Well, I care—­intimately care to have
      Experience how a human creature felt
    In after life, who bore the burthen grave
      Of certainly believing God had dealt
    For once directly with him:  did not rave
      —­A maniac, did not find his reason melt
    —­An idiot, but went on, in peace or strife,
    The world’s way, lived an ordinary life.

The solution Browning offers is interesting, because it recalls a part of the experiences of Lazarus in the Epistle to Karshish.  Rene, like Lazarus, but only for a moment, has lived in the eternal.

Are such revelations possible, is his second question.  Yes, he answers; and the form of the answer belongs to the theory of life laid down in Paracelsus.  Such sudden openings of the greater world are at intervals, as to Abt Vogler, given by God to men.

The end of the second asks what is the true test of the greater poet, when people take on them to weigh the worth of poets—­who was better, best, this, that or the other bard?  When I read this I trembled, knowing that I had compared him with Tennyson.  But when I heard the answer I trembled no more.  “The best poet of any two is the one who leads the happier life.  The strong and joyful poet is the greater.”  But this is a test of the greatness of a man, not necessarily of a poet.  And, moreover, in this case, Tennyson and Browning both lived equally happy lives.  Both were strong to the end, and imaginative joy was their companion.  But the verse in which Browning winds up his answer is one of the finest in his poetry.

    So, force is sorrow, and each sorrow, force;
      What then? since Swiftness gives the charioteer
    The palm, his hope be in the vivid horse
      Whose neck God clothed with thunder, not the steer
    Sluggish and safe!  Yoke Hatred, Crime, Remorse,
      Despair; but ever mid the whirling fear,
      Let, through the tumult, break the poet’s face
      Radiant, assured his wild slaves win the race!

La Saisiaz is a more important poem:  it describes the sudden death of his friend, Ann Egerton Smith, and passes from that, and all he felt concerning it, into an argument on the future life of the soul, with the assumption that God is, and the soul.  The argument is interesting, but does not concern us here.  What does concern us is that Browning has largely recovered his poetical way of treating a subject.  He is no longer outside of it, but in it.  He does not use it as a means of exercising his brains only.  It is steeped in true and vital feeling, and the deep friendship he had for his friend fills even the theological argument with a passionate intensity.  Nevertheless, the argument is perilously near the work of the understanding alone—­as if a question like that of immortality could receive any solution from the hands of the understanding.  Only each man, in the recesses of his own spirit with