An Introduction to the Study of Browning | Page 3

of philosophical thought, is much more the
outcome of a natural and inevitable bent. No great poet ever
constructed his poems upon a theory, but a theory may often be very
legitimately discovered in them. Browning, in his essay on Shelley,
divides all poets into two classes, subjective and objective, the Seer and
the Maker. His own genius includes a large measure of them both; for it
is equally strong on the dramatic and the metaphysical side. There are
for him but two realities; and but two subjects, Life and Thought. On
these are expended all his imagination and all his intellect, more
consistently and in a higher degree than can be said of any English poet
since the age of Elizabeth. Life and thought, the dramatic and the
metaphysical, are not considered apart, but woven into one seamless
tissue; and in regard to both he has one point of view and one manner
of treatment. It is this that causes the unity which subsists throughout
his work; and it is this, too, which distinguishes him among poets, and
makes that originality by virtue of which he has been described as the
most striking figure in our poetic literature.
Most poets endeavour to sink the individual in the universal; it is
Browning's special distinction that when he is most universal he is most
individual. As a thinker he conceives of humanity not as an aggregate,
but as a collection of units. Most thinkers write and speak of man;
Browning of men. With man as a species, with man as a society, he
does not concern himself, but with individual man and man. Every man
is for him an epitome of the universe, a centre of creation. Life exists
for each as completely and separately as if he were the only inhabitant
of our planet. In the religious sense this is the familiar Christian view;
but Browning, while accepting, does not confine himself to, the
religious sense. He conceives of each man as placed on the earth with a

purpose of probation. Life is given him as a test of his quality; he is
exposed to the chances and changes of existence, to the opposition and
entanglement of circumstances, to evil, to doubt, to the influence of his
fellow-men, and to the conflicting powers of his own soul; and he
succeeds or fails, toward God, or as regards his real end and aim,
according as he is true or false to his better nature, his conception of
right. He is not to be judged by the vulgar standards of worldly success
or unsuccess; not even by his actions, good or bad as they may seem to
us, for action can never fully translate the thought or motive which lay
at its root; success or unsuccess, the prime and final fact in life, lies
between his soul and God. The poet, in Browning's view of him, is
God's witness, and must see and speak for God. He must therefore
conceive of each individual separately and distinctively, and he must
see how each soul conceives of itself.
It is here that Browning parts company most decisively with all other
poets who concern themselves exclusively with life, dramatic poets, as
we call them; so that it seems almost necessary to invent some new
term to define precisely his special attitude. And hence it is that in his
drama thought plays comparatively so large, and action comparatively
so small, a part; hence, that action is valued only in so far as it reveals
thought or motive, not for its own sake, as the crown and flower of
these.
"To the motive, the endeavour, the heart's self
His quick sense looks:
he crowns and calls aright
The soul o' the purpose, ere 'tis shaped as
act,
Takes flesh i' the world, and clothes itself a king."[1]
For his endeavour is not to set men in action for the pleasure of seeing
them move; but to see and show, in their action and inaction alike, the
real impulses of their being: to see how each soul conceives of itself.
This individuality of presentment is carried out equally in the domain
of life and of thought; as each man lives, so he thinks and perceives, so
he apprehends God and truth, for himself only. It is evident that this
special standpoint will give not only a unity but an originality to the
work of which it may be called the root; equally evident that it will

demand a special method and a special instrument.
The dramatic poet, in the ordinary sense, in the sense in which we
apply it to Shakespeare and the Elizabethans, aims at showing, by
means of action, the development of character as it manifests itself to
the world in deeds. His study is character, but it is character in