Browning felt this
criticism, and replied to it with a scriptural insult in his poem
_At the Mermaid_. I cannot possibly be a great poet, he said
sneeringly, because I have never said I longed for death; I have
enjoyed life and loved it, and have never assumed a peevish attitude.
In another poem he declared that pessimists were liars, because they
really loved life while pretending it was all suffering.
It is only fair to Browning to remember that his optimism has a
philosophical basis, and is the logical result of a firmly-held view
of the universe. Many unthinking persons declare that Browning, with
his jaunty good spirits, gets on their nerves; he dodges or leaps
over the real obstacles in life, and thinks he has solved
difficulties when he has only forgotten them. They miss in Browning
the note of sorrow, of internal struggle, of despair; and insist
that he has never accurately portrayed the real bitterness of the
heart's sufferings. These critics have never read attentively
Browning's first poem.
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