hat the poem is no exceptional
work of Browning, for which an apology is required, but of a piece with
his other writings and in harmony with the body of thought and feeling
expressed through them. Now it is certain that as Browning advanced in
years he more and more distrusted the results of the intellect in its
speculative research; he relied more and more upon the knowledge that
comes through or is embodied in love. Love by its very nature implies a
relation; what is felt is real for us. But the intellect, which aspires
to know things as they are, forever lands us in illusions--illusions
needful for our education, and therefore far from unprofitable, to be
forever replaced by fresh illusions; and the only truth we thus attain
is the conviction that truth there assuredly is, that we must forever
reach after it, and must forever grasp its shadow. Theologies,
philosophies, scientific theories--these change like the shifting and
shredding clouds before our eyes, and are forever succeeded by clouds of
another shape and hue. But the knowledge involved in love is veritable
and is verified at least for us who love. While in his practice he grew
more scientific in research for truth, and less artistic in his desire
for beauty, such was the doctrine which Browning upheld.

The speaker in _Fifine at the Fair_ is far more a seeker for knowledge
than he is a lover. And he has learnt, and learnt aright, that by
illusions the intellect is thrown forward towards what may relatively be
termed the truth; through shadows it advances upon reality. When he
argues that philosophies and theologies are the fizgigs of the brain,
its Fifines the false which lead us onward to Elvire the true, he
expresses an idea which Browning has repeatedly expressed in
_Ferishtah's Fancies_ and which, certainly, was an idea he had made his
own. And if a man approaches the other sex primarily with a view to
knowledge, with a view to confirm and to extend his own
self-consciousness and to acquire experience of the strength and the
weakness of womanhood, it is true that he will be instructed more
widely, if not more deeply, by Elvire supplemented by Fifine than by
Elvire alone. The sophistry of the speaker in Browning's poem consists
chiefly in a juggle between knowledge and love, and in asserting as true
of love what Browning held to be, in the profoundest sense, true of
knowledge. The poet desires, as Butler in his "Analogy" desired, to take
lower ground tha