All's right with the world."
The poet had far too much speculative acumen to be ignorant of this, and too much boldness and strength of conviction in the might of the good, to refuse to confront the issues that sprang from it. In his later poems, as in his earlier ones, he is endeavouring to justify the ways of God to man; and the difficulties which surround him are not those of a casuist, but the stubborn questionings of a spirit, whose religious faith is thoroughly earnest and fearless. To a spirit so loyal to the truth, and so bold to follow its leading, the suppression of such problems is impossible; and, consequently, it was inevitable that he should use the whole strength of his dialectic to try those fundamental principles, on which the moral life of man is based. And it is this, I believe, which we find in Fifine, as in Ferishtah's Fancies and the Parleyings; not an exhibition of the argumentative subtlety of a mind whose strength has become lawless, and which spends itself in intellectual gymnastics, that have no place within the realm of either the beautiful or the true.
[CHAPTER V.]
OPTIMISM AND ETHICS: THEIR CONTRADICTION.
"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky
Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.