that so certain? When he thinks it over in the full survey, it seems far from clear to him how much of the ill in man's lot can be removed, or even whether it ought to be. Good and ill seem so bound up with each other; the "ill seems so often the basis and occasion of so much of the "good." Take it away, and where were the occasion for much of what is most excellent in man's life-for help and pity? In fact, in regard to the large question, it does seem that if you give men the "whole," you take away all use in the "parts."

And just as the gain of the people by his refusal seems doubtful, so his own gain by accepting Palma and the office seems great, All that men could gain by it they will gain in due time and by other means, while he loses all. But if he do lose, there is the life to come, it may be said. There may be; but life is now, and he craves life-the little stream certain and near rather than the rocky fount on far-off heights. Yet this cup of life he makes so much of in the debate has been easily dashed aside many a time. Yes, by those who had the faith or the hope that mastered life. Let him find such power, and he will renounce too, he thinks.

But much of this debate, we are to conclude, has been on the surface. Sordello now passed into a mood touching the deeper thoughts of the past. He sank through all secondary states, and seemed to get to the core of principle and passion within—to lay hold of the essential truth. He saw how all our

notions, even good and ill, might be but modes of time, and how in other spheres things might prove quite distinct. But a sense of this had put him out of time; had given him a tendency to force eternity upon time, the soul on the body. If you look at matters of life from that point of view, that seems right. And yet such a course neglects the conditions of this life, and puts it quite out of place; to insist on the soul's absoluteness is to destroy the body and miss life. So it had been with Sordello; his spiritual vision had been won by the "flesh-half's break-up," and had resulted in his showing himself inadequate for life. The problem was to have kept these in their due relations, and take life on its proper conditions. Yet how many do that? Most men brutalize the soul-the opposite mistake. Who shall find power to solve the problem and conciliate both elements of man's life? Who shall find wisdom through love to "see the great before and after, the small now," and, seeing both, do the duty that is at hand? Plainly some power or principle Sordello did not find is needed for this. And the poet, speaking for Sordello, says that what is required is some power above man's nature and sphere some divine power, both infinite and loving-revealed within man's sphere and nature, and giving its transcendent yet clear and practical sanction to duty. Idealists like Sordello need such a law as this, divine and human, resting on the eternal, yet touching close the tasks of life, and giving these a large relation without loss of practical point and fitness.

But it may be that, after all, you look on the whole problem as the creation of a poet's dreams. No one, you think, ever made so sorry a farce" of

his life as this Sordello. So mad an idealist never went at large. Never, it may be, one so consistent. and complete, for circumstances leave few men free for such consistency; but the strife of principle is very common, and perhaps no earnest mind has kept quite clear of compromise in the conflict.

Browning, we may judge, felt the strife in his own mind, and with regard to his work, and he had to adjust the relation of principles in both, as the growth of his art proves. "Paracelsus" and “ Sordello" both speak of the ideality of Shelley and the so-called "metaphysical" bent of Browning's mind. His dramatic art was his "escape" from the dangers of his first poetry, while the double quality of his mind became clearer and better balanced as his genius matured.

But the leading question of "Sordello" we shall find him touching again and again, and it is, perhaps, best to hand over from this early poem the solution of it as it comes within his poetry. Yet I may suggest how, by force of his perception of life, and by pressure of his own thoughts, Browning was grappling a question upon which the whole drift of Hegel's thought bore, whether as interpretation of mind, of life, or of religion; and the solution of the problem offered by him is found in his doctrine of the immanence of God, the unity of the divine and human, and the ideal significance of thought and duty.

K

CHAPTER VII.

BROWNING AS A DRAMATIST.

BROWNING'S plays are, I fancy, little read, in part because they have been thrown into the shade by later work, but their place in his work, in the growth of his art, and in the expression of his genius, give them interest besides the interest they have in themselves; for, in a century that has produced very few dramas of true value, the author of Pippa and Colombe and Mildred Tresham, of Valence and Ogniben and Luria, has added to our stock of dramatic figures and conceptions.

Browning began with "Strafford" in 1837. It was given at Covent Garden on May 1, Macready and Miss Faucit taking leading parts, "with all the evidences of distinct success," but was of greater promise than achievement, as Forster felt in reviewing it. The character of Strafford is well conceived, though not effectively realized through the play, and as a whole it lacks the proper energy and interest of acting drama.

The next of the dramas was "Pippa Passes," in

1841. It is not a play, but a series of dramatic scenes bound by a lyrical thread, and shaped to express a poetic idea. That idea is the way in which all lives, even lonely and lowly lives, have a world of lives about them upon whom their influence is greater than they know; and also how we each judge partially, or it may be quite wrongly, of the lives and happiness of others. The design of "Pippa" was to present these truths in dramatic form, and it has been done.

It is New-Year's Day at Asolo, and Pippa, who works in the silk-mills of the place, is thinking, as the day dawns, what she must do with her one holiday. For one day she will be happy, if only in dreams, with the happiness of the happiest four in Asolo. She will be Ottima, lover of Sebald. Yet no; that is a mad, bad love. Phene, then, the Greek girl, who has come to be married to Jules the sculptor. Yet again no; that love is new and uncertain. The love of the mother for her child is deeper and surer; she will be the gentle mother watching over her son. And then she thinks there is a higher love still-" God's love." She will be the Bishop who is to be at the duomo that evening.

And yet it occurs to her that even as Pippa she has God's love, and there is, perhaps, less need than seems to change places. For what says her hymn ?— "All service ranks the same with God." So with that idea in her mind, she goes forth to her holiday, to pass these people and see their happiness, and test the hymn's truth.