THE GREEKS AND BROWNING 
405 
in comparison with right action, prompted by Truth! Even 
words which poorly express our thoughts and are susceptible 
of misunderstanding, when Truth is back of them, fire nearer 
the bull’s eye. 
“From truth 
Whate’er the force wherewith you fling your speech, 
Be sure that speech will lift you, by rebound 
Somewhere above the lowness of a lie!” 
In those forcible lines in Francis Furini to the “Bounteous 
God, deviser and dispenser of all gifts” the poet exclaims, — 
“ True — true — all too true — 
No gift but, in the very plenitude 
Of its perfection, goes maimed, misconstrued 
By wickedness or weakness : still, some few 
Have grace to see thy purpose, strength to mar 
Thy work by no admixture of their own, 
— Limn truth not falsehood, bid us love alone, 
The type untampered with, the naked star!” 
Browning is for Justice too. He is neither arrogant nor 
falsely modest. He is Aristotelian in considering the aim of 
man to be happiness, in its highest and purest sense, and he 
believes that this aim can be reached only through virtue, 
man being born with a natural capacity for virtue. He will 
have nothing to do with those worldly philosophers who 
would call Truth “the lancet of the heart” and say “not all 
truths can be spoken and ’t is dangerous, yet a good man 
cannot avoid speaking the truth.” 
He tells us of the liar being so from habit, lies being a part 
of his stock in trade, and in harmony with a lying character 
which can reason itself into believing its own lies; Browning 
expresses a thought akin to Plato’s of the romancing metier 
of poets, “who sing how Greeks that never were, in Troy 
which never was, did this or the other impossible thing!” 
nor does he countenance good conduct and truthfulness 
when these arise for the reward or praise of fellow men. 
Browning is in accord with Aristotle in denouncing abstract 
falsehood as bad and blamable and in declaring truth as honor- 
