To show that Mr. Browning is a metaphysical poet, is to show that he is
not a metaphysical _thinker_, though he is a thinker whose thought is
metaphysical so far as principle goes. A metaphysical thinker is always
in some way or other thinking about _thought_; and this is precisely
what Mr. Browning has no occasion to do, because he takes its
assumptions upon trust. He is a constant analyst of secondary motives
and judgments. No modern freethinker could make a larger allowance for
what is incidental, personal, and even material in them: we shall see
that all his practical philosophy is bound up with this fact. But he has
never questioned the origin of our primary or innate ideas, for he has,
as I have said, never questioned their truth. It is essential to bear in
mind that Mr. Browning is a metaphysical poet, and not a metaphysical
thinker, to do justice to the depth and originality of his creative
power; for his imagination includes everything which at a given moment a
human being can think or feel, and often finds itself, therefore, at
some point to which other minds have _reasoned_ their way. The
coincidence occurs most often with German lines of thought, and it has
therefore been concluded that he has studied the works in which they are
laid down, or has otherwise moved in the same track; the fact being that
he has no bond of union with German philosophers, but the natural
tendencies of his own mind. It may be easily ascertained that he did not
read their language until late in life; and if what I have said of his
mental habits is true, it is equally certain that their methods have
been more foreign to him still. He resembles Hegel, Fichte, or
Schelling, as the case may be, by the purely creative impulse which has
met their thought, and which, if he had lived earlier, might have
forestalled it. Mr. Browning's position is that of a fixed centre of
thought and feeling. Fifty years ago he was in advance of his age. He
stood firm and has allowed the current to overtake him, or even leave