so largely to the patience and knowledge of his interpreter, I see no tribute whatever to the vivid creative genius which has made the author of Childe Roland one of the great powers of his day. I do not deny that the most original genius must have its promptings from without; but those promptings are often no more like what comes of them than is the bread we eat to the body which it turns into, and stand in no more visible relation to it. Mr. Browning may have seen such a tower as he describes, in reality, or in a picture, or in a dream. The line from King Lear was ready to spring into his memory. A figure on his wall had supplied his fancy with one of many possible symbols of a desolate nature and of a living death; and one day, when the time had come, the spirit of Childe Roland laughed and lifted him by the hair (see The Ring and the Book), and in a single leap the poem was born. He knows as little as we do how those floating germs of imagination coalesced and quickened into life; and he knows, far better than we, how easily suggestions of a quite opposite kind might have worked to the same end. On this ground I agree with Mr. Kirkman, that it is a mistake to invoke Mr. Browning's authority on the poetic origin of his works; for in doing so we throw no real light on our discussion of them, and we weaken the various personal impressions which constitute their poetic truth. He himself would deprecate our asserting that he meant, in any poem, verse by verse, something not given in his words. He would have a right to deprecate our saying of this one, that he had derived its whole idea from an old English ballad, and either forgotten the fact, or concealed it in a quotation from Shakspere. He denies, since Mr. Furnival says he does, that he meant Childe Roland as an allegory; but he would consider himself understood by any mind which found in it the reflection of some crisis in its own life, and would accept the reflected image as a true one. "I think therefore that the only knowledge in which we should approach this work, or any other of the same fantastic kind, is the knowledge of life; and my own experience has proved that no other is needed for its appreciation. I knew none of the sources from which Mr. Kirkman derives its significance. I have been convicted of literary ignorance in more than one of the suggestions which my fellow-members of the committee have brought to bear on its problems. I am far from priding myself on this ignorance. Yet I have always seen in the poem what I believe the author felt it to be: the picture of a dream-like struggle, in which courage is stimulated by fear, and difficulties are out of proportion to their visible cause, and the goal only eludes us to show that it was close at hand, and attainment may alike prove victory or defeat; in which everything is substantial and spectral at the same time. This certainly is the mood of the poem, whatever its idea might be; and there is nothing incompatible with such a mood in supposing that the idea of a striving after truth underlay it: for truth, as Mr. Browning describes it, is always relative and shifting, and may look like a tower, but behaves like a will-o'-the-wisp. But I think no unbiassed criticism can connect Childe Roland's striving with the idea of death as its goal; for as Mr. Matthew has observed, he would not speak of the possible missing it as finding 'failure' within his 'scope'-still less of a death incurred in buoyancy of spirit: for a tone of overwrought sensation runs through the whole ;-least of all of a death confronted in the spirit of Prospice; for in Prospice the speaker's courage is nerved by an ecstatic hope which is the foretaste of victory; and in Childe Roland it has become an almost hopeless straining, to which the thought of failure is a relief. This is no fit occasion for defending my view any farther. I only state it as other members have stated theirs; and I cannot help thinking that if Mr. Kirkman had brought less literary knowledge to bear upon the poem, and more of that sympathy with the artistic aspects of Mr. Browning's work, of which his inaugural address has shown him so capable, his interpretation of Childe Roland would have come nearer to ours."

28*

Sixth Meeting, Friday, April 28, 1882.

JAMES COTTER MORISON, Esq., in the Chair.

After the reading of Mr. Bury's Paper by Mr. Furnivall,

THE CHAIRMAN said he thought all would agree that they had heard a most remarkable paper, and one which would give them a great deal to think about. In moving a vote of thanks to Mr. Bury, he would simply content himself with making a few remarks on the paper they had heard read. It was a paper which undoubtedly came from a certain school of thought-the extreme transcendental school of Hegel. He did not think it a special joy to have to master Hegel before we could understand or enjoy Browning. It seemed to him that Browning was better when not diluted with Hegel. It was, he remarked, a noteworthy thing that the philosophy of Hegel was dying out in its own country. Still he thought a criticism of the kind they had heard that evening most valuable, in that it would make us read Browning more carefully. As regarded philosophy, he was not so sure that that was the province of the poet; though he must admit that in the history of the world there never was a greater union of poet and philosopher than was found in Browning: yet he felt that the philosophy did at times interfere with our enjoyment of the poet.

MR. FURNIVALL then read letters from 1. Mrs. Owen, 2. the Rev. Jn. Sharpe, and 3. the Rev. Prof. Johnson.

1. MRS. OWEN: "I have been deeply interested in Mr. Bury's paper. Might I suggest that Cristina (which is not quoted in it, I think) is a beautiful example of what he says on pp. 272, 273; verses iii. iv. v. and vii., and especially the last verse viii.

'Life will just hold out the proving
Both our powers, alone and blended;
And then, come the next life quickly!
This world's use will have been ended.'

"I think Browning is the first poet who has given us the clue of the future perfecting of undeveloped powers,--not in individual consciousness, but in universal use-and it seems to flood the future with light."

2. The REV. J. SHARPE: This letter (which Mr. F. has unluckily mislaid) complained of Mr. Bury's argument against a personal God,' and said that Christians did not limit their God by Time and Space. It also urged that Browning treated those who differed from him with more consideration than Mr. Bury does.

3. The REV. PROF. E. JOHNSON: "I should hardly feel tempted to say anything in criticism of Mr. Bury's paper, were it not for the peremptory manner in which he disposes of the profound religious questions touched upon in paragr. vii. p. 271. I will confine myself to the question of the personality of God.

"1. Mr. Bury is inconsistent with himself. In ii. and iii. we are told that Love is the first principle of the universe; that it is 'concrete'; that it is to be identified with Truth and with God; that it is self-conscious. In vii, we are told that we are not to conceive of God as personal. Consequently we are not to conceive of absolute Love or Truth, or the 'concrete principle' as personal. Here then we are to think of something which is not abstract, but concrete, yet not personal; of something which is self-conscious, yet not personal in any intelligible

sense.

("I must give it up; it beats the Sphinx's riddle; I cannot imagine what it is !)

"The fallacy here is that Mr. Bury has introduced a chameleon into his imagination, which keeps changing colour; or he puts plus and minus alternately before the same quantity, thus:

"First, I love.' This is a personal truth, I suppose he will admit. He cannot use those words without confessing personality. Love is rooted in personality, does not exist as a fact in our experience apart from it. Call this +, a positive quantity, or a. Next, I abstract, i, e. de-personify, and get the general notion Love. Call this negation of personality, or -a. Next, I say that Love is the First Principle, etc., and is concrete, and is God; i. e. I re-personify, and we have + a again. Lastly, I say that this same principle is not personal in any intelligible sense, i. e. de-personify once more, - a again. Result: aa+a—a = 0, which represents the nil of this reasoning.

"We move forward up to a certain point, then, deterred by some difficulty, turn round and run back again. We build to a certain height; then get tired and pull the whole structure down. I did not understand that Mr. Browning had spent his time in such amusement. It is a baseless supposition it seems, that the poet teaches a personal God; and yet 'his God is at all events a Being of a glorious kind' (p. 271). Baseless, yet possible!

"2. But there is an old prejudice in the argument that God is not personal, because this implies limitation to time and space. All arguments against the personality of God turn upon this assumption: personality implies limitation. To show the fallacy of this:

"1. Personality is indefinable, in general. Our knowledge of ourselves is the knowledge of a phenomenon, not of a noumenon.

"All our definite thought is subject to the forms of space and time. But there is indefinite and indefinable thought, and that the most precious we have. We enjoy glimpses of our own personality out of relation to space and time, as Mr. Bury himself points out (p. 274). Music,' as Hegel says, 'frees from the limit of space,' etc.

2. Let us for a moment refer to those strange musical experiences. Mr. Browning says that music is the earnest of a heaven,' and that we know through it, as we do not otherwise know; that 'the rest may reason and welcome, 'tis we musicians know.' Madame de Stael said that under the influence of music we feel on the point of seizing the secret of existence.' J. P. Richter said to music: 'Away, away! thou speakest to me of things which in all my endless life I have not found, and shall not find,' Dr. Channing said he believed multitudes of church-goers obtained persuasions of immortality from the music, upon whom the preaching produced no effect. Doubtless there are other experiences, similar in effect the soldier falling heroically, the martyr, dying people-they feel near to seizing the secret of existence,'-'on the brink of being born.'

"Thus we may get fugitive glimpses of our real personality free from all fetters. And under these analogies we may likewise obtain some glimpse of an absolutely free personality in God. Our own personality is ideal; so His; or ours an ' abysmal depth ' (Tennyson); so His.

"3. It will be said that great thinkers of the logical and systematic class— Spinoza, Fichte, Hegel-have failed to grasp the personality of God. Certainly; because their business was with forms of thought, and these cannot express lifeneither ours, nor God's. As well argue that we have not personality because philosophers can only reason about an abstraction called human nature,' as argue against the personality of God on the ground that systematic philosophers are obliged to reason about Him as a higher generalization: Absolute Substance,' 'Absolute Spirit,'' Moral Order of the World,' and so on.

"In short, formal reasoning breaks down with us very soon, when we try to make plain to ourselves what life is. A geometrical form may help us a long way

2

(e. g. a triangle has held much Divine truth for many). much more; but still very little of the Infinite Object. and is not therefore the less, but the more personal.

Logical forms will hold He eludes all definition,

"4. Once admit that it is but the infirmity of our thought and language which is the real cause of the difficulty; it will be seen on the other hand that the overwhelming presumption is in favour of the faith in the personal God. We know what the 'heart' says i. e. the whole living consciousness of the man. It 'cries out for the living God,' and ought to be listened to, if there is no insuperable objection to doing so. Note the force of the saying from Goethe, p. 262: It is not that in us which is expressible, communicable, interchangeable, which is the best we have; but that which is in the last resort inexpressible and incommunicable.' Here is the seat of all true self-knowledge and Divine knowledge. Any indefiniteness or obscurity in Mr. Browning on these high themes is, I believe, due to the fact that he forces his way with the imperfect medium of language, in surpassing earnestness, as near as possible to the bounds of the inaccessible (Goethe again) as Turner did in another branch of art.

"But he is not guilty of the incoherence ascribed to him in this paper. If a man expresses faith in love as the principle of the world, yet denies that this love is the expression of a living will, he expresses faith in something which is nothing actual. In other words, any real belief in such a principle carries with it the explicit recognition of personality.

"I may refer to the closing chapter of the Mikrokosmus of Hermann Lotze, vol. iii., one of the finest recent scientific thinkers, who shows that science rests upon poesy, that love is the basis of all worth in existence, and the expression of the Living God.

"Not, 'Love is God,' but God is Love.'

'Love is the Root of Creation; God's Essence.

Worlds without number

Lie in His bosom like children;

He made them for His purpose only,

Only to love, and be loved again."-Longfellow.

MR. FURNIVALL, in remarking upon the term used by Mr. Bury of "personal God," and the objections raisd thereto by Mr. Sharpe and Professor Johnson, said that he thought there would be no difficulty whatever in reconciling their opinions, if each would define his terms. If Mr. Sharpe grants that God is not limited by time and space-as all persons that most of us can conceive, are limited,-if he does not seek to co-ordinate God with other persons,-as Mr. F. took it he doesn't -then Mr. Bury and he are at one. Mr. F. thought Mr. Bury decidedly right in saying, that Browning did not teach the doctrine of "a personal God" in the sense in which that phrase was generally understood, that is, a Being with a definite form,-more or less like man's, or like Christ's glorified body.-The poem to settle the question is the undramatic one of La Saisiaz, Browning's latest direct declaration (1878) on the point. In that he asks: Is there a future life for the soul? "I have questioned and am answered. Question, answer, presuppose Two points: that the thing itself which questions answers,-is, it knows ; As it also knows the thing perceived outside itself,—a force

Actual ere its own beginning, operative through its course,
Unaffected by its end,—that this thing likewise needs must be,

Call this 'God,' then, call that 'soul,' and both the only facts for me."

p. 32-3, 1. 217-222.

Now, said Mr. Furnivall, is this the ordinary definition of "a personal God"? I trow not. Assuredly the poet is "very sure of God” (p. 80), “a cause all-good, all-wise, all-potent" (p. 47); but as surely, so far as I can judge, his God is not what is usually understood by a "personal God."

Mr. Bury's Paper is, I think, a very able one, and gives in a short space a better general view of Browning's Philosophy than I know elsewhere. Has any one else ever tried the same range? It does not include all the details that, with more space, Mr. Bury might have given. But Browning's doctrine of Universal Redemption is involved in what Mr. Bury has stated of the ceasing of Evil. Α minor point on which Browning often dwells-in The Statue and Bust, Dis aliter Visum, Youth and Art, &c. may be stated in Shakspere's words

"There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows, and in miseries."

But I do not wish to speak of all the points that might be stated, or to go into the question of how it is that God can't exist here without Evil, and yet is to do so in Heaven, &c. I cannot take Browning's view of the mysteries he discusses in La Saisiaz, and I hope some day here to say why. I feel grateful to Mr. Bury for his thoughtful and able paper.

MR. COUPLAND said the subject was a wide and difficult one. It was certainly an advantage to have a system of thought evolved from Browning's poems. Browning undoubtedly has a definite system of fundamental belief; and he has not shifted his ground much from his early poems. There were many points of similarity between Browning and Hegel-but they were not confined to Hegel alone, but to philosophy in general. To do justice to Mr. Bury's paper, however, one would have to go right through it, and that would take more time than they could spare that evening. He thought that Mr. Bury's exposition of Browning was not altogether consistent. In one place he makes love the sole ultimate essence of all things, and in another a principle co-ordinate with Knowledge and Power. He did not quite follow Mr. Bury in considering God as Love-he wished he was present to explain his own paper. The passage quoted from Christmas Eve did not strike him as either clear or scientific:

"Man, therefore, stands on his own stock

Of love and power as a pin-point rock,
And, looking to God who ordained divorce
Of the rock from his boundless continent,
Sees, in his power made evident,

Only excess by a million-fold,

O'er the power God gave man in the mould," &c.

The poet says Power can, but Love cannot be increased; it is already complete ; it is ours to keep it or let it go. With regard to the question of a personal God, Mr. C. thought that the term "personal" implied contrast, but in God all contrast is abolished. He was not clear as to personal immortality involving memory. He knew that Browning attached great importance to the hope of future existence; and he could not help thinking that Browning's views were far grander than most ideas regarding immortality. Browning's philosophy was eminently practical, teaching us that our actions have a value for all time; and that a man's soul is greater than the conventionalities of the age.

MR. RADFORD was at a loss to understand why Mr. Furnivall took such pains to reconcile the views of Mr. Bury and the clergymen-they are irreconcilable. He took Mr. Bury for a plain-spoken Agnostic-and of course it was not easy or possible to reconcile Mr. Bury and the clergymen. The business of the poet proper was not with philosophy; it must be obvious that the language of science and poetry were diametrically opposed-he might speak of the one as analytical, the other as presentable. It was a difficult task to speak of Browning's metaphysics. He turned religion into love; and had none of the narrow prejudices of dogmatism. It would sometimes seem that Browning had a special metaphysics of his own-but this did not seem conceivable. Because Browning had seized on