t all, it rules absolutely; and that a single
exception would confute his optimism.

"So, gazing up, in my youth, at love
As seen through power, ever above
All modes which make it manifest,
My soul brought all to a single test--
That He, the Eternal First and Last,
Who, in His power, had so surpassed
All man conceives of what is might,--
Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,
--Would prove as infinitely good;
Would never, (my soul understood,)
With power to work all love desires,
Bestow e'en less than man requires."[B]

[Footnote B: _Christmas Eve_.]

"No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,
Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,
The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it,
Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it.
And I shall behold Thee, face to face,
O God, and in Thy light retrace
How in all I loved here, still wast Thou!"[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]

We can scarcely miss the emphasis of the poet's own conviction in these
passages, or in the assertion that,--

"The acknowledgment of God in Christ
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
All questions in the earth and out of it,
And has so far advanced thee to be wise."[A]

[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_.]

Consequently, there is a defiant and aggressive element in his attitude.
Strengthened with an unfaltering faith in the supreme Good, this knight
of the Holy Spirit goes forth over all the world seeking out wrongs. "He
has," said Dr. Westcott, "dared to look on the darkest and meanest forms
of action and passion, from which we commonly and rightly turn our eyes,
and he has brought back for us from this universal survey a conviction
of hope." I believe, further, that it was in order to justify this
conviction that he set out on his quest. His interest in vice--in
malice, cruelty, ignorance, brutishness, meanness, the irrational
perversity of a corrupt disposition, and the subtleties of philosophic
and aesthetic falsehood--was no morbid curiosity. Browning was no
"painter of dirt"; no artist can portray filth for filth's sake, and
remain an artist. He crowds his pages with criminals, because he sees
deeper than their crimes. He describes evil without "palliation or
reserve," and allows it to put forth all its might, in order that he
may, in the end, show it to be subjected to God's purposes. He confronts
evil in order to force it to give up the good, which