was that he possessed a genuinely optimistic temper. Browning's optimism, as all men's optimism, no doubt was largely influenced by his temperament. Chesterton says it was wholly due to his temperament. In his book on Browning he says: "Any one will make the deepest and blackest and most incurable mistake about Browning who imagines that his optimism was founded on any argument for optimism." Now this is not the deepest and blackest and most incurable mistake one can make about Browning, just as many other things are not superlatively deep and black and incurable that Chesterton says are superlatively so in that brilliant though highly colored work of his on Browning; yet in this instance there doubtless would be a mistake. But these two things in particular are to be noted, first, that no man ascribes his philosophy of optimism to the conditions of his tempermanent, and second, the number and kind of unusual or extraordinary circumstances that may surround him and the choices he makes in his reactions on them are important and determining factors in his optimism. The great crisis in Wordsworth's life was his reactionary experience with the French Revolution. His soul was plunged into utter despair from the coils of which he slowly wound himself, until at last he could speak with a deep and over-flowing joy of the goodness of life. The great crisis in Tennyson's early life was the death of Arthur Hallam. This fact filled Tennyson's sensitive and imaginative soul with agony and despair, from which state of mind he gradually escaped until he too could speak with assurance that human life in the main is good and sweet and true. The great crisis in Browning's early life was his elopement and marriage with Elizabeth Barrett. And though this was accomplished with the most anxious and serious experiences a man can meet, it immediately re sulted in a long series of the deepest and profoundest joys a man can know. Thus from childhood to the age of forty-nine Browning's life was a life of continuous and unbroken joy and optimism. When Browning was forty-nine Elizabeth Barrett Browning died. But a man at forty-nine will meet a calamity differently than at twenty-four. Though the spiritual changes wrought in Browning by this calamity were great, his heart had been steeled for it. And it tended to make him all the more à fighter, unwilling to have his eyes bandaged by death, but anxious to fight "the best and the last," to "taste the whole of it," "to bear the brunt" bravely, as he says in the immortal "Prospice." Wordsworth and Tennyson each had his happiness taken from him in early manhood and slowly each recovered that joy and unity of spirit that a great poet must possess before he can be the mouthpiece of a nation or a race. Browning simply never had that joy and unity of spirit taken from him, and consequently was never compelled to struggle for it strenuously, as were Wordsworth and Tennyson. Wordsworth based his optimism mainly on the power of the mind to reproduce through memory and will the exalted moments of the past, especially those of childhood, and make them live in the present. Tennyson based his optimism on the miracle of the living will that shall endure and the orderliness of human life in general, with the faith that the power of will and freedom shall be "more and more" in the world. Browning characteristically based his optimism on the continuous and almost infinite energy of passion, on the power of our souls to make their own destiny, and on the fact of the incompleteness of life here below, which latter point, we shall see later, has far reaching consequences. Thus, Browning's simplicity and human-heartedness, his enthusiastic and optimistic temper which was in harmony with both his theory of optimism and his practical experiences of life, tended to keep his intense passions and energy of will from solidifying and sterilizing themselves, and made it possible for these latter forces to express themselves in such poetry of passion and energy and power as falls short only of the poetry of the greatest masters. CHAPTER X BROWNING: PASSION AND WILL. I On the question of the freedom of the will, which is the fundamental question at issue in these pages, the attitudes of Wordsworth and Browning respectively are very much alike and stand in contrast to the attitude of Tennyson. Wordsworth held that there is a free creative spirit in all things. Even in the meadow-flower and in the forest-tree this principle of inner self-direction finds expression: How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold? Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold; And so the grandeur of the Forest-tree Comes not by casting in a formal mould, But from its own divine vitality.1 And this principle of universal freedom is in all things, for whatever exists has properties that spread beyond itself "this is the freedom of the universe." But the "most apparent home" of this freedom is in the mind of man, for even in the hour of defeat we are to "feel that we are greater than we know." Man indeed is "a sensitive being, a creative soul." "A Poet!-He Hath Put His Heart to School." Tennyson, on the contrary, would say that the meadow-flower is not free down to its root and there is no special divine vitality in a forest-tree. Much less than in an eagle's wing or an insect's eye can one find the power of divinity in meadow-flowers and forest-trees. All these products of creation are given over to blind forces, fixed and impersonal laws. It is a hard matter indeed to he convinced that the will of man himself is not wholly subject to these same blind and impersonal forces. Tennyson concludes, however, that man's will is free in a measure and in a progressive form; and, in his efforts to determine the limits of its freedom Tennyson reasons on this subject in his verse more directly than either Wordsworth or Browning; that is, on this subject he is more nearly a technical philosopher than Wordsworth or Browning. Wordsworth is filled with the spirit of child-like simplicity; Browning is possessed with the eternal aspirations of youth; Tennyson is wise. As has been suggested, Browning, like Wordsworth, without attempting to define any limits, makes the assumption of freedom in man boldly and without reserve. But there is this difference in their views; that whereas Wordsworth emphasized the freedom that exists in the external universe along with the freedom in man, Browning emphasized the freedom alone that exists in the soul. For Browning there was no great virtue in the idea as to whether there is freedom or not in the external universe apart from the passions and volitions of man; because the soul, if it acts decisively in the great moments of life that come upon it, finds that this world is peculiarly fitted to its needs: How the world is made for each of us! How all we perceive and know in it Tends to some moment's product thus |