Chapter VII: Act V (3)

The reference, of course, is to a man well known in England,--Thomas Guy (d. 1724), founder of Guy's Hospital in London. He was the George Peabody of his day. Beginning life as a bookseller, he made a good deal of money in printing Bibles, but acquired most of his enormous fortune by financial speculations. He was extremely economical; for example, always ate his dinner on his shop counter, first spreading out a newspaper to catch the crumbs. His charities were boundless. To his hospital he gave $1,000,000; and at his death his will was found to contain an enormous number of special benefactions, including bequests to over ninety cousins. Emerson in his poem compares Guy to Polycrates, who was King of Samos some five hundred years before Christ. He says that Polycrates "chained the sunshine and the breeze"; that is, the very elements seemed to be in his pay. This run of luck was without a break up to his death; his fleet of a hundred ships was the largest then known; he conquered all his enemies, and amassed great treasure. His ally, Amasis, King of Egypt, was so alarmed at his prosperity, fearing the envy of the gods, that he advised him to make some noteworthy sacrifice. The story goes that Polycrates accordingly threw his emerald signet-ring into the sea, but it came back to his kitchens in the belly of a large fish, as in the Arabian Nights story. The fears of Amasis were finally justified; for the Persian satrap Or[oe]tes enticed Polycrates to the mainland, and crucified him.

'Xenophanes' embodies poetically the doctrine of the earnest old Greek agnostic and monist of that name, that God, or the All, is uncreated, immovable, and one,--not immovable in its parts, but as a whole, and just because it is all. Xenophanes saw the grandeur and incomprehensibility of the universe, he violently opposed what seemed to him the disgraceful polytheism of Homer, and anticipated the modern atomic theory and the doctrine of the unity of life as revealed by the spectroscope and the discovery of the conservation and mutual convertibility of forces. Or, as Emerson puts it in his haunting numbers,--

"By fate, not option, frugal Nature gave
One scent to hyson and to wall-flower,
One sound to pine-groves and to waterfalls,
One aspect to the desert and the lake.
It was her stern necessity."

The title of the poem 'Hamatreya' seemed at first to baffle a perfect and indubitable explanation. The word can be found in no English or foreign dictionary that the largest libraries afford. We are indebted, however, to Col. T. W. Higginson (_The Critic_, Feb. 18, 1888) for not only giving us a clew to the title, but for pointing out the portion of the Vishnu Purana (Wilson's translation, 1840) on which Emerson based his 'Earth Song' in 'Hamatreya,' and, in fact, got the hint for the whole poem; namely, at the close of Book IV. Maitreya is a disciple of Parasara, who relates to Maitreya the Vishnu Purana. Among other things he tells Maitreya of a chant of the Earth, who said, "When I hear a king sending word to another by his ambassador, 'This earth is mine: immediately resign your pretensions to it,' I am moved to violent laughter at first; but it soon subsides in pity for the infatuated fool." Again, the Purana says, "Earth laughs, as if smiling with autumnal flowers, to behold her kings unable to effect the subjugation of themselves"; which is Emerson's

"Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs."

And again: "These were the verses, Maitreya, which Earth recited, and by listening to which ambition fades away, like snow before the sun." Here are Emerson's lines:--

"When I heard the Earth-song,
I was no longer brave;
My avarice cooled
Like lust in the chill of the grave."

Colonel Higginson suggests that Emerson may also have had in mind, in writing 'Hamatreya,' Psalm, xlix. 11. As he rightly says, the title evidently is meant to give a hint of the Hindoo source of the argument of the poem. It is in line with the uniform custom of Emerson in giving historical catch-words, especially proper names, as his titles. After an exhaustive search through all the Hindoo scriptures, I have reached a conviction which approaches absolute certainty that Hamatreya is Emerson's imperfect recollection of Maitreya or that he purposely coined the word. Emerson, it is nearly certain, read the Vishnu Purana, translated by H. H. Wilson (a large and costly work), by the copy then in the Harvard Library or the Boston Athenaeum, perhaps taking brief notes, but omitting to write down "Maitreya." In his exhaustive index of proper names, appended to the Vishnu Purana, Wilson has no such word as Hamatreya, nor does it occur anywhere in the book. To clinch the argument, Prof. Charles R. Lanman, the well-known Sanskrit scholar of Harvard University, writes me that "Hamatreya is not a Sanskrit word." "The Atreyas," he says, "were the descendants of Atri." "It is an easy mistake to make _Hamatreya_ out of _Maitreya_. I really think you will have to assume a simple slip here."

Emerson is not wilfully obscure. But he comes dangerously near to being so in the demand he often makes upon his readers for out-of-the-way knowledge. 'Casella' is the title of an Emersonian quatrain,--

"Test of the poet is knowledge of love,
For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove.
Never was poet, of late or of yore,
Who was not tremulous with love-lore."

The reference is to Dante's friend Casella ("Casella mio"), whom he meets in Purgatory, and who sweetly sings (as of yore on earth he was wont) a canzone by Dante himself,--"_Amor, che nella mente mi ragiona_." Emerson's favorite poet, Milton, in his sonnet to Henry Lawes, alludes, as Mr. Norton points out, to this friendship:--

"Dante shall give fame leave to set thee higher
Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing
Met in the milder shades of Purgatory."

The title [Greek: adakrun nemontai aiona] is from Pindar, I believe. Emerson took it from _The Dial_, where (July, '43) it appears as the motto to a poem by Charles A. Dana on 'Manhood.' It means, literally, "They pass a tearless life"; or, very freely rendered, "They live a life of smiles,"--a sentiment explained by the first lines,--

"A new commandment, said the smiling Muse,
I give my darling son, Thou shalt not preach."

Even in so slight a matter as choosing a name for his verses 'To Rhea,' Emerson's philosophical belief is glimpsed; for Rhea was the mother of gods, and such he believed all women to be. The thought of this remarkable poem, which its author feigns to have received from the thousand chattering tongues of the poplar-tree, is extremely subtle and somewhat difficult to formulate. The analysis is this. If you, a wife, have lost your supremacy in your husband's affections, take a strange and noble revenge, not by hating, but, in a kind of calm altruistic despair, endowing him with all the gifts and blessings at your command. The poem is headed 'To Rhea' (Rhea being the wife of the cruel Saturn, who devoured his own children) as to a wife whose husband had merely "drank of Cupid's nectar cup," married her from sex-instinct alone, and then, the "bandages of purple light" fallen from "his eyes," treated her with indifference. But she continues to love him; and more the poet gives her the advice just noted, illustrating by the supposed case of a god loving a mortal maid, and warily knowing that she, with her inferior ideals, can never adequately requite his love, yet nobly endowing her with all gifts and graces, which are the hostages he pawns for freedom from "his thrall." He does this in an altruistic spirit, in order by her to "model newer races" and "carry man to new degrees of power and comeliness." But what thrall? We must walk warily here. In order not to seem to give his verses an autobiographical cast (although the god, the "wise Immortal," of them is really such a type as the seer Emerson himself), he withdraws into dim recesses and speaks in subtlest metaphors. The thrall, I think, is the bondage a lover or husband is in to his beloved, in whom the solecisms and disenchantments of possession have supplanted the poetic illusions of romantic love. The man of supreme wisdom, by the magic of self-sacrifice and boundless profusion of gifts turns the trap or prison in which nature has caught him into a bower of Eden. By the road of generosity he escapes. He cunningly builds up in her mind gratitude and friendship in place of the lost romanticism. There is in this treatment of love a touch of the coldblooded philosophy of the Emersonian critique of friendship. But if it is not a marriage of ideal kind, such as that of the Brownings, which he celebrates, he at least embodies in his verse the shrewd love-philosophy of the practical-poetical Englishman, united to the average woman for the furtherance of the ends of the species.

Mr. George Brown, in his Emerson primer, thinks that the key-thought of 'Rhea' is in these lines from 'The World-Soul' about the gods:--

"To him who scorns their charities
Their arms fly open wide."

But the parallelism somewhat halts. For mark: In the one case Napoleon's maxim is embodied, that God is on the side of the strongest battalions. The one who scorns the favoritisms and alms of Heaven, and yet, will he nill he, receives its aid, is really the strong God himself in mask, the noble and resolute man executing his will in time and space. But in the case supposed in 'Rhea,' of husband and wife, the ones who scorn love are those not deserving of gifts at all (although Nature finds her account in them), but persons who receive gifts in charity from one altruistically nobler than themselves. It is just this idea of sublime self-sacrifice that gives to 'Rhea' its strange subtlety and its uniqueness among poems on love. There is a consolatory under-thought in the palimpsest, too. By his illustration of the god and the mortal maid the poet wishes Rhea to divine that, if wives make moan over husbands' lost love, husbands no less often have reason to lament the cooled affection of wives.

The central idea in 'Uriel' is that there is no such thing as evil. This thesis is put into the mouth of Uriel, one of the seven archangels, because he was the "interpreter" of God's will. So Milton says, in the _locus classicus_ on Uriel in Book III of 'Paradise Lost.' He also says he was

"The sharpest-sighted spirit of all in heav'n."

His station was in the all-viewing sun. Uriel, in Milton, tells how, when the universe was yet chaos,

"Or ever the wild Time coined itself
Into calendar months and days,"

he saw the worlds a-forming,--earth, sun, and stars. Emerson (or "Sayd") takes Milton at his word, and leads us back into that dark backward and abysm of time, and lets us overhear a conversation between Uriel and the other seraphs. At his speech "the gods shook," because if there is no sin, if all comes round to good, even a lie, then good-bye gods, hells and heavens, and their punishments. But note that, though the All turns your wrong to good in the end, yet you, an individual, suffer for your wrongdoing.

In a genial paper in the _Andover Review_ for March, 1887, Dr. C. C. Everett says that Dr. Hedge suggested to him that 'Uriel' probably took its origin in the discussions of the Boston Association of Ministers on the theme (then rife), "There is no line in nature": all is circular, and by the law of reaction every deed returns upon the doer. At any rate, it was written in 1838, soon after his Divinity School Address. ('Emerson in Concord,' by Edward Emerson.)

The god of boundaries in ancient Rome--Terminus--gives his name to the cheeriest of monodies or anchoring songs sung by the gayest of old sailors on the sea of eternity, and at last approaching port. Terminus, like Hermes, the Greek god of bounds, was shown in his statues without hands or feet, to indicate that he never moved. Was Emerson a little rusty in his classical lore, or did he boldly and knowingly defy classical verities when he says the divinity came to him "in his fatal rounds"? He seems to have attributed to Terminus patrolling functions like those of his own New England village fence-viewers. Or, rather, speaking in noble and more adequate terms, has he not added to the world's mythologies a new and poetical deity,--the god of the bounds of human life, a kind of avant-courier or Death's dragoman to announce to men their approaching end? 'Terminus' was written about 1866, when Emerson was in or near his sixty-third year, and sixteen years before his death. _William Sloane Kennedy._

* * * * *

A DEFENCE OF BROWNING'S LATER WORK.

If a defence of Browning's work were to include all he has written since the date when Edmund Gosse said his books were chiefly valuable as keeping alive popular interest in the poet, and as leading fresh generations of readers to what he had already published, it would needs begin as far back as 1868; and considering the amount of work done since that time would require at least a volume to do the subject justice.

Fortunately it has long been admitted that Homer sometimes nods, though not with such awful effect as was said to attend the nods of Jove--Hence, in spite of Mr. Gosse's undoubted eminence as a critic, we may dare to assume that in this particular instance he fell into the ancient and distinguished trick of nodding.

If Mr. Gosse were right, it would practically put on a par with a mere advertising scheme many poems which have now become household favorites. Take, for example, 'Herve Riel.' Think of the blue-eyed Breton hero whom all the world has learned to love through Browning, tolerated as nothing more than an index finger to 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin!' Take, too, such poems, as 'Donald,' whose dastardly sportsmanship is so vividly portrayed that it has the power to arouse strong emotion in strong men, who have been known literally to break down in the middle of it through excess of feeling; 'Ivan Ivanovitch,' in which is embodied such fear and horror that weak hearts cannot stand the strain of hearing it read; the story of the dog Tray who rescued a drowning doll with the same promptitude as he did a drowning child--at the relation of whose noble deeds the eyes of little children grow eager with excitement and sympathy. And where is there in any poet's work, a more vivid bit of tragedy than 'A Forgiveness!'

And would not an unfillable gap be left in the ranks of our friends of the imaginative world if Balaustion were blotted out? The exquisite lyric girl, brave, tender and with a mind in which wisdom and wit are fair playfellows.

As Carlyle might say, "Verily, verily Mr. Gosse, thou hast out-Homered Homer, and thy nod hath taken upon itself very much the semblance of a snore."

These and many others which might be mentioned as having appeared since the date when Mr. Gosse autocratically put up the bars to the poet's genius are now so universally accepted that any defence of them would be absurd.

There are again others whose tenure of fame is still hanging in the balance like 'The Red Cotton Night-cap Country,' 'The Inn Album,' 'Aristophanes' Apology,' 'Fifine at the Fair'; but as they have had already some able defenders, I shall not attempt any defence of them further than to say, in passing, that the longer I know them, and the more I read them, the more I am impressed with their masterly portrayal of human motives as they either reflect a given social environment or work contrary to it. Only a genius of the greatest power could have grasped and moulded into palpitating life beings of the calibre of the brilliant complex and illogical Aristophanes, or the dunderheaded, well meaning and equally illogical Miranda and set them to act out their little parts in a living historical environment--one in decadent Athens with her petty political and literary rivalries and dying religion; the other in ultramontane France where superstition and materialism were fighting for the mastery. Such art as is illustrated in these poems on in 'Fifine at the Fair' or in 'The Inn Album,' may not be of the kind to give one direct ideals for the conduct of life; but it represents the most splendid realism from which as from life itself deep moral lessons may be drawn. There is an actuality of realism in these poems of Browning's that puts into the shade, that of the great apostle of realism, Zola, for his realism too often presents what I venture to call obverse idealism--evil apotheosized, not evil struggling toward good as it invariably appears in life.

Among the poet's later works, 'Ferishtah's Fancies' and 'The Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day' have perhaps been more obscured by mists of non-appreciation than any others. I shall, therefore, confine myself for the present to making here and there a rift in these mists in the hope that some glimpses of the splendor of the giant form behind them may be gained.

Without particularizing either critics or criticism, it may be said that criticism of these poems divides itself into the usual three branches,--one which objects to their philosophy, one which objects to their art, one which finds them difficult of comprehension at all. This last criticism may easily be disposed of by admitting it as in part true. The mind whose highest reaches of poetic inspiration are ministered unto by such simple and easily understandable lyrics as 'Twinkle, twinkle little star' might not at once grasp the significance of the Parleying with George Bubb Dodington. Indeed, it may be surmised that some minds might sing upon the starry heights with Hegel and fathom the doctrine of the equivalence of being and non-being and yet be led into a slough of despond by this same cantankerous George.

But a poetical slough of despond may be transfigured in the twinkling of an eye--after a proper amount of study and hard thinking--into an elevated plateau with prospects upon every side, grand or terrible or smiling.

Are we never to feel spurred to any poetical pleasure more vigorous than dilly-dallying with Keats while we feast our eyes upon the wideness of the seas? Or lazily floating in a lotus land with Tennyson, say, among the meadows of the Musketaquid, in canoes with silken cushions? Beauty and peace is the reward of such poetical pleasures. They fall upon the spirit like the "sweet sound that breathes upon a bank of violets, stealing and giving odor," but shall we never return from the land where it is always afternoon? Is it only in such a land as this that we realize the true power of emotion? Rather does it conduce to the slumber of emotion; for progress is the law of feeling as it is the law of life, and many times we feel,--yes--feel--with tremendous rushes of enthusiasm like climbing Matterhorns with great iron nails in our shoes, with historical and archaeological, and philosophical Alpen-stocks in our hands, and when we reach the summit what unsuspected beauties become ours.

Advancing a step more seriously into the subject, I may say that these two series of poems form the key-stone to Browning's whole work. They are like a final synthesis of the problems of existence which he has previously made analyses of from myriad points of view in his dramatic presentation of character. It has been said that in these poems his philosophy loses its intuitional and assured point of view, to become hard-headed and doubting. But does not a careful comparison with his early work disprove this assertion?

In his two early poems, 'Pauline' and 'Paracelsus,' before the poet's personality became merged in that of his characters, he presents us with his poetic creed and his theory of the universe in no mistakable terms. In 'Pauline' we get a direct glimpse of the poet's own artistic temperament, and may literally put our fingers upon those qualities which were to be a large influence in moulding his work.

As described by himself the poet of 'Pauline' was

"Made up of an intensest life
Of a most clear idea of consciousness
Of self, distinct from all its qualities,
From all affections, passions, feelings, powers;
And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all:
But linked in me to self-supremacy,
Existing as a centre to all things,
Most potent to create and rule and call
Upon all things to minister to it."

This sense of an over-consciousness is the mark of an objective poet--one who sympathizes with all the emotions and aspirations of humanity,--interprets their actions through the light of this sympathy, and at the same time keeps his own individuality distinct. The poet of this poem discovers that he can no longer lose himself with enthusiasm in any phase of life; but what does that mean to a soul constituted as his? It means that the way has been cleared for the birth of that greater, broader love of the fully developed artist-soul which, while entering into sympathy with all phases of life, finds its true complement only in an ideal of absolute Love.

This picture of the artist aspiring toward the absolute by means of his large human sympathy may be supplemented by the theory of man's relation to the universe involved in 'Paracelsus' where it is shown that the Absolute cannot be fully realized by mankind either through knowledge or love. Aprile's doctrine has an element of fatalism in it. He sees and loves God in imperfection, but does not seem to have much notion of progress. On the other hand, Paracelsus sees God only in perfected Mankind, until he is really made wise to know that

"Even hate is but a mask of love's
To see a good in evil and a hope
In ill success,"

and so is led to combine his own former standpoint with Aprile's by perceiving God and God's love in progress from lesser to ever greater good, and that evil and failure are the spurs that send man onwards to a future where joy climbs its heights "forever and forever."

From this point in his work Browning, like the Hindu Brahmah, becomes manifest not as himself, but in his creations. The poet whose portrait we get in 'Pauline' is the same poet who sympathetically presents a whole world of human experiences to us, keeping his own individuality for the most part intact, and the philosopher whose portrait is drawn in 'Paracelsus' is the same who interprets these human experiences in the light of the great life-theories therein presented.

But as the creations of Brahmah return into himself, so the human experiences Browning has entered into artistic sympathy with return to enrich his completed view of the problems of life, when like his own Rabbi Ben Ezra, he reaches the last of life for which "the first was planned" in these 'Fancies' and 'Parleyings'.

Though these two groups of poems undoubtedly express the poet's own mature conclusions, they yet preserve the dramatic form. Several things are gained in this way. First, the poems are saved from didacticism, for the poet expresses his opinion as an individual and not as a seer, trying to implant his theories in the minds of disciples. Second, variety is given and the mind is stimulated by having opposite points of view presented, while the thought is infused with a certain amount of emotional force through the heat of argument.

It has, of course, been objected that philosophical and ethical problems are not fit subjects for discussion in poetry. It should be remembered, however, that there is one point the critic of AEsthetics has not yet learned to realize; namely, that the law of evolution is differentiation, in art as well as in cosmic, organic, and social life. It is just as prejudiced and unforeseeing in these days to limit poetry to this or that subject, or say that nothing is dramatic that does not deal with immediate action, as it would have been for Homer to declare that no poem would ever be worthy the name that did not contain a catalogue of ships.

These facts exist! We have dramas dealing merely with action, dramas, in which character development is of prime importance; dramas, wherein action and character are entirely synchronous; and those in which the action means more than appears upon the surface, like Hauptmann's 'Sunken Bell,' or Ibsen's 'Master Builder,' then why not dramas of thought and dramas of mood when the brain and heart become the stage of action instead of an actual stage. Surely, such dramas are a natural development of this Nineteenth Century. As the man in 'Half Rome' says

"Facts are facts and lie not, and the question 'How came that purse i' the poke o' you admits of no reply.'" Art has a great many forms of drama in its poke already, so we would better be careful how we make authoritative statements on the subject.

Another advantage, gained from the dramatic form and this is most important, is that the poet has been enabled by means of it to hold the mirror up to the turmoil of thought that has racked the brains and hearts of the last half of the Nineteenth Century. Victorian England in its thought phases lives just as surely in these poems as Renaissance Italy in its art phases in 'Fra Lippo Lippi,' 'Andrea del Sarto,' 'Pictor Ignotus' and 'The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's;' and this is true though the first series is cast in the form of Persian Fables and the second, in the form of Parleyings with worthies of past centuries.

We who have grown up under the dispensation, so to speak, of the doctrine of evolution, now acknowledged to be the guiding principle in every department of knowledge find it hard to enter into the spirit of that mid-century Sturm and Drang period which resulted upon the publication of Darwin's 'Origin of Species.' This book is the landmark of the century, and commemorates at once the triumph of knowledge, and its failure. The triumph of science in the realm of phenomena, its failure to pierce into the ultimate causes of these phenomena. What a hard fight scientific methods of investigating the phenomena of nature and life had had up to that time, in the teeth of opposition from the less instructed religious world, has been summarized for us in the fascinating pages of Andrew D. White's 'Warfare Between Theology and Science.' One by one, Science won the outposts held by prejudice and conservatism. It had to be admitted that the earth was not flat and that it did not float upon an infinite sea supported on the back of a tortoise. It had to be admitted, even, that it did not occupy the chief seat in the synagogue of the firmament, but went rolling about the sun like any common little asteroid. Finally, the great guns of science were trained upon man himself and he was forced to retire from his lofty position of Lord of Creation to the much more humble one of outcome of creation.

To a large proportion of mankind it seemed as if, should these things be admitted as truth, the whole fabric of society must fall to pieces and religion become a mockery. Those who felt so fought, as for their life, against the conclusions of science. There was a large minority, however, which, intellectually constrained to accept the conclusions of science, yet differed much in temperament and were by consequence, affected in very different ways by the new truths. There were men like Matthew Arnold who no longer believed in the revelations of the past, yet who clung to the beauty of religious forms, in despair at the thought of the wilderness life would be without them. There were others like George Eliot, who became positivists, and gained comfort only in the thought of a religion of humanity and an immortality of nothing more tangible than human influence. There were those like William Morris who accepted cheerfully this life as being all and who devoted their energies to making it as lovely as possible and working to make it more lovely for the future. There were still others, like Clifford, entirely hopeless, but who like Childe Roland put the slug horn to their lips, and lived brave, noble lives in the certainty of coming annihilation; a divine melancholy seized upon some, such as we see reflected in much of Tennyson's verse.

But there were a few who beheld the triumph of science undismayed, for they saw that her sway could not pass beyond the realm of phenomena, that the failure of the intellect to penetrate behind the mysteries of nature and life must be the saving of religion. Herbert Spencer is among scientists undoubtedly the greatest of this type of mind. Whatever misunderstandings and vituperations he may have been subjected to, from the positivist who thinks him inconsistent for his religious tone to the religionist who dubs him an atheist, the fact still remains that his was the genius that stood out against the advancing flood of materialism saying "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." He it was who declared that underlying phenomena was an Infinite power that transcended all human faculties of imagination, and that this fact was the most certain intuition of the human mind.

So great an upheaval of thought, changing, as it finally has, man's whole outlook upon the universe from one more or less static with fixed codes of morals and standards of art to one that is dynamic and progressive, brought in its wake the consideration of many ethical as well as philosophical problems.

Nothing bears upon the grounds of moral action more disastrously than blind fatalism, and while there have been many evil forms of this doctrine in the past there has probably been none worse than the modern form because it seems to have scientific sanction in the doctrines of the conservation of energy, the persistence of heredity and the survival of the fittest, and tends to positive atrophy of the will. Even wise and thoughtful men now-a-days take such a philosophic view of events that they hesitate to throw in their voice on either side in the solution of a national problem because things are bound to follow the laws of development either way. This is equivalent to admitting that you are simply a heap of burnt out ashes in the furnace of life, and that you have no longer any part to play in the combustion that leads to progress. In the first of 'Ferishtah's Fancies,' a strong plea is made for those human impulses that lead to action. The will to serve the world is the true force from God. Every man, though he be the last link in a chain of causes over which he had no control, can at least have a determining influence upon the direction in which the next link shall be forged. Ferishtah appears upon the scene, himself, a fatalist, leaving himself wholly in God's hands until he is taught by the dream God sent him that man's part is to act as he saw the eagle act, succouring the helpless, not to play the part of the helpless birdlings who were taken care of. Another phase of the same thought is touched upon in 'A Camel Driver.' The discussion turns upon punishment and the point is, if, as Ferishtah declares, the sinner is not to be punished eternally, then why should man trouble himself to punish him. The answer amounts to this. Man must regard sin from the human point of view as something evil and to be got rid of and must, therefore, will to work for its annihilation. It follows then that the sinner should be punished as that is a means for teaching him to cease sinning.

Another doctrine upon which the Nineteenth Century belief in progress as the law of life has set its seal is that of the pursuit of happiness, or the striving for the greatest good of the whole number including oneself. With this Browning shows himself in full sympathy in 'Two Camels,' wherein Ferishtah contends that only through the development of individual happiness and the experiencing of many forms of joyousness can one help others to happiness and joyousness, while in 'Plot Culture,' the enjoyment of human emotion as a means of developing the soul is emphasized.

The relations of good and evil have also had to be re-considered in the light of Nineteenth Century thought, the dualism of the past not being compatible with the evolutionary doctrine that good and evil are relative, a phrase which we sometimes forget must be understood in two ways:--first, that good and evil are relative to the state of society in which they exist, and what may be good in one phase of society, may become evil in a more developed phase. Second, were it not for evil, we should never be able to appreciate the superiority of good and so to work for good, and in working for it to bring about progress. To his pupil worried over the problem of evil Ferishtah points out in 'Mihrab Shah' that evil in the form of bodily suffering has given rise to the beautiful sentiments of pity and sympathy. But though it be recognized that good comes of evil, shall evil be encouraged? No! Ferishtah declares, Man bound by man's conditions is obliged to estimate as "fair or foul Right, wrong, good, evil, what man's faculty adjudges such," therefore the man will do all he can to relieve the suffering of poor Mihrab Shah with a fig-plaster. The answers, then, that Browning gives to the ethical problems of the century growing out of the acceptance of modern scientific doctrines, are, in brief, that man shall use that will-power of which he feels himself possessed, and which really distinguishes him from the brute creation, in working against whatever appears to him evil; while the good for which he shall work is the greatest happiness of all.

What of the philosophical doctrines to which Browning gives expression in the remaining poems of the group? We find it insisted upon in 'Cherries', 'The Sun', in 'A Bean Stripe also Apple Eating', and especially in that remarkable poem 'A Pillar at Sebzevar' that knowledge fails. Knowledge the golden is but lacquered ignorance, as gain to be mistrusted. Curiously, enough, this contention of Browning's has been the cause of most of the criticisms against him as a philosopher, yet as far as I have been able to discover, there has been no deep thinker of this century, and there have been many in other centuries, who has not held in some form or another the opinion that intellect was unable to solve the mysterious problems of the universe. Even the metaphysicians who build very wonderful air castles on _a priori_ ideas declare that these ideas cannot be matters of mere intellectual perception, but must be intuitions of the higher reason. Browning, however, does not rest in the assertion that the intellect fails. He draws immense comfort from this failure of knowledge. Though it is to be distrusted as gain, it is not to be mistrusted as means to gain. "Friend" quoth Ferishtah in 'A Pillar at Sebzevar'

"As gain--mistrust it! Not as means to gain:
Lacquer we learn by: cast in firing-pot,
We learn,--when what seemed ore assayed proves dross--
Surelier true gold's worth, guess how purity
I' the lode were precious could one light on ore
Clarified up to test of crucible.
The prize is in the process: knowledge means
Ever-renewed assurance by defeat
That victory is somehow still to reach."

For men with minds of the type of Spencer's, this negative assurance of an infinite ever on before is sufficient, but human beings, as a rule, will not rest satisfied in such cold abstractions. Though Job said thousands of years ago "Who by searching can find out God," mankind still continues to search.

Now comes Browning and says that it is in that very act of searching that the absolute becomes most directly manifest. From the earliest times of which we have any record man has been aspiring toward God. Many times he has thought that he had found God, but later discovered it to be only God's image built up out of his own human experiences. This search is very beautifully described in the Fancy called 'The Sun,' under the symbol of the man who seeks the prime giver that he may give thanks where it is due for a palatable fig. This search for God Browning calls Love, meaning by that the moving, aspiring force of the whole universe, and many are its manifestations, from the love that goes forth in thanks for benefits received, through the aspirations of the artist toward beauty, of the lover toward human sympathy, even of the scientist toward knowledge, to the lover of humanity like Ferishtah, who declares "I know nothing save that love I can boundlessly, endlessly."

The poet argues from this that if mankind has with ever increasing fervor aspired toward a God of Love, and has ever developed toward broader conceptions of human love, it is only reasonable to infer that in his nature God has something which corresponds to human love, though it transcend our most exalted imagining of it. In John Fiske's recent book 'Through Nature to God' he advances a theory identical with this, evidently unaware that Browning had been before him, for he claims it as entirely original. Fiske's originality consists in his having based his proof upon analogies drawn from the evolution of organic life in following out the law of the adjustment of inner to outer relations. For example, since the eye has through aeons of time gradually adjusted itself into harmony with light, why should not man's search for God be the gradual adjustment of the soul into harmony with the infinite spirit. Other modern thinkers have advanced the idea that love was the ruling force of the universe; nor need we confine ourselves to the moderns, for like nearly every phase of thought, it had its counterpart or at least its seed in Greek thought. Thus we find that Empedocles declared that the ruling forces of the universe were Love and Strife and that the conflict between these was necessary for the continuance of life. As far as I know, however, no other thinker or poet has emphasized with such power the thought that the only true basis of belief is the intuition of God that comes from the direct revelation of feeling in the human heart, and which has been at once the motive force of the search for God and the basis of a conception of God's nature. A natural corollary of such a theory is that every conception man has had of the Infinite had its value as a partial image since it grew out of the divine impulse planted in man, but that in the Christian ideal, the highest symbolical conception was attained through the mystical unfolding of love in the human soul.

The thought of the 'Fancies' is optimistically rounded out in 'A Bean Stripe also Apple Eating' in which Ferishtah argues that life, in spite of the evil in it, seems to him on the whole good, and he cannot believe that evil is not meant for good ends since he is so sure that God is infinite in love.

From all this it will be seen that our poet accepts with Spencerians the negative proof of God growing out of the failure of intellect, but adds to it the positive proof derived from emotion.

It was a happy thought of the poet to present such problems in Persian guise, for Persia stands in Zoroastrianism for the dualism which Ferishtah denies in his recognition of the part evil plays in the development of good, and through Mahometanism for the Fatalism, Ferishtah learned to cast from him. The Persian atmosphere is preserved throughout not only by the introduction constantly of Persian allusions traceable to the great Persian epic the Shah Nameh, but by the telling of fables in the Persian manner to point the morals intended. With the exception of the first Fancy, which is derived from a fable of Bidpai's, we have the poet's own word that all the others are inventions of his own, but they are none the worse for this. These clever stories make the poems lively reading, and we soon find ourselves growing fond of the wise and clever Ferishtah, who like Socrates is never at a loss for an answer, no matter what bothersome questions his pupils may propound.

If we see the thoughtful and brilliant Browning in the 'Fancies' proper, we perhaps see even more clearly the emotional and passionate Browning in the lyrics which add such variety and charm to the whole. This feature is also borrowed from Persian form, a beautiful example of which has been given to English readers in Edwin Arnold's 'Gulistan' or 'Rose Garden' of the poet Sa' di. In fact Sa' di's preface to his 'Rose Garden' evidently gave Browning the hint for his humorous prologue, in which he likens the poems to follow to an Italian dish made of ortolans on toast with a bitter sage leaf, symbolizing sense, sight and song

"Sage-leaf is bitter-pungent--so's a quince:
Eat each who's able!
But through all three bite boldly--lo, the gust!
Flavor--no fixture--
Flies, permeating flesh and leaf and crust
In fine admixture.
So with your meal, my poem masticate
Sense, sight, and song there!
Digest these, and I praise your peptics' state,
Nothing found wrong there."

Similarly Sa' di says "Yet will men of light and learning, from whom the true countenance of a discourse is not concealed, be well aware that herein the pearls of good counsel which heal are threaded on strings of right sense; that the bitter physic of admonition is constantly mingled with the honey of good humor, so that the spirits of listeners grow not sad, and that they remain not exempt from blessings of acceptance."

A further interest attaches to these lyrics because they form a series of emotional phases in the soul-life of two lovers whom I think, we may be justified in regarding as Mr. and Mrs. Browning themselves. I always think of them as companion pictures to 'The Sonnets from the Portuguese.' In these the sun-rise of a great love is portrayed with intense and exalted passion while the lyrics in 'Ferishtah's Fancies' reflect the subsequent development of such a love, through the awakening of whole new realms of feeling, wherein love for humanity is enlarged, criticism from the one beloved, welcome; all the little trials of life dissolved in the new light; and divine love realized with a force never before possible. Do we not see a living portrait of the two poets in the lyric 'So the head aches and the limbs are faint'? Many a hint may be found in their letters to prove that Mrs. Browning with just such a frail body possessed a fire of spirit that carried her constantly toward attainment while he, with all the vigor of splendid health could with truth have frequently said "In the soul of me sits sluggishness." These exquisite lyrics which, whether they conform to Elizabethan models or not, are as fine as anything ever done in that line, are crowned by the epilogue in which we hear the stricken husband crying out to her whom twenty years earlier he had called his "lyric love" in a voice doubting, yet triumphing in the thought that his optimism is the light radiating from the halo which her human love had irised round his head.

In 'The Parleyings' the discussions turn principally upon artistic problems and their relation to modern philosophy, four out of the seven being inspired by artist, poet, or musician. The forgotten worthies whom Browning rescued from oblivion, make their appeal to him upon various grounds that connect them with the present. Bernard de Mandeville evidently caught Browning's fancy because in his satirical poem 'The Grumbling Hive' he forestalled, by a defence of the Duke of Marlborough's war policy, the doctrine of the relativity of good and evil. One might have imagined that this subject had been exhausted in 'Ferishtah's Fancies,' but it seems to have had a great fascination for Browning, probably because the idea was a new one and he felt the need of thinking his way through all its implications. Fresh interest is added in this case because the objector in the argument was a contemporary of Browning's--Carlyle, whose well-known pessimism over the existence of evil is graphically presented. Browning clenches his side of the argument with an original and daring variation upon the Prometheus myth led up to by one of the most magnificent passages in the whole range of his poetry, and probably the finest example anywhere in literature of a description of nature as interpreted by the laws of cosmic evolution. He describes the effect of the sun-light in developing the life upon the earth, tracing it as far as the mind of man. But the mind of man is not satisfied with the purely physical and phenomenal.

"What avails sun's earth-felt thrill
To me? Mind seeks to see,
Touch, understand, by mind inside me,
The outside mind--whose quickening I attain
To recognize--I only."

But Prometheus offered an artifice whereby man's mind is satisfied. He drew Sun's rays into a focus plain and true. The very sun in little: made fire burn and henceforth do man service. Denuded of its scientific and mystical symbolism Browning makes the Prometheus myth teach his favorite doctrine, namely that the image of love formed in the human heart by means of the burning glass supplied by sense and feeling is a symbol of infinite love.

Daniel Bartoli, an extremely superstitious old Jesuit of the 17th century is set up by Browning in the next poem, simply to be knocked down again on the ground that all the legendary saints he worshipped could not compare with a real woman the poet knows. The romantic story of this lady is told in Browning's most fascinating narrative style, so rapid and direct that it has all the force of a dramatic sketch. Her claim upon his admiration consists in her recognition of the sacredness of love which she will not dishonor for worldly considerations, and finding her betrothed love incapable of attaining her height of nobleness, she leaves him free. This story only bears upon the poet's philosophy as it reflects his attitude toward human love, which he considers so clearly a revelation, that any treatment of it not absolutely noble and true to the highest ideals is a sin against heaven itself.

George Bubb Dodington is the black sheep of these later poems and gives the poet an opportunity to let loose all his subtlety and sarcasm; and the reader a chance to use his wits in discovering that the poet _assumes_ to agree with Dodington that when one is serving his state, he should at the same time have an eye to his own private welfare, that he _pretends_ to criticise only Dodington's method of attaining this-- which is to disclaim that he works for any other good than the state's, nobody would ever believe that. He then gives what purports to be his own opinion on the correct method of successful statesmanship--that is, to pose as a superior being with a divine right to rule, treating everybody as his puppet and entirely scornful of their opinion of him. If he will adopt this attitude he may change his tactics every year and the people instead of suspecting his sincerity will think that he has wise reasons beyond their insight for his changes. Browning is said to have had Lord Beaconsfield in mind when he described this proper method for the statesman. Be that as it may the type is not unknown in this day. Having discovered all this, the wit of the reader may now draw its inferences--which will doubtless be that the whole poem is a powerful, intensely cynical argument, against what we to-day call imperialism and in favor of liberal government which means the development of every individual so that he will be able to see for himself whether this or that policy be right instead of depending upon the leadership of the over-man, whose intentions are unfortunately too seldom to be trusted.

The poet Browning calls out from the shades is Christopher Smart, who was celebrated for having only once in his life composed a great poem, 'The Song of David,' that put him on a par with Milton and Keats. Perhaps we might not altogether agree with this decision, but critics have loved to eulogize its great beauties and whether Browning actually agreed with their conclusions or not makes little difference, for the fact furnishes him with a text for discussing the problem of beauty versus truth in art. Should the poet's province simply be to record his visions of the beauty and strength of nature and the universe, that come to him in moments of inspiration such as that which came once to Christopher Smart? "No," says Browning, whose feet are always firmly based upon the earth. These visions of poets should not be considered ends in themselves but the materials for greater ends. He asks such poets if they would

"Play the fool,
Abjuring a superior privilege?
Please simply when your function is to rule--
By thought incite to deed? Ears and eyes
Want so much strength and beauty, and no less
Nor more, to learn life's lesson by."

He goes on to insist that the poet should find his inspiration in the human heart and climb to heaven by its means, not investigate the heavens first. He evidently does not sympathize with Emerson's attitude that the poet has some mysterious connection with the divine mind which enables him to become at one bound a seer who may henceforth lead mankind. Rather must the poet diligently study mankind and teach as a man may through this knowledge. Space does not permit me to dwell on the beautiful opening of this poem which recalls the imaginative faculty of the visions in 'Christmas Eve' and 'Easter Day.'

In 'Francis Furini' the subject is the nude in art, and Browning vows he will never believe the tale told by Baldinucci that Furini ordered all his pictures of this description burned. He expresses his indignation vigorously at some length, showing plainly his own sympathies then makes Furini pray a very beautiful prayer, then deliver before a supposed cultured London audience a long and decidedly recondite speech containing an attack upon that species of agnosticism that allies itself with positivism and Furini's refutation. The upshot of it all is that Furini declares the only thing he is certain of is his own consciousness and the fact that it had a cause behind it, called God.

"Knowledge so far impinges on the cause
Before me, that I know--by certain laws
Wholly unknown, what'ere I apprehend
Within, without, me, had its rise: thus blend
I, and all things perceived in one effect."

Readers of philosophy will recognize in this an echo from Descartes. This fact of the human consciousness he further develops into an argument that the painter should paint the human body, just as it was argued the poet should study the human heart.

A Philippic against Greek art and its imitation is delivered by the poet in the 'Parleying with Gerard de Lairesse' whom he makes the scape-goat of his strictures, on the score of a book Lairesse wrote in which was described a walk through a Dutch landscape transmogrified by classic imaginings. To this good soul an old sepulchre, struck by lightning became the tomb of Phaeton, and an old cart wheel half buried in the sand near by, the Chariot of the Sun. In a spirit of bravado Browning proceeds to show what he himself could make of a walk provided he condescended to illuminate it by classic metaphor and symbol, and a remarkable passage is the result. It occupies from the eighth to the twelfth stanzas. It is meant to be in derision of the grandiloquent, classically embroidered style but so splendid is the language, so haunting the pictures, the symbolism so profound that it is as if a God were showing some poor weakling mortal how not to do it--and through his omniscience must perforce create something wondrously beautiful. The double feeling one has about this passage only adds to its interest. After thus classicizing in a manner that might make Euripides himself turn green with envy, he nonchalantly remarks--

"Enough, stop further fooling,"

and to show how a modern poet greets a landscape he flings in the perfectly simple and irresistible little lyric

"Dance, yellows, and whites and reds."

The poet's strictures upon classicism are entirely in line with his philosophy, placing as it does the paramount importance on living realities.