It is only fair to Browning to remember that his optimism has a philosophical basis, and is the logical result of a firmly-held view of the universe. Many unthinking persons declare that Browning, with his jaunty good spirits, gets on their nerves; he dodges or leaps over the real obstacles in life, and thinks he has solved difficulties when he has only forgotten them. They miss in Browning the note of sorrow, of internal struggle, of despair; and insist that he has never accurately portrayed the real bitterness of the heart's sufferings. These critics have never read attentively Browning's first poem.
The poem Pauline shows that Browning had his Sturm und Drang, in common with all thoughtful young men. Keats' immortal preface to Endymion would be equally applicable to this youthful work. "The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages." The astonishing thing is, that Browning emerged from the slough of despond at just the time when most young men are entering it. He not only climbed out, but set his face resolutely toward the Celestial City.
The poem Pauline shows that young Browning passed through skepticism, atheism, pessimism, cynicism, and that particularly dark state when the mind reacts on itself; when enthusiasms, high hopes, and true faith seem childish; when wit and mockery take the place of zeal, this diabolical substitution seeming for the moment to be an intellectual advance. But although he suffered from all these diseases of the soul, he quickly became convalescent and Paracelsus proves that his cure was complete.
Browning's optimism is not based on any discount of the sufferings of life, nor any attempt to overlook such gross realities as sin and pain. No pessimist has realised these facts more keenly than he. The Pope, who is the poet's mouthpiece, calls the world a dread machinery of sin and sorrow. The world is full of sin and sorrow, but it is machinery—and machinery is meant to make something; in this instance the product is human character, which can not be made without obstacles, struggles, and torment. In Reverie, Browning goes even farther than this in his description of terrestrial existence.
Head praises, but heart refrains
From loving's acknowledgment
Whole losses outweigh half-gains:
Earth's good is with evil blent:
Good struggles but evil reigns.
Such an appraisal of life can hardly be called a blind and jaunty optimism.
Browning declares repeatedly that the world shows clearly two attributes of God: immense force and immense intelligence. We can not worship God, however, merely because He is strong and wise; He must be better than we are to win our respect and homage. The third necessary attribute, Love, is not at all clear in the spectacle furnished by science and history. Where then shall we seek it? His answer is, in the revelation of God's love through Jesus Christ.
What lacks then of perfection fit for God
But just the instance which this tale supplies
Of love without a limit?
Browning's philosophy therefore is purely Christian. The love of God revealed in the Incarnation and in our own ethical natures—our imperfect souls containing here and now the possibilities of infinite development—makes Browning believe that this is God's world and we are God's children. He conceives of our life as an eternal one, our existence here being merely probation. No one has ever believed more rationally and more steadfastly in the future life than our poet; and his optimism is based solidly on this faith. The man who believes in the future life, he seems to say, may enjoy whole-heartedly and enthusiastically the positive pleasures of this world, and may endure with a firm mind its evils and its terrible sufferings. Take Christianity out of Browning, and his whole philosophy, with its cheerful outlook, falls to the ground. Of all true English poets, he is the most definitely Christian, the most sure of his ground. He wrote out his own evangelical creed in Christmas-Eve and Easter Day; but even if we did not have these definite assurances, poems like A Death in the Desert and Gold Hair would be sufficient.
Sequels are usually failures: the sequel to Saul is a notable exception to the rule. The first part of the poem, including the first nine stanzas, was published among the Dramatic Romances in 1845: in 1855, among the Men and Women, appeared the whole work, containing ten additional stanzas. This sequel is fully up to the standard of the original in artistic beauty, and contains a quite new climax, of even greater intensity. The ninth stanza closes with the cry "King Saul!"—he represents the last word of physical manhood, the finest specimen on earth of the athlete. The eighteenth stanza closes with the cry "See the Christ stand!"—He represents the climax of all human history, the appearance on earth of God in man. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.