Cunliffe — Browning’s Idealism. 
681 
In the doctrine of the atonement Browning had no such sym¬ 
pathetic interest; it was, in fact, inconsistent with his theory 
of the nature of evil, which, whatever its origin, was obviously 
non-Christian. Mr. Bury thinks that if Browning had been 
“a philosopher proper he would have been a Hegelian;” but I 
am inclined to think 'that Browning’s idealism came to him 
rather by way of Shelley than of German philosophers; he has 
a poem on the “Transcendentalism” (as he calls it) of Jacob 
Boehme, and there is a reference to Kant in Prince Hohenstiel - 
Schwangau , but neither reference shows sympathy or even ex¬ 
tensive knowledge. Boehme, indeed, a philosophical colleague 
tells me, was not a transcendentalism at all, but a mystic; and 
in the poem as originally published Browning by mistake de¬ 
scribed him as “Swedish” instead of German. In the case of 
Shelley the evidence, though it does not amount to proof, is 
more considerable; in his Essay on Shelley Browning draw T 3 
attention to the earlier poet’s “belief in the existence of Good,, 
to which Evil is an accident”—a very characteristic doctrine, 
as we have seen. The famous apostrophe in the Adonais: 
The One remains, the many change and pass; 
Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly; 
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, 
Stains the white radiance of Eternity, 
Until Death tramples it to fragments—Die, 
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek! 
has obviously much in common with Browning, e. g. Sordello 
VI. 555. 
Is the cloud of hindrance broke 
But by the failing of the fleshy yoke, 
Its loves and hates, as now when death lets soar 
Sordello? 
There are also obvious differences, but I must leave the analy¬ 
sis of them to minds better versed in metaphysical distinctions. 
