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

450 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—

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.