CHAPTER V.

A:Fifine at the Fair, lxvii.

But Carlyle was always more able to detect the disease than to suggest the remedy. He had, indeed, "a glimpse of it." "There is in man a Higher than love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness." But the glimpse was misleading, for it penetrated no further than the first negative step. The "Everlasting Yea" was, after all, only a deeper "No!" onlyEntsagung, renunciation: "the fraction of life can be increased in value not so much by increasing your numerator as by lessening your denominator." Blessed alone is he that expecteth nothing. The holy of holies, where man hears whispered the mystery of life, is "the sanctuary of sorrow." "What Act of Legislature was there thatthoushouldst be Happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right tobeat all. What if thou wert born and predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy? Nay, is not 'life itself a disease, knowledge the symptom of derangement'? Have not the poets sung 'Hymns to the Night' as if Night were nobler than Day; as if Day were but a small motley-coloured veil spread transiently over the infinite bosom of Night, and did but deform and hide from us its pure transparent eternal deeps." "We, the whole species of Mankind, and our whole existence and history, are but a floating speck in the illimitable ocean of the All ... borne this way and that way by its deep-swelling tides, and grand ocean currents, of which what faintest chance is there that we should ever exhaust the significance, ascertain the goings and comings? A region of Doubt, therefore, hovers for ever in the back-ground.... Only on a canvas of Darkness, such is man's way of being, could the many-coloured picture of our Life paint itself and shine."

In such passages as these, there is far deeper pessimism than in anything which Byron could experience or express. Scepticism is directed byCarlyle, not against the natural elements of life—the mere sensuous outworks, but against the citadel of thought itself. Self-consciousness, or the reflecting interpretation by man of himself and his world, the very activity that lifts him above animal existence and makes him man, instead of being a divine endowment, is declared to be a disease, a poisonous subjectivity destructive of all good. The discovery that man is spirit and no vulture, which was due to Carlyle himself more than to any other English writer of his age, seemed, after all, to be a great calamity; for it led to the renunciation of happiness, and filled man with yearnings after a better than happiness, but left him nothing wherewith they might be satisfied, except "the duty next to hand." And the duty next to hand, as interpreted by Carlyle, is a means of suppressing by action, not idle speech only, but thought itself. But, if this be true, the highest in man is set against itself. And what kind of action remains possible to a "speck on the illimitable ocean, borne this way and that way by its deep-swelling tides"? "Here on earth we are soldiers, fighting in a foreign land; that understand not the plan of the campaign, and have no need to understand it, seeing what is at our hand to be done." But there is one element of still deeper gloom in this blind fighting; it is fought for a foreign cause. It is God's cause and not ours, or ours only in so far as it has been despotically imposed upon us; and it is hard to discover from Carlyle what interest we can have in the victory. Duty is to him amenace—like the duty of a slave, were that possible. It lacks the element which alone can make it imperative to a free being, namely, that it be recognized ashisgood, and that the outer law become his inner motive. The moral law is rarely looked at by Carlyle as a beneficent revelation, and still more rarely as the condition which, if fulfilled, will reconcile man with nature and with God. And consequently, he can draw little strength from religion; for it is only love that can cast out fear.

To sum up all in a word, Carlyle regarded evil as having penetrated into the inmost recesses of man's being. Thought was disease; morality was blind obedience to a foreign authority; religion was awe of an Unknowable, with whom man can claim no kinship. Man's nature was discovered to be spiritual, only on the side of its Wants. It was an endowment of a hunger which nothing could satisfy—not the infinite, because it is too great, not the finite, because it is too little; not God, because He is too far above man, not nature, because it is too far beneath him. We are unable to satisfy ourselves with the things of sense, and are also "shut out of the heaven of spirit." What have been called, "the three great terms of thought"—the World, Self, and God—have fallen asunder in his teaching. It is the difficulty of reconciling these which brings despair, while optimism is evidently the consciousness of their harmony.

Now, these evils which reflection has revealed, and which are so much deeper than those of mere sensuousdisappointment, can only be removed by deeper reflection. The harmony of the world of man's experience, which has been broken by "the comprehensive curse of sceptical despair," can, as Goethe teaches us, be restored only by thought—

"In thine own soul, build it up again."

The complete refutation of Carlyle's pessimistic view can only come, by reinterpreting each of the contradicting terms in the light of a higher conception. We must have a deeper grasp and a new view of the Self, the World, and God. And such a view can be given adequately only by philosophy. Reason alone can justify the faith that has been disturbed by reflection, and re-establish its authority.

How, then, it may be asked, can a poet be expected to turn back the forces of a scepticism, which have been thus armed with the weapons of dialectic? Can anything avail in this region except explicit demonstration? A poet never demonstrates, but perceives; art is not a process, but a result; truth for it is immediate, and it neither admits nor demands any logical connection of ideas. The standard-bearers and the trumpeters may be necessary to kindle the courage of the army and to lead it on to victory, but the fight must be won by the thrust of sword and pike. Man needs more than the intuitions of the great poets, if he is to maintain solid possession of the truth.

Now, I am prepared to admit the force of this objection, and I shall endeavour in the sequel toprove that, in order to establish optimism, more is needed than Browning can give, even when interpreted in the most sympathetic way. His doctrine is offered in terms of art, and it cannot have any demonstrative force without violating the limits of art. In some of his poems, however,—for instance, inLa Saisiaz, Ferishtatis Fanciesand theParleyings, Browning sought to advance definite proofs of the theories which he held. He appears before us at times armedcap-à-pie,like a philosopher. Still, it is not when he argues that Browning proves: it is when he sees, as a poet sees. It is not by means of logical demonstrations that he helps us to meet the despair of Carlyle, or contributes to the establishment of a better faith. Browning's proofs are least convincing when he was most aware of his philosophical presuppositions; and a philosophical critic could well afford to agree with the critic of art, in relegating the demonstrating portions of his poems to the chaotic limbo lying between philosophy and poetry.

When, however, he forgets his philosophy, and speaks as poet and religious man, when he is dominated by that sovereign thought which gave unity to his life-work, and which, therefore, seemed to lie deeper in him than the necessities of his art and to determine his poetic function, his utterances have a far higher significance. For he so lifts the artistic object into the region of pure thought, and makes sense and reason so to interpenetrate, that the old metaphors of "the noble lie" and "the truth beneath the veil" seem no longer to help. Heseems to show us the truth so vividly and simply, that we are less willing to make art and philosophy mutually exclusive, although their methods differ. Like some of the greatest philosophers, and notably Plato and Hegel, he constrains us to doubt, whether the distinction penetrates low beneath the surface; for philosophy, too, when at its best, is a thinking of things together. In their light we begin to ask, whether it is not possible that the interpretation of the world in terms of spirit, which is the common feature of both Hegel's philosophy and Browning's poetry, does not necessarily bring with it a settlement of the ancient feud between these two modes of thought.

But, in any case, Browning's utterances, especially those which he makes when he is most poet and least philosopher, have something of the convincing impressiveness of a reasoned system of optimism. And this comes, as already suggested, from his loyalty to a single idea, which gives unity to all his work. That idea we may, in the end, be obliged to treat not only as a hypothesis—for all principles of reconciliation, even those of the sciences, as long as knowledge is incomplete, must be regarded as hypotheses—but also as a hypothesis which he had no right to assume. It may be that in the end we shall be obliged to say of him, as of so many others—

"See the sage, with the hunger for the truth,And see his system that's all true, exceptThe one weak place, that's stanchioned by a lie!"A

"See the sage, with the hunger for the truth,

And see his system that's all true, except

The one weak place, that's stanchioned by a lie!"A

A:Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.

It may be that the religious form, through which he generally reaches his convictions, is not freed from a dogmatic element, which so penetrates his thought as to vitiate it as a philosophy. Nevertheless, it answered for the poet all the uses of a philosophy, and it may do the same for many who are distrustful of the systems of the schools, and who are "neither able to find a faith nor to do without one." It contains far-reaching hints of a reconciliation of the elements of discord in our lives, and a suggestion of a way in which it may be demonstrated, that an optimistic theory is truer to facts than any scepticism or agnosticism, with the despair that they necessarily bring.

For Browning not only advanced a principle, whereby, as he conceived, man might again be reconciled to the world and God, and all things be viewed as the manifestation of a power that is benevolent; he also sought to apply his principle to the facts of life. He illustrates his fundamental hypothesis by means of these facts; and he tests its validity with the persistence and impressive candour of a scientific investigator. His optimism is not that of an eclectic, who can ignore inconvenient difficulties. It is not an attempt to justify the whole by neglecting details, or to make wrong seem right by reference to a far-off result, in which the steps of the process are forgotten. He stakes the value of his view of life on its power to meetallfacts; one fact, ultimately irreconcilable with his hypothesis, will, he knows, destroy it.

"All the same,Of absolute and irretrievable black,—black's soul of blackBeyond white's power to disintensify,—Of that I saw no sample: such may wreckMy life and ruin my philosophyTomorrow, doubtless."A

"All the same,

Of absolute and irretrievable black,—black's soul of black

Beyond white's power to disintensify,—

Of that I saw no sample: such may wreck

My life and ruin my philosophy

Tomorrow, doubtless."A

A:A Bean Stripe—Ferishtah's Fancies.

He knew that, to justify God, he had to justifyallHis ways to man; that if the good rules at all, it rules absolutely; and that a single exception would confute his optimism.

"So, gazing up, in my youth, at loveAs seen through power, ever aboveAll modes which make it manifest,My soul brought all to a single test—That He, the Eternal First and Last,Who, in His power, had so surpassedAll man conceives of what is might,—Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,—Would prove as infinitely good;Would never, (my soul understood,)With power to work all love desires,Bestow e'en less than man requires."B

"So, gazing up, in my youth, at love

As seen through power, ever above

All modes which make it manifest,

My soul brought all to a single test—

That He, the Eternal First and Last,

Who, in His power, had so surpassed

All man conceives of what is might,—

Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,

—Would prove as infinitely good;

Would never, (my soul understood,)

With power to work all love desires,

Bestow e'en less than man requires."B

B: Christmas Eve.

"No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it,Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it.And I shall behold Thee, face to face,O God, and in Thy light retraceHow in all I loved here, still wast Thou!"C

"No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,

Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,

The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it,

Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it.

And I shall behold Thee, face to face,

O God, and in Thy light retrace

How in all I loved here, still wast Thou!"C

C:Ibid.

We can scarcely miss the emphasis of the poet's own conviction in these passages, or in the assertion that,—

"The acknowledgment of God in ChristAccepted by thy reason, solves for theeAll questions in the earth and out of it,And has so far advanced thee to be wise."A

"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."A

A:A Death in the Desert.

Consequently, there is a defiant and aggressive element in his attitude. Strengthened with an unfaltering faith in the supreme Good, this knight of the Holy Spirit goes forth over all the world seeking out wrongs. "He has," said Dr. Westcott, "dared to look on the darkest and meanest forms of action and passion, from which we commonly and rightly turn our eyes, and he has brought back for us from this universal survey a conviction of hope." I believe, further, that it was in order to justify this conviction that he set out on his quest. His interest in vice—in malice, cruelty, ignorance, brutishness, meanness, the irrational perversity of a corrupt disposition, and the subtleties of philosophic and aesthetic falsehood—was no morbid curiosity. Browning was no "painter of dirt"; no artist can portray filth for filth's sake, and remain an artist. He crowds his pages with criminals, because he sees deeper than their crimes. He describes evil without "palliation or reserve," and allows it to put forth all its might, in order that he may, in the end, show it to be subjected to God's purposes. He confronts evil in order to force it to give up the good, which is all the reality that is in it. He conceives it as his mission to prove that evil is "stuff for transmuting," and that there is nought in the world.

"But, touched aright, prompt yields each particle its tongueOf elemental flame—no matter whence flame sprung,From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness."

"But, touched aright, prompt yields each particle its tongue

Of elemental flame—no matter whence flame sprung,

From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness."

All we want is—

"The power to make them burn, expressWhat lights and warms henceforth, leaves only ash behind,Howe'er the chance."A

"The power to make them burn, express

What lights and warms henceforth, leaves only ash behind,

Howe'er the chance."A

A:Fifine at the Fair.

He had Pompilia's faith.

"And still, as the day wore, the trouble grew,Whereby I guessed there would be born a star."

"And still, as the day wore, the trouble grew,

Whereby I guessed there would be born a star."

He goes forth in the might of his faith in the power of good, as if he wished once for all to try the resources of evil at their uttermost, and pass upon it a complete and final condemnation. With this view, he seeks evil in its own haunts. He creates Guido, the subtlest and most powerful compound of vice in our literature—except Iago, perhaps—merely in order that we may see evil at its worst; and he places him in an environment suited to his nature, as if he was carrying out anexperimentum crucis.The

"Midmost blotch of blackDiscernible in the group of clustered crimesHuddling together in the cave they callTheir palace."B

"Midmost blotch of black

Discernible in the group of clustered crimes

Huddling together in the cave they call

Their palace."B

B:The Ring and the Book—The Pope, 869-872.

Beside him are his brothers, each with his own "tint of hell"; his mistress, on whose face even Pompilia saw the glow of the nether pit "flash and fade"; and his mother—

"The gaunt grey nightmare in the furthest smoke,The hag that gave these three abortions birth,Unmotherly mother and unwomanlyWoman, that near turns motherhood to shame,Womanliness to loathing"A

"The gaunt grey nightmare in the furthest smoke,

The hag that gave these three abortions birth,

Unmotherly mother and unwomanly

Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame,

Womanliness to loathing"A

A:The Ring and the Book—The Pope, 911-915.

Such "denizens o' the cave now cluster round Pompilia and heat the furnace sevenfold." While she

"Sent prayer like incense upTo God the strong, God the beneficent,God ever mindful in all strife and strait,Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme,Till at the last He puts forth might and saves."B

"Sent prayer like incense up

To God the strong, God the beneficent,

God ever mindful in all strife and strait,

Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme,

Till at the last He puts forth might and saves."B

B:The Ring and the Book—Pompilia, 1384-1388.

In these lines we feel the poet's purpose, constant throughout the whole poem. We know all the while that with him at our side we can travel safely through the depths of the Inferno—for the flames bend back from him; and it is only what we expect as the result of it all, that there should come

"A bolt from heaven to cleave roof and clear place,. . . . then floodAnd purify the scene with outside day—Which yet, in the absolutest drench of dark,Ne'er wants its witness, some stray beauty-beamTo the despair of hell."C

"A bolt from heaven to cleave roof and clear place,

. . . . then flood

And purify the scene with outside day—

Which yet, in the absolutest drench of dark,

Ne'er wants its witness, some stray beauty-beam

To the despair of hell."C

C:The Ring and the Book—The Pope, 996-1003.

The superabundant strength of Browning's conviction in the supremacy of the good, which led him inThe Ring and the Bookto depict criminals at their worst, forced him later on in his life to exhibit evil in another form. The real meaningand value of such poems asFifine at the Fair, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Red Cotton Nightcap Country, Ferishtah's Francies, and others, can only be determined by a careful and complete analysis of each of them. But they have one characteristic so prominent, and so new in poetry, that the most careless reader cannot fail to detect it. Action and dramatic treatment give place to a discussion which is metaphysical; instead of the conflict of motives within a character, the stress and strain of passion and will in collision with circumstances, there is reflection on action after it has passed, and the conflict of subtle arguments on the ethical value of motives and ways of conduct, which the ordinary moral consciousness condemns without hesitation. All agree that these poems represent a new departure in poetry, and some consider that in them the poet, in thus dealing with metaphysical abstractions, has overleapt the boundaries of the poetic art. To such critics, this later period seems the period of his decadence, in which the casuistical tendencies, which had already appeared inBishop Blougram's Apology, Mr. Sludge the Medium, and other poems, have overwhelmed his art, and his intellect, in its pride of strength, has grown wanton.Fifine at the Fair issaid to be "a defence of inconstancy, or of the right of experiment in love." Its hero, who is "a modern gentleman, a refined, cultured, musical, artistic and philosophic person, of high attainments, lofty aspirations, strong emotions, and capricious will," produces arguments "wide in range, of profoundsignificance and infinite ingenuity," to defend and justify immoral intercourse with a gipsy trull. The poem consists of the speculations of a libertine, who coerces into his service truth and sophistry, and "a superabounding wealth of thought and imagery," and with no further purpose on the poet's part than the dramatic delineation of character.Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangauis spoken of in a similar manner as the justification, by reference to the deepest principles of morality, of compromise, hypocrisy, lying, and a selfishness that betrays every cause to the individual's meanest welfare. The object of the poet is "by no means to prove black white, or white black, or to make the worse appear the better reason, but to bring a seeming monster and perplexing anomaly under the common laws of nature, by showing how it has grown to be what it is, and how it can with more or less self-delusion reconcile itself to itself."

I am not able to accept this as a complete explanation of the intention of the poet, except with reference toPrince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.ThePrinceis a psychological study, likeMr. Sludge the Medium,andBishop Blougram. No doubt he had the interest of a dramatist in the hero ofFifine at the Fairand in the hero ofRed Cotton Nightcap Country;but, in these poems, his dramatic interest is itself determined by an ethical purpose, which is equally profound. His meeting with the gipsy at Pornic, and the spectacle of her unscrupulous audacity in vice, not only "sent his fancy roaming," but openedout before him the fundamental problems of life. What I would find, therefore, inFifine at the Fairis not the casuistic defence of an artistic and speculative libertine, but an earnest attempt on the part of the poet to prove,

"That, through the outward sign, the inward grace allures,And sparks from heaven transpierce earth's coarsest covertures,—All by demonstrating the value of Fifine."A

"That, through the outward sign, the inward grace allures,

And sparks from heaven transpierce earth's coarsest covertures,—

All by demonstrating the value of Fifine."A

A:Fifine at the Fair, xxviii.

Within his scheme of the universal good he seeks to find a place even for this gipsy creature, who traffics "in just what we most pique us that we keep." Having, in theRing and the Book, challenged evil at its worst as it manifests itself practically in concrete characters and external action, and having wrung from it the victory of the good, inFifineand in his other later poems he meets it again in the region of dialectic. In this sphere of metaphysical ethics, evil has assumed a more dangerous form, especially for an artist. His optimistic faith has driven the poet into a realm into which poetry never ventured before. His battle is now, not with flesh and blood, but with the subtler powers of darkness grown vocal and argumentative, and threatening to turn the poet's faith in good into a defence of immorality, and to justify the worst evil by what is highest of all. Having indicated in outward fact "the need," as well as the "transiency of sin and death," he seeks here to prove that need, and seems, thereby, to degrade the highest truth of religion into a defence of the worst wickedness.

No doubt the result is sufficiently repulsive to the abstract moralist, who is apt to find inFifinenothing but a casuistical and shameless justification of evil, which is blasphemy against goodness itself. We are made to "discover," for instance, that

"There was justEnough and not too much of hate, love, greed and lust,Could one discerningly but hold the balance, shiftThe weight from scale to scale, do justice to the driftOf nature, and explain the glories by the shamesMixed up in man, one stuff miscalled by different names."A

"There was just

Enough and not too much of hate, love, greed and lust,

Could one discerningly but hold the balance, shift

The weight from scale to scale, do justice to the drift

Of nature, and explain the glories by the shames

Mixed up in man, one stuff miscalled by different names."A

We are told that—

"Force, guile were arms which earnedMy praise, not blame at all."

"Force, guile were arms which earned

My praise, not blame at all."

A:Fifine at the Fair, cviii.

Confronted with such utterances as these, it is only natural that, rather than entangle the poet in them, we should regard them as the sophistries of a philosophical Don Juan, powerful enough, under the stress of self-defence, to confuse the distinctions of right and wrong. But, as we shall try to show in the next chapter, such an apparent justification of evil cannot be avoided by a reflective optimist; and it is implicitly contained even in those religious utterances ofRabbi Ben Ezra, Christmas Eve, andA Death in the Desert, with which we not only identify the poet but ourselves, in so far as we share his faith that

"God's in His heaven,—All's right with the world."

"God's in His heaven,—

All's right with the world."

The poet had far too much speculative acumen to be ignorant of this, and too much boldness and strength of conviction in the might of the good, to refuse to confront the issues that sprang from it. In his later poems, as in his earlier ones, he is endeavouring to justify the ways of God to man; and the difficulties which surround him are not those of a casuist, but the stubborn questionings of a spirit, whose religious faith is thoroughly earnest and fearless. To a spirit so loyal to the truth, and so bold to follow its leading, the suppression of such problems is impossible; and, consequently, it was inevitable that he should use the whole strength of his dialectic to try those fundamental principles, on which the moral life of man is based. And it is this, I believe, which we find inFifine, as inFerishtah's Fanciesand theParleyings; not an exhibition of the argumentative subtlety of a mind whose strength has become lawless, and which spends itself in intellectual gymnastics, that have no place within the realm of either the beautiful or the true.

"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated skyGives us free scope; only doth backward pullOur slow designs, when we ourselves are dull."But most it is presumption in us, whenThe help of heaven we count the act of men."A

"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,

Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky

Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull

Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.

"But most it is presumption in us, when

The help of heaven we count the act of men."A

A:All's Well that Ends Well.

I have tried to show that one of the ruling conceptions of Browning's view of life is that the Good is absolute, and that it reveals itself in all the events of human life. By means of this conception, he endeavoured to bring together the elements which had fallen asunder in the sensational and moral pessimism of Byron and Carlyle. In other words, through the re-interpreting power which lies in this fundamental thought when it is soberly held and fearlessly applied, he sought to reconcile man with the world and with God, and thereby with himself. And the governing motive, whether the conscious motive or not, of Browning's poetry, the secret impulse which led him to dramatise the conflicts and antagonisms of human life, was the necessity of finding in them evidence of the presence of this absolute Good.

Browning's optimism was deep and comprehensive enough to reject all compromise. His faith in the good seemed to rise with the demands that were made upon it by the misery and wickedness of man, and the apparently purposeless waste of life and its resources. There was in it a deliberate earnestness which led him to grapple, not only with the concrete difficulties of individual life, but with those also that spring from reflection and theory.

The test of a philosophic optimism, as of any optimism which is more than a pious sentiment, must finally lie in its power to reveal the presence of the good in actual individual evils. But there are difficulties still nearer than those presented by concrete facts, difficulties arising out of the very suggestion that evil is a form of good. Such speculative difficulties must be met by a reflective mind, before it can follow out the application of an optimistic theory to particular facts. Now, Browning's creed, at least as he held it in his later years, was not merely the allowable exaggeration of an ecstatic religious sentiment, the impassioned conviction of a God-intoxicated man. It was deliberately presented as a solution of moral problems, and was intended to serve as a theory of the spiritual nature of things. It is, therefore, justly open to the same kind of criticism as that to which a philosophic doctrine is exposed. The poet deprived himself of the refuge, legitimate enough to the intuitive method of art, when, in his later works, he not only offered a dramatic solution of the problem of life, butdefinitely attempted to meet the difficulties of speculative ethics.

In this chapter I shall point out some of these difficulties, and then proceed to show how the poet proposed to solve them.

A thorough-going optimism, in that it subdues all things to the idea of the supreme Good, and denies to evil the right even to dispute the absoluteness of its sway, naturally seems to imply a pantheistic theory of the world. And Browning's insistence on the presence of the highest in all things may easily be regarded as a mere revival of the oldest and crudest attempts at finding their unity in God. For ifall, as he says, is for the best, there seems to be no room left for the differences apparent in the world, and the variety which gives it beauty and worth. Particular existences would seem to be illusory and evanescent phenomena, the creations of human imagination, itself a delusive appearance. The infinite, on this view, stands over against the finite, and it overpowers and consumes it; and the optimism, implied in the phrase that "God is all," turns at once into a pessimism. For, as soon as we inquire into the meaning of this "all," we find that it is only a negation of everything we can know or be. Such a pantheism as this is self-contradictory; for, while seeming to level all things upwards to a manifestation of the divine, it really levels all downwards to the level of mere unqualified being, a stagnant and empty unknowable. It leaves only a choicebetween akosmism and atheism, and, at the same time, it makes each of the alternatives impossible. For, in explaining the world it abolishes it, and in abolishing the world it empties itself of all signification; so that the Godhood which it attempts to establish throughout the whole realm of being, is found to mean nothing. "It is the night, in which all cows are black."

The optimistic creed, which the poet strove to teach, must, therefore, not only establish the immanence of God, but show in some way how such immanence is consistent with the existence of particular things. His doctrine that there is no failure, or folly, or wickedness, or misery, but conceals within it, at its heart, a divine element; that there is no incident in human history which is not a pulsation of the life of the highest, and which has not its place in a scheme of universal good, must leave room for the moral life of man, and all the risks which morality brings with it. Otherwise, optimism is impossible. For a God who, in filling the universe with His presence, encroaches on the freedom and extinguishes the independence of man, precludes the possibility of all that is best for man—namely, moral achievement. Life, deprived of its moral purpose, is worthless to the poet, and so, in consequence, is all that exists in order to maintain that life. Optimism and ethics seem thus to come into immediate collision. The former, finding the presence of God in all things, seems to leave no room for man; and the latter seems to set man towork out his own destiny in solitude, and to give him supreme and absolute authority over his own life; so that any character which he forms, be it good or bad, is entirely the product of his own activity. So far as his life is culpable or praiseworthy, in other words, so far as we pass any moral judgment upon it, we necessarily think of it as the revelation of a self, that is, of an independent will, which cannot divide its responsibility. There may be, and indeed there always is for every individual, a hereditary predisposition and a soliciting environment, tendencies which are his inheritance from a remote past, and which rise to the surface in his own life; in other words, the life of the individual is always led within the larger sweep of the life of humanity. He is part of a whole, and has his place fixed, and his function predetermined, by a power which is greater than his own. But, if we are to call him good or evil, if he is to aspire and repent and strive, in a word, if he is to have anymoralcharacter, he cannot be merely a part of a system; there must be something within him which is superior to circumstances, and which makes him master of his own fate. His natural history may begin with the grey dawn of primal being, but his moral history begins with himself, from the time when he first reacted upon the world in which he is placed, and transformed his natural relations into will and character. For who can be responsible for what he did not will? What could a moral imperative mean, what could an "ought" signify, to a being who was only atemporary embodiment of forces, who are prior to, and independent of himself? It would seem, therefore, as if morality were irreconcilable with optimism. The moral life of man cannot be the manifestation of a divine benevolence whose purpose is necessary; it is a trust laid upon himself, which he may either violate or keep. It surpasses divine goodness, "tho' matched with equal power" tomakeman good, as it has made the flowers beautiful. From this point of view, spiritual attainment, whether intellectual or moral, is man's own, a spontaneous product. Just as God is conceived as all in all in the universe, so man is all in all within the sphere of duty; for the kingdom of heaven is within. In both cases alike, there is absolute exclusion of external interference.

For this reason, it has often seemed both to philosophers and theologians, as if the world were too confined to hold within it both God and man. In the East, the consciousness of the infinite seemed at times to leave no room for the finite; and in the West, where the consciousness of the finite and interest therein is strongest, and man strives and aspires, a Deism arose which set God at a distance, and allowed Him to interfere in the fate of man only by a benevolent miracle. Nor is this collision of pantheism and freedom, nay of religion and morality, confined to the theoretical region. This difficulty is not merely the punishment of an over-bold and over-ambitious philosophy, which pries too curiously into the mystery of being. It liesat the very threshold of all reflection on the facts of the moral life. Even children feel the mystery of God's permitting sin, and embarrass their helpless parents with the contradiction between absolute benevolence and the miseries and cruelties of life. "A vain interminable controversy," says Teufels-dröckh, "which arises in every soul since the beginning of the world: and in every soul, that would pass from idle suffering into actual endeavouring, must be put an end to. The most, in our own time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough Suppression of this controversy: to a few Solution of it is indispensable."

Solution, and not Suppression, is what Browning sought; he did, in fact, propound a solution, which, whether finally satisfactory or not, at least carries us beyond the easy compromises of ordinary religious and ethical teaching. He does not deny the universality of God's beneficence or power, and divide the realm of being between Him and the adversary: nor, on the other hand, does he limit man's freedom, and stultify ethics by extracting the sting of reality from sin. To limit God, he knew, was to deny Him; and, whatever the difficulties he felt in regarding the absolute Spirit as realising itself in man, he could not be content to reduce man into a temporary phantom, an evanescent embodiment of "spiritual" or natural forces, that take a fleeting form in him as they pursue their onward way.

Browning held with equal tenacity to the idea of auniversal benevolent order, and to the idea of the moral freedom of man within it. He was driven in opposite directions by two beliefs, both of which he knew to be essential to the life of man as spirit, and both of which he illustrates throughout his poems with an endless variety of poetic expression. He endeavoured to find God in man and still to leave man free. His optimistic faith sought reconciliation with morality. The vigour of his ethical doctrine is as pre-eminent, as the fulness of his conviction of the absolute sway of the Good. Side by side with his doctrine that there is no failure, no wretchedness of corruption that does not conceal within it a germ of goodness, is his sense of the evil of sin, of the infinite earnestness of man's moral warfare, and of the surpassing magnitude of the issues at stake for each individual soul. So powerful is his interest in man as a moral agent, that he sees nought else in the world of any deep concern. "My stress lay," he said in his preface toSordello(1863), "on the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study. I, at least, always thought so—you, with many known and unknown to me, think so—others may one day think so." And this development of a soul is not at any time regarded by the poet as a peaceful process, like the growth of a plant or animal. Although he thinks of the life of man as the gradual realization of a divine purpose within him, he does not suppose it to take place in obedience to a tranquil necessity. Man advances morally by fighting his way inch by inch, and he gains nothing exceptthrough conflict. He does not become good as the plant grows into maturity. "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force."

"No, when the fight begins within himself,A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head,Satan looks up between his feet,—both tug—He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul awakesAnd grows. Prolong that battle through this life!Never leave growing till the life to come."A

"No, when the fight begins within himself,

A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head,

Satan looks up between his feet,—both tug—

He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul awakes

And grows. Prolong that battle through this life!

Never leave growing till the life to come."A

A:Bishop Blougram.

Man is no idle spectator of the conflict of the forces of right and wrong; Browning never loses the individual in the throng, or sinks him into his age or race. And although the poet ever bears within him the certainty of victory for the good, he calls his fellows to the fight as if the fate of all hung on the valour of each. The struggle is always personal, individual like the duels of the Homeric heroes.

It is under the guise of warfare that morality always presents itself to Browning. It is not a mere equilibrium of qualities—the measured, self-contained, statuesque ethics of the Greeks, nor the asceticism and self-restraint of Puritanism, nor the peaceful evolution of Goethe's artistic morality: it is valour in the battle of life. His code contains no negative commandments, and no limitations; but he bids each man let out all the power that is within him, and throw himself upon life with the whole energy of his being. It is better even to seek evil with one's whole mind, than tobe lukewarm in goodness. Whether you seek good or evil, and play for the counter or the coin, stake it boldly!

"Let a man contend to the uttermostFor his life's set prize, be it what it will!"The counter our lovers staked was lostAs surely as if it were lawful coin:And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost"Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loinThough the end in sight was a vice, I say.You, of the virtue (we issue join)How strive you?—'De te fabula!'"A

"Let a man contend to the uttermostFor his life's set prize, be it what it will!

"Let a man contend to the uttermost

For his life's set prize, be it what it will!

"The counter our lovers staked was lostAs surely as if it were lawful coin:And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost

"The counter our lovers staked was lost

As surely as if it were lawful coin:

And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost

"Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loinThough the end in sight was a vice, I say.You, of the virtue (we issue join)How strive you?—'De te fabula!'"A

"Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin

Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.

You, of the virtue (we issue join)

How strive you?—'De te fabula!'"A

A: The Statue and the Bust.

Indifference and spiritual lassitude are, to the poet, the worst of sins. "Go!" says the Pope to Pompilia's pseudo-parents,

"Never again elude the choice of tints!White shall not neutralize the black, nor goodCompensate bad in man, absolve him so:Life's business being just the terrible choice."B

"Never again elude the choice of tints!

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good

Compensate bad in man, absolve him so:

Life's business being just the terrible choice."B

B:The Ring and the Book—The Pope, 1235-1238.

In all the greater characters ofThe Ring and the Book, this intensity of vigour in good and evil flashes out upon us. Even Pompilia, the most gentle of all his creations, at the first prompting of the instinct of motherhood, rises to the law demanding resistance, and casts off the old passivity.

"Dutiful to the foolish parents first,Submissive next to the bad husband,—nay,Tolerant of those meaner miserableThat did his hests, eked out the dole of pain ";C

"Dutiful to the foolish parents first,

Submissive next to the bad husband,—nay,

Tolerant of those meaner miserable

That did his hests, eked out the dole of pain ";C

C:Ibid., 1052-1055.

she is found

"Sublime in new impatience with the foe.""I did for once see right, do right, give tongueThe adequate protest: for a worm must turnIf it would have its wrong observed by God.I did spring up, attempt to thrust asideThat ice-block 'twixt the sun and me, lay lowThe neutralizer of all good and truth."A"Yet, shame thus rank and patent, I struck, bare,At foe from head to foot in magic mail,And off it withered, cobweb armouryAgainst the lightning! 'Twas truth singed the liesAnd saved me."B

"Sublime in new impatience with the foe."

"I did for once see right, do right, give tongueThe adequate protest: for a worm must turnIf it would have its wrong observed by God.I did spring up, attempt to thrust asideThat ice-block 'twixt the sun and me, lay lowThe neutralizer of all good and truth."A

"I did for once see right, do right, give tongue

The adequate protest: for a worm must turn

If it would have its wrong observed by God.

I did spring up, attempt to thrust aside

That ice-block 'twixt the sun and me, lay low

The neutralizer of all good and truth."A

"Yet, shame thus rank and patent, I struck, bare,At foe from head to foot in magic mail,And off it withered, cobweb armouryAgainst the lightning! 'Twas truth singed the liesAnd saved me."B

"Yet, shame thus rank and patent, I struck, bare,

At foe from head to foot in magic mail,

And off it withered, cobweb armoury

Against the lightning! 'Twas truth singed the lies

And saved me."B

A:The Ring and the Book—Pompilia, 1591-1596.

B:Ibid., 1637-1641.

Beneath the mature wisdom of the Pope, amidst the ashes of old age, there sleeps the same fire. He is as truly a warrior priest as Caponsacchi himself, and his matured experience only muffles his vigour. Wearied with his life-long labour, we see him gather himself together "in God's name," to do His will on earth once more with concentrated might.

"I smiteWith my whole strength once more, ere end my part,Ending, so far as man may, this offence."C

"I smite

With my whole strength once more, ere end my part,

Ending, so far as man may, this offence."C

C:The Ring and the Book—The Pope, 1958-1960.

Nor, spite of doubts, the promptings of mercy, the friends plucking his sleeve to stay his arm, does he fear "to handle a lie roughly"; or shrink from sending the criminal to his account, though it be but one day before he himself is called beforethe judgment seat. The same energy, the same spirit of bold conflict, animates Guido's adoption of evil for his good. At all but the last moment of his life of monstrous crime, just before he hears the echo of the feet of the priests, who descend the stair to lead him to his death, "he repeats his evil deed in will."

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