nce in imagery and description;
in sounds; in words. Grotesqueness. Intensity.
Catastrophic action. The pregnant moment 257
VII. _Joy in Soul_. 1. Limited in Browning on the side
of simple human nature; of the family; of the
civic community; of myth and symbol 266
VIII. _Joy in Soul_. 2. Supported by Joy in Light and
Colour; in Form; in Power. 3. Extended to
(a) sub-human Nature, (b) the inanimate
products of Art; Relation of Browning's poetry to
his interpretation of life 272

X. THE INTERPRETER OF LIFE 287
I. Approximation of God, Man, Nature in the thought
of the early nineteenth century; how far reflected
in the thought of Browning 287

II. Antagonistic elements of Browning's intellect; resulting
fluctuations of his thought. Two conceptions of Reality.
Ambiguous treatment of "Matter"; of Time 290

III. Conflicting tendencies in his conception of God 295

IV. Conflicting tendencies in his treatment of Knowledge 297

V. Proximate solution of these antagonisms in the conception
of Love 300

VI. Final estimate of Browning's relation to the progressive
and conservative movements of his age 304

INDEX 310

PART I.

BROWNING'S LIFE AND WORK

BROWNING.

CHAPTER I.

EARLY LIFE. _PARACELSUS_.

The Boy sprang up ... and ran,
Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.
--_A Death in the Desert_.

Dass ich erkenne, was die Welt
Im Innersten zusammenhaelt.
--_Faust_.

Judged by his cosmopolitan sympathies and his encyclopaedic knowledge, by
the scenery and the persons among whom his poetry habitually moves,
Browning was one of the least insular of English poets. But he was also,
of them all, one of the most obviously and unmistakably English.
Tennyson, the poetic mouthpiece of a rather specific and exclusive
Anglo-Saxondom, belonged by his Vergilian instincts of style to that
main current of European poetry which finds response and recognition
among cultivated persons of all nationalities; and he enjoyed a European
distinction not attained by