become less intimate, and his expression of them more halting.  What we find in his earlier works are vigorous ethical convictions, a glowing optimistic faith, achieving their fitting expression in impassioned poetry; what we find in his later works are arguments, which, however richly adorned with poetic metaphors, have lost the completeness and energy of life.  His poetic fancies are like chaplets which crown the dead.  Lovers of the poet, who seek in his poems for inspiring expressions of their hope and faith, will always do well in turning from his militant metaphysics to his art.

In his case, as in that of many others, spiritual experience was far richer than the theory which professed to explain it.  The task of lifting his moral convictions into the clear light of conscious philosophy was beyond his power.  The theory of the failure of knowledge, which he seems to have adopted far too easily from the current doctrine of the schools, was fundamentally inconsistent with his generous belief in the moral progress of man; and it maimed the expression of that belief.  The result of his work as a philosopher is a confession of complete ignorance and the helpless asseveration of a purely dogmatic faith.

The fundamental error of the poet’s philosophy lies, I believe, in that severance of feeling and intelligence, love and reason, which finds expression in La Saisiaz, Ferishtah’s Fancies, The Parleyings, and Asolando.  Such an absolute division is not to be found in Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day, Rabbi Ben Ezra, A Death in the Desert, or in The Ring and the Book; nor even in Fifine at the Fair.  In these works we are not perplexed by the strange combination of a nature whose principle is love, and which is capable of infinite progress, with an intelligence whose best efforts end in ignorance.  Rather, the spirit of man is regarded as one, in all its manifestations; and, therefore, as progressive on all sides of its activity.  The widening of his knowledge, which is brought about by increasing experience, is parallel with the deepening and purifying of his moral life.  In all Browning’s works, indeed, with the possible exception of Paracelsus, love is conceived as having a place and function of supreme importance in the development of the soul.  Its divine origin and destiny are never obscured; but knowledge is regarded as merely human, and, therefore, as falling short of the truth.  In Easter-Day it is definitely contrasted with love, and shown to be incapable of satisfying the deepest wants of man.  It is, at the best, only a means to the higher purposes of moral activity, and, except in the Grammarian’s Funeral, it is nowhere regarded as in itself a worthy end.

  “’Tis one thing to know, and another to practise. 
  And thence I conclude that the real God-function
  Is to furnish a motive and injunction
  For practising what we know already."[A]