in his stubborn soul and his erect body did really express the
fighter; he was always contending, whether it was with a German theory
about the Gnostics, or with a stranger who elbowed his wife in a
crowd. Again, if we had decided that he was a Jew, we should point out
how absorbed he was in the terrible simplicity of monotheism: we
should be right, for he was so absorbed. Or again, in the case even of
the negro fancy; it would not be difficult for us to suggest a love of
colour, a certain mental gaudiness, a pleasure

"When reds and blues were indeed red and blue,"

as he says in _The Ring and the Book_. We should be right; for there
really was in Browning a tropical violence of taste, an artistic
scheme compounded as it were, of orchids and cockatoos, which, amid
our cold English poets, seems scarcely European. All this is extremely
fascinating; and it may be true. But, as has above been suggested,
here comes in the great temptation of this kind of work, the noble
temptation to see too much in everything. The biographer can easily
see a personal significance in these three hypothetical nationalities.
But is there in the world a biographer who could lay his hand upon his
heart and say that he would not have seen as much significance in any
three other nationalities? If Browning's ancestors had been Frenchmen,
should we not have said that it was from them doubtless that he
inherited that logical agility which marks him among English poets?
If his grandfather had been a Swede, should we not have said that the
old sea-roving blood broke out in bold speculation and insatiable
travel? If his great-aunt had been a Red Indian, should we not have
said that only in the Ojibways and the Blackfeet do we find the
Browning fantasticality combined with the Browning stoicism? This
over-readiness to seize hints is an inevitable part of that secret