Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning. Robert Browning

himself when he says of his poems, "Their contents are always dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary people." Yet it is possible, by taking the general trend and scope of his work, to make justifiable deductions concerning the dominant ideas in the rich field of his poetry and drama.

      In Browning's philosophy of life, words of especial significance are "growth" and "progress." Domizia in Luria says:

      How inexhaustibly the spirit grows!

       One object, she seemed erewhile born to reach

       With her whole energies and die content—

       So like a wall at the world's edge is stood,

       With naught beyond to live for—is that reached?—

       Already are new undreamed energies

       Outgrowing under, and extending farther

       To a new object.

      So, too, John in "A Death in the Desert" sums up his belief in the line,

      I say that man was made to grow, not stop.

      Growth here and growth hereafter are the essential elements of Browning's creed. And there is no other poet in whom all kinds of thinking and doing are so uniformly tested by their outcome in the growth of the soul. Does joy stimulate to fuller life; does suffering bring out moral qualities; do obstacles develop energy; do sharp temptations become a source of strength and assured soldiership; does knowledge of evil lead to a new exaltation of good; does sin lead to self-knowledge and so to regeneration? Then all these are ministers of grace, for through them the soul has reached greater heights and fuller life. Whatever bids the soul "nor stand nor sit, but go" is to be welcomed. The cost of this growth may be great, but the advances of spirit are represented as worth any sacrifice. The lady in "The Flight of the Duchess" goes from splendor and ease to hardship and obscurity, but she wins freedom of thought and of act and the opportunity to test the qualities of her soul. In Pippa Passes Sebald might have had love and wealth, Jules might have attained fame along the conventional path marked out for him by the Monsignor, Luigi had the prospect of an easy life and happy love, the Monsignor might have had enhanced honor from the church into whose coffers he could have turned great revenues. But instead each responds in turn to Pippa's songs; Sebald gains a true view of sin, Jules gets a new conception of service and attainment, Luigi's wavering purpose of self-sacrifice for his country's good is strengthened, the Monsignor is held back from connivance at a crime. In all these cases the external loss is as nothing compared to the gain in spiritual knowledge and energy.

      Contact with magnetic and superior personalities is a way of growth particularly noted by Browning. There are men, he says, who bring new feeling fresh from God, and whose life "reteaches us what life should be, what faith is, loyalty and simpleness." Pompilia says of Caponsacchi:

      Through such souls alone

       God stooping shows sufficient of his light

       For us i' the dark to rise by.

      The highest souls are "seers" in the noblest sense and they "impart the gift of seeing to the rest." But the helpful personality need not be great in knowledge or rank. In Pippa Browning emphasizes the power of unconscious goodness in clarifying the spiritual vision of others and in thus stimulating to right action. And in David he shows the power of poetic charm, innocence, and eager love to drive away from another heart a mood of black despair.

      But outside influences are, after all, says Browning, of secondary importance. They can, at best, do no more than stimulate and guide. When Andrea del Sarto attributes his general lowering of ideals and power to the influence of Lucrezia, he evades the real issue. Incentives must come from the soul's self. Growth is dependent on personal struggle. Man is, by his very nature,

      forced to try and make, else fail to grow—

       Formed to rise, reach at, if not grasp and gain

       The good beyond him—which attempt is growth.

      So, also, is it better that youth

      should strive, through acts uncouth,

       Toward making, than repose on aught found made.

      It is in the independence and originality of such striving that the soul discovers and frees its innate potentialities.

      An inevitable corollary of this idea of progress is the emphasis put upon aspiration as a habit of the mind. The pursuit of an ideal, a divine discontent with present accomplishment, are enjoined upon man. The gleams of heaven on earth are not meant to be permanent or satisfying, but only to sting man into hunger for full light. When a human being has achieved to the full extent of his perceptions or aspirations, he has, thinks Browning, met with the greatest possible disaster, that of arrested development. Man's powers should ever climb new heights. For his soul's health he should always see "a flying point of bliss remote, a happiness in store afar, a sphere of distant glory." "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" According to this ideal, man's conception of good is ever changing and ever widening and hence never in this life to be fully attained; yet the condition of growth is that he have an unmeasured thirst for good and that he pursue it with unquenchable ardor.

      The importance of love as one of the most effective agencies in spiritual growth is stated and restated in Browning's poetry and by exceedingly diverse characters. The Queen in In a Balcony turns away from her lonely splendor to exclaim,

      There is no good of life but love—but love!

       What else looks good is some shade flung from love;

       Love gilds it, gives it worth.

      The Duchess learns from the gypsy

      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