and ten years and their insistent claim upon a life beyond that term, all these things fascinated him and wrought themselves over into poetry in the alembic of his mind. "Paracelsus" and "Sordello" represent in their several ways the element of spiritual adventure to which religion invites us, and without which it degenerates into mere formality. "Saul" and "Cleon" speak of the inappeasable hunger of the soul for God and immortality. "An Epistle" and "A Death in the Desert" remind us of the inevitable appeal made by Jesus Christ even though He be considered as a mere incident or phenomenon of history. "Christmas Eve" and "Easter Day" are as frankly theological as Newman's "Apologia" or "Grammar of Assent." "Pippa Passes" and "The Ring and the Book" are far too great and comprehensive to be characterized in a sentence; but in them both, sometimes explicitly, and more often by suggestion, the poet echoes St. Paul's reasoning of "righteousness, temperance, and judgement to come."

Pippa's song, so often and unintelligently quoted as though it numbered Browning among the dogmatic optimists, really has a far deeper significance than that. It is the chance unreasoning utterance of a happy little working girl upon the morning of a holiday; it penetrates not the ears only but the fleshly hearts of an adulteress and the paramour who has just murdered her husband. Here lies the wonder of the thing; that this child's thoughtless

assertion, moved as she is to utter it by the appeal of springtime to her innocent heart, —

"God's in His heaven

All's right with the world!"

should bring a murderer to himself, so that Sebald echoes breathlessly,

"God's in His heaven! Do you hear that? Who spoke?" and a little later, speaking both of and to Ottima, he sets forth inimitably the old attempt of the flesh to strangle the spirit.

"To think
She would succeed in her absurd attempt,
And fascinate by sinning, show herself
Superior guilt from its excess superior
To innocence! That little peasant's voice
Has righted all again. Though I be lost,
I know which is the better, never fear,
Of vice or virtue, purity or lust,

Nature or trick! I see what I have done,
Entirely now! Oh, I am proud to feel
Such torments

It is not exactly the sorrow of repentance, but rather the reassertion of manhood after a term of bondage to greed and lust. This is typical of Browning's method in using religious and ethical material. The two are inextricably mingled by nature, representing indeed but different aspects of one experience. They are among the fundamental things for which man has innate appetite. Every man when he is most himself recognizes that they concern him.

The poet rarely cares to assert this dogmatically, preferring to show it by example in taking such themes for his most telling work. He is careful, too, to admit the subtle complexities and difficulties as well as the great simplicities of religion. Sometimes the matter is dealt with half whimsically, as in the marvellously clever monologue of Bishop Blougram over his wine and walnuts; sometimes grotesquely almost to the point of caricature, as in "Caliban upon Setebos"; and yet again with a high and wistful seriousness, as by Cleon, and the Pope in "The Ring and the Book."

One great reason of Browning's early neglect and later vogue has been that he anticipated with so sure an instinct the analytical tendency of the latter half of his century, when science strove to bring all things in heaven and earth to the dissecting table.' Another lies in an extraordinary insight into the depths of man's soul which makes the reading of some of his poems seem like an anticipation of the day when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed. A third is to be found in his large use in argument of a philosophical method now particularly known as Humanism or Pragmatism. In "A Death in the Desert” St. John argues, to be sure, that if man were as certain of the worth of Christ as he is of the worth of fire, all would accept Him, there would be no room for doubt or question, and —

1 This fact has been interestingly developed by Mr. Stopford Brooke in his Poetry of Robert Browning, p. 8.

Man's probation would conclude, his earth

Crumble.

Yet, after all, the poet is always recurring to exactly this argument. Religion is as necessary and wholesome to a man's soul as bread to his body. Some faith in God, Duty, Immortality, is as needful to the breath of his soul's life during this present winter of his discontent as is fire to his household's health. Bishop Blougram is a somewhat doubtful ally, to be sure, but he reaches a fundamental experience in saying,

Belief's fire, once in us,

Makes of all else mere stuff to show itself;

We penetrate our life with such a glow

As fire lends wood and iron- this turns steel,
That burns to ash

The secret of Browning's widespread and beneficent influence, as well as the guarantee of his fame, lies not merely in his art, grotesque and wilful as it often was; nor in his unique power of analysis; nor yet in his happy choice of a philosophical method which was about to become popular; nor even in the robust and good-humoured cheerfulness which gives a glow of genuine health to his work as a whole; but rather in the fact that, though a poet endowed with transcendent gifts, he was yet so representative a man in his feeling the deepest matters of doubt and faith.

upon

The sum of all is yes, my doubt is great,

My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough.

CHAPTER XII

DARWIN AND HIS PLOUGHSHARE

GEORGE JOHN ROMANES was the son of a Scots Presbyterian clergyman, resident in Kingston, Canada, as Professor of Greek in Queen's College. Following his birth, in 1848, the family left America and after several years of travel settled in London. Romanes received a rather desultory education, and finally went to Cambridge with the idea of fitting himself to take orders in the Church of England. This purpose he cherished for several years, but before taking a degree, found his interest enlisted so heartily by scientific studies as to change his plans, win a scholarship in science, and turn more or less definitely toward the profession of medicine. It was in the field of biology, however, that he was finally to do his life-work and gain a considerable recognition. I use his name to introduce this chapter, not because he is to be regarded as a Darwinian of unique gifts or authority, -although his gifts were exceptional and his authority eminent, but because of a representative if not typical element in his experience. His first acquaintance with Darwin's books marked an epoch in his life. Circumstances eventually brought the