Chapter 2 of 10
CHAPTER II
Browning and His Century · Helen A. Clarke
CHAPTER II THE CENTURY'S END: PROMISE OF PEACE 77
CHAPTER III POLITICAL TENDENCIES 118
CHAPTER IV SOCIAL IDEALS 174
CHAPTER V ART SHIBBOLETHS 217
CHAPTER VI CLASSIC SURVIVALS 277
CHAPTER VII PROPHETIC VISIONS 342
ILLUSTRATIONS
Browning at 23 (London 1835) _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Paracelsus 38
Herbert Spencer 94
David Strauss 112
Cardinal Wiseman 120
William Ewart Gladstone 160
William Morris 196
John Burns 208
Alfred Tennyson 250
A. C. Swinburne 260
Dante Gabriel Rossetti 266
George Meredith 272
Euripides 296
Aristophanes 306
Walter Savage Landor 330
Browning at 77 (1889) 360
BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY
PROLOGUE
TO ROBERT BROWNING
"Say not we know but rather that we love, And so we know enough." Thus deeply spoke The Sage; and in men's stunted hearts awoke A haunting fear, for fain are they to prove Their life, their God, with yeas and nays that move The mind's uncertain flow. Then fierce outbroke,-- Knowledge, the child of pain shall we revoke? The guide wherewith men climb to things above? Nay, calm your fears! 'Tis but the mere mind's knowing, The soul's alone the poet worthy deeming. Let mind up-build its entities of seeming With toil and tears! The toil is but for showing How much there lacks of truth. But 'tis no dreaming When sky throbs back to heart, with God's love beaming.