right had once been claimed for it in his presence, he rejoined
quickly, 'That is an error! _noblesse oblige_.' But he had difficulty in
acknowledging any abstract law which did not derive from a Higher Power;
and this fact may have been at once cause and consequence of the special
conditions of his own mind. All human or conventional obligation appeals
finally to the individual judgment; and in his case this could easily be
obscured by the always militant imagination, in regard to any subject
in which his feelings were even indirectly concerned. No one saw
more justly than he, when the object of vision was general or remote.
Whatever entered his personal atmosphere encountered a refracting medium
in which objects were decomposed, and a succession of details, each held
as it were close to the eye, blocked out the larger view.

We have seen, on the other hand, that he accepted imperfect knowledge as
part of the discipline of experience. It detracted in no sense from his
conviction of direct relations with the Creator. This was indeed the
central fact of his theology, as the absolute individual existence had
been the central fact of his metaphysics; and when he described the
fatal leap in 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country' as a frantic appeal to the
Higher Powers for the 'sign' which the man's religion did not afford,
and his nature could not supply, a special dramatic sympathy was at
work within him. The third part of the epilogue to 'Dramatis Personae'
represented his own creed; though this was often accentuated in the
sense of a more personal privilege, and a perhaps less poetic mystery,
than the poem conveys. The Evangelical Christian and the subjective
idealist philosopher were curiously blended in his composition.

The transition seems violent from this old-world religion to any system
of politics applicable to the present day. They were, nevertheless,
closely allied in Mr. Browning's mind. His politics were, so far as they
went, the practical aspect of his religion. Their cardinal doctrine was
the liberty of individual growth; removal of every barrier of prejudice
or convention by which it might still be checked. He had been a Radical
in youth, and probably in early manhood; he remained, in the truest
sense of the word, a Liberal; and his position as such was defined in
the sonnet prefixed in 1886 to Mr. Andrew Reid's essay, 'Why I am a
Liberal', and bearing the same name. Its profession of faith did not,
however, neces