and His Century, by Helen Archibald Clarke Project Gutenberg's Browning and His Century, by Helen Archibald Clarke This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Browning and His Century Author: Helen Archibald Clarke Release Date: February 14, 2012 [EBook #38874] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY *** Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.) BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY BY THE SAME AUTHOR and His Century, by Helen Archibald Clarke 1 BROWNING'S ITALY BROWNING'S ENGLAND A GUIDE TO MYTHOLOGY ANCIENT MYTHS IN MODERN POETS LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY HAWTHORNE'S COUNTRY THE POETS' NEW ENGLAND [Illustration: BROWNING AT 23 (LONDON 1835)] Browning and His Century BY HELEN ARCHIBALD CLARKE Author of "Browning's Italy," "Browning's England," etc. ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1912 Copyright, 1912, by DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO. All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian To THE BOSTON BROWNING SOCIETY IN COMMEMORATION OF THE BROWNING CENTENARY 1812-1912 CONTENTS PAGE and His Century, by Helen Archibald Clarke 2 CHAPTER I THE BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 3 CHAPTER I 3 CHAPTER II THE CENTURY'S END: PROMISE OF PEACE 77 CHAPTER II 4 CHAPTER III POLITICAL TENDENCIES 118 CHAPTER III 5 CHAPTER IV SOCIAL IDEALS 174 CHAPTER IV 6 CHAPTER V ART SHIBBOLETHS 217 CHAPTER V 7 CHAPTER VI CLASSIC SURVIVALS 277 CHAPTER VI 8 CHAPTER VII PROPHETIC VISIONS 342 ILLUSTRATIONS Browning at 23 (London 1835) Frontispiece FACING PAGE Paracelsus 38 Herbert Spencer 94 David Strauss 112 Cardinal Wiseman 120 William Ewart Gladstone 160 William Morris 196 John Burns 208 Alfred Tennyson 250 A. C. Swinburne 260 Dante Gabriel Rossetti 266 George Meredith 272 Euripides 296 Aristophanes 306 Walter Savage Landor 330 Browning at 77 (1889) 360 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY PROLOGUE TO ROBERT BROWNING "Say not we know but rather that we love, And so we know enough." Thus deeply spoke The Sage; and in men's stunted hearts awoke A haunting fear, for fain are they to prove Their life, their God, with yeas and nays that move The mind's uncertain flow. Then fierce outbroke, Knowledge, the child of pain shall we revoke? The guide wherewith men climb to things above? Nay, calm your fears! 'Tis but the mere mind's knowing, The soul's alone the poet worthy deeming. Let mind up-build its entities of seeming With toil and tears! The toil is but for showing How much there lacks of truth. But 'tis no dreaming When sky throbs back CHAPTER VII 9 to heart, with God's love beaming. I THE BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT During the nineteenth century, which has already receded far enough into the perspective of the past for us to be able to take a comprehensive view of it, the advance guard of the human race found itself in a position entirely different from that ever before occupied by it. Through the knowledge of cosmic, animal, and social evolution gradually accumulated by the laborious and careful studies of special students in every department of historical research and scientific experiment, a broader and higher state of self-consciousness was attained. Mankind, on its most perceptive plane, no longer pinned its faith to inherited traditions, whether of religion, art, or morals. Every conceivable fact and every conceivable myth was to be tested in the laboratory of the intellect, even the intellect itself was to undergo dissection, with the result that, once for all, it has been decided what particular range of human knowledge lies within the reach of mental perception, and what particular range of human knowledge can be grasped only through spiritual perception. Such a momentous decision as this in the history of thought has not been reached without a long and protracted struggle extending back into the early days of Christianity, nor, it may be said, is the harmony as yet complete, for there are to-day, and perhaps always will be, human beings whose consciousness is not fully orbed and who either seek their point of equilibrium too entirely in the plane of mind or too entirely in the plane of spirit. In the early days, before Christianity came to bring its "sword upon earth," there seems to have been little or no consciousness of such a struggle. The ancient Hindu, observing Nature and meditating upon the universe, arrived intuitively at a perception of life and its processes wonderfully akin to that later experimentally proved by the nineteenth century scientist, nor did he have a suspicion that such truth was in any way antagonistic to religious truth. On the contrary, he considered that, by it, the beauty and mystery of religion was immeasurably enhanced, and, letting his imagination play upon his intuition, he brought forth a theory of spiritual evolution in which the world to-day is bound to recognize many elements of beauty and power necessary to any complete conception of religion in the future. Even the Babylonians made their guesses at an evolutionary theory of the universe. Greek philosophy, later, was permeated with the idea, it having been derived by them perhaps from the Chaldeans through the Phoenicians, or if the theories of Aryan migrations be correct, perhaps through inheritance from a remote Aryan ancestry. When Christian thought gained its hold upon the world, the account of creation given in Genesis became so thoroughly impressed upon the minds of men that it was regarded as the orthodox view, rooted in divine revelation, and to question it was to incur the danger of being called an atheist, with its possibly uncomfortable consequences of being martyred. Strangely enough, the early Church adopted into its fold many pagan superstitions, such as a belief in witchcraft and in signs and wonders, as well as some myths, but this great truth upon which the pagan mind had stumbled, it would have none of. These two circumstances the adoption on the part of Christianity of pagan superstitions and its utter repudiation of the pagan guesses upon evolution, carrying within it the germs of truth, later to be unearthed by scientific research furnished exactly the right conditions for the throwing down of the gauntlet between the mind and the spirit. The former, following intellectual guidance, found itself coming more and more into antagonism with the spirit, not yet freed from the trammels of imagination. The latter, guided by imagination, continued to exercise a mythopoeic faculty, which not only brought it more and more into antagonism with CHAPTER VII 10 [...]... favorite and charge of the Deity: "He had implanted in him by God the natural conditions only of that which he was ultimately to become, and his realization of this destiny was the result of his own spontaneity His admirable wisdom he acquired by the judicious application of his intellectual powers and the conscientious use of all the aids within his reach; his moral greatness, by the zealous culture of his. .. Was this mortal combat to end in the annihilation of either, or would this, too, end in a compromise leading to harmony? CHAPTER VII 13 At the dawn of this century, in 1812, came into the world its master poetic mind I say this to-day without hesitation, for no other English poet of the century has been so thoroughly aware of the intellectual tendencies of his century, and has so emotionalized them and. .. sympathy and through creating forms of beauty which would show him his own thoughts and hopes glorified by the all-seeing touch of the artist Paracelsus recognizes his deficient sympathy for mankind, and tries to make up for it in his own way by giving out of the fulness of his knowledge to men The scornful and proud reformer has not, however, truly learned the lesson of love, and verily has his reward... ourselves ruling new and beauteous realms ***** CHAPTER VII 19 As Heaven and Earth are fairer far Than chaos and blank darkness, though once chiefs, And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth In form and shape compact and beautiful, In will, in action free, companionship And thousand other signs of purer life, So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, A power more strong in beauty, born of us And fated to... what elements in this solution the poet retained to the end of his life, how his thought became modified, and what relation his final solution bears to the final thought of the century In this first attempt at a synthesis of life in which the attributes peculiar to the mind and to the spirit are brought into harmonious relationship, Browning is more the intuitionalist than the scientist His convictions... fundamental object of the history: on the other hand he derived these thoughts only from himself and the cultivation of his age, and therefore could seldom assume that they had actually been laid down by the authors of these writings; and on the other hand, and for the same reason, he omitted to show what was the relation between these thoughts and those symbolic representations, and how it happened that... de' Fiori, where there now stands a statue erected by Progressive Italy in his honor His last words were, "I die a martyr, and willingly." Then they cast his ashes into the Tiber and placed his name among the accused on the rolls of the Church And there it probably still remains, for no longer ago than 1889, when his statue was unveiled on the ninth of June, on the site of his burning, in full view of... Venice and teach him the higher and secret learning The two men soon quarreled, and Bruno was betrayed by the count into the hands of the Inquisition He was convicted of heresy in Venice and delivered to the Inquisition in Rome He spent seven years in its dungeons, and was again tried and convicted, and called upon to recant, which he stoutly refused to do Sentence of death was then passed upon him and. .. spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and strength, of the knowledge and fear of God He will not judge according to appearance, nor will he according to hearsay He will govern in righteousness the poor, and judge with equity the humble of the earth He will smite the mighty with the rod of his mouth, and the wicked with the breath of his lips." The ideal expressed here of a great and wise national... of himself His persecution, however, continued to the end He was exiled from his family and friends, and, even when he had become blind and wasted by sorrow and disease, he was still closely watched lest he might utter the awful heresy that the earth moved A hundred years later than this, when Buffon attempted to teach the simple truths of geology, he was deposed from his high position and made to . Archive.) BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY BY THE SAME AUTHOR and His Century, by Helen Archibald Clarke 1 BROWNING& apos;S ITALY BROWNING& apos;S ENGLAND A GUIDE. and His Century, by Helen Archibald Clarke Project Gutenberg's Browning and His Century, by Helen Archibald Clarke This eBook is for