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 system, by means of the principle from which he makes his departure.