elearned." The truest and highest point of view from
which to regard the poetry of Shelley is that which shows it as a
"sublime fragmentary essay towards a presentment of the correspondency
of the universe to Deity, of the natural to the spiritual, and of the
actual to the ideal."

For Browning the poet of _Prometheus Unbound_ was not that beautiful and
ineffectual angel of Matthew Arnold's fancy, beating in the void his
luminous wings. A great moral purpose looked forth from Shelley's work,
as it does, Browning would add, from all lofty works of art. And it may
be remarked that the criticism of Browning's own writings which
considers not only their artistic methods and artistic success or
failure, but also their ethical and spiritual purport, is entirely in
accord with his thoughts in this essay. Far from regarding Shelley as
unpractical, he notes--and with perfect justice--"the peculiar
practicalness" of Shelley's mind, which in his earlier years acted
injuriously upon both his conduct and his art. His power to perceive the
defects of society was accompanied by as precocious a fertility to
contrive remedies; but his crudeness in theorising and his inexperience
in practice resulted in not a few youthful errors. Gradually he left
behind him "this low practical dexterity"; gradually he learnt that "the
best way of removing abuses is to stand fast by truth. Truth is one, as
they are manifold; and innumerable negative effects are produced by the
upholding of one positive principle." Browning urges that Shelley,
before the close, had passed from his doctrinaire atheism to what was
virtually a theistic faith. "I shall say what I think," he adds--"had
Shelley lived he would have finally ranged himself with the
Christians.... The preliminary step to following Christ is the leaving
the dead to bury their dead." Perhaps this hypothetical anticipation is
to be classed with the surmise of Cardinal Wiseman (if Father Prout
rightly attributed to that eminent ecclesiastic a review of _Men and
Women_ in _The Rambler_) that Browning himself would one day be found in
the ranks of converts to Catholicism. In each case a wish was father to
the thought; Browning recognised the fact that Shelley assigned a place
to love, side by side with power, among the forces which determine the
life and development of humanity, and with Browning himself "power" was
a synonym for the Divine will, and "love" was often an equivalent for
God manifest in Jes