669 
Gunliffe — Browning’s Idealism. 
in mind. The course chosen by God and revealed by man is 
that of service to humanity. Human need and human sympa¬ 
thy are the only means of communication with the Divine. 
The Power above is otherwise utterly incomprehensible, not 
merely concealed but beyond all communication, and therefore 
out of all rivalry with Man. Only in God as the object of as¬ 
piration, and only in human sympathy and service as the ex¬ 
pression of that aspiration can be found the solution of “the 
SouTs attempt to 
Fit to the finite his infinity. 
(VI. 499.) 
II. Belief in God. 
It would be easy to show by numerous examples that Brown 
ing held this idealistic standard in his judgment of men and 
things throughout his life, but a quotation from one of his 
later poems will be sufficient. Red Cotton Night Cap Country 
is mainly a study of Miranda’s attempt to compromise with 
his spiritual ideals, and the poet’s final summing up in judg¬ 
ment of the two principal characters puts very clearly and di¬ 
rectly what I have been trying to bring out with respect to the 
earlier poems: 
Clara, I hold the happier specimen,— 
It may be, through that artist-preference 
For work complete, inferiorly proposed, 
To incompletion, though it aim aright. 
Morally, no! Aspire, break bounds! I say, 
Endeavor to be good, and better still, 
And best! Success is naught, endeavor’s all. 
But intellect adjusts the means to ends, 
Tries the low thing, and leaves it done, at least; 
No prejudice to high thing, intellect 
Would do and will do, only give the means. 
Miranda, in my picture gallery, 
Presents a Blake; be Clara—Meissonier! 
Merely considered so by artist, mind! 
For, break through Art and rise to poetry, 
Bring Art to tremble nearer, touch enough 
The verge of vastness to inform our soul 
What orb makes transit through the dark above, 
And there’s the triumph!—there the incomplete, 
More than completion, matches the immense,— 
Then Michelagnolo against the world! 
(IV. 760-780.) 
