Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/466

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CRITICAL STUDIES

Gustave Flaubert (in "Madame Bovary"), George Meredith (as in "Emilia in England," and "The Egoist"). Carlyle, in his "French Revolution," delights in sneering at "Victorious Analysis;" here is Victorious Analysis in a very real sense commanding the extreme opposite of sneers.

5. Manliness.—Further, Browning's passion is as intense, noble, and manly as his intellect is profound and subtle and therefore original. I would especially insist on its manliness, because our present literature abounds in so-called passion, which is but half-sincere or wholly insincere sentimentalism, if it be not thinly disguised prurient lust, and in so-called pathos, which is maudlin to nauseousness. The great unappreciated poet last cited has defined passion as noble strength on fire; and this is the true passion of great natures and great poets; while sentimentalism is ignoble weakness dallying with fire; and mere lust, even in novels written by "ladies" for Society with the capital S, is mere brutishness. Browning's passion is of utter self-sacrifice, self-annihilation, self-vindicated by its irresistible intensity. So we read it in "Time's Revenges," so in the scornful condemnation of the weak lovers in "The Statue and the Bust," so in "In a Balcony," and "Two in the Campagna," with its—

"Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn."

Is the love rejected, unreturned? No weak and mean upbraidings of the beloved, no futile complaints; a solemn resignation to immitigable Fate; intense gratitude for inspiring love to the unloving beloved.