t is, having earth and the earthly
for its starting-point; henceforward make it HELIOCENTRIC (that is,
with the sun, or the heavenly, for its principle of motion)."

The poetry of Browning everywhere says this, and says it
more emphatically than that of any other poet in our literature.
It says everywhere, that not through knowledge, not through
a sharpened intellect, but through repentance, in the deeper sense
to which I have just alluded, through conversion, through wheeling into
a new centre its spiritual system, the soul attains to saving truth.
Salvation with him means that revelation of the soul to itself,
that awakening, quickening, actuating, attitude-adjusting, of the soul,
which sets it gravitating toward the Divine.

Browning's idea of Conversion is, perhaps, most distinctly expressed
in a passage in the Monologue of the Canon Caponsacchi,
in `The Ring and the Book', wherein he sets forth the circumstances
under which his soul was wheeled into a new centre, after a life
of dalliance and elegant folly, and made aware of "the marvellous dower
of the life it was gifted and filled with". He has been telling
the judges, before whom he has been summoned, the story of the letters
forged by Guido to entrap him and Pompilia, and of his having seen
"right through the thing that tried to pass for truth and solid,
not an empty lie". The conclusion and the resolve he comes to,
are expressed in the soliloquy which he repeats to the judges,
as having uttered at the time: "So, he not only forged
the words for her but words for me, made letters he called mine:
what I sent, he retained, gave these in place, all by
the mistress messenger! As I recognized her, at potency of truth,
so she, by the crystalline soul, knew me, never mistook the signs.
Enough of this--let the wraith go to nothingness again,
here is the orb, have only thought for her!" What follows admits us
to the very HEART of Browning's poetry--admits us to the great Idea
which is almost, in these days, strange to say, peculiarly his--
which no other poet, certainly, of this intellectual, analytic,
scientific age, with its "patent, truth-extracting processes",
has brought out with the same degree of distinctness--the great Idea
which may be variously characterized as that of soul-kindling,
soul-quickening, adjustment of soul-attitude, regeneration, conversion,
through PERSONALITY--a kindling, quickening, adjustment,
regeneration, conversion in which THOUGHT