An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry Part 59

428. This imports solely: this is the one all important thing.

428-430. A similar comparison is used in 'Julius Caesar', A. II., S. I., 22-27:

. . ."lowliness is young ambition's ladder, Whereto the climber-upward turns his face; But when he once attains the upmost round, He then unto the ladder turns his back, Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend."

452. This might be pagan teaching: that is, even pagan teaching might go so far as this.

"I say, that as the babe, you feed awhile, Becomes a boy and fit to feed himself, So, minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth: {455} When they can eat, babe's nurture is withdrawn.

I fed the babe whether it would or no: I bid the boy or feed himself or starve.

I cried once, 'That ye may believe in Christ, Behold this blind man shall receive his sight!' {460} I cry now, 'Urgest thou, FOR I AM SHREWD, AND SMILE AT STORIES HOW JOHN'S WORD COULD CURE-- REPEAT THAT MIRACLE AND TAKE MY FAITH?'

I say, that miracle was duly wrought When, save for it, no faith was possible. {465} Whether a change were wrought i' the shows o' the world, Whether the change came from our minds which see Of shows o' the world so much as and no more Than G.o.d wills for His purpose,--(what do I See now, suppose you, there where you see rock {470} Round us?)--I know not; such was the effect, So faith grew, making void more miracles Because too much: they would compel, not help.

I say, the acknowledgment of G.o.d in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee {475} All questions in the earth and out of it, And has so far advanced thee to be wise.

Wouldst thou unprove this to re-prove the proved?

In life's mere minute, with power to use that proof, Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung? {480} Thou hast it; use it and forthwith, or die!

-- 472. So faith grew, making void more miracles: the outward manifestations of spiritual powers (du/namis, 'power', 'act of power', and shmei^on, 'sign', 'token', are the original words in the N. T., which are translated 'miracle') gave place to subjective proof.

Christianity was endorsed by man's own soul. To this may be added, that even the historical bulwarks of Christianity may, ere long, be dispensed with.

474-481. These verses may be taken as presenting Browning's own conclusion as to the whole duty of man, in a spiritual direction.

And see the quotation from 'Christmas Eve' and the remarks which follow, on pp. 63 and 64. {In etext, Chapter II, Section 3 of Introduction.} --

"For I say, this is death and the sole death, When a man's loss comes to him from his gain, Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, And lack of love from love made manifest; {485} A lamp's death when, replete with oil, it chokes; A stomach's when, surcharged with food, it starves.

With ignorance was surety of a cure.

When man, appalled at nature, questioned first 'What if there lurk a might behind this might?' {490} He needed satisfaction G.o.d could give, And did give, as ye have the written word: But when he finds might still redouble might, Yet asks, 'Since all is might, what use of will?'

--Will, the one source of might,--he being man {495} With a man's will and a man's might, to teach In little how the two combine in large,-- That man has turned round on himself and stands, Which in the course of nature is, to die.

"And when man questioned, 'What if there be love {500} Behind the will and might, as real as they?'-- He needed satisfaction G.o.d could give, And did give, as ye have the written word: But when, beholding that love everywhere, He reasons, 'Since such love is everywhere, {505} And since ourselves can love and would be loved, We ourselves make the love, and Christ was not',-- How shall ye help this man who knows himself, That he must love and would be loved again, Yet, owning his own love that proveth Christ, {510} Rejecteth Christ through very need of Him?

The lamp o'erswims with oil, the stomach flags Loaded with nurture, and that man's soul dies.

"If he rejoin, 'But this was all the while A trick; the fault was, first of all, in thee, {515} Thy story of the places, names and dates, Where, when, and how the ultimate truth had rise, --Thy prior truth, at last discovered none, Whence now the second suffers detriment.

What good of giving knowledge if, because {520} O' the manner of the gift, its profit fail?

And why refuse what modic.u.m of help Had stopped the after-doubt, impossible I' the face of truth--truth absolute, uniform?

Why must I hit of this and miss of that, {525} Distinguish just as I be weak or strong, And not ask of thee and have answer prompt, Was this once, was it not once?--then and now And evermore, plain truth from man to man.

Is John's procedure just the heathen bard's? {530} Put question of his famous play again How for the ephemerals' sake, Jove's fire was filched, And carried in a cane and brought to earth: THE FACT IS IN THE FABLE, cry the wise, MORTALS OBTAINED THE BOON, SO MUCH IS FACT, {535} THOUGH FIRE BE SPIRIT AND PRODUCED ON EARTH.

As with the t.i.tan's, so now with thy tale: Why breed in us perplexity, mistake, Nor tell the whole truth in the proper words?'

-- 514-539. John antic.i.p.ates another objection that will be made to his Gospel, namely, that so many things therein are not cleared up, that the whole truth is not told in the proper words, the sceptic claiming that everything should have been so proved

"That the probation bear no hinge nor loop To hang a doubt on";

that all after-doubt, impossible in the face of truth--truth absolute, uniform, might have been stopped.

523. Had stopped: would have stopped.

530. the heathen bard's: Aeschylus'.

531. famous play: 'Prometheus Bound'.

532. ephemerals': mortals'.

537. t.i.tan's: Prometheus'.

"I answer, Have ye not to argue out {540} The very primal thesis, plainest law, --Man is not G.o.d but hath G.o.d's end to serve, A master to obey, a course to take, Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become?

Grant this, then man must pa.s.s from old to new, {545} From vain to real, from mistake to fact, From what once seemed good, to what now proves best.

How could man have progression otherwise?

Before the point was mooted 'What is G.o.d?'

No savage man inquired 'What is myself?' {550} Much less replied, 'First, last, and best of things.'

Man takes that t.i.tle now if he believes Might can exist with neither will nor love, In G.o.d's case--what he names now Nature's Law-- While in himself he recognizes love {555} No less than might and will: and rightly takes.

Since if man prove the sole existent thing Where these combine, whatever their degree, However weak the might or will or love, So they be found there, put in evidence,-- {560} He is as surely higher in the scale Than any might with neither love nor will, As life, apparent in the poorest midge (When the faint dust-speck flits, ye guess its wing), Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas' self-- {565} Given to the n.o.bler midge for resting-place!

Thus, man proves best and highest--G.o.d, in fine, And thus the victory leads but to defeat, The gain to loss, best rise to the worst fall, His life becomes impossible, which is death. {570}

-- 540-633. All that John says in these verses, in reply to the antic.i.p.ated objections urged in vv. 514-539, are found, substantially, in several pa.s.sages in Browning's poetry.

See remarks on pp. 36-38 beginning, "The human soul is regarded in Browning's poetry", etc. {Chapter II, Section 1 in this etext.} An infallible guide, which would render unnecessary any struggles on man's part, after light and truth, would torpify his powers.

And see vv. 582-633 of the present poem.

552. Man takes that t.i.tle now: that is, of 'First, last, and best of things", if, etc. See sections 17 and 18 of 'Saul', and stanza 10 of 'Rabbi Ben Ezra'. And see the grand dying speech of Paracelsus, which concludes Browning's poem.

554. "A law of nature means nothing to Mr. Browning if it does not mean the immanence of power, and will, and love. He can pa.s.s with ready sympathy into the mystical feeling of the East, where in the unclouded sky, in the torrent of noonday light, G.o.d is so near

'He glows above With scarce an intervention, presses close And palpitatingly, His soul o'er ours.'

But the wisdom of a Western 'savant' who in his superior intellectuality replaces the will of G.o.d by the blind force of nature, seems to Mr. Browning to be science falsely so called, a new ignorance founded upon knowledge,

'A lamp's death when, replete with oil, it chokes.'

To this effect argues the prophet John in 'A Death in the Desert', antic.i.p.ating with the deep prevision of a dying man the doubts and questionings of modern days. And in the third of those remarkable poems which form the epilogue of the 'Dramatis Personae', the whole world rises in the speaker's imagination into one vast spiritual temple, in which voices of singers, and swell of trumpets, and cries of priests are heard going up to G.o.d no less truly than in the old Jewish worship, while the face of Christ, instinct with divine will and love, becomes apparent, as that of which all nature is a type or an adumbration."

--Prof. Edward Dowden in his Comparative Study of Browning and Tennyson (Studies in Literature, 1789-1877).

"But if, appealing thence, he cower, avouch He is mere man, and in humility Neither may know G.o.d nor mistake himself; I point to the immediate consequence And say, by such confession straight he falls {575} Into man's place, a thing nor G.o.d nor beast, Made to know that he can know and not more: Lower than G.o.d who knows all and can all, Higher than beasts which know and can so far As each beast's limit, perfect to an end, {580} Nor conscious that they know, nor craving more; While man knows partly but conceives beside, Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact, And in this striving, this converting air Into a solid he may grasp and use, {585} Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not G.o.d's, and not the beasts': G.o.d is, they are, Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.

Such progress could no more attend his soul Were all it struggles after found at first {590} And guesses changed to knowledge absolute, Than motion wait his body, were all else Than it the solid earth on every side, Where now through s.p.a.ce he moves from rest to rest.

Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect {595} He could not, what he knows now, know at first; What he considers that he knows to-day, Come but to-morrow, he will find misknown; Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns Because he lives, which is to be a man, {600} Set to instruct himself by his past self: First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn, Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind, Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law.

G.o.d's gift was that man should conceive of truth, {605} And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake, As midway help till he reach fact indeed.

The statuary ere he mould a shape Boasts a like gift, the shape's idea, and next The aspiration to produce the same; {610} So, taking clay, he calls his shape thereout, Cries ever 'Now I have the thing I see': Yet all the while goes changing what was wrought, From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself.

How were it had he cried 'I see no face, {615} No breast, no feet i' the ineffectual clay?'

Rather commend him that he clapped his hands, And laughed, 'It is my shape and lives again!'

Enjoyed the falsehood, touched it on to truth, Until yourselves applaud the flesh indeed {620} In what is still flesh-imitating clay.

Right in you, right in him, such way be man's!

G.o.d only makes the live shape at a jet.

Will ye renounce this pact of creatureship?

The pattern on the Mount subsists no more, {625} Seemed awhile, then returned to nothingness; But copies, Moses strove to make thereby, Serve still and are replaced as time requires: By these, make newest vessels, reach the type!

If ye demur, this judgment on your head, {630} Never to reach the ultimate, angels' law, Indulging every instinct of the soul There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!

"Such is the burthen of the latest time.

I have survived to hear it with my ears, {635} Answer it with my lips: does this suffice?

For if there be a further woe than such, Wherein my brothers struggling need a hand, So long as any pulse is left in mine, May I be absent even longer yet, {640} Plucking the blind ones back from the abyss, Though I should tarry a new hundred years!"