that I think I am entitled to seek in him, as in Isaiah or Aeschylus, a
solution, or a help to the solution, of the problems that press upon us
when we reflect upon man, his place in the world and his destiny. He has
given us indirectly, and as a poet gives, a philosophy of life; he has
interpreted the world anew in the light of a dominant idea; and it will
be no little gain if we can make clear to ourselves those constitutive
principles on which his view of the world rests.




CHAPTER II.

ON THE NEED OF A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.

"Art,--which I may style the love of loving, rage
Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things
For truth's sake, whole and sole, not any good, truth brings
The knower, seer, feeler, beside,--instinctive Art
Must fumble for the whole, once fixing on a part
However poor, surpass the fragment, and aspire
To reconstruct thereby the ultimate entire."[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xliv.]

No English poet has spoken more impressively than Browning on the
weightier matters of morality and religion, or sought with more
earnestness to meet the difficulties which arise when we try to
penetrate to their ultimate principles. His way of poetry is, I think,
fundamentally different from that of any other of our great writers. He