Such intellectual egotism is unconnected with moral selfishness,though it often unconsciously does its work.Were it otherwise,I should have passed over in silence this aspect,comprehensive though it is,of Mr.Browning's character.He was capable of the largest self-sacrifice and of the smallest self-denial;and would exercise either whenever love or duty clearly pointed the way.He would,he believed,cheerfully have done so at the command,however arbitrary,of a Higher Power;he often spoke of the absence of such injunction,whether to endurance or action,as the great theoretical difficulty of life for those who,like himself,rejected or questioned the dogmatic teachings of Christianity.This does not mean that he ignored the traditional moralities which have so largely taken their place.
They coincided in great measure with his own instincts;and few occasions could have arisen in which they would not be to him a sufficient guide.I may add,though this is a digression,that he never admitted the right of genius to defy them;when such a right had once been claimed for it in his presence,he rejoined quickly,'That is an error!NOBLESSE OBLIGE.'
But he had difficulty in acknowledging any abstract law which did not derive from a Higher Power;and this fact may have been at once cause and consequence of the special conditions of his own mind.
All human or conventional obligation appeals finally to the individual judgment;and in his case this could easily be obscured by the always militant imagination,in regard to any subject in which his feelings were even indirectly concerned.No one saw more justly than he,when the object of vision was general or remote.
Whatever entered his personal atmosphere encountered a refracting medium in which objects were decomposed,and a succession of details,each held as it were close to the eye,blocked out the larger view.
We have seen,on the other hand,that he accepted imperfect knowledge as part of the discipline of experience.It detracted in no sense from his conviction of direct relations with the Creator.This was indeed the central fact of his theology,as the absolute individual existence had been the central fact of his metaphysics;and when he described the fatal leap in 'Red Cotton Nightcap Country'as a frantic appeal to the Higher Powers for the 'sign'which the man's religion did not afford,and his nature could not supply,a special dramatic sympathy was at work within him.The third part of the epilogue to 'Dramatis Personae'
represented his own creed;though this was often accentuated in the sense of a more personal privilege,and a perhaps less poetic mystery,than the poem conveys.The Evangelical Christian and the subjective idealist philosopher were curiously blended in his composition.
The transition seems violent from this old-world religion to any system of politics applicable to the present day.
They were,nevertheless,closely allied in Mr.Browning's mind.
His politics were,so far as they went,the practical aspect of his religion.
Their cardinal doctrine was the liberty of individual growth;removal of every barrier of prejudice or convention by which it might still be checked.He had been a Radical in youth,and probably in early manhood;he remained,in the truest sense of the word,a Liberal;and his position as such was defined in the sonnet prefixed in 1886to Mr.Andrew Reid's essay,'Why I am a Liberal',and bearing the same name.
Its profession of faith did not,however,necessarily bind him to any political party.It separated him from all the newest developments of so-called Liberalism.He respected the rights of property.
He was a true patriot,hating to see his country plunged into aggressive wars,but tenacious of her position among the empires of the world.
He was also a passionate Unionist;although the question of our political relations with Ireland weighed less with him,as it has done with so many others,than those considerations of law and order,of honesty and humanity,which have been trampled under foot in the name of Home Rule.It grieved and surprised him to find himself on this subject at issue with so many valued friends;and no pain of Lost Leadership was ever more angry or more intense,than that which came to him through the defection of a great statesman whom he had honoured and loved,from what he believed to be the right cause.
The character of Mr.Browning's friendships reveals itself in great measure in even a simple outline of his life.
His first friends of his own sex were almost exclusively men of letters,by taste if not by profession;the circumstances of his entrance into society made this a matter of course.In later years he associated on cordial terms with men of very various interests and professions;and only writers of conspicuous merit,whether in prose or poetry,attracted him as such.No intercourse was more congenial to him than that of the higher class of English clergymen.
He sympathized in their beliefs even when he did not share them.
Above all he loved their culture;and the love of culture in general,of its old classic forms in particular,was as strong in him as if it had been formed by all the natural and conventional associations of a university career.He had hearty friends and appreciators among the dignitaries of the Church --successive Archbishops and Bishops,Deans of Westminster and St.Paul's.They all knew the value of the great freelance who fought like the gods of old with the regular army.
