Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher Part 6

"Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will!

"The counter our lovers staked was lost As surely as if it were lawful coin: And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost

"Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.

You, of the virtue (we issue join) How strive you?--'_De te fabula!_'"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Statue and the Bust_.]

Indifference and spiritual la.s.situde are, to the poet, the worst of sins. "Go!" says the Pope to Pompilia's pseudo-parents,

"Never again elude the choice of tints!

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good Compensate bad in man, absolve him so: Life's business being just the terrible choice."[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1235-1238.]

In all the greater characters of _The Ring and the Book_, this intensity of vigour in good and evil flashes out upon us. Even Pompilia, the most gentle of all his creations, at the first prompting of the instinct of motherhood, rises to the law demanding resistance, and casts off the old pa.s.sivity.

"Dutiful to the foolish parents first, Submissive next to the bad husband,--nay, Tolerant of those meaner miserable That did his hests, eked out the dole of pain ";[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_., 1052-1055.]

she is found

"Sublime in new impatience with the foe."

"I did for once see right, do right, give tongue The adequate protest: for a worm must turn If it would have its wrong observed by G.o.d.

I did spring up, attempt to thrust aside That ice-block 'twixt the sun and me, lay low The neutralizer of all good and truth."[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Pompilia_, 1591-1596.]

"Yet, shame thus rank and patent, I struck, bare, At foe from head to foot in magic mail, And off it withered, cobweb armoury Against the lightning! 'Twas truth singed the lies And saved me."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_., 1637-1641.]

Beneath the mature wisdom of the Pope, amidst the ashes of old age, there sleeps the same fire. He is as truly a warrior priest as Caponsacchi himself, and his matured experience only m.u.f.fles his vigour.

Wearied with his life-long labour, we see him gather himself together "in G.o.d's name," to do His will on earth once more with concentrated might.

"I smite With my whole strength once more, ere end my part, Ending, so far as man may, this offence."[C]

[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1958-1960.]

Nor, spite of doubts, the promptings of mercy, the friends plucking his sleeve to stay his arm, does he fear "to handle a lie roughly"; or shrink from sending the criminal to his account, though it be but one day before he himself is called before the judgment seat. The same energy, the same spirit of bold conflict, animates Guido's adoption of evil for his good. At all but the last moment of his life of monstrous crime, just before he hears the echo of the feet of the priests, who descend the stair to lead him to his death, "he repeats his evil deed in will."

"Nor is it in me to unhate my hates,-- I use up my last strength to strike once more Old Pietro in the wine-house-gossip-face, To trample underfoot the whine and wile Of beast Violante,--and I grow one gorge To loathingly reject Pompilia's pale Poison my hasty hunger took for food."[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_Guido_, 2400-2406.]

If there be any concrete form of evil with which the poet's optimism is not able to cope, any irretrievable black "beyond white's power to disintensify," it is the refusal to take a definite stand and resolute for either virtue or vice; the hesitancy and compromise of a life that is loyal to nothing, not even to its own selfishness. The cool self-love of the old English moralists, which "reduced the game of life to principles," and weighed good and evil in the scales of prudence, is to our poet the deepest d.a.m.nation.

"Saint Eldobert--I much approve his mode; With sinner Vertgalant I sympathize; But histrionic Sganarelle, who prompts While pulling back, refuses yet concedes,--

"Surely, one should bid pack that mountebank!"

In him, even

"thickheads ought to recognize The Devil, that old stager, at his trick Of general utility, who leads Downward, perhaps, but fiddles all the way!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Red Cotton Nightcap Country._]

For the bold sinner, who chooses and sustains his part to the end, the poet has hope. Indeed, the resolute choice is itself the beginning of hope; for, let a man only give _himself_ to anything, wreak _himself_ on the world in the intensity of his hate, set all sail before the gusts of pa.s.sion and "range from Helen to Elvire, frenetic to be free," let him rise into a decisive self-a.s.sertion against the stable order of the moral world, and he cannot fail to discover the nature of the task he has undertaken, and the meaning of the power without, against which he has set himself. If there be sufficient strength in a man to vent himself in action, and "try conclusions with the world," he will then learn that it has another destiny than to be the instrument of evil.

Self-a.s.sertion taken by itself is good; indeed, it is the very law of every life, human and other.

"Each lie Redounded to the praise of man, was victory Man's nature had both right to get and might to gain."[B]

[Footnote B: _Fifine at the Fair_, cxxviii.]

But it leads to the revelation of a higher law than that of selfishness.

The very a.s.sertion of the self which leads into evil, ultimately leaves the self a.s.sertion futile. There is the disappointment of utter failure; the sinner is thrown back upon himself empty-handed. He finds himself subjected, even when sinning,

"To the reign Of other quite as real a nature, that saw fit To have its way with man, not man his way with it."[A]

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

"Poor pabulum for pride when the first love is found Last also! and, so far from realizing gain, Each step aside just proves divergency in vain.

The wanderer brings home no profit from his quest Beyond the sad surmise that keeping house were best Could life begin anew."[B]

[Footnote B:_Ibid_. cxxix.]

The impossibility of living a divided life, of enjoying at once the sweets of the flesh on the "Turf," and the security of the "Towers," is the text of _Red Cotton Nightcap Country_. The sordid hero of the poem is gradually driven to choose between the alternatives. The best of his luck, the poet thinks, was the

"Rough but wholesome shock, An accident which comes to kill or cure, A jerk which mends a dislocated joint!"[C]

[Footnote C: _Red Cotton Nightcap Country_.]

The continuance of disguise and subterfuge, and the retention of "the first falsehood," are ultimately made impossible to Leonce Miranda:

"Thus by a rude in seeming--rightlier judged Beneficent surprise, publicity Stopped further fear and trembling, and what tale Cowardice thinks a covert: one bold splash Into the mid-shame, and the shiver ends, Though cramp and drowning may begin perhaps."[D]

[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]

In the same spirit he finds Miranda's suicidal leap the best deed possible for _him_.

"'Mad!' 'No! sane, I say.

Such being the conditions of his life, Such end of life was not irrational.

Hold a belief, you only half-believe, With all-momentous issues either way,-- And I advise you imitate this leap, Put faith to proof, be cured or killed at once!'"[A]