The more one studies Browning, the
more one is convinced that the poet's astonishing mental vigor is
shown not in the number and variety of his ideas, but rather in the
number and variety of illustrations of them. I can not at this
moment think of any poet, dramatist or novelist who has invented so
many plots as Browning. He seems to present to us a few leading
ideas in a vast series of incarnations. Over and over again the same
thoughts, the same doctrines are repeated; but the scenery, the
situations, and the characters are never alike. Here is where he
remains true to the theory set forth in _Transcendentalism_; the poet
should not produce thoughts but rather concrete images of them; or,
as he says in the closing lines of _The Ring and the Book_, Art must
do the thing that breeds the thought.
In _Cristina_, four of Browning's fundamental articles of faith are
expressed: the doctrine of the elective affinities; the doctrine of
success through failure; the doctrine that time is measured not by
the clock and the calendar, but by the intensity of spiritual
experiences; the doctrine that life on earth is a trial and a test,
the result of which will be seen in the higher and happier
development when the soul is freed from the limitations of time and
space.
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