ong conventions: for he already finds himself within the fortified
lines of convention, and remains there. Thus is true what Mr. Mortimer
says in a recent admirable critique--"His position in regard to the
thought of the age is paradoxical, if not inconsistent. He is in advance
of it in every respect but one, the most important of all, the matter of
fundamental principles; in these he is behind it. His processes of
thought are often scientific in their precision of analysis; the sudden
conclusion which he imposes upon them is transcendental and inept."
Browning's conclusions, which harmonise so well with our haphazard
previsionings, are sometimes so disastrously facile that they exercise
an insurrectionary influence. They occasionally suggest that wisdom of
Gotham which is ever ready to postulate the certainty of a fulfilment
because of the existence of a desire. It is this that vitiates so much
of his poetic reasoning. Truth may ring regnant in the lines of Abt
Vogler--

"And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence
For the fulness of the days?"--

but, unfortunately, the conclusion is, in itself, illogical.

We are all familiar with, and in this book I have dwelt more than once
upon, Browning's habitual attitude towards Death. It is not a novel one.
The frontage is not so much that of the daring pioneer, as the sedate
assurance of 'the oldest inhabitant.' It is of good hap, of welcome
significance: none the less there is an aspect of our mortality of which
the poet's evasion is uncompromising and absolute. I cannot do better
than quote Mr. Mortimer's noteworthy words hereupon, in connection,
moreover, with Browning's artistic relation to Sex, that other great
Protagonist in the relentless duel of Humanity with Circumstance. "The
final inductive hazard he declines for himself; his readers may take it
if they will. It is part of the insistent and perverse ingenuity which
we display in masking with illusion the more disturbing elements of
life. Veil after veil is torn down, but seldom before another has been
slipped behind it, until we acquiesce without a murmur in the
concealment that we ourselves have made. Two facts thus carefully
shrouded from full vision by elaborate illusion conspicuously round in
our lives--the life-giving and life-destroying elements, Sex and Death.
We are compelled to occasional physiologic and economic discussion of
the one, but we shrink from recognising the full extent t