t
every poet has handled, and handled in his highest manner--with that
freshness and insight, which is possible only to the inborn originality
of genius. Other poets have, in some ways, given to love a more
exquisite utterance, and rendered its sweetness, and tenderness, and
charm with a lighter grace. It may even be admitted that there are poets
whose verses have echoed more faithfully the fervour and intoxication of
passion, and who have shown greater power of interpreting it in the
light of a mystic idealism. But, in one thing, Browning stands alone. He
has given to love a moral significance, a place and power amongst those
substantial elements on which rest the dignity of man's being and the
greatness of his destiny, in a way which is, I believe, without example
in any other poet. And he has done this by means of that moral and
religious earnestness, which pervades all his poetry. The one object of
supreme interest to him is the development of the soul, and his
penetrative insight revealed to him the power to love as the paramount
fact in that development. To love, he repeatedly tells us, is the sole
and supreme object of man's life; it is the one lesson which he has to
learn on earth; and, love once learnt, in what way matters little, "it
leaves completion in the soul." Love we dare not, and, indeed, cannot
absolutely miss. No man can be absolutely selfish and be man.

"Beneath the veriest ash, there hides a spark of soul
Which, quickened by love's breath, may yet pervade the whole
O' the grey, and, free again, be fire; of worth the same,
Howe'er produced, for, great or little, flame is flame."[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xliii.]

Love, once evoked, once admitted into the soul,

"adds worth to worth,
As wine enriches blood, and straightway sends it forth,
Conquering and to conquer, through all eternity,
That's battle without end."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. liv.]

This view of the significance of love grew on Browning as his knowledge
of man's nature and destiny became fuller and deeper, while, at the same
time, his trust in the intellect became less. Even in _Paracelsus_ he
reveals love, not as a sentiment or intoxicating passion, as one might
expect from a youthful poet, but as one of the great fundamental
"faculties" of man. Love, "blind, oft-failing, half-enlightened,
often-chequered trust," though it be, still makes man

"The heir of hopes too fair to