How love is the only good in the world.
The famous singer in "Dis Aliter Visum" knows that art, verse, music,
count as naught beside "love found, gained, and kept." Browning seems to
regard almost any genuine love as a means of opening out the nature to
fuller self-knowledge, to wider sympathies, and to increased power of
action. Hence he condemns all cautious calculation of obstacles, all
dwelling upon conventional difficulties, in the path of those who have
clearly seen "the love-way." Hence even love unrequited is counted of
inestimable value. In _Colombe's Birthday_ Valence says,
Is the knowledge of her, naught? the memory, naught?
--Lady, should such an one have looked on you,
Ne'er wrong yourself so far as quote the world
And say, love can go unrequited here!
You will have blessed him to his whole life's end--
Low passions hindered, baser cares kept back,
All goodness cherished where you dwelt--and dwell.
But the love of man and woman is not the only sort. A part of the value
of this individual relationship is that it may be regarded as a
revelation and symbol of the spirit of all-embracing sympathy whereby
mankind should be ruled. When Paracelsus analyzes his life he ascribes
his failure to the fact that he has sought knowledge to the exclusion of
all else; he finally came to see that knowledge, however profound, is of
itself barren of satisfaction. He had meant to serve men by revealing
truth to them, but he found that real service is based on the
understanding given by love. In self condemnation he says,
In my own heart love had not been made wise
To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind,
To know even hate is but a mask of love's.
To see a good in evil, and a hope
In ill-success; to sympathize, be proud
Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim
Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies,
Their prejudice and fears and cares and doubts;
All with a touch of nobleness, despite
Their error, upward tending all though weak.
Browning's conception of the function and power of love is based on his
belief in its divine origin. Twice at least, in "Easter Day" and "Saul,"
his characters work out from an overpowering recognition of God's
omniscience and omnipotence to a final recognition that his love is
equal in scope with his power and knowledge. And he counts human service
as most complete when, as in David before Saul, it reaches out to God's
love and recruits its failing forces from the divine source.
Underlying Browning's doctrine of the value of love, and his doctrine of
progress and aspiration, is his belief in personal immortality. When he
was charged with being strongly against Darwin, with rejecting the
truths of science and regretting its advance, he answered that the idea
of a progressive development from senseless matter until man's
appearance had been a familiar conception to him from the beginning, but
he reiterated his constant faith in creative intelligence acting on
matter but not resulting from it. "Soul," he said, "is not matter, nor
from matter, but above." Two assumptions which though not susceptible of
proof he regards as "inescapable," are the existence of creative
intelligence and of "the subtle thing called spirit." When he argues out
the question of the immortality of this spirit, as in _La Saisiaz_, he
admits the subjective character of the evidence; but when he speaks
spontaneously out of his own feeling or experience, it is with positive
belief in life after death. To Mr. Sharp he said, "Death, death! It is
this harping on death that I do despise so much! Why, _amico mio_, you
know as well as I that death is life, just as our daily, our momentarily
dying body is none the less alive and ever recruiting new forces of
existence. Without death which is our crape-like church-yardy word for
change, for growth, there could be no prolongation of what we call life.
Pshaw, it is foolish to argue upon such a thing, even. For myself, I
deny death as an end of everything. Never say of me that I am dead!"
When his wife died he wrote in her Testament these words from Dante,
"Thus I believe, thus I affirm, thus I am certain it is, that from this
life I shall pass to another better there where that lady lives of whom
my soul was enamored." This faith in life after death explains much of
Browning's philosophy. The source of the pagan Cleon's profound
discouragement was the fact that man should be dowered with
"joy-hunger," should be given the ability to perceive and comprehend
splendor and breadth of experience, but should, through the straitness
of human limitations, be held back from satisfaction and achievement,
and should be left to die thus dazzled, thus baffled. The secret of
Browning's optimism, on the other hand, is his belief that in heaven
the soul is freed from limitations, and blossoms out into capabilities
of joy and of activity beyond anything suggested by the most golden
dreams of earth. To him all life is a unit, beginning here and destined
to unimaginable development hereafter. Earth is regarded as a place of
tutelage where man may learn to set foot on some one path to heaven. And
no work begun here shall ever pause for death. Even apparent failure
here counts for little so the quest be not abandoned. Each of us may, as
Abt Vogler, look without despair on the broken arcs of earth if his
faith reveals the perfect round in heaven.
From any prolonged study of Browning's poetry we become conscious of
certain dominant qualities of style that may be thought of quite apart
from his themes or message. That his style has the defect of its
qualities has already been pointed out. Here we may appropriately
indicate those qualities as positive elements of his power. His diction,
rich alike in the most learned words and the most colloquial, is
responsive to all demands. His power of phrasing runs the whole gamut
from the most pellucid simplicity to the most triumphant originality.
His figures of speech, drawn from all realms, are penetrating in
quality, of startling aptness. Equally characteristic is his
versification, varying as it does from passages of melodic smoothness
and grace to lines as strident, broken, and harsh as the thought they
dramatically reflect. In narration, whether in the brilliant rapidity
and ease of a short poem like "Hervé Riel" or in the sustained flow of a
long story like that of Pompilia, we find unusual skill. In
disquisition, in the presentation of complicated and elusive
intellectual processes, there is a quite unmatched agility and
dexterity. Probably no two forms of poetry contain more of Browning's
most noteworthy work than the lyric, especially the reflective love
lyric, and that form which is distinctively his own, the dramatic
monologue. In his best poems in this last form he has no competitor. It
is in the presentation of character through the medium of dramatic
monologue that he most fully reveals the unerring precision of his
analysis, his lightning glance into the heart of a mystery, the ease
with which he tracks a motive or mood or thought to its last hiding
place, and his consequent passion and fire of sympathy or scorn.
Finally, whether we consider Browning's style or subject matter or
philosophy of life, we become growingly conscious of his force. The
"clear Virgilian line" of Tennyson is the outcome of a nature
instinctively aristocratic and aloof. Browning is out in the thick of
the fight and almost vociferously demands a hearing. Whatever makes his
thought clear, vivid, active, forcible, seems to him, however prosaic it
may appear at first glance, proper poetic material. The immediate effect
of his verse is the rousing of the mind to great issues. His tremendous
sincerity results in a dispelling of mists, a stripping off of husks.
His demand for the truth is a trumpet note of challenge to our doubt or
fear or indifference. His penetrating study of human problems leads to
an inevitable widening of the horizon of comprehension and sympathy on
the part of his readers. And his courage and optimism constitute an
inspiration and stimulus of an uncommonly virile sort.
It has been said that Browning is "not a poet, but a literature," and in
work so vast and varied that it can be thus characterized there must be
wide extremes of value. It is almost certain that portions of his work
cannot live. They are too difficult, too unliterary. But in the portions
where great thought finds adequate form, the product is a priceless gift
and one not equaled by any other poet of his age.