ies of human
character. Love, he thinks, is never illicit, never unwise, except when
it is disloyal to itself; it never ruins, but always strives to enrich
its object. Bacon quotes with approval a saying "That it is impossible
to love, and to be wise." Browning asserts that it is impossible to love
and _not_ be wise. It is a power that, according to the Christian idea
which the poet adopts, has infinite goodness for its source, and that,
even in its meanest expression, is always feeling its way back to its
origin, flowing again into the ocean whence it came.

So sparklingly pure is this passion that it could exorcise the evil and
turn old to new, even in the case of Leonce Miranda. At least Browning,
in this poem, strives to show that, being true love, though the love of
an unclean man for an unclean woman, it was a power at war with the
sordid elements of that sordid life. Love has always the same potency,
flame is always flame,

"no matter whence flame sprung,
From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness."[A]

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

"Let her but love you,
All else you disregard! what else can be?
You know how love is incompatible
With falsehood--purifies, assimilates
All other passions to itself."[B]

[Footnote B: _Colombe's Birthday._]

"Ne'er wrong yourself so far as quote the world
And say, love can go unrequited here!
You will have blessed him to his whole life's end--
Low passions hindered, baser cares kept back,
All goodness cherished where you dwelt--and dwell."[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]

But, while love is always a power lifting a man upwards to the level of
its own origin from whatever depths of degradation, its greatest potency
can reveal itself only in characters intrinsically pure, such as
Pompilia and Caponsacchi. Like mercy and every other spiritual gift, it
is mightiest in the mighty. In the good and great of the earth love is
veritably seen to be God's own energy;

"Who never is dishonoured in the spark
He gave us from His fire of fires, and bade
Remember whence it sprang, nor be afraid
While that burns on, though all the rest grow dark."[A]

[Footnote A: _Any Wife to Any Husband_, III.]

It were almost an endless task to recount the ways in which Browning
exhibits the moralizing power of love: how it is for him the
quintessence of all goodness; the motive, and inspiring cause, of every
act in the world that is