oul, with the
assumption that God is, and the soul. The argument is interesting, but
does not concern us here. What does concern us is that Browning has
largely recovered his poetical way of treating a subject. He is no
longer outside of it, but in it. He does not use it as a means of
exercising his brains only. It is steeped in true and vital feeling, and
the deep friendship he had for his friend fills even the theological
argument with a passionate intensity. Nevertheless, the argument is
perilously near the work of the understanding alone--as if a question
like that of immortality could receive any solution from the hands of
the understanding. Only each man, in the recesses of his own spirit with
God, can solve that question for himself, and not for another. That is
Browning's position when he writes as a poet, and no one has written
more positively on the subject. But when he submits the question to
reasoning, he wavers, as he does here, and leaves the question more
undecided than anywhere else in his work. This is a pity, but it is the
natural penalty of his partial abandonment of the poetic for the prosaic
realm, of the imagination for the understanding, of the Reason for
reasoning.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Rene Gentilhomme, page to Prince Conde, heir of France since Louis
XIII. and his brother Gaston were childless, is surprised, while writing
a love poem, by a lightning flash which shatters a marble ducal crown.
He thinks this a revelation from God, and he prophecies that a Dauphin
will be born to the childless Queen. The Dauphin was born, and Rene
pushed suddenly into fame.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVIII

_THE LAST POEMS_

Two Volumes of Dramatic Idyls, one in 1879, the other in 1880, followed
_La Saisiaz_ and _The Two Poets of Croisic_. These are also mixed books,
composed, partly of studies of character written in rhythmical prose,
and partly of poems wrought out of the pure imagination. Three of
them--if they were written at this time--show how the Greek legends
still dwelt with Browning; and they brought with them the ocean-scent,
heroic life, and mythical charm of Athenian thought. It would be
difficult, if one could write of them at all, not to write of them
poetically; and _Pheidippides, Echetlos, Pan and Luna_ are alive with
force, imaginative joy, and the victorious sense the poet has of having
conquered his material. _Pheidippides_ is as full of fire, of careless
he