Browning was guided first of all by his keen sympathy with the
scientific spirit--the spirit of dauntless inquiry, of quenchless
curiosity, of a searching enthusiasm. Pietro of Abano, Giordano Bruno,
Galileo, were heroes whom he regarded with an admiration which would
have been boundless but for the wise sympathy which enabled him to
apprehend and understand their weaknesses as well as their lofty
qualities. Once having come to the conclusion that Paracelsus was a
great and much maligned man, it was natural for him to wish to portray
aright the features he saw looming through the mists of legend and
history. But over and above this, he half unwittingly, half consciously,
felt the fascination of that mysticism associated with the name of the
celebrated German scientist--a mysticism, in all its various phases, of
which he is now acknowledged to be the subtlest poetic interpreter in
our language, though, profound as its attraction always was for him,
never was poet with a more exquisite balance of intellectual sanity.

Latest research has proved that whatsoever of a pretender Paracelsus may
have been in certain respects, he was unquestionably a man of
extraordinary powers: and, as a pioneer in a science of the first
magnitude of importance, deserving of high honour. If ever the famous
German attain a high place in the history of the modern intellectual
movement in Europe, it will be primarily due to Browning's championship.

But of course the extent or shallowness of Paracelsus' claim is a matter
of quite secondary interest. We are concerned with the poet's
presentment of the man--of that strange soul whom he conceived of as
having anticipated so far, and as having focussed all the vagrant
speculations of the day into one startling beam of light, now lambently
pure, now lurid with gross constituents.[9]