THE GREEKS AND BROWNING 409 



Browning in his earlier and later poems insists that although 

 work we must, the motives should be Truth and Duty, never 

 gain. The soft voice whispered, "Wilt thou adventure for 

 my sake and man's apart from all reward?" 



"'Why from the world,' Ferishtah smiled, 'should thanks 



Go to this work of mine? . . . Justice says: 

 Be just to fact, or blaming or approving: 

 But generous? No, nor loving! 



"Loving! what claim to love has work of mine? 

 Concede my life were emptied of its gains 



To furnish forth and fill work's strict confine, 



Who works so for the world's sake he complains 

 With cause when hate, not love, rewards his pains. 



I looked beyond the world for truth and beauty: 



Sought, found, and did my duty." 



The impress of Platonic thought concerning truth and 

 ideality are apparent in passages of "Pauline" and "Para- 

 celsus." Indeed the impression is not lost in other poems 

 running with the poet's advancing years, and such thoughts 

 are sprinkled as gems through "Asolando." 



Plato tells us that the kind of rhetoric a wise man should 

 concern himself with is truthful speaking and the cautious 

 denning of words. Words are misleading, and the utmost 

 care must be observed in the rightful appropriation of names. 



Flimsy word architecture of gaudy structure is not for 

 Browning's ideal city. He warns us that " words are but words 

 and wind, why let the wind sing in your ear, bite sounding to 

 your brain?" Not from names but from their essences we must 

 really learn of things. Phaedrus is bid to go and tell Lysias 

 and other composers of speeches Homer, and other writers 

 of poems, Solon and others who compose political discourses 

 called laws he is bid to say to all of them if their compo- 

 sitions are based on knowledge of the Truth, and they can 

 defend or prove them, then they are to be called not only 

 poets, orators, legislators, but they are worthy of a higher 

 name : they are lovers of wisdom or philosophers. This worthy 

 name of lover of wisdom and philosopher is Robert Browning's, 



