THOUGHT, HOPE AND CONSOLATION FROM BROWNING. BY MRS. MARY E. BAGG. HE poetry of Robert Browning is not popular, Browning Societies are laughed at, and by the poet himself; but steadily his work grows in the estimation of the thoughtful, and more and more clearly he is recognized as the peer of the few who entertain, instruct, stimulate and console. His poems are not for idle moments,—they demand the student's hour, for his message must often be spelled out. In an attempt to present somewhat of Browning's thought, hope and consolation, I shall quote liberally from his works, and shall also avail myself of the appreciative and authoritative interpretations of Prof. Corson and the London Browning Society. Browning is the poet of the rational, ethical and spiritual. He is never common-place or sentimental, never superstitious. He is not directly scientist, philanthropist, or reformer. He is a keen observer of "Life, with all it yields of joy or woe, and hope or fear." Every type of individual gives occasion for the exercise of his wonderful insight and analytic portraiture. He is curious about man's machinery; he is a "mental mechanic," "taking to pieces and putting together." He is philosopher, psychologist, metaphysician, mystic and seer. He is a searcher after substance obscured by shadows, a discoverer of divine ideas underlying material expression, an acute estimator of physical and intellectual frictions as affecting spiritual growth. Soul development he holds to be the Supreme thing of worth, and its study the supreme thing of interest, the intellect and its subtle exercises being secondary in importance. 66 'Religion is all-in-all with Browning, but not any particular religion." His attitude towards the various helpful forms of philosophy and religion, is intensely sympathetic, and he is in accord with much of their deepest thought about God, man, life here, and life hereafter. Jews, Mohammedans, Pagans, Agnostics, Positivists and Christians may mistake his intellectual and æsthetic sympathy with their special forms of thought, for an actual agreement or a personal belief. He has been claimed as pre-eminently the Christian poet. "In the last words of Paracelsus, he gives a most perfect expression of the transcendental creed; and the whole work is, as the interpreter thinks, a confession of Browning's faith philosophical, which is Hegelian." Those best acquainted with the poet and his works, are of the opinion, that in the speech of his noblest characters, it is safe to presume that he utters himself. His deep concern is to present a "Theory of Life,” and to offer a gospel which reconciles to life insoluble problems. It may be conjectured, that in David's song before Saul, Browning speaks his greatest thought about God. "I have gone the whole round of Creation! I report, as a man may of God's work,—all's love, yet all's law! I but open my eyes,-and perfection, no more and no less In the kind I imagine, full-fronts me: and God is seen God In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod." "God over us, under, round us, every side! "The soul also sees the thing perceived outside itself; a force actual ere its own beginnings; operative through its course; unaffected by its end;—that this thing likewise needs must be; calls this-God." Our poet, "only a learner, just a discerner, would teach no one;" he is too reverent to define or to picture Deity; nor would he rudely shatter the gods many, whom men have made in their own image,believing that the true God deigns to dwell in every reverent thought and creation of his children. A Deity projected from the mind of man must ever be of the fashion of the mind that projects; hence, conceptions of God vary, from the ideal of the savage to the loftiest and most spiritual creation of the religious philosopher. Caliban had his God, so had Socrates and Tyndall, and Heber Newton. Swedenborg, and Whitfield, and so has is modified and changed with the passage of years. "Man apprehends Him newly at each stage, Browning sees God as one all-powerful, "to fill full the heart that His power expands"; as one all-pitiful, "who will not be wroth, who gave the will to labor and withheld the strength"; as one who is perfect Providence alike to man and mote; as one whose "love fills infinitude wholly, nor leaves up nor down one spot for the creature to stand in.” And for joyous testimony to these beliefs our poet looks into the heart of man, where as in a mirror is reflected that Infinite love, power and wisdom which glorify creation. Browning's view of the nature of man is based upon a wide study of individual man and of the race, in their successive stages of development from animal, through the rational, moral and spiritual. He "holds man to have gathered up, and to exhibit in himself all the hints and previsions of faculties strewn about through the inferior natures,—all leading up higher,—all shaping out dimly the superior race." "Progress is the law of life, man is not man as yet," but in the completed man, begins anew a tendency to God. Man is a reflection of God; "The truth in God's breast, lies trace for trace upon ours impressed; though He is so bright and we so dim, we are made in His image to witness Him." "Nearer we hold, of God who gives than of His tribes that take; to that which doth provide and not partake, effect and not receive." "The spiritual man is the real man, and certain to be called so, when things shall have their names." Our poet teaches that the human soul is a complexly organized, individualized, divine force, destined to gravitate toward the Infinite, "A God, though in the germ." "He loves to speak of the hidden soul, the unconscious personality, as back of, and distinguished from the active powers, the conscious intellect." "This spirit consciousness, this sense of sense," this power to view itself, is the crown and consummation of man's existence. It is "this absolute soul-knowledge which severs great minds from small," which differences one mind from another. For "at bottom men are alike, souls are no way diverse in kind, no one better than another." In regard to the soul's inherent possessions, its microcosmic potentialities, our poet teaches that "Truth is within ourselves, it takes no rise From outward things; There is an inmost centre in us all, Where truth abides in fullness! and around Blinds it, and makes all error: and 'to know' Supposed to be without. Watch narrowly In manhood, clogged by sickness, back compelled Of mind, Browning asserts that "It is not matter, nor from matter, but from above"; it is "supernatural, but linked with, and even enslaved by, the natural." Spirit may be overweighted with body, or spirit may lack in "earthly ballast." Man is many-natured; all faculties of his being have their rights,—the delights of sound, sight, touch, taste, beauty, reverie, imagination, poetic and spiritual ecstacy, all help each, and each help all to the harmonious development of the complete man; so may the earth-man live the earth-life with due recognition of the spiritual nature; and the spiritual man live the spiritual life with due recognition of the earthly nature. Browning emphasizes the "value and significance of flesh." Body is soul's tool, agent, medium, through which come man's experiences, it is soul's aid or hindrance and soul's shield and pleasure-house. And "pleasant is this flesh." The joy of physical existence is jubilantly chanted in David's Song before Saul, ending with "How good is man' life, the mere living! How fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses, Forever in joy!" "O! our manhood's prime vigor!" Corson "assumes that this is an expression of the poet's experience of the glory of the flesh. Browning is an example of the fullest physical life and (past his seventieth year) possesses mind and body in a magnificent vigor." "Let us not always say, 'spite of this flesh I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!' As the bird wings and sings let us cry; 'all good things are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul." "Wait for some transcendent O! never! Life here and manly, brave and beneficent This world is interesting to Browning as being man's dwellingplace and school. He mourns that "too much, life here has been walled about with disgrace." He insists on the "sanctity of things near"; he would have man, a man while here; with all his heart and soul throwing himself on the present." life reserved by Fate, to follow this? now, gives ample opportunity for all beginnings. It is "no mean stage, too narrow for our wide performance"; we are too little to enact the parts we are able to conceive. "Where is the man who has shown himself too great for earth and human life, with its many and complex needs?" A noble conception of life's consummation should save from contempt its beginning. Earthly experiences are not simply to be tolerated, endured, they are to be dignified; and, as "God joys in the uncouth joy of the incomplete world, so man may take a pleasure in his "Half-reasons, faint aspiring, dim Struggles for truth, his poorest fallacies, Man's concern is with to-day. To live overmuch in the future is to sacrifice the present, and so peril that future; as unwise as "to wear |