ts health. But
reconciliations of this kind do not bring back all the ancient affection
and happiness. Nature and humanity never lived together in his poetry in
as vital a harmony as before, nor was the work done on them as good as
it was of old. A broken marriage is not repaired by an apparent
condonation. Nature and humanity, though both now dwelt in him, kept
separate rooms. Their home-life was destroyed. Browning had been drawn
away by a Fifine of humanity. He never succeeded in living happily again
with Elvire; and while our intellectual interest in his work remained,
our poetic interest in it lessened. We read it for mental and ethical
entertainment, not for ideal joy.

No; if poetry is to _be_ perfectly written; if the art is to be brought
to its noblest height; if it is to continue to lift the hearts of men
into the realm where perfection lives; if it is to glow, an unwearied
fire, in the world; the love of Nature must be justly mingled in it
with the love of humanity. The love of humanity must be first, the love
of Nature second, but they must not be divorced. When they are, when the
love of Nature forms the only subject, or when the love of Man forms the
only subject, poetry decays and dies.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Creatures accordant with the place?

[6] Browning, even more than Shelley, was fond of using the snake in his
poetry. Italy is in that habit.

[7] There is a fine picture of the passing of a hurricane in
_Paracelsus_ (p. 67, vol i.) which illustrates this inability to stop
when he has done all he needs. Paracelsus speaks:

The hurricane is spent,
And the good boat speeds through the brightening weather;
But is it earth or sea that heaves below?
The gulf rolls like a meadow-swell, o'erstrewn
With ravaged boughs and remnants of the shore;
And now, some islet, loosened from the land,
Swims past with all its trees, sailing to ocean:
_And now the air is full of uptorn canes._
_Light strippings from the fan-trees, tamarisks_
_Unrooted, with their birds still clinging to them,_
_All high in the wind_. Even so my varied life
Drifts by me.

I think that the lines I have italicised should have been left out. They
weaken what he has well done.

* * * * *

CHAPTER IV

_BROWNING'S THEORY OF HUMAN LIFE_

_PAULINE AND PARACELSUS_

To isolate Browning's view of Nature, and to leave it behind us, seemed
ad