VI
It might seem at first as if it were unfair to attempt any estimate of the philosophic and religious teaching of a poet like Browning, whose method we have already recognized as dramatic. Can we ascribe to the poet himself the opinions which he puts into the mouths of his characters? Can we hold him responsible for the sentiments which are expressed by the actors on his stage?
Certainly this objection must be admitted as a restraint in the interpretation of his poetry. We are not to take all that his characters say, literally and directly, as his own belief, any more than we are to read the speeches of Satan, and Eliphaz, and Bildad, and Zophar, in the Book of Job, as utterances of the spirit of inspiration. But just as that great dramatic Scripture, dealing with the problems of evil and suffering and sovereignty, does contain a doctrine and convey a lesson, so the poetry of Browning, taken as a whole, utters a distinct and positive prophetic message.
In the first place, many of the poems are evidently subjective, written without disguise in the first person. Among these we may consider My Star; By the Fireside; One Word More; the Epilogues to Dramatis Personæ and Pachiarrotto and Ferishtah’s Fancies; the introduction and the close of The Ring and the Book; Christmas Eve and Easter Day; the ending of the poem called Gold Hair, and of A Death in the Desert, and of Bishop Blougram’s Apology; Prospice and Reverie. In the second place we must remember Goethe’s dictum: “Every author in some degree, pourtrays himself in his works, even be it against his will.” Even when Browning is writing dramatically, he cannot conceal his sympathy. The masks are thin. His eyes shine through. “His own personality,” says Mr. Stedman, “is manifest in the speech and movement of almost every character of each piece. His spirit is infused as if by metempsychosis, within them all, and forces each to assume a strange Pentecostal tone, which we discover to be that of the poet himself.” Thus it is not impossible, nor even difficult, to reach a fair estimate of his ethical and religious teaching and discover its principal elements.
1. First among these I would put a great confidence in God. Browning is the most theological of modern poets. The epithet which was applied to Spinoza might well be transferred to him. He is a “God-intoxicated” man. But in a very different sense, for whereas the philosopher felt God as an idea, the poet feels Him intensely as a person. The song which he puts into the lips of the unconscious heroine in Pippa Passes,—
“God’s in his heaven
All’s right with the world,——”
is the recurrent theme of his poetry. He cries with Paracelsus,
“God thou art Love, I build my faith on that.”
Even when his music is broken and interrupted by discords, when it seems to dissolve and fade away as all human work, in its outward form, dissolves and fades, he turns, as Abt Vogler turns from his silent organ, to God;