[Footnote C:  Ibid.]

We can scarcely miss the emphasis of the poet’s own conviction in these passages, or in the assertion that,—­

      “The acknowledgment of God in Christ
  Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
  All questions in the earth and out of it,
  And has so far advanced thee to be wise."[A]

[Footnote A:  A Death in the Desert.]

Consequently, there is a defiant and aggressive element in his attitude.  Strengthened with an unfaltering faith in the supreme Good, this knight of the Holy Spirit goes forth over all the world seeking out wrongs.  “He has,” said Dr. Westcott, “dared to look on the darkest and meanest forms of action and passion, from which we commonly and rightly turn our eyes, and he has brought back for us from this universal survey a conviction of hope.”  I believe, further, that it was in order to justify this conviction that he set out on his quest.  His interest in vice—­in malice, cruelty, ignorance, brutishness, meanness, the irrational perversity of a corrupt disposition, and the subtleties of philosophic and aesthetic falsehood—­was no morbid curiosity.  Browning was no “painter of dirt”; no artist can portray filth for filth’s sake, and remain an artist.  He crowds his pages with criminals, because he sees deeper than their crimes.  He describes evil without “palliation or reserve,” and allows it to put forth all its might, in order that he may, in the end, show it to be subjected to God’s purposes.  He confronts evil in order to force it to give up the good, which is all the reality that is in it.  He conceives it as his mission to prove that evil is “stuff for transmuting,” and that there is nought in the world.

  “But, touched aright, prompt yields each particle its tongue
  Of elemental flame—­no matter whence flame sprung,
  From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness.”

All we want is—­

        “The power to make them burn, express
  What lights and warms henceforth, leaves only ash behind,
  Howe’er the chance."[A]

[Footnote A:  Fifine at the Fair.]

He had Pompilia’s faith.

  “And still, as the day wore, the trouble grew,
  Whereby I guessed there would be born a star.”

He goes forth in the might of his faith in the power of good, as if he wished once for all to try the resources of evil at their uttermost, and pass upon it a complete and final condemnation.  With this view, he seeks evil in its own haunts.  He creates Guido, the subtlest and most powerful compound of vice in our literature—­except Iago, perhaps—­merely in order that we may see evil at its worst; and he places him in an environment suited to his nature, as if he was carrying out an experimentum crucis.  The

        “Midmost blotch of black
  Discernible in the group of clustered crimes
  Huddling together in the cave they call
  Their palace."[B]