His chief influence, other than what is purely artistic, upon a reader is towards establishing a connection between the known order of things in which we live and move and that larger order of which it is a part. He plays upon the will, summoning it from lethargy to activity. He spiritualises the passions by showing that they tend through what is human towards what is divine. He assigns to the intellect a sufficient field for exercise, but attaches more value to its efforts than to its attainments. His faith in an unseen order of things creates a hope which persists through the apparent failures of earth. In a true sense he may be named the successor of Wordsworth, not indeed as an artist but as a teacher. Substantially the creed maintained by each was the same creed, and they were both more emphatic proclaimers of it than any other contemporary poets. But their ways of holding and of maintaining that creed were far apart. Wordsworth enunciated his doctrines as if he had never met with, and never expected to meet with, any gainsaying of them. He discoursed as a philosopher might to a school of disciples gathered together to be taught by his wisdom, not to dispute it. He feared chiefly not a counter creed but the materialising effects of the industrial movement of his own day. Expecting no contradiction, Wordsworth did not care to quit his own standpoint in order that he might see how things appear from the opposing side. He did not argue but let his utterance fall into a half soliloquy spoken in presence of an audience but not always directly addressed to them. Browning's manner of speech was very unlike this. He seems to address it often to unsympathetic hearers of whose presence and gainsaying attitude he could not lose sight. The beliefs for which he pleaded were not in his day, as they had been in Wordsworth's, part of a progressive wave of thought. He occupied the disadvantageous position of a conservative thinker. The later poet of spiritual beliefs had to make his way not with, but against, a great incoming tide of contemporary speculation. Probably on this account Browning's influence as a teacher will extend over a far shorter space of time than that of Wordsworth. For Wordsworth is self-contained, and is complete without reference to the ideas which oppose his own. His work suffices for its own explanation, and will always commend itself to certain readers either as the system of a philosophic thinker or as the dream of a poet. Browning's thought where it is most significant is often more or less enigmatical if taken by itself: its energetic gestures, unless we see what they are directed against, seem aimless beating the air. His thought, as far as it is polemical, will probably cease to interest future readers. New methods of attack will call forth new methods of defence. Time will make its discreet selection from his writings. And the portion which seems most likely to survive is that which presents in true forms of art the permanent passions of humanity and characters of enduring interest.
NOTES:
Mrs Orr gives the dates of composition of several of the Asolando poems. Rosny, Beatrice Signorini and Flute-Music were written in the winter of 1887-1888. Two or three of the Bad Dreams are, with less confidence, assigned to the same date. The Ponte dell' Angelo "was imagined during the next autumn in Venice" (see Mrs Bronson's article "Browning in Venice"). "White Witchcraft had been suggested in the same summer (1888) by a letter from a friend in the Channel Islands which spoke of the number of toads to be seen there." The Cardinal and the Dog, written with the Pied Piper for Macready's son, is a poem of early date. Mrs Bronson in her article "Browning in Asolo" (Century Magazine, April 1900) relates the origin at Asolo 1889 of The Lady and the Painter.
Mrs Orr, Life, p. 414.
W.M. Rossetti, Portraits of Browning, i., Magazine of Art, 1890, p. 182. Mr Rossetti's words refer to an earlier period.
"The Nation," vol. 1., where reminiscences by Moncure Conway may also be found.