ed, to
detect a tendency to degrade the former into a mere temporary expedient,
whereby moral ends may be served. The poet speaks of "such knowledge as
is possible to man." The attitude he assumes towards it is apologetic,
and betrays a keen consciousness of its limitation, and particularly of
its utter inadequacy to represent the infinite. In the speech of the
Pope---which can scarcely be regarded otherwise than as the poet's own
maturest utterance on the great moral and religious questions raised by
the tragedy of Pompilia's death--we find this view vividly expressed:--

"O Thou--as represented here to me
In such conception as my soul allows,--
Under Thy measureless, my atom width!--
Man's mind, what is it but a convex glass
Wherein are gathered all the scattered points
Picked out of the immensity of sky,
To reunite there, be our heaven for earth,
Our known unknown, our God revealed to man?"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1308-1315.]

God is "appreciable in His absolute immensity solely by Himself," while,
"by the little mind of man, He is reduced to littleness that suits man's
faculty." In these words, and others that might be quoted, the poet
shows that he is profoundly impressed with the distinction between human
knowledge, and that knowledge which is adequate to the whole nature and
extent of being. And in _Christmas-Eve_ he repudiates with a touch of
scorn, the absolute idealism, which is supposed to identify altogether
human reason with divine reason; and he commends the German critic for
not making

"The important stumble
Of adding, he, the sage and humble,
Was also one with the Creator."[A]

[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]

Nowhere in Browning, unless we except _Paracelsus_, is there any sign of
an inclination to treat man's knowledge in the same spirit as he deals
with man's love--namely, as a direct emanation from the inmost nature of
God, a divine element that completes and crowns man's life on earth. On
the contrary, he shows a persistent tendency to treat love as a power
higher in nature than reason, and to give to it a supreme place in the
formation of character; and, as he grows older, that tendency grows in
strength. The philosophical poems, in which love is made all in all, and
knowledge is reduced to nescience follow by logical evolution from
principles, the influence of which we can detect even in his earlier
works. Still, in the latter,