Tyndall or Clifford.

When we ask, where is Browning in all this diversity of theological opinion? we can only answer that beyond an ever-present undercurrent of religious aspiration there is no possibility of pinning the poet to any given dogmas. Everywhere we feel the dramatic artist. In "Paracelsus" the philosophy of life was that of the artist whose adoration finds its completion in beauty and joy; now the poet himself is the artist experiencing as Aprile did, this beauty and joy in a boundless sympathy with many forms of mystical religious ecstasy. Every one of these poems presents a conflict between the doubts born of some phase of theological controversy and the exaltation of moments or periods of ecstatic vision, and though nowhere is dogmatic truth asserted with positiveness, everywhere we feel a mystic sympathy with the moving power of religious aspiration, a sympathy which belongs to a form of consciousness perhaps more inclusive than the religious-namely, a poetic consciousness, able at once to sympathize with the content and to present the forms of mystic vision belonging to various phases of human consciousness.

* * *

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.

* * *

In the political affairs of his own age and country Browning as a poet shows little interest. This may at first seem strange, for that he was deeply sympathetic with past historical movements indicating a growth toward democratic ideals in government is abundantly proved by his choice and treatment of historical epochs in which the democratic tendencies were peculiarly evident. Why then did he not give us dramatic pictures of the Victorian era, in which as perhaps in no other era of English history the yeast of political freedom has been steadily and quietly working?

There were probably several reasons for his failure to make himself felt as an influence in the political world of his time. In the first place, he was pre?minently a dramatic poet, and as such his interest was in the presentation and analysis of individual character as it might work itself out in a given historical environment. To deal with contemporaries in this analytic manner would be a difficult and delicate matter, and, as we see, in those instances where he did venture upon an analysis of English contemporaries, as in the case of Wiseman (Bishop Blougram), Carlyle in Bernard de Mandeville and in "George Bubb Dodington," the sketch of Lord Beaconsfield, he takes care to suppress every external circumstance which would lead to their identification, and to dwell only upon their intellectual or psychic aspects.

A second reason is that the present is usually too near at hand to be used altogether effectively as dramatic material. Contemporary conditions of history seem to have an air of stateliness owing to the fact that every one is familiar with them, not only through talk and experience but through newspapers and magazines, while their larger, universal meanings cannot be seen at too close a range. If, however, past historical episodes and their tendencies can be so presented as to illustrate the tendencies of the present, then the needful artistic perspective is gained. In this manner, with a few minor exceptions, Browning has revealed the direction in which his political sympathies lay.

When Browning was born, the first Napoleonic episode was nearing its close. Absolutism and militarism had in its lust for power and bloodshed slaughtered itself for the time being, and once more there was opportunity for the people of England to strive for their own enfranchisement.

As a progressive ministry in England did not come into power until 1830, the struggles of the people were rewarded with little success during many years after the Battle of Waterloo. During the childhood and boyhood of Browning the events which from time to time marked the determination of the downtrodden Englishman to secure a larger measure of justice for himself were exciting enough to have made a strong impression upon the precocious mind of the incipient poet even in the seclusion of his father's library at Camberwell.

The artificial prosperity which had buoyed up the workman during the war with France suddenly collapsed with the advent of peace after the Battle of Waterloo. Everything seemed to combine to make the affairs of the workingman desperate. Public business had been blunderingly administered, and while a fatuous Cabinet was congratulating the nation upon the flourishing state of the country, trade was actually almost at a standstill, and failures in business were the order of the day. To make matters worse, a wet summer and early frosts interfered with farming, and the result was that laborers and workmen could not find employment. A not unusual percentage of paupers in any given district was four fifths of the whole population. Thinking the farmers were to blame for the high price of bread, these starving people wreaked their vengeance on them by burning farm buildings, and machinery, and even stacks of corn and hay.

Cardinal Wiseman

Instead of giving sympathy to these men in their desperate condition, a conservative government saw in them only rioters, and took the most stringent measures against them. They were tried by a special commission, and thirty-four of them were condemned to death, though it is recorded that only five of them were executed. The miners of Cornwall and Wales, the lace makers of Nottingham, and the iron workers of the Black Country, next broke out and the smashing of machinery continued. Finally there was a meeting of the artisans of London, Westminster, and Southwick in Spa Fields, Clerkenwall, which had been called by Harry Hunt, a man of property and education, who was known as a supporter of extreme measures, and the leader of the Radicals of that day. They met for the legitimate purpose, one would think, of considering the propriety of petitioning the Prince Regent and Parliament to adopt means of relieving the existing distress. One of the speakers, however, a poor doctor by the name of Watson, was of a more belligerent disposition. He made an inflammatory speech which ended by his seizing a tri-colored flag and marching toward the city followed by the turbulent rabble. On their way they seized the contents of a gunsmith's shop on Snow Hill, murdered a man, and finally were met opposite the Mansion House by the Lord Mayor, who, assisted by a strong body of police, arrested some of the leaders and dispersed the rest. The arrested persons were brought to trial and indicted for high treason by the Attorney General, but the jury, evidently thinking the indictment had taken too exaggerated a form, acquitted Watson, and the others were dismissed.

The conservative Parliament was, however, so alarmed by these proceedings that, instead of seeking some way of removing the cause of the difficulties, it thought only of making restrictions for the protection of the person of the Regent, of the more effective prevention of seditious meetings and of surer punishment. And what were some of these measures? Debating societies, lecture halls and reading rooms were shut up. Even lectures on medicine, surgery and chemistry were prohibited. Though there was a possibility of getting a license to lecture from the magistrate, the law was interpreted in the narrowest spirit.

Parliamentary reform began to be spoken of in 1819, when a resolution pledging the House of Commons to the consideration of the state of representation was rejected by a vote of one hundred and fifty-three to fifty-eight. This decision stirred up the reform spirit, and large meetings in favor of it were held. The people attending these meetings received military drilling and marched to their meetings in orderly processions, a fact naturally very disturbing to the government. When a great meeting was arranged at Manchester on the 16th of August, troops were accordingly sent to Manchester. The cavalry was ordered to charge the crowd, and although they used the flat side of their swords, the charge resulted in the killing of six persons and the wounding of some hundreds. The clash did not end here, for to offset the ministerial approval of the action of the magistrates and their decision that the meeting was illegal, the Common Council of London passed a resolution by a large majority declaring that the meeting was legal. A number of Whig noblemen also were on the side of the London Council and made similar motions. But the ministers, unmoved by these signs of the times, introduced bills in Parliament for the repression of disorder and the further restraining of public liberty. The bills, it is true, were strenuously opposed in both houses, but the eloquence expended against them was all to no purpose, the bills were passed, and reform for the time being was nipped in the bud.

Although after this laws were gradually introduced by the ministers which tended very much to the betterment of conditions, the fire of reform did not burst out again with full fury until the time of the Revolution of July, in France, which it will be remembered was directed against the despotic King Charles X, and ended in his being deposed, when his crown was given to his distant cousin Louis Philippe. The success of the French in their stand against despotism caused a general revolutionary stir in several European countries, while in England the spirit of revolution showed itself in incendiary fires from one end of the country to the other.

With Parliament itself full of believers in reform, the chief of the Cabinet, the Duke of Wellington, announced that the House of Commons did not need reform and that he would resist all proposals for a change. So great was the popular excitement at this announcement that the Duke could not venture to go forth to dine at the Guildhall for fear that he might be attacked.

Such were the chief episodes in the forward advance of the people up to the time of the presentation of the Reform Bill in Parliament. This important measure has been described as the greatest organic change in the British Constitution that had taken place since the revolution of 1688. When this bill was finally passed it meant a transference of governmental control from the upper classes to the middle classes, and was the inauguration of a policy which has constantly added to the prosperity and well-being of the English people. The agitation upon this bill, introduced in the House by Lord John Russell, under the Premiership of Earl Grey, and a ministry favorable to reform, was filling the attention of all Englishmen to the exclusion of every other subject just at the time when Browning was emerging into manhood, 1831 and 1832, and though he has not commemorated in his poetry this great step in the political progress of his own century, his first play, written in 1837, takes up a period of English history in which a momentous struggle for liberty on the part of the people was in progress.

Important as the Reform Bill was, it furnished no such picturesque episodes for a dramatist as did the struggle of Pym and Strafford under the despotic rule of King Charles I.

In choosing this period for his play the poet found not only material which furnished to his hand a series of wonderfully dramatic situations, but in the three men about whom the action moves is presented an individuality and a contrast in character full of those possibilities for analysis so attractive to Browning's mind.

Another point to be gained by taking this remote period of history was that his attitude could be supremely that of the philosopher of history. He could portray with fairness whatever worth of character he found to admire in the leaders upon either side, at the same time that he could show which possessed the winning principle-the principle of progress. In dealing with contemporary events a strong personal feeling is sure to gain the upper hand, and to be non-partisan and therefore truly dramatic is a difficult, if not an impossible, task. When we come to examine this play, we find that the character which unquestionably interested the poet most was Strafford's; not because of his political principles but because of his devotion to his King. Human love and loyalty in whomever manifested was always of the supremest interest to Browning, and, working upon any hints furnished by history, the poet has developed the character of Strafford in the light of his personal friendship for the King-a feeling so powerful that no fickle change of mood on the part of the King could alter it. Upon this fact of his personal relations to the King Strafford's actions in this great crisis have been interpreted and explained, though not defended, from the political point of view.

Some wavering on the part of Pym is also explained upon the ground of his friendship for and his belief in Strafford, but mark the difference between the two men. Pym, once sure that Strafford is not on the side of progress, crushes out all personal feeling. He allows nothing to stand in the way of his political policy. With unflinching purpose he proceeds against his former friend, straight on to the impeachment for treason, straight on, like an inexorable fate, to the prevention of his rescue from execution. Browning's dramatic imagination is responsible for this last climax in which he brings the two men face to face. Here, in Pym's strength of will to serve England at any cost, mingled with the hope of meeting Strafford purged of all his errors in a future life, and in Strafford's response, "When we meet, Pym, I'd be set right-not now! Best die," is foreshadowed the ultimate triumph of the parliamentary over the monarchical principles of government, and the poet's own sympathy with the party of progress is made plain.

It is interesting in the present connection to inquire whether there are any parallels between the agitation connected with the reform legislation of 1832 and the revolution at the time of Charles I which might send Browning's mind back to that period. The special point about which the battle raged in 1832 was the representation in Parliament. This was so irregular that it was absolutely unfair. In many instances large districts or towns would have fewer representatives than smaller ones, or perhaps none at all. Representation was more a matter of favoritism than of justice. The votes in Parliament were, therefore, not at all a true measure of the attitude of the country. It seems strange that so eminently sensible a reform should meet with such determined opposition. As usual, those in power feared loss of privilege. The House of Lords was the obstruction. The bill was in fact a step logically following upon the determination of the people of the time of Charles I that they would not submit to be levied upon for ship-money upon the sole authority of the King. They demanded that Parliament, which had not been assembled for ten years, should meet and decide the question. This question was not merely one of the war-tax or ship-money, but of whether the King should have the power to levy taxes upon the people without consent of Parliament.

As every one knows, when the King finally consented to the assembling of Parliament, in April, 1840, he informed it that there would be no discussion of its demands until it had granted the war subsidies for which it had been asked. The older Vane added to the consternation of the assembly by announcing that the King would accept nothing less than the twelve subsidies which he had demanded in his message. In the face of this ultimatum the committee broke up without coming to a conclusion, postponing further consideration until the next day, but before they had had time to consider the matter the next day the King had decided to dissolve the Parliament.

The King was forced, however, to reassemble Parliament again in the autumn. In this Parliament the people's party gained control, and many reforms were instituted. Led by such daring men as Pym, Hampden, Cromwell, and the younger Vane, resolutions were passed censuring the levying of ship-money, tonnage and poundage, monopolies, innovations in religion-in fact, all the grievances of the oppressed which had been ignored for a decade were brought to light and redressed by the House, quite regardless of the King's attitude.

The chief of the abuses which it was bent upon remedying was the imposing of taxes upon the authority of the King and the persecution of the Puritans. But there was another grievance which received the attention of the Long Parliament, and which forms a close link with the reforms of 1832-namely, the attempt to improve the system of representation in Parliament, an attempt which was partially carried into effect by Cromwell later. Under Charles II, however, things fell back into their old way and gradually went on from bad to worse until the tide changed, and the people became finally aroused after two hundred years to the need of a radical change. The blindness of the Duke of Wellington, declaring no reform was needed, is hardly less to be marveled at than that of King Charles declaring he would rule without Parliament. The King took the ground that the people had no right to representation in the government; the Minister, that only some of the people had a right.

The horrors of revolution followed upon the blindness of the one, with its reactionary aftermath, while upon the other there was violence, it is true, and a revolution was feared, but through the wise measures of the liberal ministers no subversion of the government occurred. Violence reached such a pitch, however, that the castle of Nottingham in Derby was burned, the King's brother was dragged from his horse, and Lord Londonderry roughly treated. The mob at Bristol was so infuriated that Sir C. Wetherell, the Recorder of the city, who had voted against the bill, had to be escorted to the Guildhall by a hundred mounted gentlemen. Two men having been arrested, the mob attacked and destroyed the interior of the Mansion House, set fire to the Bishop's palace and to many other buildings. There was not only an enormous loss of property, but loss of life.

A quieter demonstration at Birmingham carries us back, as it might have carried Browning, to the "great-hearted men" of the Long Parliament. A meeting was called which was attended by one hundred and fifty thousand persons, and resolutions were passed to the effect that if the Reform Bill were not passed they would refuse to pay taxes, as Hampden had refused to pay ship-money.

The final act in this momentous drama was initiated with the introduction by Lord John Russell of the third Reform Bill in December, 1831. Again it was defeated in the House of Lords, whereupon some of the Cabinet wished to ask the King to create a sufficient number of new peers to force the bill through the House. Earl Grey was not at all in favor of this, but at last consented. This course was not welcome to the House of Lords, and the doubtful members in the House promised that if this suggestion were not carried into effect they would insure a sufficient majority in the House of Lords to carry the bill. This was done, but before the Lords went into committee a hostile motion postponing the disfranchisement clauses was carried. Then Earl Grey asked for the creation of new peers. As it would require the creating of about fifty new peers, the King refused, the ministry resigned and the Duke of Wellington came into power again. But his power, like that of Strafford, was broken. He had reached the point of recognizing that some reform was needed, but he could not persuade his colleagues of this. In the meantime the House of Commons passed a resolution of confidence in the Grey administration. Such determined opposition being shown not only in Parliament but by the people in various ways, Wellington felt his only course was resignation. William IV had, much to his chagrin, to recall Grey, but he escaped the necessity of creating a large number of peers, by asking the opposition in the House of Lords to withdraw their resistance to the bill. The Duke of Wellington and others thereupon absented themselves, and finding further obstruction was useless, the Lords at last passed the bill and it became law in June, 1832.

This national crisis through which Browning had lived could not fail to have made its impression on him. It is certainly an indication of the depth of his interest in the growth of liberalism that his first English subject, written only a few years subsequent to this momentous change in governmental methods, should have dealt with a period whose analysis and interpretation in dramatic form gave him every opportunity for the expression of his sympathy with liberal ideals. Broad-minded in his interpretation of Strafford's career, in love with his qualities of loyalty, and his capabilities of genuine affection for the vacillating Charles, he made Strafford the hero of his play, but it is Pym whom, in his play, he has exalted as the nation's hero, and into whose mouth he has put one of the greatest and most intensely pathetic speeches ever uttered by an Englishman. It is when he confronts Strafford at the last:

"Have I done well? Speak, England! Whose sole sake

I still have labored for, with disregard

To my own heart,-for whom my youth was made

Barren, my manhood waste, to offer up

Her sacrifice-this friend-this Wentworth here-

Who walked in youth with me, loved me, it may be,

And whom, for his forsaking England's cause,

I hunted by all means (trusting that she

Would sanctify all means) even to the block

Which waits for him. And saying this, I feel

No bitterer pang than first I felt, the hour

I swore that Wentworth might leave us, but I

Would never leave him: I do leave him now.

I render up my charge (be witness, God!)

To England who imposed it. I have done

Her bidding-poorly, wrongly,-it may be,

With ill effects-for I am weak, a man:

Still, I have done my best, my human best,

Not faltering for a moment. It is done.

And this said, if I say ... yes, I will say

I never loved but one man-David not

More Jonathan! Even thus I love him now:

And look for that chief portion in that world

Where great hearts led astray are turned again,

(Soon it may be, and, certes, will be soon:

My mission over, I shall not live long)-

Ay, here I know and talk-I dare and must,

Of England, and her great reward, as all

I look for there; but in my inmost heart,

Believe, I think of stealing quite away

To walk once more with Wentworth-my youth's friend

Purged from all error, gloriously renewed,

And Eliot shall not blame us. Then indeed ...

This is no meeting, Wentworth! Tears increase

Too hot. A thin mist-is it blood?-enwraps

The face I loved once. Then, the meeting be."

At the same time that Browning was writing "Strafford," he was also engaged upon "Sordello." In that he has given expression to his democratic philosophy through his construction and interpretation of Sordello's character as a champion of the people as well as a poet who ushered in the dawn of the Italian literary Renaissance. As he made Paracelsus develop from a dependence upon knowledge as his sole guide in his philosophy of life into a perception of the place emotion must hold in any satisfactory theory of life, and put into his mouth a modern conception of evolution illuminated by his own artistic emotion, so he makes Sordello develop from the individualistic type to the socialist type of man, who is bent upon raising the masses of the people to higher conditions. The ideal of liberal forms of government was even in Sordello's time a growing one, sifting into Italy from Greek precedents, but Browning's Sordello sees something beyond either political or ecclesiastical espousal of the people's cause-namely, the espousal of the people's cause by the people themselves, the arrival of the self-governing democracy, an ideal much nearer attainment now than when Browning was writing:

"Two parties take the world up, and allow

No third, yet have one principle, subsist

By the same injustice; whoso shall enlist

With either, ranks with man's inveterate foes.

So there is one less quarrel to compose

The Guelf, the Ghibelline may be to curse-

I have done nothing, but both sides do worse

Than nothing. Nay, to me, forgotten, reft

Of insight, lapped by trees and flowers, was left

The notion of a service-ha? What lured

Me here, what mighty aim was I assured

Must move Taurello? What if there remained

A cause, intact, distinct from these, ordained

For me its true discoverer?"

The mood here portrayed was one which might have been fostered in Browning in relation to his own time. He doubtless felt that neither the progressive movements in the state nor those in religion really touched upon the true principles of freedom for the individual. He might not have defined these principles to himself any more definitely than as a desire for the greatest happiness of the whole number. And even of such an ideal as that he had his doubts because of the necessity of his mind to find a logical use for evil in the world. This he could only do by supposing it a divine means for the development of the human soul in its sojourn in this life. Speaking in his own person in "Sordello," he gives expression to this doubt in the following passage in the third book:

"I ask youth and strength

And health for each of you, not more-at length

Grown wise, who asked at home that the whole race

Might add the spirit's to the body's grace,

And all be dizened out as chiefs and bards.

······

"--As good you sought

To spare me the Piazza's slippery stone

Or keep me to the unchoked canals alone,

As hinder Life the evil with the good

Which make up Living rightly understood."

Still, though vague as to what the good for the whole people might be, there was no vagueness in his mind as to the people's right to possess the power to bring about their own happiness. Yet given the right principles, he would not have the attempt made to put them into practice all at once.

His final attitude toward the problem of the best methods for bettering human conditions in the poem is, strictly speaking, that of the opportunist working a step toward his ideal rather than that of the revolutionist who would gain it by one leap. Sordello should realize that

"God has conceded two lights to a man-

One, of men's whole work, man's first

Step to the plan's completeness."

Man's part is to take this first step, leaving the ultimate ideal to be worked out, as time goes, on by successive men. To reach at one bound the ideal would be to regard one's self as a god. Some such theory of action as this is the one which guides the Fabian socialist working in England to-day. Nothing is to be done to subvert the present order of society, but every opportunity is to be made the most of which will tend to the betterment of the conditions of the masses, until by degrees the socialist régime will become possible. Sordello was too much of the idealist to seize the opportunity when it came to him of helping the people by means of the Ghibelline power suddenly conferred upon him, and so he failed.

This opportunist doctrine is one especially congenial to the English temperament and certainly has its practical advantages, if it is not so inspiring as the headlong idealism of a Pym, which just as surely has its disadvantages in the danger that the ideal will be ahead of humanity's power of seizing it and living it, and will therefore run the risk of being overturned by a reaction to the low plane of the past; especially does this danger become apparent when the way to the attainment of the ideal is paved with violence.

While Browning was writing "Sordello," the preparation of which included a short trip to Italy, the Chartist agitation was going on in England. It may well, at that time, have been considered to demand an ideal beyond possibility of attainment, which was proved by its final utter annihilation. The workingmen's association led by Mr. Duncombe was responsible for a program in the form of a parliamentary petition which asked for six things. These were: universal suffrage, or the right of voting by every male of twenty-one years of age; vote by ballot; annual Parliaments; abolition of the property qualification for members of Parliament; members of Parliament to be paid for their services; equal electoral districts.

There were two sorts of Chartists, moral-force Chartists and physical-force Chartists, the latter of whom did as much damage as possible in the agitation.

The combined forces were led by Feargus O'Connor, an Irish barrister, who madly spent his force and energy for ten years in carrying forward the movement, and, at last, confronted by disagreement in the ranks of the Chartists and the Duke of Wellington and his troops, gave it up in despair. He was a martyr to the cause, for he took its failure so much to heart that he ended his days in a lunatic asylum.

This final failure came many years after "Sordello" was finished, but the poet's conclusions in "Sordello" seem almost prophetic in the light of the passage in the poem already quoted, in which the poet declares himself grown wiser than he was at home, where he had asked the utmost for all men, and now realized that this cannot be attained in one leap.

Agitation about the relations between England and Ireland were also filling public attention at this time, but most important of all the contemporary movements was the League for the Repeal of the Corn Laws. The story of the growth and the peaceful methods by which it attained its growth is one of the most interesting in the annals of England's political development. It meant the adoption of the great principle of free trade, to which England has since adhered. For eight years the agitation in regard to it was continued, during which great meetings were held, thousands of pounds were subscribed to the cause, and the names of Sir Richard Cobden and John Bright became famous as leaders in the righteous cause of untaxed food for the people. John Bright's account of how he became interested in the movement and associated himself with Cobden in the work, told in a speech made at Rochdale, gives a vivid picture of the human side of the problem which by the conservatives of the day was treated as a merely political issue:

"In the year 1841 I was at Leamington and spent several months there. It was near the middle of September there fell upon me one of the heaviest blows that can visit any man. I found myself living there with none living of my house but a motherless child. Mr. Cobden called upon me the day after that event, so terrible to me and so prostrating. He said, after some conversation, 'Don't allow this grief, great as it is, to weigh you down too much. There are at this moment in thousands of homes in this country wives and children who are dying of hunger-of hunger made by the law. If you come along with me, we will never rest till we have got rid of the Corn Law.' We saw the colossal injustice which cast its shadow over every part of the nation, and we thought we saw the true remedy and the relief, and that if we united our efforts, as you know we did, with the efforts of hundreds and thousands of good men in various parts of the country, we should be able to bring that remedy home, and to afford that relief to the starving people of this country."

The movement thus inaugurated was, as Molesworth declares, "without parallel in the history of the world for the energy with which it was conducted, the rapid advance it made, and the speedy and complete success that crowned its efforts; for the great change it wrought in public opinion and the consequent legislation of the country; overcoming prejudice and passion, dispelling ignorance and conquering powerful interests, with no other weapons than those of reason and that eloquence which great truths and strong conviction inspire."

A signal victory for the League was gained in 1843, when the London Times, which up to that time had regarded the League with suspicion and even alarm, suddenly turned round and ranged itself with the advancing tide of progress by declaring, "The League is a great fact. It would be foolish, nay, rash, to deny its importance. It is a great fact that there should have been created in the homestead of our manufacturers (Manchester) a confederacy devoted to the agitation of one political question, persevering at it year after year, shrinking from no trouble, dismayed at no danger, making light of every obstacle. It demonstrates the hardy strength of purpose, the indomitable will, by which Englishmen working together for a great object are armed and animated."

The final victory, however, did not come until three years later, when Sir Robert Peel, who became Prime Minister to defend the Corn Laws, announced that he had been completely convinced of their injustice, and that he was an "absolute convert to the free-trade principle, and that the introduction of the principle into all departments of our commercial legislation was, according to his intention, to be a mere question of time and convenience." This was in January, 1845, and shortly after, June, 1846, the bill for the total repeal of the Corn Laws passed the House.

How much longer it might have been before the opposition was carried is a question if it had not been for the failure of the grain crops and the widespread potato disease which plunged Ireland into a state of famine, and threatened the whole country with more or less of disaster.

Even when this state of affairs became apparent in the summer of 1845 there was still much delay. The Cabinet met and discussed and discussed; still Parliament was not assembled; and then it was that the Mansion House Relief Committee of Dublin drew up resolutions stating that famine and pestilence were approaching throughout the land, and impeaching the conduct of the Ministry for not opening the ports or calling Parliament together.

But still Peel, already won over, could not take his Cabinet with him; he was forced to resign. Lord John Russell was called to form a ministry, but failed, when Peel was recalled, and the day was carried.

Browning's brief but pertinent allusion to this struggle in "The Englishman in Italy" shows clearly how strongly his sympathies were with the League and how disgusted he was with the procrastination of Parliament in taking a perfectly obvious step for the betterment of the people.

"Fortnu, in my England at home,

Men meet gravely to-day

And debate, if abolishing Corn laws

Be righteous and wise

If 'twere proper, Scirocco should vanish

In black from the skies!"

An occasional allusion or poem like this makes us aware from time to time of Browning's constant sympathy with any movement which meant good to the masses. Even if he had not written near the end of his life "Why I am a Liberal," there could be no doubt in any one's mind of his political ideals. In "The Lost Leader" is perhaps his strongest utterance upon the subject. The fact that it was called out by Wordsworth's lapse into conservatism after the horrors of the French Revolution had brought him and his sans culotte brethren, Southey and Coleridge, to pause, a fact very possibly freshened in Browning's mind by Wordsworth's receiving a pension in 1842 and the poet-laureateship in 1843, does not affect the force of the poem as a personal utterance on the side of democracy. Browning, himself, considered the poem far too fierce as a portrayal of Wordsworth's case.[2] He evidently forgot Wordsworth, and thought only of a renegade liberal as he went on with the poem. It was written the same year that there occurred the last attempt to postpone the passing of the Anti-Corn Law Bill, when the intensity of feeling on the part of all who believed in progress was at its height, and the bare thought of a deserter from Liberal ranks would be enough to exasperate any man who had the nation's welfare at heart. That Browning's feeling at the time reached the point not only of exasperation but of utmost scorn for any one who was not on the liberal side is shown most forcibly in the bitter lines:

"Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,

One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,

One more devil's triumph and sorrow for angels,

One more wrong to man, one more insult to God!"

Browning speaks of having thought of Wordsworth at an unlucky juncture.

Whatever the exact episode which called forth the poem may have been, we are safe in saying that at a time when Disraeli was attacking Sir Robert Peel because of his honesty in avowing his conversion to free trade, and because of his bravery in coming out from his party, in breaking up his cabinet and regardless of all costs in determining to carry the bill or resign, and finally carrying it in the face of the greatest odds-at such a time, when a great conservative leader had shown himself capable of being won over to a great liberal principle; the spectacle of a deserter from the cause, and that deserter a member of one's own brotherhood of poets, would be especially hard to bear.

One feels a little like asking why did not Browning let his enthusiasm carry him for once into a contemporary expression of admiration for Sir Robert Peel? Perhaps the tortuous windings of parliamentary proceedings obscured to a near view the true greatness of Peel's action.

The year of this great change in England's policy was the year of Robert Browning's marriage and his departure for Italy, where he lived for fifteen years. During this time and for some years after his return to England there is no sign that he was taking any interest in the political affairs of his country. Human character under romantic conditions in a social environment, or the thought problems of the age, as we have already seen, occupied his attention, and for the subject matter of these he more often than not went far afield from his native country.

In "Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau" is the poet's first deliberate portrayal of a person of contemporary prominence in the political world. The alliance of Napoleon III with England brought his policy of government into strong contrast with that of the liberal leaders in English politics, a contrast which had been emphasized through Lord Palmerston's sympathy with the coup d'état.

The news of the manner in which Louis Napoleon had carried out his policy of smashing the French constitution caused horror and consternation in England, and the Queen at once gave instructions that nothing should be done by her ambassador in Paris which could be in any way construed as an interference in the internal affairs of France. Already, however, Lord Palmerston had expressed to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs his entire approbation in the act of Napoleon and his conviction that he could not have acted otherwise than as he had done. When this was known, the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, wrote Palmerston a letter, causing his resignation, which was accepted very willingly by the Queen. The letter was as follows:

"While I concur in the foreign policy of which you have been the adviser, and much as I admire the energy and ability with which it has been carried into effect, I cannot but observe that misunderstandings perpetually renewed, violations of prudence and decorum too frequently repeated, have marred the effects which ought to have followed from a sound policy and able admirers. I am, therefore, most reluctantly compelled to come to the conclusion that the conduct of foreign affairs can no longer be left in your hands with advantage to the country."

When England's fears that Louis Napoleon would emulate his illustrious predecessor and invade her shores were allayed, her attitude was modified. She forgot the horrors of the coup d'état and formed an alliance with him, and her hospitable island became his refuge in his downfall.

A prominent figure in European politics for many years, Louis Napoleon had just that combination of greatness and mediocrity which would appeal to Browning's love of a human problem. Furthermore, Napoleon was brought very directly to the poet's notice through his Italian campaign and Mrs. Browning's interest in the political crisis in Italy, which found expression in her fine group of Italian patriotic poems.

The question has been asked, "Will the unbiased judgment of posterity allow to Louis Napoleon some extenuating circumstances, or will it pronounce an unqualified condemnation upon the man who, for the sake of consolidating his own power and strengthening his corrupt government, spilled the blood of no less than a hundred thousand Frenchmen?"

When all Europe was putting to itself some such question as this, and answering it with varying degrees of leniency, Browning conceived the idea of making Napoleon speak for himself, and at the same time he added what purports to be the sort of criticism of him indulged in by a Thiers or a Victor Hugo. The interest of the poem centers in Napoleon's own vindication of himself as portrayed by Browning. What Browning wrote of the poem in a letter to a friend in 1872 explains fully his aim, as well as showing by indirection, at least, how much he was interested in political affairs at this time, though so little of this interest crops out in his poetry: "I think in the main he meant to do what I say, and but for weakness-grown more apparent in his last years than formerly-would have done what I say he did not. I thought badly of him at the beginning of his career, et pour cause; better afterward, on the strength of the promises he made and gave indications of intending to redeem. I think him very weak in the last miserable year. At his worst I prefer him to Thiers's best." At another time he wrote: "I am glad you like what the editor of the Edinburgh calls my eulogium on the Second Empire, which it is not, any more than what another wiseacre affirms it to be, 'a scandalous attack on the old constant friend of England.' It is just what I imagine the man might, if he pleased, say for himself."

Browning depicts the man as perfectly conscious of his own limitations. He recognizes that he is not the genius, nor the creator of a new order of things, but that his power lies in his faculty of taking an old ideal and improving upon it. He contends that in following out his special gifts as a conservator he is doing just what God intended him to do, and as to his method of doing it that is his own affair. God gives him the commission and leaves it to his human faculties to carry it out, not inquiring what these are, but simply asking at the end if the commission has been accomplished.

Once admit these two things-namely, that his nature, though not of the highest, is such as God gave him, and his lack of responsibility in regard to any moral ideal, so that he accomplishes the purpose of this nature-and a loophole is given for any inconsistencies he may choose to indulge in in bringing about that strengthening of an old ideal in which he believes. The old ideal is, of course, the monarchical principle of government, administered, however, in such a manner that it will be for the good of society in all its complex manifestations of to-day. His notion of society's good consists in a balancing of all its forces, secured by the smoothing down of any extreme tendencies, each having its orbit marked but no more, so that none shall impede the other's path.

"In this wide world-though each and all alike,

Save for [him] fain would spread itself through space

And leave its fellow not an inch of way."

Browning makes him indulge in a curiously sophisticated view of the relativity of good and evil in the course of his argument, to the effect that since there is a further good conceivable beyond the utmost earth can realize, therefore to change the agency-the evil whereby good is brought about, try to make good do good as evil does-would be just as foolish as if a chemist wanting white and knowing that black ingredients were needed to make the dye insisted these should be white, too. A bad world is that which he experiences and approves. A good world he does not want in which there would be no pity, courage, hope, fear, sorrow, joy-devotedness, in short-which he believes form the ultimate allowed to man; therefore it has been his policy not to do away with the evil in the society he is saving. To mitigate, not to cure, has been his aim.

Browning would, himself, answer the sophistry, here, by showing that evil though permitted by divine power was only a means of good through man's working against whatever he conceives to be evil with the whole strength of his being. To deliberately follow the policy of conserving evil would be in the end to annihilate the good. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau could not see so far as this.

It is not astonishing that with such a policy as this his methods of carrying it out might seem somewhat dubious if not positively criminal. His departure from his early idealism is excused for the reason that idealism is not practicable when the region of talk is left for the real action of life. Every step in his own aggrandizement is apologized for on the ground that what needed to be accomplished could only be done by a strong hand and that strong hand his own. He was in fact an unprincipled utilitarian as Browning presents him, who spoiled even what virtue resides in utilitarianism by letting his care for saving society be too much influenced by his desire for personal glory. One ideal undertaking he permitted himself, the freeing of Italy from the Austrian yoke. But he was not strong enough for any such high flight of idealism, as the sequel proved.

Browning does not bring out in the poem the Emperor's real reasons for stopping short in the Italian campaign, which certainly were sufficient from a practical standpoint, but as Archibald Forbes says in his "Life of Napoleon," should have been thought of before he published his program of freedom to Italy "from the Alps to the Adriatic." "Even when he addressed the Italians at Milan," continues Forbes, "the new light had not broken in upon him which revealed the strength of the quadrilateral, the cost of expelling the Austrians from Venetia, and the conviction that further French successes would certainly bring mobilized Germany into the field. That new light seems to have flashed upon Napoleon for the first time from the stern Austrian ranks on the day of Solferino. It was then he realized that should he go forward he would be obliged to attack in front an enemy entrenched behind great fortresses, and protected against any diversion on his flanks by the neutrality of the territories surrounding him."

Mrs. Browning, whose consternation and grief over Villafranca broke out in burning verse, yet made a defence of Napoleon's action here which might have been worked into Browning's poem with advantage. She wrote to John Foster that while Napoleon's intervention in Italy overwhelmed her with joy it did not dazzle her into doubts as to the motive of it, "but satisfied a patient expectation and fulfilled a logical inference. Thus it did not present itself to my mind as a caprice of power, to be followed perhaps by an onslaught on Belgium and an invasion of England. Have we not watched for a year while every saddle of iniquity has been tried on the Napoleonic back, and nothing fitted? Wasn't he to crush Piedmontese institutions like so many eggshells? Was he ever going away with his army, and hadn't he occupied houses in Genoa with an intention of bombarding the city? Didn't he keep troops in the north after Villafranca on purpose to come down on us with a grand duke or a Kingdom of Etruria and Plon-Plon to rule it? And wouldn't he give back Bologna to the Pope?... Were not Cipriani, Farini and other patriots his 'mere creatures' in treacherous correspondence with the Tuileries 'doing his dirty work'?" Of such accusations as these the intelligent English journals were full, but she maintains that against "The Inane and Immense Absurd" from which they were born is to be set "a nation saved." She realized also how hard Napoleon's position in France must be to maintain "forty thousand priests with bishops of the color of Monseigneur d'Orleans and company, having, of course, a certain hold on the agricultural population which forms so large a part of the basis of the imperial throne. Then add to that the parties who use this Italian question as a weapon simply."

Many of Napoleon's own statements have furnished Browning with the arguments used in the apology. After deliberately destroying the constitution, for example, and himself being the cause of the violence and bloodshed in Paris, he coolly addressed the people in the following strain, in which we certainly recognize Hohenstiel-Schwangau:

"Frenchmen! the disturbances are appeased. Whatever may be the decision of the people, society is saved. The first part of my task is accomplished. The appeal to the nation, for the purpose of terminating the struggle of parties, I knew would not cause any serious risk to the public tranquillity. Why should the people have risen against me? If I do not any longer possess your confidence-if your ideas are changed-there is no occasion to make precious blood flow; it will be sufficient to place an adverse vote in the urn. I shall always respect the decision of the people."

His cleverness in combining the idea of authority with that of the idea of obeying the will of the people is curiously illustrated in his speech at the close of his dictatorship, during which it must be confessed that he had done excellently well for the country-so well, indeed, that even the socialists were ready to cry "Vive l'Empereur!"

"While watching me re?stablish the institutions and reawaken the memories of the Empire, people have repeated again and again that I wished to reconstitute the Empire itself. If this had been so the transformation would have been accomplished long ago; neither the means nor the opportunities would have been lacking.... But I have remained content with that I had. Resolved now, as heretofore, to do all in my power for France and nothing for myself, I would accept any modification of the present state of things only if forced by necessity.... If parties remain quiet, nothing shall be changed. But if they endeavor to sap the foundations of my government; if they deny the legitimacy of the result of the popular vote; if, in short, they continually put the future of the country in jeopardy, then, but only then, it might be prudent to ask the people for a new title which would irrevocably fix on my head the power with which they have already clothed me. But let us not anticipate difficulties; let us preserve the Republic. Under its banner I am anxious to inaugurate once more an epoch of reconciliation and pardon; and I call on all without distinction who will frankly co?perate with me for the public good."

In contrast to such fair-sounding phrases Napoleon was capable of the most dishonorable tactics in order to gain his ends. Witness the episode of his tempting Bismarck with offers of an alliance against Austria at the same time that he was treating secretly with Francis Joseph for the cession of Venetia in return for Silesia. And while negotiating secretly and separately with these two sworn enemies, he pretended to be so disinterested as to suggest the submission of their quarrel to a European congress.

Browning has certainly presented a good portrait of the man as the history of his own utterances contrasted with the history of his actions proves. In trying to bridge with this apology the discrepancies between the two he has, however, attributed to Louis Napoleon a degree of self-consciousness beyond any ever evinced by him. The principle of imperialism was a conviction with him. That he desired to help the people of France and to a great extent succeeded, is true; that he combined with this desire the desire of power for himself is true; that he used unscrupulous means to gain whatever end he desired when such were necessary is true; but that he was conscious of his own despicable traits to the extent that the poet makes him conscious of them is most unlikely. Nor is it likely that he would defend himself upon any such subtle ground as that his character and temperament being the gift of God he was bound to follow out his nature in order that God's purposes might be accomplished. It is rather an explanation of his life from the philosopher's or psychologist's standpoint than a self-conscious revelation. It is none the less interesting on this account, while the scene setting gives it a thoroughly human and dramatic touch.

Whatever may be said of Napoleon himself, his rule was fraught with consequences of import for the whole of Europe, not because of what he was, but because of what he was not. He was an object lesson on the fallacy of trying to govern so that all parties will be pleased by autocratically keeping each one from fully expressing itself. The result is that each grows more aware of the suppression than of the amount of freedom allowed to it, and nobody is pleased. When added to such a policy as this is the surmounting desire for power and the Machiavellian determination to attain it by any means, fair or foul, a principle of statecraft which by the middle of the century could not be practised in its most acute form without arousing the most severe criticism, his power carried within it the seeds of destruction.

It has been said that "never in the history of the world has one man undertaken a task more utterly beyond the power of mortal man than that which Louis Napoleon was pledged to carry through." He professed to be at one and the same time the elect sovereign of the people, a son of the revolution, a champion of universal suffrage, and an adversary of the demagogues. In the first of these characters he was bound to justify his elevation by economic and social reforms, in his second character he had to destroy the last trace of political liberty. He had, in fact, assumed various utterly incompatible attitudes, and the day that the masses found themselves deceived in their expectations, and the middle classes found their interests were betrayed, reaction was inevitable.

William Ewart Gladstone

In spite of his heinous faults, however, historians have grown more and more inclined to admit that Napoleon filled for a time a necessary niche in the line of progress, just that step which Browning makes him say the genius will recognize that he fills-namely, to

"Carry the incompleteness on a stage,

Make what was crooked straight, and roughness smooth,

And weakness strong: wherein if I succeed,

It will not prove the worst achievement, sure

In the eyes at least of one man, one I look

Nowise to catch in critic company:

To-wit, the man inspired, the genius, self

Destined to come and change things thoroughly.

He, at least, finds his business simplified,

Distinguishes the done from undone, reads

Plainly what meant and did not mean this time

We live in, and I work on, and transmit

To such successor: he will operate

On good hard substance, not mere shade and shine."

That is, at a time when Europe was seething with the idea of a new order, in which the ideal of nationality was to take the place of such decaying ideas as the divine right of kings, balance of power, and so on, Napoleon held on to these ideas just long enough to prevent a general disintegration of society. He held in his hands the balance of power until the nations began to find themselves, and in the case of Italy actually helped on the triumph of the new order.

It is interesting to note in this connection that one of the principal factors in the making of Gladstone into the stanch liberal which he became was the freeing of Italy, in which Napoleon had so large a share. Gladstone himself wrote in 1892 of the events which occurred in the fifth decade: "Of the various and important incidents which associated me almost unawares with foreign affairs ... I will only say that they all contributed to forward the action of those home causes more continuous in their operation, which, without in any way effacing my old sense of reverence for the past, determined for me my place in the present and my direction toward the future." In 1859 Gladstone dined with Cavour at Turin, when the latter had the opportunity of explaining his position and policy to the man whom he considered "one of the sincerest and most important friends that Italy had." But as his biographer says, Gladstone was still far from the glorified democracy of the Mazzinian propaganda, and expressed his opinion that England should take the stand that she would be glad if Italian unity proved feasible, "but the conditions of it must be gradually matured by a course of improvement in the several states, and by the political education of the people; if it cannot be reached by these means, it hardly will by any others; and certainly not by opinions which closely link Italian reconstruction with European disorganization and general war." Yet he was as distressed as Mrs. Browning at the peace of Villafranca, about which he wrote: "I little thought to have lived to see the day when the conclusion of a peace should in my own mind cause disgust rather than impart relief." By the end of the year he thought better of Napoleon and expressed himself again somewhat in the same strain as Mrs. Browning, to the effect that the Emperor had shown, "though partial and inconsistent, indications of a genuine feeling for the Italians-and far beyond this he has committed himself very considerably to the Italian cause in the face of the world. When in reply to all that, we fling in his face the truce of Villafranca, he may reply-and the answer is not without force-that he stood single-handed in a cause when any moment Europe might have stood combined against him. We gave him verbal sympathy and encouragement, or at least criticism; no one else gave him anything at all. No doubt he showed then that he had undertaken a work to which his powers were unequal; but I do not think that, when fairly judged, he can be said to have given proof by that measure of insincerity or indifference."

Gladstone's gradual and forceful emancipation into the ranks of the liberals may be followed in the fascinating pages of Morley's "Life," who at the end declares that his performances in the sphere of active government were beyond comparison. Gladstone's own summary of his career gives a glimpse of what these performances were as well as an interpretation of the century and England's future growth which indicate that had he had another twenty years in which to progress, perhaps fewer, he would beyond all doubt have become an out and out social democrat.

"The public aspect of the period which closes for me with the fourteen years (so I love to reckon them) of my formal connection with Midlothian is too important to pass without a word. I consider it as beginning with the Reform Act of Lord Grey's government. That great act was for England, improvement and extension: for Scotland it was political birth, the beginning of a duty and a power, neither of which had attached to the Scottish nation in the preceding period. I rejoice to think how the solemnity of that duty has been recognized, and how that power has been used. The threescore years offer as the pictures of what the historian will recognize as a great legislative and administrative period-perhaps, on the whole, the greatest in our annals. It has been predominantly a history of emancipation-that is, of enabling man to do his work of emancipation, political, economical, social, moral, intellectual. Not numerous merely, but almost numberless, have been the causes brought to issue, and in every one of them I rejoice to think that, so far as my knowledge goes, Scotland has done battle for the right.

"Another period has opened and is opening still-a period possibly of yet greater moral dangers, certainly a great ordeal for those classes which are now becoming largely conscious of power, and never heretofore subject to its deteriorating influences. These have been confined in their actions to the classes above them, because they were its sole possessors. Now is the time for the true friend of his country to remind the masses that their present political elevation is owing to no principles less broad and noble than these-the love of liberty, of liberty for all without distinction of class, creed or country, and the resolute preference of the interests of the whole to any interest, be it what it may, of a narrower scope."

Mr. Gladstone entered Parliament at twenty-three, in 1832, and a year later Browning, at twenty-one, printed his first poem, "Pauline." The careers of the two men ran nearly parallel, for Browning died in 1889, on the day of the publication of his last volume of poems, and Gladstone's retirement from active life took place in 1894, shortly after the defeat of his second Home Rule Bill. Though there is nothing to show that these two men came into touch with each other during their life, and while it is probable that Browning would not have been in sympathy with many of the aspects of Gladstone's mentality, there is an undercurrent of similarity in their attitude of mind toward reform. The passage in "Sordello" already referred to, written in 1840, might be regarded almost as a prophecy of the sort of leader Gladstone became. I have said of that passage that it expressed the ideal of the opportunist, not that of the revolutionary. Opportunist Mr. Gladstone was often called by captious critics, but any unbiased reader following his career now as a whole will see, as Morley points out, that whenever there was a chance of getting anything done it was generally found that he was the only man with courage and resolution enough to attempt it.

A distinction should be made between that sort of opportunism which waits upon the growth of conditions favorable to the taking of a short step in amelioration, and what might be called militant opportunism, which, at all times, seizes every opportunity to take a step in the direction of an evolving, all-absorbing ideal. Is not this the opportunism of both a Browning and a Gladstone? Such a policy at least tacitly acknowledges that the law of evolution is the law that should be followed, and that the mass of the people as well as the leader have their share in the unfolding of the coming ideal, though their part in it may be less conscious than his and though they may need his leadership to make the steps by the way clear.

The other political leader of the Victorian era with whom Gladstone came most constantly into conflict was Disraeli, of whom Browning in "George Bubb Dodington" has given a sketch in order to draw a contrast between the unsuccessful policy of a charlatan of the Dodington type and that of one like Disraeli. The skeptical multitude of to-day cannot be taken in by declarations that the politician is working only for their good, and if he frankly acknowledged that he is working also for his own good they would have none of him. The nice point to be decided is how shall he work for his own good and yet gain control of the multitude. Dodington did not know the secret, but according to Browning Disraeli did, and what is the secret? It seems to be an attitude of absolute self-assurance, a disregard of consistency, a scorn of the people he is dealing with, and a pose suggesting the play of supernatural forces in his life.

This is a true enough picture of the real Disraeli, who seems to have had a leaning toward a belief in spiritualism, and who was notorious for his unblushing changes of opinion and for a style of oratory in which his points were made by clever invective and sarcasm hurled at his opponents instead of by any sound, logical argument, it being, indeed one of his brilliant discoveries that "wisdom ought to be concealed under folly, and consistency under caprice."

Many choice bits of history might be given in illustration of Browning's portrayal of him; for example, speaking against reform, he exclaims: "Behold the late Prime Minister and the Reform Ministry! The spirited and snow-white steeds have gradually changed into an equal number of sullen and obstinate donkeys, while Mr. Merryman, who, like the Lord Chancellor, was once the very life of the ring, now lies his despairing length in the middle of the stage, with his jokes exhausted and his bottle empty."

As a specimen of his quickness in retort may be cited an account of an episode which occurred at the time when he came out as the champion of the Taunton Blues. In the course of his speech he "enunciated," says an anonymous writer of the fifties, "one of those daring historical paradoxes which are so signally characteristic of the man: 'Twenty years ago' said the Taunton Blue hero, 'tithes were paid in Ireland more regularly than now!'

"Even his supporters appeared astounded by this declaration.

"'How do you know?' shouted an elector.

"'I have read it,' replied Mr. Disraeli.

"'Oh, oh!' exclaimed the elector.

"'I know it,' retorted Disraeli, 'because I have read, and you' (looking daggers at his questioner) 'have not.'

"This was considered a very happy rejoinder by the friends of the candidate, and was loudly cheered by the Blues.

"'Didn't you write a novel?' again asked the importunate elector, not very much frightened even by Mr. Disraeli's oratorical thunder and the sardonical expression on his face.

"'I have certainly written a novel,' Mr. Disraeli replied; 'but I hope there is no disgrace in being connected with literature.'

"'You are a curiosity of literature, you are,' said the humorous elector.

"'I hope,' said Mr. Disraeli, with great indignation, 'there is no disgrace in having written that which has been read by hundreds of thousands of my fellow-countrymen, and which has been translated into every European language. I trust that one who is an author by the gift of nature may be as good a man as one who is Master of the Mint by the gift of Lord Melbourne.' Great applause then burst forth from the Blues. Mr. Disraeli continued, 'I am not, however, the puppet of the Duke of Buckingham, as one newspaper has described me; while a fellow laborer in the same vineyard designated me the next morning, "the Marleybone Radical." If there is anything on which I figure myself it is my consistency.'

"'Oh, oh!' exclaimed many hearers.

"'I am prepared to prove it,' said Mr. Disraeli, with menacing energy. 'I am prepared to prove it, and always shall be, either in the House of Commons or on the hustings, considering the satisfactory manner in which I have been attacked, but I do not think the attack will be repeated.'"

It seems extraordinary that such tactics of bluff could take a man onward to the supreme place of Prime Minister. Possibly it was just as much owing to his power to amuse as to any of the causes brought out by Browning. Is there anything the majority of mankind loves more than a laugh?

The conflicts of Disraeli and Gladstone form one of the most remarkable episodes of nineteenth-century politics. One is tempted to draw a parallel between Napoleon III and Disraeli, whose tactics were much the same, except that Disraeli was backed up by a much keener intellect. Possibly he held a part in English politics similar to that held by Napoleon in European politics-that is, he conserved the influences of the past long enough to make the future more sure of itself. Browning, however, evidently considered him nothing more than a successful charlatan.

When Browning wrote, "Why I Am a Liberal," in 1885, liberalism in English politics had reached its climax in the nineteenth century through the introduction by Mr. Gladstone, then Premier for the third time, of his Home Rule Bill. The injustices suffered by the Irish people and the horrible atrocities resulting from these had had their effect upon Mr. Gladstone and had taken him the last great step in his progress toward freedom. The meeting at which this bill was introduced has been described as the greatest legislative assembly of modern times. The House was full to overflowing, and in a brilliant speech of nearly four hours the veteran leader held his audience breathless as he unfolded his plans for the betterment of Irish conditions. We are told that during the debates that followed there was a remarkable exhibition of feeling-"the passions, the enthusiasm, the fear, and hope, and fury and exultation, sweeping, now the surface, now stirring to its depths the great gathering." The bill, which included, besides the founding of an Irish Parliament in Dublin, which would have the power to deal with all matters "save the Crown, the Army and Navy, Foreign and Colonial Policy, Trade, Navigation, Currency, Imperial Taxation, and the Endowment of Churches," also provided that Ireland should annually contribute to the English exchequer the sum of ￡3,243,000.

Eloquence, enthusiasm, exultation-all came to naught. The bill did not even suit the liberals, the bargain from a financial point of view being regarded as hard. It was defeated in Parliament and fared no better when an appeal was made to the country, and Mr. Gladstone resigned. In nine months, however, a general election returned him to office again, and again he introduced a Home Rule Bill, and though it passed the Commons, it was overwhelmingly defeated in the House of Lords.

It is pleasant to reflect that in this last act of a noble and brilliant career spent in the interests of the ever-growing ideals of democracy Gladstone had the sympathy of Browning, shown by his emphatic expression of "liberal sentiments" at a momentous crisis, when a speech on the liberal side even from the mouth of a poet counted for much.

As we have seen, the reflections in Browning's poetry of his interest in public affairs are comparatively few, yet such glimpses as he has given prove him, beyond all doubt, to have been a democrat in principle, to have arrived, in fact, at the beginning of his career at a point beyond that attained by England's rulers at the end of the century. This far-sighted vision of his may have been another reason to be added to those mentioned at the beginning of the chapter why his interest in the practical affairs of his country did not more often express itself. The wrangling, the inconsequentialness, the eloquence expended upon mere personal interests which make up by far the larger proportion of all political agitation, are irritating to the last degree to a man of vision. His part was that of the philosopher and artist-to watch and to record in the portrayal of his many characters the underlying principle of freedom, which was the guiding star in all his work.

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