it overcame. He imagined yet more vividly than he saw, and the
stone wall which forbade vision but whetted imagination, acquired an
ideal merit in his eyes because it was not an open door. In later life
he came with growing persistence to regard the phenomenal world as a
barrier of illusion between man and truth. But instead of chilling his
faith, the obstacle only generated that poet's philosophy of the "value
of a lie" which perturbs the less experienced reader of _Fifine_.
"Truth" was "forced to manifest itself through falsehood," won thence by
the excepted eye, at the rare season, for the happy moment, till
"through the shows of sense, which ever proving false still promise to
be true," the soul of man worked its way to its final union with the
soul of God.[118]

[Footnote 118: _Fifine at the fair_, cxxiv.]

* * * * *

And here at length if not before we have a clear glimpse of the athlete
who lurks behind the explorer. Browning's joy in imagining impediment
and illusion was only another aspect of his joy in the spiritual energy
which answers to the spur of difficulty and "works" through the shows of
sense; and this other joy found expression in a poetry of soul yet more
deeply tinged with the native hue of his mind. "From the first, Power
was, I knew;" and souls were the very central haunt and focus of its
play. Not that strong natures, as such, have much part in Browning's
poetic-world; the strength that allured his imagination was not the
strength that is rooted in nerve or brain, slowly enlarging with the
build of the organism, but the strength that has suddenly to be begotten
or infused, that leaps by the magic of spiritual influence from heart to
heart. If Browning multiplies and deepens the demarcations among
material things, he gives his souls a rare faculty of transcending them.
Bright spiritual beings like Pippa shed their souls innocently and
unwittingly about like a spilth of "X-rays," and the irradiation
penetrates instantly the dense opposing integuments of passion,
cupidity, and worldliness. At all times in his life these accesses of
spiritual power occupied his imagination. Cristina's momentary glance
and the Lady of Tripoli's dreamed-of face lift their devotees to
completeness:--

"She has lost me, I have gained her,
Her soul's mine, and now grown perfect
I shall pass my life's remainder."

Forty years later, Browning told with far greater realis