him behind. If I may be allowed a comparison: other mental existences
suggest the idea of a river, flowing onwards, amidst varying scenes, and
in a widening bed, to lose itself in the sea. Mr. Browning's genius
appears the sea itself, with its immensity and its limits, its
restlessness and its repose, the constant self-balancing of its ebb and
flow.

As both dramatic and metaphysical poet, Mr. Browning is inspired by one
central doctrine: that while thought is absolute in itself, it is
relative or personal to the mind which thinks it; so that no one man can
attain the whole truth of any abstract subject, and no other can convict
him of having failed to do so. And he also believes that since
intellectual truth is so largely for each of us a matter of personal
impression, no language is special enough to convey it. The arguments
which he carries on through the mouths of his men and women often
represent even moral truth as something too subtle, too complex, and too
changing, to be definitely expressed; and if we did not see that he
reverences what is good as much as he excuses what is bad, we might
imagine that even on this ground he considered no fixed knowledge to be
attainable. These opinions are, however, closely bound up with his
religious beliefs, and in great measure explained by them. He is
convinced that uncertainty is essential to the spiritual life; and his
works are saturated by the idea that where uncertainty ceases,
stagnation must begin; that our light must be wavering, and our progress
tentative, as well as our hopes chequered, and our happiness even devoid
of any sense of finality, if the creative intention is not to frustrate
itself; we may not see the path of progress and salvation clearly marked
out before us. On the other hand, he believes that the circumstances of
life are as much adapted to the guidance of each separate soul as if
each were the single object of creative care; and that therefore while