ich, as I said at the beginning of
this chapter, is a totally different thing from the abnormal.

In other words, Browning was rugged. It was as natural for him to be
rugged as for Ruskin to be polished, for Swift to be cynical (in an
optimistic sense), for Chesterton to be paradoxical. Ruggedness is a
form of beauty, but it is a beauty that is quite different from the
commonly accepted grounds. A mountain is rugged and it is beautiful, a
woman is beautiful; but the two features of the aesthetic are quite
different. It is the same with poetry. There is (and Browning proved it)
a 'beautifulness' in the rugged; it is a sense of being 'beautifully'
rugged.

Enough has been said to make it quite clear that Browning was a literary
artist; but, as Chesterton contends, an original one. He did not confine
himself to any one form: his beauty lay in the placing of the 'rugged'
before his readers, the method he used of employing the grotesque.

* * * * *

It is now an excellent time in which to look at Browning's philosophy
and Chesterton's interpretation of it.

As it is perfectly true to say that every man has a point of view, a
position so admirably brought out by Browning in his 'Ring and the
Book,' so it is also, I think, a truism that every man has (not always
consciously) a philosophy. A philosophy is, after all, a point of view;
it is not necessarily an abstract academic position; nor is it always a
well-defined attempt to discover the ultimate purpose of things. It can
be, and very often is, a point of view really acquired by experience.

Naturally a man of the intellect of Browning would have a philosophy,
and he had, as our critic points out, a very definite one.

In his quaint way Chesterton tells us 'Browning had opinions as he had
a dress suit or a vote for Parliament.' And he had no hesitation in
expressing these opinions. There was no reason why he should; at least
part of his philosophy, as I have indicated, lay in his knowledge of the
value of men's opinions--yet again brought out in 'The Ring and the
Book.'

He had, so we are told, two great theories of the universe: the first,
the hope that lies in man, imperfect as he is; the second, a bold
position that has offended many people but is nevertheless at least a
reasonable one, that God is in some way imperfect; that is, in some
obscure way He could be made jealous.

This is, no doubt, a highly unorthodox position.