An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry. Robert Browning

      And Tennyson, in picturing to us in the Idylls, the passage of the soul “from the great deep to the great deep”, appears to have felt it necessary to the completion of that picture (or why did he do it?), that he should bring out that doubt at the last moment. The dying Arthur is made to say:—

      “I am going a long way

       With these thou seest—if indeed I go

       (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)—

       To the island-valley of Avilion”; etc.

      Tennyson’s poetry is, in fact, an expression of the highest sublimation of the scepticism which came out of the eighteenth century, which invoked the authority of the sensualistic philosophy of Locke, and has since been fostered by the science of the nineteenth; while Browning’s poetry is a decided protest against, and a reactionary product of, that scepticism, that infidel philosophy (infidel as to the transcendental), and has CLOSED with it and borne away the palm.

      The key-note of his poetry is struck in ‘Paracelsus’, published in 1835, in his twenty-third year, and, with the exception of ‘Pauline’ published in 1833, the earliest of his compositions: Paracelsus says (and he who knows Browning knows it to be substantially his own creed):—

      “Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise

       From outward things, whate’er you may believe:

       There is an inmost centre in us all,

       Where truth abides in fulness; and around

       Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,

       This perfect, clear perception—which is truth;

       A baffling and perverting carnal mesh

       Blinds it, and makes all error: and ‘TO KNOW’

       Rather consists in opening out a way

       Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,

       Than in effecting entry for a light

       Supposed to be without. Watch narrowly

       The demonstration of a truth, its birth,

       And you trace back the effluence to its spring

       And source within us, where broods radiance vast,

       To be elicited ray by ray, as chance

       Shall favour: chance—for hitherto, your sage

       Even as he knows not how those beams are born,

       As little knows he what unlocks their fount;

       And men have oft grown old among their books

       To die, case-hardened in their ignorance,

       Whose careless youth had promised what long years

       Of unremitted labour ne’er performed:

       While, contrary, it has chanced some idle day,

       That autumn-loiterers just as fancy-free

       As the midges in the sun, have oft given vent

       To truth—produced mysteriously as cape

       Of cloud grown out of the invisible air.

       Hence, may not truth be lodged alike in all,

       The lowest as the highest? some slight film

       The interposing bar which binds it up,

       And makes the idiot, just as makes the sage

       Some film removed, the happy outlet whence

       Truth issues proudly? See this soul of ours!

       How it strives weakly in the child, is loosed

       In manhood, clogged by sickness, back compelled

       By age and waste, set free at last by death:

       Why is it, flesh enthralls it or enthrones?

       What is this flesh we have to penetrate?

       Oh, not alone when life flows still do truth

       And power emerge, but also when strange chance

       Ruffles its current; in unused conjuncture,

       When sickness breaks the body—hunger, watching,

       Excess, or languor—oftenest death’s approach—

       Peril, deep joy, or woe. One man shall crawl

       Through life, surrounded with all stirring things,

       Unmoved—and he goes mad; and from the wreck

       Of what he was, by his wild talk alone,

       You first collect how great a spirit he hid.

       Therefore set free the spirit alike in all,

       Discovering the true laws by which the flesh

       Bars in the spirit! …

      I go to gather this

       The sacred knowledge, here and there dispersed

       About the world, long lost or never found.

       And why should I be sad, or lorn of hope?

       Why ever make man’s good distinct from God’s?

       Or, finding they are one, why dare mistrust?

       Who shall succeed if not one pledged like me?

       Mine is no mad attempt to build a world

       Apart from His, like those who set themselves

       To find the nature of the spirit they bore,

       And, taught betimes that all their gorgeous dreams

       Were only born to vanish in this life,

       Refused to fit them to this narrow sphere,

       But chose to figure forth another world

       And other frames meet for their vast desires—

       Still, all a dream! Thus was life scorned; but life

       Shall yet be crowned: twine amaranth! I am priest!”