now asks the author of "A Song to David" how one who had thus touched
the absolute in art could so decline from it. He assumes that the
madness had but revealed the poet: whether or not the fiery outbreak was
due to force suppressed or to particles of brain substance disturbed.
Why was he after as before silent?

It might be urged in answer that the full glory of that vision did not
return--that the strength and beauty of the universe never came to him
again with so direct a message for the eye and ear of his fellow men.
But, Mr. Browning continues, impressions of strength and beauty are only
the materials of knowledge. They contain the lesson of life. And that
lesson is not given in the reiterated vision of what is beautiful, but
in the patient conversion into knowledge and motive of such impressions
of beauty--in other words, of strength or power--as Man's natural
existence affords. The poet's privilege, as the poet's duty, is not
merely to impart the pleasure, but to aid the process of instruction. He
only suggests the explanation to disclaim it in Smart's name.

These arguments are very typical of Mr. Browning's philosophy of Art: of
his conviction that Art has no mission, its intuitions have no
authority, distinct from moral and intellectual truth. He concludes the
little sermon by denouncing that impatience of Fancy which would grasp
the end of things before the beginning, and scale the heights of
Knowledge, while rejecting Experience, through which, as by a ladder, we
scale them step by step.

The lines in "Paracelsus," vol. ii., p. 36, which are in this view so
appropriate to the case of Christopher Smart, bore reference to him. The
main facts of his life may be found in any biographical dictionary.

With GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON is a lesson in the philosophy of intrigue, or
the art of imposing on our fellow men. It is addressed to Bubb
Dodington[127] as to an ambitious, obsequious, unscrupulous, and only
partially successful courtier; and undertakes to show that, being (more
or less) a knave, his conduct also proclaimed him a fool, and lost him
the rewards of knavery. Mr. Browning does not concern himself with the
moralities of the case; these, for the time being, are put out of court.
He assumes, for the purposes of the discussion, that everyone is selfish
and no one need be sincere, and that "George" was justified in labouring
for his own advancement and cheating others, if possible, into
subservience to it