But music helps and supports his imagination, never controls it.
Music is to Browning an inarticulate revelation of the truth
of the supersensual world, the `earnest of a heaven'.
He is no voluptuary in music. Music is simply the means
by which the soul wings its way into the azure of spiritual theory
and contemplation. Take only `Saul' and `Abt Vogler' in illustration.
`Saul' is a magnificent interpretation of the old theme,
a favorite with the mystics, that evil spirits are driven out by music.
But in this interpretation it is not the mere tones, the thrumming
on the harp, it is the religious movement of the intelligence,
it is the truth of Divine love throbbing in every chord,
which constitutes the spell. And so in `Abt Vogler';
the abbot's instrument is only the means whereby he strikes out
the light of faith and hope within him. Not to dwell upon this point,
I would only say that it seems clear that Browning has the finest
acoustic gifts, and could, if he had chosen, have scattered
musical bons-bons through every page. But he has printed
no `versus inopes rerum, nugaeque canorae' (Hor. ad Pis.).
He has had higher objects in view, and has dispensed better stuff
than that which lingers in the ear, and tends to suppress
rather than support the higher activity of thought.

"When for a moment he shuts his eyes, and falls purely into
the listening or `musing' mood, he becomes the instrument of
a rich deep music, breaking out of the heart of the unseen world,
as in the Dirge of unfaithful Poets in `Paracelsus',
or the Gypsy's Incantation in the `Flight of the Duchess',
or the Meditation at the crisis of Sordello's temptation.

"When the keen inquisitive intelligence is in its full waking activity