ILLUSTRATIONS
| Browning at 23 (London 1835) | [Frontispiece] |
| FACING PAGE | |
| Paracelsus | [38] |
| Herbert Spencer | [94] |
| David Strauss | [112] |
| Cardinal Wiseman | [120] |
| William Ewart Gladstone | [160] |
| William Morris | [196] |
| John Burns | [208] |
| Alfred Tennyson | [250] |
| A. C. Swinburne | [260] |
| Dante Gabriel Rossetti | [266] |
| George Meredith | [272] |
| Euripides | [296] |
| Aristophanes | [306] |
| Walter Savage Landor | [330] |
| Browning at 77 (1889) | [360] |
BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY
PROLOGUE
TO ROBERT BROWNING
| “Say not we know but rather that we love, And so we know enough.” Thus deeply spoke The Sage; and in men’s stunted hearts awoke A haunting fear, for fain are they to prove Their life, their God, with yeas and nays that move The mind’s uncertain flow. Then fierce outbroke,— Knowledge, the child of pain shall we revoke? The guide wherewith men climb to things above? Nay, calm your fears! ’Tis but the mere mind’s knowing, The soul’s alone the poet worthy deeming. Let mind up-build its entities of seeming With toil and tears! The toil is but for showing How much there lacks of truth. But ’tis no dreaming When sky throbs back to heart, with God’s love beaming. |