An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry. Robert Browning

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      In his poem entitled ‘Halbert and Hob’ (‘Dramatic Lyrics’, First Series), quoting from Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’, “Is there a reason in nature for these hard hearts?” the poet adds, “O Lear, That a reason OUT of nature must turn them soft, seems clear!”

      Mind is, with Browning, SUPERNATURAL, but linked with, and restrained, and even enslaved by, the natural. The soul, in its education, that is, in its awakening, becomes more and more independent of the natural, and, as a consequence, more responsive to higher souls and to the Divine. ALL SPIRIT IS MUTUALLY ATTRACTIVE, and the degree of attractiveness results from the degree of freedom from the obstructions of the material, or the natural. Loving the truth implies a greater or less degree of that freedom of the spirit which brings it into SYMPATHY with the true. “If ye abide in My word,” says Christ (and we must understand by “word” His own concrete life, the word made flesh, and living and breathing), “if ye abide in My word” (that is, continue to live My life), “then are ye truly My disciples; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John viii. 32).

      In regard to the soul’s INHERENT possessions, its microcosmic potentialities, Paracelsus is made to say (and this may be taken, too, as the poet’s own creed), “Truth is WITHIN ourselves; it takes no rise from outward things, whate’er you may believe: there is an inmost centre in us all, where truth abides in fulness; and around, wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, this perfect, clear perception—which is truth. A baffling and perverting carnal mesh blinds it, and makes all error: and, TO KNOW, rather consists in opening out a way whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, than in effecting entry for a light supposed to be without.”

      All possible thought is IMPLICIT in the mind, and waiting for release—waiting to become EXPLICIT. “Seek within yourself,” says Goethe, “and you will find everything; and rejoice that, without, there lies a Nature that says yea and amen to all you have discovered in yourself.” And Mrs. Browning, in the person of Aurora Leigh, writes: “The cygnet finds the water; but the man is born in ignorance of his element, and feels out blind at first, disorganized by sin in the blood—his spirit-insight dulled and crossed by his sensations. Presently we feel it quicken in the dark sometimes; then mark, be reverent, be obedient—for those dumb motions of imperfect life are oracles of vital Deity attesting the Hereafter. Let who says ‘The soul’s a clean white paper’, rather say, a palimpsest, a prophet’s holograph defiled, erased, and covered by a monk’s—the Apocalypse by a Longus! poring on which obscure text, we may discern perhaps some fair, fine trace of what was written once, some off-stroke of an alpha and omega expressing the old Scripture.”

      This “fair, fine trace of what was written once”, it was the mission of Christ, it is the mission of all great personalities, of all the concrete creations of Genius, to bring out into distinctness and vital glow. It is not, and cannot be, brought out—and this fact is emphasized in the poetry of Browning—it cannot be brought out, through what is born and resides in the brain: it is brought out, either directly or indirectly, by the attracting power of magnetic personalities, the ultimate, absolute personality being the God-man, Christ, qea/nqrwpos.

      The human soul is regarded in Browning’s poetry as a complexly organized, individualized divine force, destined to gravitate towards the Infinite. How is this force, with its numberless checks and counter-checks, its centripetal and centrifugal tendencies, best determined in its necessarily oblique way? How much earthly ballast must it carry, to keep it sufficiently steady, and how little, that it may not be weighed down with materialistic heaviness? How much certainty must it have of its course, and how much uncertainty, that it may shun the “torpor of assurance”, *1* and not lose the vigor which comes of a dubious and obstructed road, “which who stands upon is apt to doubt if it’s indeed a road.” *2* “Pure faith indeed,” says Bishop Blougram, to Gigadibs, the literary man, “you know not what you ask! naked belief in God the Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much the sense of conscious creatures, to be borne. It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare. Some think, Creation’s meant to show him forth: I say, it’s meant to hide him all it can, and that’s what all the blessed Evil’s for. Its use in time is to environ us, our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough against that sight till we can bear its stress. Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain and lidless eye and disimprisoned heart less certainly would wither up at once, than mind, confronted with the truth of Him. But time and earth case-harden us to live; the feeblest sense is trusted most: the child feels God a moment, ichors o’er the place, plays on and grows to be a man like us. With me, faith means perpetual unbelief kept quiet like the snake ’neath Michael’s foot, who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.” *3*

      —

       *1* ‘The Ring and the Book’, The Pope, v. 1853.

       *2* ‘Bishop Blougram’s Apology’, vv. 198, 199.

       *3* ‘Bishop Blougram’s Apology’, vv. 650–671.

      —

      There is a remarkable passage to the same effect in ‘Paracelsus’, in which Paracelsus expatiates on the “just so much of doubt as bade him plant a surer foot upon the sun-road.”

      And in ‘Easter Day’:—

      “You must mix some uncertainty

       With faith, if you would have faith BE.”