Browning and His Century

sm and his idealism, with no touch of the utilitarianism which has been a distinctive mark of the fabric of English society during the nineteenth century, nor, on the ot

his heart with such gratefulness to the giver of the fig that immediately he fares forth upon the way which brings him into the presence of the Prime Giver from whom all gifts are received. What ecstasy of feeling in the artist aspiring through his art to the higher regions of Absolute Beauty in "Abt Vogler" of the poet who loves, aspiring to the div

htah's Fancies," and the sonnet to Edward Fitzgerald just before his death, and thirty years after his wife's death. Moreover, in the epilogue to "The Two Poets of Croisic" he gives a hint of w

ictory wa

sang and

re at lowe

e-one stri

soft was sn

be hear

kind cricke

upon t

t, and dul

Love,' when

e treble

mewhat som

was evidently the distinctive mark of Browning's personality on the emotional side, furnishes the keynote by which

his short ones personal love had been portrayed under various conditions-between friends or lovers, husband and wife, or father and son, and in every instance it is a dominating influence in the action, as we hav

ttima's vision of the reality of her own love, despite her great sin as contrasted with that of Sebald's, and in Jules's rising above the conv

utwyche, what N

world except

Phen

ak these pal

n art a

cted isle in

g through the w

for a momen

hoods of ceda

ever by me

rms as now-a

cted isle in

ted isle in f

divinity in Djabal and human love for him in the soul of Anael, resulting at the end in the destruction of the idea of Djabal's su

ed from nineteenth-century conditions in England. In "Pippa," the social conditions of nineteenth-century

exalted love of the two young people who in their ecstasy transcend conventions, illustrates, as perhaps no other situation could, his reverential attitude upon the subject of love. Gwendolen, the older, intuitional woman, and Mertoun, the young lover, are the only people in the play to realize that purity may exist although the social enactments upon which it is suppo

long w

tis so easy, an

ndness! Can

ch spoken to y

artless men sha

with grave-cloth

ps, of every

ps-yet of no

e by stripe! Di

ble world to

h, though the wo

o real and permanent a sympathy between two souls, and so absolute a revelation of divine beauty, that its morality far transcended that of the conventional codes, which under the guise of lawful alliances permit and even encourag

h the solemnization of marriage, but his eyes were wide open to the fact that there might be sin

ory are with the intention of pitting against the villainy of an aristocratic seducer of the lowest type a bourgeois young man, who has been in love with the betrayed woman, and who when he finds out that it was this man, his friend, who had stood between them, does not swerve from his loyalty and truth to her,

of a man than in the passage where the hero of the story gives

heart

and of mine wi

see upon this

of a heart

? Dear, you k

rd me pardon

h her foot, if

ost indignit

and no love! A

o the purpose!

nly let me s

int and how yo

l-perhaps the

power against th

life for you

d-in marriage,

re's something f

re well-wishe

fe long, at you

e open to le

d you need not

k you!-are you t

even: I should

at least: some

f weeks and mo

! 'I believe yo

ake my heart lea

et in Heaven to

one thing more! H

angry? If the

orst-if still t

d was no shame,

if my hand and

be your safegua

he hand-you h

evoted to a woman with a "past"; like the lover in "One Way of Love," who still can say, "Those who win heaven, blest are they." Sometimes there is a problem t

mind to do so. Considering what an entirely conventional and loveless marriage this of the lady and the Duke evidently was we cannot suppose, in the light of Browning's solution of similar situations, that he would have thought it any great crime if the Duke and the lady had eloped, since the

race to be extracte

pute to each f

lamp and th

in sight was

said in another connection,[3] there is no moral struggle in Pompilia's short life such as that in Caponsacchi's. Both were alike in the fact that up to a certain point in their lives their full consciousness was unawakened: hers slept, through innocence and ignorance; his, in spite of knowledge, through lack of aspiration. She was rudely awakened by suffering; he by the sudden revelation of a possible ideal. Therefore, while for him, conscious of his past failures, a struggle begins: for her, conscious of no failure in her duty, which she had always followed according to her light, there simply co

so-never ob

Terrible, who

bear to see m

certainty of the right, characteristic of her, she acknowledges, at the end, her love for Caponsacchi, and looks for its fulfilment in the future when marriage shall be an interpenetration of souls that know themselves into one. Having attained so great a g

ed love in a future existence, she is only equaled in Browni

ers love in spirit in a convent to the accepting of the King's promise that she will be made much of in court if she will sign a paper agreeing that her husband shall at once cede his dukedoms to the King. She explains her attitude to the Duke, who hesitates in his decision, whereupon she leaves and saves his honor for him, but his inability to decide at once upon the higher ground of spiritual love reveals to her the inadequacy of his love as compared with her own and kills her love for him. She later, however, marries a man who was only a boy of ten at the time of

ling as it comes to a woman. The poet's answer to this doubt is invariably, that where the love was true other attraction is a makeshift by which a des

r sense of the eternal in love than the ordinary man. In rela

ke the duke, too

aintship for h

best and woma

he same thing,

iracle of

ithful somewha

t that love, wh

ely love from

l the re

e has the distinctively human side been touched with such reverence as in Browning. It is not Beatrice translated into a divine personage to be adored by a worshipping devotee, but a wholly human woman who loves and is loved, who touches divinity in Browning's mind. Human love is then not an impossible ideal of which he writes in poetic language ex

contract under the law binding for life except in cases of definite breaches of conduct, and under the Church of affection which is binding only for life; and have, on the other hand, gone extreme lengths in the advocacy of entire freedom in the

nd, declaring that human emotion should be untrammeled by either Church, law or God, would find him a pernicious influence against freedom

ation, the depth or the constancy that brings with it the sense of revelation. For many people law or the Church is absolutely necessary to preserve such feeling as they are cap

lations from which all sincerity has departed, even though humanity as a whole has not

ble. He even carries this doctrine of truth to the individual nature so far as to base upon it an apology for the most unmitigated villain he has po

l God be absen

in his shado

ch the shadow

esence was u

od, temptatio

t me but dre

n me,-somewh

hate was thus t

nishment f

o relieve the

its natural l

e; he nowise

ve him, but hi

an in "Fifine" had the power of perceiving an ideal, but not the power of living up to it without experimentation upon lower planes of living, probably the most common type of man to-day. There are others like Norbert or Mertoun, in whom the ideal truth is the real truth of their natures and for whom life means the constant expansion of this ideal t

al of a static humanity born in sin and only to be saved by belief in certain dogmas to that of a humanity born to develop; changing the notion that sin was a terrible and absolutely defined entity, against which every soul had ceas

l that the soul is given its real opportunity for development? Pain and suffering give rise to the thirst for happiness and joy, and through the arousing of sympathy and pity, the desire that others shall have happiness and joy, therefore to be despairing and pessimistic about evil or

e up, by a

bove and bel

ike to attra

cent: by hate

re indeed t

ever-to mo

aspire yet

aimed at! Sc

I left nor t

pangs bring the

from ignorance

drop to a

you doubt, yo

u agonize, d

your life's w

ssurance that,

ve right? Who

phere to which

chapter. Carlyle, as Browning represents him, cannot reconcile the existence of evil with beneficent and omnisc

he

re power and w

merely! Craft

defeats be

very last of

vil ends, strange

garnered safely

rning. Thought

leave to thus o'

boast the stalk an

one sunn

nineteenth century have come more and more to the front, and is an index of just where the poet stood in relation to the social movements of the century's end. His gaze was so centered upon the indivi

of the evil. Though he was not to suggest practical means for leading the masses out of bondage, he was to call attention in trumpet tones to the fact that the bondage existed. By so doing he was taking a first step or rather drawing aside the curtain and revealing the dire necessity that steps should be taken and taken soon. While Carlyle was militantly shouting against evil to some purpose which woul

he state to get these things. Hence the movement of the working classes to gain freedom by substituting for a competitive form of society a co?perative form. Great names in literature and art have helped toward the on-coming of this movement. Carlyle had railed at the millions of the English nation, "m

iam

of the workers. He did not stop here, however, but spent his vast fortune in trying to make the conditions of the workingmen better. In the estimation of socialists to-day his work was of a very high order, "not mere utopianism." It bore no similarity to the romantic dreams of poets who saw visions of a perfect society regardless of the fact that a perfect society cannot suddenly blossom from conditions of appalling misery and degradation. Owen was a practical business man. He knew all the ins and outs of the industrial régime, and consequently he had a practical program, not a dream, which he wished to see carried out. Accounts of the conditions of the workers at that time are heartrending. Everywhere the same tale of abject poverty, ignorance, and oppression in field and factory, long hours of labor and dear food. To bring help to these downtrodden people was the burning desire of Robert Owen and his followers. His efforts were not rewarded by that success which they deserved, his failure being a necessary concomitant of the fact that even a practical program for betterment cann

hat chaotic socialism of the Chartists, it cannot be doubted that his efforts influenced the political reformers who were to take up one injustice after another and fight for its melioration unt

the Christian aspect of the movement. He was an excellent supplement to Owen, whose liberal views on

in the practical attainment of their object, but their ideas on socialism

is. Of these Morris held a position midway between the old-fashioned dreamer of dreams and the new-fashioned hustling pol

y the most hardened of trust magnates without making him see how unjust has been the distribution of this world's goods through the making of one man do the work of many: "In days to come one man shall do the work of a hundred men-yea,

, and all other crafts, that it shall be for them looking on and tending, as with the man that sitteth in the cart while the horse draws. Yea, at last so shall it be even with those who are mere husbandmen; and no longer shall the reaper fare afield in the morning with his hook over his shoulder, and smite and bind and smite again till the sun is down and the moon is up; but he shall draw a thing made by men into the field with

day to come will be not as they are but as they

m and loved them-I say if the men be still men, what will happen except that there should be all plenty in the land, and not one poor man therein ... for there would then be such abundance of good things, that, as greedy as the lords might be, the

le some socialist writers make us feel that socialism might possibly only be Gradgrind in another guise, he makes us feel that peace and plenty and loveliness would attend upon the sons and daughte

it, and the consequent abolition of all competition for the means of life." His attitude of mind on these points led him to break away from the Social Democratic Federation, which, with its political program, was distasteful to Morr

self, who inspired such men as Burne-Jones and Walter Crane with a sympathy in the new ideals, as well as multitudes of

strations as far beyond ordinary illustrations as the punctuation marks are beyond ordinary periods. If anything could add to the richness of the interior it is the contrasting simplicity of the white vellum bindings, and, again, if there is another possible touch of grace-a gilding of the lily-what could better fulfil that purpose than the outer boxing covered with a Morris cot

ul books under conditions of happy workmanship-that is, they are skilled craftsmen, who have been trained in an apprenticeship, who are asked to work only e

onducting a business upon genuinely artistic principles has done an incalculable amount in spreading the gospel of socialism.

on the subject reveals that, after all, there was too much of the poet ab

ith increasing momentum, disintegrating through its own rottenness. The capitalist system of production is breaking down fast and is compelled to exploit new regions in Africa and other parts, where he thinks its term will be short. Economically, socially, morally, politically, religiously, civilization is becoming bankrupt. Meanwhile it is for the socialist to take advantage of this disintegration by spreading discontent, by preaching economic truths, and by any kind of demonstration which may harass the authorities and develop among

eps in the direction of vital activity was overcome by the next socialist body which came

ven to harmonize it with English practical political methods. Besides this, they have done a vast amount of work in educating public opinion, not with the view to immediately converting the English n

n B

: "If any public, especially any social, question came to the front, the Fabian method was to make a careful independent study of the matter, and present to the public, in a penny pamphlet, a though

dencies would divulge had we the time to follow them in this place. However that may be, the great fact remains that the Fabians have done more than any other branch of socialists to bridge over the distance betw

ormous growth in public sentiment occurred during the session of the Unionist Parliament, 1886-92. When this Parliament opened there was hardly any socialist liter

enough to see that the ideal of a better and more beautiful social life could not be gained except by a long and toilsome process of education and of action which would consciously follow the principles of growth discovered by scientists to obtain in all unconscious cosmic and physical development, the very principle which as we have seen, Browning declared should have guided his hero Sordello long before the Fabian socialists came into existence-namely, the principle of evolution. That their methods should have peacefully brought about the cond

y other the subject of better conditions for the people, "Sordello," he distinctly expresses a mood of doubt as to the advisability of making conditions too easy for the human being, who needs the hardships and ills of life to bring his soul to perfection, a far more important thing in Browning's eyes than to live comfortably and beautifully. All he wishes for the human being is the fine chance to make the most of himself spiritually. The socialist would say that he coul

the masses like Morris. Why? Because he from the first was made wise to see a good in evil, a hope in ill-success, to be proud of men's fallacies, their half reasons, their faint aspirings, upward tending all though weak, the lesson learned after weary experiences of life by Paracelsus. His thought was centered upon the

ld, he finds true in the moral world. Lack in human knowledge points

social development, Browning naturally would not turn his attention upon those practical, social or governmental means by which even the chance for individual development must be

fe throws in his course. Third, that even those who are incapable of formulating an ideal must be regarded as living out the truth of their natures and must therefore be treated with compassion. Fourth, that the highest function of the human soul is love, which expresses itself in many ways, but attains its full flowering only in the love of man and woman on a plane of spiritual exaltation, and that through this power of human love some glimpse of the divine is caught; therefore to this function of the soul it is of the utmost importance that

ent seas of the future, finding the path to another high island in order that the way may be made clear for the ship Individualism to continue her course to another stage in the voyage toward a perfect democracy. And as the new ship, Socialism, passes on its way it will do well to heed the vision of the poet seer, straining his eyes toward the dawn of other lives in

the nineteenth century he seems to have been left behind by his age. In his insistence upon the worth of the individual to himself and to God he is both of his age and beyond it. As has been said of philosophy, "It cannot give u