III. Taking himself then at his critics’ estimate, i.e., as a sceptic masquerading in the garb of an ecclesiastical dignitary, he opens his exposition by a comparison of his life as actually lived with the ideal life advocated by the critic and his compeers. Pursuing the subject—having attained even to the supreme honour to which his calling admits, having ascended the papal throne, the position would yet be but one of outward splendour, incomparable with “the grand, simple life” a man may lead; grand, because essentially genuine—“imperial, plain and true.” Nevertheless, he would submit, it is better for a man so to order his life that it may be lived to his satisfaction in Rome or Paris of the nineteenth century, rather than to dissipate his powers in the evolution of some ideal scheme, impossible of practical execution. As illustration, follows the incident of the outward-bound vessel in which are provided cabins of equal dimensions for the accommodation of all passengers. One would fain fill his “six feet square” with all the luxuries which the mode of life hitherto pursued has rendered essential to his comfort. His neighbour, meanwhile, has limited his requirements to the possibilities of the space allotted; with the result that the man content with little finds himself satisfactorily equipped for the voyage; whilst he of great, but impracticable aspirations, is left with a bare cabin, one after the other the articles of his proposed outfit having been rejected by the ship’s steward. Hence the deduction, that the man of moderate requirements is better fitted for life, as life now is, than he of the “artist nature.” Later on (l. 763) the speaker again reverts to the same simile, passing to the further illustration of the traveller providing his equipment in advance, in each case adapting it to a climate to be subsequently reached, rather than to that in which he is at the moment living.
As when a traveller, bound from North to South,
Scouts fur in Russia: what’s its use in France?
In France spurns flannel: where’s its need in Spain?
In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers! (ll. 790-793.)
The question not unreasonably follows, “When, through his journey, was the fool at ease?”
Thus, according to the Bishop, he who can most completely accommodate himself to the exigencies of the present life, evinces his capability for adapting himself to that which is to come. A theory, in direct opposition, it would appear, to Browning’s usual doctrine, repeated in so many of the familiar poems. It is difficult to imagine a figure affording more striking contrast to the prosperous prelate than that of the Grammarian, once the “Lyric Apollo, electing to live nameless,” occupied with the pursuit of an abstract good; only paving the way for the attainment of his successors; and in death throwing on God the task of making “the heavenly period perfect the earthen,” that incomplete phase of existence, full of unsatisfied aspirations, of unfinished attempts. Of him the poet gives us the assurance that he shall find the God whom he has sought: whilst for the worldling who
Has the world here—should he need the next,
Let the world mind him!
In Cleon, in A Death in the Desert, in Dîs Aliter Visum, and perhaps above all in Abt Vogler (to refer to only a few illustrations out of the many possible), the fact that man is incapable of accommodating himself to his environment is treated as a proof that this is not his true sphere of existence; that he was designed, and is still destined, for something higher. So asks the lover of Pauline:
How should this earth’s life prove my only sphere?
Can I so narrow sense but that in life
Soul still exceeds it?
In Dîs Aliter Visum, the assertion
What’s whole, can increase no more,
Is dwarfed and dies, since here’s its sphere;
has especial reference to love,