He goes on to insist that the poet should find his inspiration in the human heart and climb to heaven by its means, not investigate the heavens first. He evidently does not sympathize with Emerson's attitude that the poet has some mysterious connection with the divine mind which enables him to become at one bound a seer who may henceforth lead mankind. Rather must the poet diligently study mankind and teach as a man may through this knowledge. Space does not permit me to dwell on the beautiful opening of this poem which recalls the imaginative faculty of the visions in 'Christmas Eve' and 'Easter Day.'
In 'Francis Furini' the subject is the nude in art, and Browning vows he will never believe the tale told by Baldinucci that Furini ordered all his pictures of this description burned. He expresses his indignation vigorously at some length, showing plainly his own sympathies then makes Furini pray a very beautiful prayer, then deliver before a supposed cultured London audience a long and decidedly recondite speech containing an attack upon that species of agnosticism that allies itself with positivism and Furini's refutation. The upshot of it all is that Furini declares the only thing he is certain of is his own consciousness and the fact that it had a cause behind it, called God.
"Knowledge so far impinges on the cause
Before me, that I know--by certain laws
Wholly unknown, what'ere I apprehend
Within, without, me, had its rise: thus blend
I, and all things perceived in one effect."
Readers of philosophy will recognize in this an echo from Descartes. This fact of the human consciousness he further develops into an argument that the painter should paint the human body, just as it was argued the poet should study the human heart.
A Philippic against Greek art and its imitation is delivered by the poet in the 'Parleying with Gerard de Lairesse' whom he makes the scape-goat of his strictures, on the score of a book Lairesse wrote in which was described a walk through a Dutch landscape transmogrified by classic imaginings. To this good soul an old sepulchre, struck by lightning became the tomb of Phaeton, and an old cart wheel half buried in the sand near by, the Chariot of the Sun. In a spirit of bravado Browning proceeds to show what he himself could make of a walk provided he condescended to illuminate it by classic metaphor and symbol, and a remarkable passage is the result. It occupies from the eighth to the twelfth stanzas. It is meant to be in derision of the grandiloquent, classically embroidered style but so splendid is the language, so haunting the pictures, the symbolism so profound that it is as if a God were showing some poor weakling mortal how not to do it--and through his omniscience must perforce create something wondrously beautiful. The double feeling one has about this passage only adds to its interest. After thus classicizing in a manner that might make Euripides himself turn green with envy, he nonchalantly remarks--
"Enough, stop further fooling,"