The Epistle is a subtle representation of a soul conceived with absolute spiritual standards, while obliged to live in a world where all standards are relative and determined by the circumstances and limitations of its situation. The spiritual life has been too distinctly revealed for fulfilling aright the purposes of earth-life, purposes which the soul, while in the flesh, must not ignore, since, in the words of Rabbi Ben Ezra, "all good things are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul." The poem may also be said to represent what is, or should be, the true spirit of the man of science. In spite of what Karshish writes, apologetically, he betrays his real attitude throughout, towards the wonderful spiritual problem involved. It is, as many of Browning's Monologues are, a double picture one direct, the other reflected, and the reflected one is as distinct as the direct. The composition also bears testimony to Browning's own soul-healthfulness. Though the spiritual bearing of things is the all-in-all, in his poetry, the robustness of his nature, the fulness and splendid equilibrium of his life, protect him against an inarticulate mysticism. Browning is, in the widest and deepest sense of the word, the healthiest of all living. poets; and in general constitution the most Shakespearian. What he makes Shakespeare say, in the Monologue entitled 'At the Mermaid,' he could say, with perhaps greater truth, in his own person, than Shakespeare could have said it : 1. Aris "Have you found your life distasteful? I find earth not gray but rosy, Heaven not grim but fair of hue. i Do I stoop? I pluck a posy. Do I stand and stare? All's blue." It is the spirit expressed in these lines which has made his poetry so entirely constructive. With the destructive spirit he has no affinities. The poetry of despair and poets with the dumps he cannot away with. Perhaps the most comprehensive passage in Browning's poetry, expressive of his ideal of a complete man under the conditions of earth-life, is found in Colombe's Birthday,' Act IV. Valence says of Prince Berthold: 66 'He gathers earth's whole good into his arms, standing, as man, now, stately, strong and wise- marching to fortune, not surprised by her: one great aim, like a guiding star above — which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift his manhood to the height that takes the prize; a prize not near-lest overlooking earth, he rashly spring to seize it nor remote, so that he rests upon his path content: but day by day, while shimmering grows shine, and the faint circlet prophesies the orb, he sees so much as, just evolving these, the stateliness, the wisdom, and the strength to due completion, will suffice this life, and lead him at his grandest to the grave." Browning fully recognizes, to use an expression in his 'Fra Lippo Lippi,' fully recognizes "the value and significance of flesh." A healthy and well-toned spiritual life is with him the furthest removed from asceticism. To the passage from his 'Rabbi Ben Ezra' already quoted, "all good things are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul," should be added what David sings to Saul, in the poem entitled 'Saul.' Was the full physical life ever more beautifully sung? "Oh! our manhood's prime vigour! no spirit feels waste, Not a muscle is stopped in its playing, nor sinew unbraced. Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock, The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear, And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair. And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine, Though this is said in the person of the beautiful shepherd-boy, David, whoever has lived any time with Browning, through his poetry, must be assured that it is also an expression of the poet's own experience of the glory of flesh. He has himself been an expression of the fullest physical life and now, in his five and seventieth year, since the 7th of last May, he preserves both mind and body in a magnificent vigor. If his soul had been lodged in a sickly, rickety body, he could hardly have written these lines from 'Saul.' Nor could he have written 'Caliban upon Setebos,' especially the opening lines: "Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, with elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin. And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, and feels about his spine small eft-things course, run in and out each arm, and make him laugh: and while above his head a pompion-plant, coating the cave-top as a brow its eye, creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard, and now a flower drops with a bee inside, and now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch, — he looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross and recross till they weave a spider-web (meshes of fire, some great fish breaks at times), and talks to his own self, howe'er he please, touching that other, whom his dam called God." There's a grand passage in Balaustion's Adventure: including a transcript from Euripides,' descriptive of Herakles as he returns, after his conflict with Death, leading back Alkestis, which shows the poet's sympathy with the physical. The passage is more valuable as revealing that sympathy, from the fact that it's one of his additions to Euripides : — "there stood the strength, Happy as always; something grave, perhaps ; As the words followed the saluting hand." It is not so much the glory of flesh which Euripides represents in Herakles, as the indulgence of appetite, at a time, too, when that indulgence is made to appear the more culpable and gross. This idea of "the value and significance of flesh," it is important to note, along with the predominant spiritual bearing of Browning's poetry. It articulates everywhere the spiritual, so to speak makes it healthy and robust, and protects it against volatility and from running into mysticism. 2. THE IDEA OF PERSONALITY AS EMBODIED IN BROWNING'S POETRY. A cardinal idea in Browning's poetry is the regeneration of men through a personality who brings fresh stuff for them to mould, interpret, and prove right, - new feeling fresh from God whose life re-teaches them what life should be, what faith is, loyalty and simpleness, all once revealed, but taught them so long since that they have but mere tradition of the fact, truth copied falteringly from copies faint, the early traits all dropped away. ('Luria.') The intellect plays a secondary part. Its place is behind the instinctive, spiritual antenna which conduct along their trembling lines, fresh stuff for the intellect to stamp and keep-fresh instinct for it to translate into law. A people is but the attempt of many to rise to the completer life of one." (A Soul's Tragedy.') Only the man who supplies new feeling fresh from God, quickens and regenerates the race, and sets it on the King's highway from which it has wandered into by-ways not the man of mere intellect, of unkindled soul, that supplies only stark-naked thought. Through the former, "God stooping shows sufficient of His light for those i' the dark to rise by." ('R. and B., Pompilia.') In him men discern "the dawn of the next nature, the new man whose will they venture in the place of theirs, and whom they trust to find them out new ways to the new heights which yet he only sees." ("Luria.') It is by reaching towards, and doing fealty to, the greater spirit which attracts and absorbs their own, that, "trace by trace old memories reappear, old truth returns, their slow thought does its work, and all's re-known." ('Luria.') "Some existence like a pact ... The fullest effluence of the finest mind, All in degree, no way diverse in kind From minds above it, minds which, more or less Lofty or low, move seeking to impress Themselves on somewhat; but one mind has climbed Step after step, by just ascent sublimed. Is soul from body still to disengage, As tending to a freedom which rejects The world, producing deeds but not by deeds, |