Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/133

 despair nor bid the world despair. 'We bid ye be of good hope' was his message to the seeming failures in life, a class of ever-growing importance in this self-conscious age. His philosophy of life was eminently manly, and has brought cheer to many a despairing soul. If we could condense it into a formula, the maxim would run, 'Aspiration is achievement.' Herein his philosophy approached closely one of the implicit assumptions of the worldly life. The man of the world regards every experience as such as a gain, apart from its moral implications. It is better to have sinned and lived than never to have lived at all—never, that is, to have developed one's own personality. Much of Browning's thought comes perilously near this, and is only redeemed from it by his acute sense of the mordant poignancy of the conscience-pang. On the whole, his influence is of the very highest kind in this part of his work. It acts as a moral tonic to be brought in contact with such a manly, cheery soul, that does not faintly trust the larger hope, but is confidently sure that in aiming at the highest we are doing the best for our best selves.

Nowhere is his influence higher in this regard than in his love poems, the highest test of a poet's powers. The world is right in thinking that the chief business of the