Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher | Page 4

We do well to seek philosophy in the poets, for though they
teach only by hints and parables, they nevertheless reflect the concrete
truth of life, as it is half revealed and half concealed in facts. On the
other hand, the reflective process of philosophy may help poetry; for, as
we shall show, there is a near kinship between them. Even the critical

analyst, while severing element from element, may help art and serve
the poet's ends, provided he does not in his analysis of parts forget the
whole. His function, though humble and merely preliminary to full
poetic enjoyment, is not unimportant. To appreciate the grandeur of the
unity of the work of art, there must be knowledge of the parts combined.
It is quite true that the guide in the gallery is prone to be too talkative,
and there are many who can afford to turn the commentator out of
doors, especially if he moralizes. But, after all, man is not pure
sensibility, any more than he is pure reason. And the aesthete will not
lose if he occasionally allows those whom he may think less sensitive
than himself to the charm of rhythmic phrase, to direct sober attention
to the principles which lie embedded in all great poetry. At the worst,
to seek for truth in poetry is a protest against the constant tendency to
read it for the sake of the emotions which it stirs, the tendency to make
it a refined amusement and nothing more. That is a deeper wrong to art
than any which the theoretical moralist can inflict. Of the two, it is
better to read poetry for ethical doctrines than for fine sensations; for
poetry purifies the passions only when it lifts the reader into the sphere
of truths that are universal.
The task of interpreting a poet may be undertaken in different ways.
One of these, with which we have been made familiar by critics of
Shakespeare and of Browning himself, is to analyze each poem by
itself and regard it as the artistic embodiment of some central idea; the
other is to attempt, without dealing separately with each poem, to reach
the poet's own point of view, and to reveal the sovereign truths which
rule his mind. It is this latter way that I shall try to follow.
Such dominant or even despotic thoughts it is possible to discover in all
our great poets, except perhaps Shakespeare, whose universality baffles
every classifier. As a rule, the English poets have been caught up, and
inspired, by the exceeding grandeur of some single idea, in whose
service they spend themselves with that prodigal thrift which finds life
in giving it. Such an idea gives them a fresh way of looking at the
world, so that the world grows young again with their new
interpretation. In the highest instances, poets may become makers of
epochs; they reform as well as reveal; for ideas are never dead things,

"but grow in the hand that grasps them." In them lies the energy of a
nation's life, and we comprehend that life only when we make clear to
ourselves the thoughts which inspire it. It is thus true, in the deepest
sense, that those who make the songs of a people make its history. In
all true poets there are hints for a larger philosophy of life. But, in order
to discover it, we must know the truths which dominate them, and
break into music in their poems.
Whether it is always possible, and whether it is at any time fair to a
poet to define the idea which inspires him, I shall not inquire at present.
No doubt, the interpretation of a poet from first principles carries us
beyond the limits of art; and by insisting on the unity of his work, more
may be attributed to him, or demanded from him, than he properly
owns. To make such a demand is to require that poetry should be
philosophy as well, which, owing to its method of intuition, it can
never be. Nevertheless, among English poets there is no one who lends
himself so easily, or so justly, to this way of treatment as Browning.
Much of his poetry trembles on the verge of the abyss which is
supposed to separate art from philosophy; and, as I shall try to show,
there was in the poet a growing tendency to turn the power of dialectic
on the pre-suppositions of his art. Yet, even Browning puts great
difficulties in the way of a critic, who seeks to draw a philosophy of
life from his poems. It is not by any means an easy task to lift the truths
he utters under the stress of poetic emotion into the region of placid
contemplation, or to connect them into a