ABSTRACT
Two particulars in his work assign to Mr. Browning his place in the literary history of our century. First, he attempts to re-establish a harmony between what is infinite and what is finite in man’s nature. In the early years of the century, infinite passion, infinite desire had found unsatisfying all the materials provided for them by our earthly life, and a cry of despair had gone up from earth. Mr. Browning, throughout the entire series of his writings, regards this world as a school or gymnasium, and also a place of test and trial for other lives to come. Therefore all the means of education in our school are precious —knowledge, beauty, passion, power-all are precious, not absolutely, but with reference to the higher existence for which they are to prepare us. In proportion to the ardour with which we pursue these, and finding them insufficient, pass through them and beyond them, have we made them yield to us their worthiest service. Hence infinite desire, infinite aspiration, is the glory and virtue of our manhood; and through art, through science, through human love, we ascend unsatisfied to God. If, on the other hand, we rest in any attainment of knowledge, or love, or creation of beauty by art, accepting it for its own sake and as final, we have forfeited our high distinction as men, we have become beasts which graze in the paddock and do not look up. Thus Mr. Browning not counselling moderation, nor attempting to restrain the emotional ardour, the dilated passion, of the early nineteenthcentury literature of imagination, yet endeavours to convert this from a source of disease and despair into an educational instrument, a source of courage and hope, a pledge of futurity. Worldliness, a low content, a base prudence, the supine heart-these are the signs of fatal disaster to man’s higher nature; to succeed perfectly on earth is to fail in heaven; to fail here, even as Paracelsus
odds with the scientific. His acceptance of the Christian revelation, say rather his acceptance of the man Christ Jesus, lies at the very heart of Mr. Browning’s poetry; and in the mode of his accepting the Christ of history he approaches close to the spirit of Mr, Maurice’s theology.1 With an energy of intellect such as few poets have possessed he unites a spiritual ardour which if not associated on the one hand with an eager and combative intellect, on the other with strong human passions and affections, might have made Mr. Browning a religious mystic; and he sets his intellect to defend the suggestions or intuitions of the spirit. In his ‘Caliban upon Setebos’ the poet has, with singular and almost terrible force, represented what must be the natural theology of one who is merely an intellectual animal, devoid of spiritual cravings, sensibilities, and checks. It is these which discover to us not only the power of God but the love of God everywhere around us, and which enable us to perceive that there is a supreme instance or manifestation of God’s love, which is very Christ. But what of the historical Jesus of Nazareth? Is He not disappearing from the world, criticized away and dissolved into a Christ-myth?
