too,
And thus eventually Godlike."[C]

[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1375-1383.]

The poet thus brings the natural world, the history of man, and the
nature of God, within the limits of the same conception. The idea of
love solves for Browning all the enigmas of human life and thought.

"The thing that seems
Mere misery, under human schemes,
Becomes, regarded by the light
Of love, as very near, or quite
As good a gift as joy before."[A]

[Footnote A: _Easter Day_.]

Taking Browning's work as a whole, it is scarcely possible to deny that
this is at once the supreme motive of his art, and the principle on
which his moral and religious doctrine rests. He is always strong and
convincing when he is dealing with this theme. It was evidently his own
deepest conviction, and it gave him the courage to face the evils of the
world, and the power as an artist to "contrive his music from its
moans." It plays, in his philosophy of life, the part that Reason fills
for Hegel, or the Blind Will for Schopenhauer; and he is as fearless as
they are in reducing all phenomena into forms of the activity of his
first principle. Love not only gave him firm footing amid the wash and
welter of the present world, where time spins fast, life fleets, and all
is change, but it made him look forward with joy to "the immortal
course"; for, to him, all the universe is love-woven. All life is but
treading the "love-way," and no wanderer can finally lose it. "The
way-faring men, though fools, shall not err therein."

Since love has such an important place in Browning's theory of life, it
is necessary to see what he means by it. For love has had for different
individuals, ages and nations, a very different significance; and almost
every great poet has given it a different interpretation. And this is
not unnatural. For love is a passion which, beginning with youth and the
hey-day of the blood, expands with the expanding life, and takes new
forms of beauty and goodness at every stage. And this is equally true,
whether we speak of the individual or of the human race.

Love is no accident in man's history, nor a passing emotion. It is
rather a constitutive element of man's nature, fundamental and necessary
as his intelligence. And, like everything native and constitutive, it is
obedient to the law of evolution, which is the law of man's being; and
it passes, therefore, through ever varying forms. To it--if we may