LECTURE VI
CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER DAY (iii)

The closer and more unprejudiced the study accorded it, the stronger becomes the conviction of the essentially dramatic character of the composition of both Christmas Eve and Easter Day. And at first sight it may, to many readers, be matter of regret that this is so: to those readers more especially who had at first rejoiced to discover, in the assertions of the soliloquists, what they held to be an immediate assurance that Browning’s faith was that form of dogmatic belief which was also theirs. If, in all honesty, we are compelled to renounce our original acceptance of the less complex nature of the poems, what is the worth, it may be asked, of the arguments which would unquestionably, were they the direct expression of the writer’s feelings, stamp him as a devout Christian, prepared to make even “doubt occasion still more faith”? Nevertheless, further reflection minimizes the cause for regret. Although we may not accept without question, as Browning’s own, the criticisms of the soliloquist of Christmas Eve, directed against the arguments of the humanitarian Lecturer, or the reasoning of the concluding Sections of Easter Day, in favour of belief in the Gospel story and in the essentially probationary character of human life; yet that which we have already had occasion to notice as true concerning all dramatic work, is true also here. The expression of the author’s own opinions is not necessarily excluded, as it is not necessarily implied. Thus, in the present instance, occur not a few passages in which it seems almost impossible that we should be in error in discerning Browning’s own personality beneath the disguise of the speaker; the immediate expression of his own vital belief, in the theories advanced. And the passages seemingly thus directly inspired are those dealing with the permanent truths of life, which find at once embodiment and limitation in the dogma of various religious bodies. How far such passages may justly be accepted as non-dramatic in character can only be ascertained by reference to and comparison with treatment of these and similar subjects elsewhere in the works. We may not judge from one poem alone as to the writer’s intention; evidence so obtained is insufficient.

I. In both Christmas Eve and Easter Day the most prominent position in the thoughts and dissertations of the soliloquist is necessarily—so the title would suggest—afforded the Doctrine of the Incarnation. Its introduction may not, in the single instance, be incontrovertibly significant as to Browning’s attitude towards Christianity. But, when we find the same subject dealt with repeatedly from different points of view, by speakers widely separated from one another by time, place, nationality, and personal character; and when, in spite of the variety of external conditions, we yet find the arguments employed ever converging towards the same goal; here even the hypercritical student is surely bound to conclude that Browning did, indeed, realize, and was anxious to make plain his realization of, the value to the individual life of the belief involved, and of the intelligibility and reasonableness of such belief. To notice a few amongst the numerous aspects in which this Doctrine of the Incarnation has been presented. In Saul, the logical inevitableness of its acceptance by the seeker after God, as revealed, first in Nature, then in His dealings with Humanity, is traced by the seer of a remote past before the historic fact has been accomplished. In Cleon, the demand for a direct revelation of God in man is the result of the cravings of a nature unable to rest satisfied in the merely deistic creed hitherto responsible for its theories of life. The very pagan character of the treatment of subject by the soliloquist, in this instance, is so handled by the poet as to lend additional force to the negative deductions from the suggestions advanced. In An Epistle of Karshish, once more as in Saul, the speaker, though an onlooker only where Christianity is concerned, is yet a believer in a divine order of the universe, and in a personal God revealed in His creation. The subject of which Karshish treats in his letter is no longer, however, as with David, an expectation to be realized in a distant future, but a matter comprehending a series of historic events recently enacted. Nevertheless, he too, whilst nominally rejecting the evidence of the witnesses as to fact, forces upon the reader the conviction that not only is it possible, but inevitable, that the “All-Great” shall be “the All-Loving too”; and must have revealed His love through the life lived by the Physician of Galilee, whose deeds Lazarus reported. Later, when that Life has become still further a thing of the past, when “what first were guessed as points,” have become known as “stars,” in A Death in the Desert are put into the mouth of the dying Evangelist, St. John, arguments which reach the final culmination towards which those of David and of Cleon alike tended. And St. John, in imagination confronting opponents of Christianity, sees not only his own contemporaries, but those of Browning: his reasoning would refute not so much the heresy of the Gnostics of the first and second centuries of the Christian era as the criticisms of German literary men of the nineteenth. And here, too, is attained the same result as that of the foregoing instances—proof of the inevitableness of an Incarnation, and of such an Incarnation as that of the Gospel story, in any definite and clearly formulated scheme of human life. Thus then, when we turn to Christmas Eve and Easter Day to find again, in the conclusions reached, not only the outcome of the suggestions and arguments of David, of Karshish, and of Cleon, but, further, a position occupied by the speaker closely akin to that held in imagination by the Evangelist; we can hardly fail to be justified in believing that Browning cared sufficiently for the subject under consideration to wish to present it to his public in those varying lights which should afford proof of its universal import, and confirm, if possible, credence in its absolute truth. To refuse, indeed, to allow due weight to the evidence thus obtained, would be to neglect the best available opportunities for estimating the true nature of the beliefs of a dramatic author; since it is necessarily by such indirect and comparative methods alone that it is possible to ascertain their character. In this exposition, then, of the fundamental truths of Christianity, as set forth by the soliloquist in either poem, we may reasonably believe ourselves to be listening to authorized assertions and arguments.

II. Again is the voice of Browning himself unmistakably heard in the acceptance by both speakers in Easter Day (although with different practical results in each case) of the inevitable extinction of faith as a necessary consequence of absolute certainty in matters spiritual. It is, in fact, but another form of the constantly advanced theory of the progressive character of human nature, involving a recognition of the world as a training-ground, mortal life as a probation. A theory finding expression in terms more or less pronounced throughout Browning’s literary career; from the suggestions, dramatic in form, of Pauline, 1833, to the direct personal assertions of the Asolando Epilogue in 1889. Whether it be in the individual aspiration of the lover of Pauline,

How should this earth’s life prove my only sphere?
Can I so narrow sense but that in life
Soul still exceeds it? (ll. 634-636.)

or in the final estimate of the race by Paracelsus—

Upward tending all though weak,
Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,
But dream of him, and guess where he may be,
And do their best to climb and get to him. (Par., v, ll. 883-886.)

The same belief, whilst it inspires the utterances of Pompilia and of Abt Vogler, of the Grammarian and the lover of Evelyn Hope, is likewise discernible as underlying, though possibly less consciously instigating the reflections of Luria and of the organist of Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha, of Andrea del Sarto and of the victim of a prudence outweighing love, in DÎs Aliter Visum. And progress is the recognized law of Faith as of Life. The existence of Truth, absolute, does not preclude its gradual revelation and realization. In the Epilogue to the Dramatis Personae, Browning, by the mouth of the “Third Speaker,” would point out that the lamentation of RÉnan over a vanished faith is unwarranted by fact since, Truth existing in its entirety, the peculiar revelations of Truth are adapted to each successive stage of the development of the human race. Hence “that Face,” the vestige even of which the “Second Speaker” held to be “lost in the night at last,”

That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
Or decomposes but to recompose,
Become my universe that feels and knows.A fuller realization of Truth has become possible in these later days than in the past of Jewish ritual, when

The presence of the Lord,
In the glory of His cloud,
Had filled the House of the Lord.

Of Easter Day it has been remarked in this connection, “If Mr. Browning has meant to say ... that religious certainties are required for the undeveloped mind, but that the growing intelligence walks best by a receding light, he denies the positive basis of Christian belief.”[72] Comparing this criticism with the treatment in A Death in the Desert of the subject of faith in relation to the Incarnation, it becomes sufficiently clear that an acceptance of “the positive basis of Christian belief” was to Browning’s mind perfectly compatible, not indeed with “a receding light,” but with that absence of certainty in matters spiritual which the First Speaker of Easter Day accepts as inevitable. And surely the suggestion in Easter Day, as elsewhere in Browning, is that the development of the “religious intelligence” is best advanced, not by a receding light, but by that ever-increasing illuminative power which shall effect gradually the revelation presented in the Vision of the Judgment as the work of a moment. The revelation of the true relation between things temporal and spiritual, between the divine and the human. For, whilst St. John bases his arguments upon the central assurance that “God the Truth” is, of all things, alone unchangeable, immediately upon the assurance follows the assertion—

Man apprehends Him newly at each stage
Whereat earth’s ladder drops, its service done.[73]Since “such progress” as is the peculiar characteristic of human nature

Could no more attend his soul
Were all it struggles after found at first
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 space he moves from rest to rest.[74]

Thus with Christianity itself

Will [man] give up fire
For gold or purple once he knows its worth?
Could he give Christ up were His worth as plain?
Therefore, I say, to test man, the proofs shift,
Nor may he grasp that fact like other fact,
And straightway in his life acknowledge it,
As, say, the indubitable bliss of fire.[75]

The effect on human nature and life of the change of “guesses” to “knowledge absolute” is elsewhere exhibited in concrete form where Lazarus, in An Epistle of Karshish, is represented, as Browning’s imagination would visualize him, in the years succeeding his resurrection from the dead. There the need for faith is accounted as no longer existing. During those four days of the spirit’s sojourn beyond the limits of the visible world, the unveiled light of eternity had thrown into their true relative positions the things of time. Thenceforth, for him who had once known, the hopes and fears attendant upon uncertainty were no longer a possibility. In view of that which is eternal, temporal prosperity or adversity had become of small moment. The advance of a hostile force upon the sacred city, centre of the national life, was to the risen nature an event trifling as “the passing of a mule with gourds.” Sickness, death, were alike met by the imperturbable “God wills.” Yet this apparently immovable serenity was at once overthrown by contact with “ignorance and carelessness and sin.” To the non-Christian onlooker, the attitude thus attained was attributable to the peculiar condition of life by which heaven was

Opened to a soul while yet on earth,
Earth forced on a soul’s use while seeing heaven.

The man capable of this two-fold vision had indeed become but “a sign,” noteworthy it is true, yet of little value as a practical example to his fellows, since what held good in this single and unprecedented case must be of no avail as a criterion for the multitude.

The importance, as an educative instrument, of the demands on faith made by the absence of overwhelmingly conclusive and unalterable evidence in matters spiritual, is again illustrated in that remarkable little poem Fears and Scruples, following Easter Day after an interval of more than a quarter of a century (pub. 1876). The writer there declares his personal preference for the condition of life ultimately the choice of the First Speaker, in which uncertainty may admit of hope, even though the future should prove such hope fallacious. The old theory is advanced beneath the illustration of relationship to an absent friend, proofs of whose affection, of whose very existence, rest upon the evidence of letters, the genuineness of which has been called in question by experts. Nevertheless, the friend at home, the soliloquist of the poem, refuses to yield credence to calumny. His faith in the friend, if misplaced, has been hitherto a source of spiritual elevation and inspiration. Even though the truth be ultimately proved but falsehood, he is yet the better for those days in which he deemed it truth. Therefore,

One thing’s sure enough: ’tis neither frost,
No, nor fire, shall freeze or burn from out me
Thanks for truth—though falsehood, gained—though lost.
All my days, I’ll go the softlier, sadlier,
For that dream’s sake! How forget the thrill
Through and through me as I thought “The gladlier
Lives my friend because I love him still!”

The parallel is enforced by the suggestion at the close—

Hush, I pray you!
What if this friend happen to be—God? (F. and S., viii, ix, xii.)

III. In considering the position of the First Speaker in Easter Day, we have already noticed the character of the final judgment, the nature of the Hell designed for the punishment of him who had chosen the things of the flesh in preference to the things of the spirit.—A Hell consisting in absolute future exclusion from opportunities of spiritual satisfaction and development.—A judgment which we remarked in passing, as peculiarly characteristic in its conception of Browning’s usual treatment of matters relative to the spiritual life of man. In Ferishtah’s Fancies, we are able to obtain direct confirmation of this suggestion, with reference to the subject actually in question. In reading this collection of poems, the work of the author’s later life (pub. 1884), we hardly need his warning (or so at least we believe) to avoid the assumption that “there is more than a thin disguise of a few Persian names and allusions.” Sheltering himself thus behind the imagined personality of the Persian historian, Browning, in his seventy-second year, gave freer utterance than was customary with him to his own opinions and beliefs touching certain momentous questions of Life and Faith. A Camel-driver is devoted to a discussion of the doctrine of Judgment and Future Punishment of the sins committed in the flesh. Ferishtah, as Dervish, submits that here, as in all allied matters, man with finite capacities cannot conceive of the infinite purpose. Knowing “but man’s trick to teach,” he does but reason from the character of his own dealings, in this respect, with the animals, as creatures of lower intelligence, employed in his service. The general conclusions from the arguments thus deduced are, in brief: (1) The punishment as regards the sufferer is not designed to be retributive only, but remedial and reformatory in character. (2) With respect to the sinner and his fellow mortals, it must be deterrent. (3) Hence, to be effective, its infliction should be immediate rather than future. By postponement, the exemplary effect of punishment is rendered void: the connection between offence and penalty is obscured, and sympathy with the sufferer will result, rather than avoidance of the offence for which the suffering is inflicted. Such is the estimate by Ferishtah, or Browning, of the punishment of a future Hell of fire. From a merely human point of view it is illogical. For the purification of the sinner, or for the admonition of the onlooker, it is alike useless. And the deduction? Man can but work and, therefore, teach as man, and not as God. At best he may but see a little way into the Eternal purpose: into that portion alone which is revealed through the experiences of mortal life. Here he must be content to rest without further speculation.

Before man’s First, and after man’s poor Last,
God operated, and will operate,

is the assertion of Reason. To which adds Ferishtah,

Process of which man merely knows this much,—
That nowise it resembles man’s at all,
Teaching or punishing.

For the character of the divine process:—as in Easter Day, so here the penalty is immediately adjusted to the peculiar requirements of the nature to be “taught or punished.” To the man of spiritual discernment, of right thought and purpose, but of imperfect performance, no hell is needed beyond that to be found in the comparison of the Might-have-been with the Has-been and the Is. And in this sadness of retrospect are to be remembered, too, the sins of ignorance; even forgiveness is powerless to efface wholly the misery of remorse. Thus shall Omnipotence deal with the individual soul. Thus does the work of judgment and of education differ essentially from that of man who “lumps his kind i’ the mass,” passing upon the mass sentence, involving a uniformity of punishment, which must fall in individual cases with varying degrees of intensity, by no means proportionate to the magnitude of the offences committed. That which to the sensitive soul is torture unfathomable, to the “bold and blind” is as naught. By some other method must be forced on him the recognition and realization of past sin. Terror may “burn in the truth,” where the recollection of irremediable evil has failed to create remorse. Only a mind incapable of spiritual discernment would award a similar penalty for a life’s faults of omission and commission to the several inmates of the Morgue, and to the onlooker who would see, in the temporary despair which had caused the end, failure apparent, not absolute. For his part he could but deem that the misery which had resulted in an overwhelming abhorrence of life had, in itself, been punishment sufficient; he could but think “their sin’s atoned.”[76] Yet in his own case, even though he held that “we fall to rise,” those falls from which no human life may be wholly exempt, were in themselves cause more than adequate for remorseful anguish without the super-addition of external penalty:

Forgiveness? rather grant
Forgetfulness! The past is past and lost.
However near I stand in his regard,
So much the nearer had I stood by steps
Offered the feet which rashly spurned their help.
That I call Hell; why further punishment?[77]

IV. So far we have only treated of conclusions which, by comparison with other poems obviously dramatic, and with his more avowedly confessed opinions elsewhere, we have felt ourselves justified in accepting as Browning’s own. Turning to the questions yet remaining for consideration, we are upon more debatable ground. But here, too, pursuing similar methods, we may expect the results to be also decisive in so far as our means of investigation will allow. To what extent did personal feeling influence the criticism of Roman Catholic ritual contained in Christmas Eve? In what degree may Browning be held to have sympathized with the final decision in favour of the creed of Zion Chapel? An answer to the first question involves at least a partial answer to the second. Browning’s attitude, could it be accurately estimated, towards Roman Catholicism, might be decisive as to how far it was possible for him to concur in the conclusions attributed to the soliloquist as the result of his night’s experience.

With regard to external evidence touching Browning’s opinions on any given question, it is usually of so conflicting a character as to leave us still in the condition of mental indecision in which we began the enquiry. In the present instance we have the report to which reference has been already made of the author’s own assertion respecting Bishop Blougram’s Apology; that he intended no hostility, and felt none towards the Roman Catholic Church. On the other side of the argument has to be reckoned the reply to Miss Barrett’s wish, expressed in the early days of their acquaintance, that he would give direct utterance to his own opinions, not sheltering himself behind his various dramatis personae. Whilst promising to accede to the request, he adds, “I don’t think I shall let you hear, after all, the savage things about Popes and imaginative religions that I must say.” This correspondence took place five years before Christmas Eve and Easter Day was published. To the year of publication is to be referred the author’s satirical observation on the premature proclivities evinced by his infant son, during a visit to Siena, towards church interiors and ritual. “It is as well,” he remarked, “to have the eye-teeth and the Puseyistical crisis over together.” Of this comment writes Professor Dowden, to whom we have been recently indebted for so much valuable light on Browning’s life and work: “Although no more than a passing word spoken in play [it] gives a correct indication of Browning’s feeling, fully shared by his wife, towards the religious movement in England, which was altering the face of the Established Church. ‘Puseyism’ was for them a kind of child’s play, which unfortunately had religion for its playground; they viewed it with a superior smile, in which there was more of pity than of anger.”[78] It was, indeed, as we have already had occasion to notice, in the nature of things unlikely that Browning should have remained uninfluenced by the spirit of anxiety and unrest, agitating the minds of English churchmen of all grades of thought during the years which succeeded the Tractarian movement. That this should have led him to assume an attitude of distrust towards the Roman Catholic Church is hardly matter for surprise; that it was one of hostility he himself denies. And it is a satisfaction to believe that The Pope section of The Ring and the Book was the more matured expression of his feeling in this connection. The most valuable internal evidence on the subject is probably to be derived from a comparison of this poem and Bishop Blougram’s Apology, with Section X-XII, and XXII of Christmas Eve.

In Bishop Blougram’s Apology, as in The Pope, all direct reference to the Church is made from within, not from without. The speaker is no critical onlooker, but, as we have seen, a prelate noted alike for his ultramontane tendencies, and for the breadth of his views with regard to the adaptability of his Church to the developments of contemporary intellectual life. This man is a leading member of the religious community for which Browning is accused of having in Christmas Eve expressed his aversion. But, although a leading member, he is not therefore to be judged as a typical representative; his marked individuality being doubtless a main cause of the author’s choice of subject. And what does this man say in defence of his Church? He points out that a profession before the world of faith, clearly defined and absolute, is essential to his influence and authority. Whatever the searchings of heart, the doubts and questionings inevitable to a keenly logical and analytic intellect, these must be concealed, lest the priest should be accounted a pretender, his profession a cloak of hypocrisy. His belief in the latest ecclesiastical miracle must be as avowedly absolute as that in a God as Creator and Supreme Ruler of the Universe. Thus he stands firm upon the ground which he has chosen. The question is throughout a personal one, and the implication is clearly not intended that the Roman Catholic Church would necessarily demand of its members this implicit credence, would thus closely fetter the intellectual faculties.Turning to Christmas Eve, we find the case reversed, and the soliloquist occupying the position of one of those outsiders to whom the Bishop believed himself compelled to present an unquestioning and unquestionable orthodoxy. For the Prelate is substituted the man of active critical instinct, inclined to pass judgment with data insufficient to prove a satisfactory basis for the decision: of perceptions readily responsive to the glories of nature and their inspiration: but, we surely are not wrong in adding, of imaginative faculty unequal to the realization of those spiritual suggestions afforded to minds of different calibre by the symbolism of a ritualistic worship. The solemn silence of the vast crowd assembled in the cathedral makes stronger appeal to his sympathies than does the gorgeous display of ritual following. Hence it is a not illogical outcome of the position that he will but hear in the music of the service “hog-grunts and horse-neighings” that he will but see in the ceremonial observed “buffoonery—posturings and petticoatings.” This man of spiritual and intellectual capacity so far developed is yet numbered amongst the congregation of the Calvinistic meeting-house, where the preacher is without erudition, the flock of mental outlook metaphorically as limited as the space bounded by the four walls within which they are assembled. How is the presence of this presumably unsympathetic personality to be accounted for in their midst? How otherwise than by the recognition of this peculiar deficiency in the nature which, whilst leaving it capable of looking directly upwards to the God of all creeds, yet renders it unable, in looking downwards, to see below the surface, and realize the worth of symbolism in worship where spiritual insight is not of the keenest. The utterance of the Third Speaker of the Epilogue[79] may well be his as he awaits the coming of the Vision on the common without the Chapel:

Why, where’s the need of Temple, when the walls
O’ the world are that?

And in his anxiety to avoid the “narrow shrines” of man’s erection, he is ultimately driven to worship at one of the narrowest, chosen because the veil of ritual there interposed between the worshipper and his God is of the thinnest. The urgency of the desire to be freed from all outward ceremonial causes him to overlook the real faults of spiritual pride and exclusiveness characteristic of the Calvinistic congregation. True of heart, he would reject all shows of things; but there is in his nature a Puritanic strain which refuses to be eradicated, and this it is which finally leads him to become a member of the religious community whose failings he at first unsparingly condemned.

V. No stronger proof of the dramatic power of the poem is, perhaps, to be found than that afforded by the criticism quoted below, to which it has seemed almost impossible to avoid reference, bearing as it does the highest literary authority. Browning appears here to be regarded as occupying the position assigned by him to the soliloquist, so completely has he succeeded in identifying himself with his dramatis persona. “Of English nonconformity in its humblest forms Browning can write, as it were, from within” [the soliloquist has become a member of the Calvinistic congregation when he narrates his experiences]; “he writes of Roman Catholic forms of worship as one who stands outside” [the position literally and metaphorically assigned to the critic on the threshold-stone of St. Peter’s]; “his sympathy with the prostrate multitude in St. Peter’s at Rome is of an impersonal kind, founded rather upon the recognition of an objective fact than springing from an instinctive feeling” [May not the sympathy capable of inspiring the closing lines of Section X be taken as indicative of something deeper than this?]. “For a moment he is carried away by the tide of their devout enthusiasms; but he recovers himself to find, indeed, that love is also here, and therefore Christ is present, but the worshippers fallen under ‘Rome’s gross yoke,’ are very infants in their need of these sacred buffooneries and posturings and petticoatings.... And this, though the time has come when love would have them no longer infantile, but capable of standing and walking, ‘not to speak of trying to climb.’ Such a short and easy method of dealing with Roman Catholic dogma and ritual cannot be commended for its intelligence; it is quite possible to be on the same side as Browning without being as crude as he is in misconception. He does not seriously consider the Catholic idea which regards things of sense as made luminous by the spirit of which they are the envoys and the ministers. It is enough for him to declare his own creed, which treats any intermediary between the human soul and the Divine as an obstruction or a veil.” Then after quoting the passage describing the soliloquist’s final choice: “This was the creed of Milton and of Bunyan; and yet with both Milton and Bunyan the imagery of the senses is employed as the means, not of concealing, but revealing the things of the spirit.”[80] Was it not just this inability to seriously consider the things of sense as made luminous by the spirit which Browning wishes to represent as accounting for the otherwise unaccountable presence of the man of culture and intellect in Zion Chapel? Surely to the characteristic weaknesses of the soliloquist, not to the crude misconception of the author, is attributable the intolerance of the criticism, whether directed, as in the earlier Sections, against the congregation of Zion Chapel, or, in the later, against that of St. Peter’s?

This belief in the strength of the dramatic element in Christmas Eve is confirmed when we turn to The Ring and the Book, and the question suggests itself—Would the critic of the earlier poem have been capable of representing any member of the Church which he condemns in the light in which Browning gives us Innocent XII? A nature to which is possible in age the purity and simplicity of a childlike personal faith.

O God,
Who shall pluck sheep Thou holdest, from Thy hand? (The Pope, ll. 641-642.)

Of a tenderness which yearns in memory over the defenceless member of his flock, lately the victim of brutality and disappointed avarice.

Pompilia, then as now
Perfect in whiteness.... (ll. 1005-1006.)
... My flower,
My rose, I gather for the breast of God. (ll. 1046-1047.)

With tenderness is coupled that humility which can say to this child of the Faith:

Go past me
And get thy praise,—and be not far to seek
Presently when I follow if I may! (ll. 1092-1094.)
········
Stoop thou down, my child,
Give one good moment to the poor old Pope
Heart-sick at having all his world to blame. (ll. 1006-1008.)

Yet, in spite of the heart-sickness, is present also the moral rectitude which refuses to shrink from the task demanding fulfilment—the censure of “all his world”—from the archbishop who repulsed the injured wife’s appeal for protection, “the hireling who did turn and flee,” through the entire list of offenders to the “fox-faced, horrible priest, this brother-brute, the Abate,” and the chief criminal, Guido, for whom also his friends would claim clerical immunity from the penalty attaching to his offence. Realizing to the full the character of his office, the weight of authority and historical continuity lying behind, the old Pope might well be tempted to grant to the miscreants that shelter which they crave. But the very fact which leads him to magnify the dignity of his official position, “next under God,” leads him also to recognize the immensity of personal responsibility attaching thereto. The sentence to be passed is the outcome of a personal decision.

How should I dare die, this man let live?

Yet whilst laying bare before his mental vision the evils existent in his Church, obvious alike in the individual even though he should himself “have armed and decked him for the fight”; and in the communal life of convent and monastery; whilst rejoicing that Caponsacchi should have had the necessary courage to break through ecclesiastical convention and

Let light into the world
Through that irregular breach o’ the boundary: (ll. 1205-1206.)

he yet points to the strength of the Church as safeguarding, by her rule as “a law of life,” those whose natural impulses may not be relied on to lead them to follow the course of Caponsacchi, and to whom it would not be safe to grant the permission: “Ask your hearts as I asked mine.” To these and such as these the law of life laid down by the Church’s rule is essential. Whatever the traditions of the past, whatever the possibilities of ecclesiastical modifications and developments in the future, in the present no considerations of personal interest or compassion must be permitted to warp the judgment of him who is armed

With Paul’s sword as with Peter’s key.

And it is to be remembered, that the man who could thus reason, thus decide, was head of that Church which excited the mocking condemnation of the soliloquist of Christmas Eve: and that Caponsacchi, “the warrior-priest, the soldier-saint,” bore likewise the title of Canon. To so remember may serve to cast new light upon Browning’s supposed attitude towards Roman Catholicism.

VI. The most important subject of discussion in relation to Easter Day is that touching its so-called asceticism. Here also, as in Christmas Eve, two interdependent questions must be asked: (1) What is the nature of the asceticism advocated by the First Speaker? (2) How far may it be regarded as the expression of Browning’s own theory of life? A plain answer to the first question is necessary in order that, by comparison with the treatment of the same subject elsewhere, it may be possible to determine the extent to which the opinions advanced are in agreement: whether Browning was desirous of advocating renunciation even in the degree held essential by the First Speaker. The key to the position seems to be contained in two recorded comments on the poem by the poet and his wife. When Mrs. Browning complained of the “asceticism,” her husband answered, that it stated “one side of the question.” Her supplementary observation adds, “It is his way to see things as passionately as other people feel them.”[81] It was by the exercise of this exceptionally powerful imaginative faculty that the author of Easter Day has dramatically stated the case which he perceived might be made out for renunciation, as well as for grateful acceptance and enjoyment of the gifts of life. If we admit the accuracy of the criticism which would define the spirit of the poem as refusing to recognize, “in poetry or art, or the attainments of the intellect, or even in the best human love, any practical correspondence with religion,”[82] then indeed we are bound to acknowledge that it stands absolutely alone in Browning’s work and is in direct opposition to his theory of life. I venture to think, however, that a careful study of this particular aspect of the poem will result in the conviction that the First Speaker is represented as realizing that, desirable as is renunciation in his own case, it is not the highest course possible to human nature.

Sections VIII, XVI, XX, XXIV, XXX, are those which deal chiefly with this question of asceticism. Taken in sequence, they present in outline the history of the spiritual life of the First Speaker. This it is desirable to notice very briefly before comparing the rule of life thus indicated with that suggested by references to Browning’s work elsewhere. In Section VIII is depicted the attitude of the First Speaker towards the Gospel story; the attitude of “the fighter” who would not only wrestle with evil, but would search for any possibly existent danger and bring it to light (Section XIV). To such a nature the intellectual belief in the Incarnation—“the all-stupendous tale—that Birth, that Life, that Death!” is productive of heartstruck horror: whilst for a practical acceptance of the faith, life must be regulated in accordance with Scriptural teaching, expressed in

Certain words, broad, plain,
Uttered again and yet again,
Hard to mistake or overgloss—(E. D., viii, ll. 257-259.)words which declare that the loss of things temporal is the gain of things spiritual and eternal. But the asceticism thus advocated does not find full explanation until Section XXX. The gradual revelation begins with Section XVI where, before judgment has been pronounced from without, conscience passes sentence upon itself; realizing that that which it had deemed in life a mere temporizing, had in fact been a final choice. That, dallying with the good things of life, whilst believing renunciation the higher course, had meant a practical decision in favour of things temporal to the exclusion of things spiritual. In that exclusion lay the error. And the recognition of failure here is in entire accordance with Browning’s usual attitude towards life. Condemnation is merited not on account of indulgence, but because that indulgence had meant running counter to the convictions of the man who held that, for him, renunciation was the higher course. Not possessing the courage of his opinions, he had chosen that which he recognized as the lower course, the path of compromise: enjoyment in the present, renunciation before it was too late. Therefore for him who had so chosen—the Hell of Satiety.

Now, as we have already noticed,[83] the experience of the results of the Judgment tended to exhibit the true worth, both absolute and relative, of the things amid which life had been hitherto passed. Satiety checked enjoyment of the beauties of Nature. Why should this be? In Section XXIV is given the answer:

All partial beauty was a pledge
Of beauty in its plenitude.

But, engrossed in contemplation of the partial beauty the spectator had found that “the pledge sufficed [his] mood.” Therefore, the plenitude was not for him, but for those only who had looked above and beyond the pledge, seeking that of which it was a proof. And in each of the successive attempts towards happiness by an appeal to art, and to the exercise of the higher intellectual faculties, the same explanation of failure is vouchsafed by the Judge. The symbol has been accepted for the reality, the pledge for the fulfilment. After the final choice has been made in favour of Love, “leave to love only,” the fuller explanation follows; the secret of life’s success or failure. Failure through the inability to recognize the Divine Love in the visible creation, or in the more immediate revelation to man: in either case ample proof being afforded to him who had eyes to see, intelligence to grasp, and heart to respond to the Love so taught. Yet the soliloquist of Easter Day had proved himself incapable of such recognition of the highest truth. The world of sense had been used not to subserve but to supersede the world of spirit. To the nature which thus found in all externals a temptation to rest content with “the level and the night,” asceticism was as essential to the preservation of the spiritual life as, under certain conditions, amputation may be to the preservation of physical life.

But it must not be overlooked that the necessity for amputation implies the existence of mortal disease. Hence, whilst realizing this personal necessity for renunciation, the speaker recalls the teaching of the divine Judge of the Vision as pointing to a higher standard of life for him who should be able to attain to it. A life in which all things should be not avoided as a snare, but accepted as cause for thankfulness; the relation of the gift to the Giver being recognized as constituting its primary value. To the lover of the beautiful is pointed out how

All thou dost enumerate
Of power and beauty in the world,
The mightiness of love was curled
Inextricably round about.
Love lay within it and without,
To clasp thee,—but in vain! (E. D., xxx, ll. 960-965.)

In this passage may be found the solution to the whole question of the asceticism advocated. When the love thus expressed had been realized, the step was not a difficult one to the acceptance of the fuller revelation of Love in the Incarnation. And in this realization the highest aspect of life temporal would have been reached. Love, not abrogating the law would have served as its fulfilment. As the statements of Bishop Blougram are personal in relation to the treatment of doubt, so the speaker in Easter Day would make out a case for personal asceticism. Not advocating it as the ideal universal course, he would yet claim for it highest value as safeguarding his individual life. To him who is incapable of moderation, renunciation may become a necessity; yet, through renunciation, may be attained that higher life consisting in a grateful enjoyment and generous communication of all gifts of the Divine Love.

Of the other poems dealing with this subject indirectly or directly, Paracelsus, 1835, Rabbi Ben Ezra, 1864, Ferishtah’s Fancies, 1884, are sufficiently representative of the different periods of the poet’s literary life to render them valuable as illustrations of his mode of treatment. In the last, at least, we may be fairly confident that the decision given is his own.

In one aspect Paracelsus may be regarded as the history of a man of genius who marked out for himself a career of complete asceticism; of work apart from human sympathy, love, and friendship, as well as from all gratifications of the flesh. And the scheme was pursued unflinchingly—for a time—until the inevitable reaction set in, spirit and flesh alike avenging themselves for their temporary suppression. Not only are love and friendship found claiming their own, but

A host of petty wild delights, undreamed of
Or spurned before, (Par., iii, ll. 537-538.)

offer themselves to supply the place of what the earlier ascetic, in a moment of despairing self-contempt, terms his “dead aims.” The declaration at Colmar is made whilst the influence of reaction still prevails.

I will accept all helps; all I despised
So rashly at the outset, equally
With early impulses, late years have quenched.
········
All helps! no one sort shall exclude the rest. (Par., iv, ll. 235-239.)

Only when he has learned from experience that human nature is not to be developed through suppression, that “its sign and note and character” are “Love, hope, fear, faith”—that “these make humanity,” only then can he fearlessly, as in youth, “press God’s lamp to [his] breast,” assured of the divine guidance and protection.

Sordello, so closely allied to Paracelsus in time of composition (pub. 1840, begun before Strafford, 1836), demands a brief reference since it has been especially singled out for notice in this connection as constituting “an indirect vindication of the conceptions of human life which Christmas Eve and Easter Day condemns.”[84] In the Sixth Book of Sordello the question of renunciation has become imminent and practical. It is the moment for decision. The imperial badge which he tells his soul “would suffer you improve your Now!” must be accepted or rejected: and with it the attendant temporal advantages. But the reflections occupying the poet’s mind, at this crisis of his fate, are akin to those following the Vision of the Judgment in Easter Day. Why not enjoy life to the full? Why treat it as a mere ante-room to the palace at the door of which stands the Usher, Death? Even accepting the simile

I, for one,
Will praise the world, you style mere ante-room
To palace.
········
Oh, ’twere too absurd to slight
For the hereafter the to-day’s delight.[85]

Yet the thought recurs, how often has the cup of life been set aside by “sage, champion, martyr,” to whom had been revealed the secret of that which “masters life.” To what causes is attributable the failure which he recognizes in reviewing his own Past? The soul, true inhabitant of the Infinite, has been unable to adapt itself to its lodgment in the body fitted, by its constitution, for Time only. Sorrow has been the inevitable result of the soul’s attempts at subjecting the body to its use. Sorrow to be avoided only when the employer shall

Match the thing employed,
Fit to the finite his infinity.[86]

Some solution of the difficulty there must assuredly be. The question of Sordello is in different form the question of the soliloquist of Easter Day—

Must life be ever just escaped which should
Have been enjoyed?[87]And the answer?—

Nay, might have been and would,
Each purpose ordered right—the soul’s no whit
Beyond the body’s purpose under it.[88]

Yet the struggle ends in renunciation, and Salinguerra arrives to find Sordello dead, “under his foot the badge”: but

Still, Palma said,
A triumph lingering in the wide eyes.[89]

In Rabbi Ben Ezra a more material conception of life is to be expected from the change in the personality of the soliloquist. The Jewish Rabbi of the twelfth century takes the place of the Mantuan poet of the thirteenth. The Rabbi also recognizes the limitations imposed by the body upon the development of the soul.

Pleasant is this flesh,
Our soul, in its rose-mesh
Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest. (R. B. E., xi.)
·······
Thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way? (viii.)

Yet, since “gifts should prove their use,” he would, in so far as may be, utilize the body for the advancement of the soul.

Let us not always say
“Spite of the flesh to-day
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!”
As the bird wings and sings,
Let us cry “All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!” (xii.)

In this complete co-operation of spirit and flesh—if attainable—might be found a satisfactory answer to Sordello’s question concerning the possibility of that use of life which should prove a legitimate enjoyment of its gifts, no mere avoidance of its snares.The parable of The Two Camels of Ferishtah’s Fancies is employed to again introduce the subject of asceticism and its uses. The conclusions there reached differ, perhaps, rather in degree than in kind from those which have gone before. Not asceticism, but enjoyment develops best the faculties of man. The perfect achievement of the work allotted him is the object of his existence. Hence the admonition,

Dare
Refuse no help thereto, since help refused
Is hindrance sought and found.

The decision, however, goes a step further than that of Easter Day where it is noticeable that the professing Christian, who objects to an examination of the basis of his faith, appears to have no anxiety respecting the world at large. The salvation of his individual soul is that which alone concerns him, and pretty well limits his outlook on life temporal and eternal. In The Two Camels, Ferishtah, in rejecting asceticism as a mode of life, looks not to its personal effects only, but to those influences which he is bound to transmit to his fellow men. To become a joy-giving medium, individual experience of joy is, he claims, essential, and to be best acquired through a free and grateful acceptance, and a reasonable enjoyment of the blessings of earth.

Just as I cannot, till myself convinced,
Impart conviction, so, to deal forth joy
Adroitly, needs must I know joy myself.
Renounce joy for my fellows’ sake? That’s joy
Beyond joy; but renounced for mine, not theirs?
········
No, Son: the richness hearted in such joy
Is in the knowing what are gifts we give,
Not in a vain endeavour not to know![90]That, I believe, we must take as Browning’s final word on the subject. Does it differ so widely from the teaching of Easter Day? Surely not? The man who feared to enjoy earth lest earth should prove a snare, was taught by the final Judgment that, to a nature of higher capacity, might be possible that full enjoyment of life comprehended in the use of all good things as opportunities for soul-enlargement. An enjoyment following immediately upon the discovery that in all

Of power and beauty in the world,
The mightiness of love was curled
Inextricably round about.