look beyond up to the Quiet. Caliban's dam told him of this, but Ixion divines for himself that this punishment is not the final word: he will defy this Zeus and trust the Potency above:

“Thither I rise, whilst thou-Zeus, keep thy godship and sink."

As Ixion, bound to his wheel, saw the rainbow

"Hell's sad triumph suspended,

Born of my tears, sweat, blood,"

-there rises the conception of hope beyond-that there the future "justifies, glorifies pain." So, says Ixion, though in torture.

It is this message of hope in a future life to retrieve the failures of the present, that Browning's poems would affirm to mankind. He thus hoped, he says in "La Saisiaz" he would ask others to hope with him. Much of his poetry is a plea for the immortal hope.

In many poems he pictures the arising of a new concept to meet a crisis in which new truth is grasped!

When a situation is encountered which old ideas are unable to cope with, when the mind is confronted with a situation which reveals deficiencies in adaptation, between the needs of the individual and the concepts of the mind to grapple with them, new concepts are gained in response to felt deficiencies in our existing stock of ideas to meet them. The general statement remains that our new concepts arise out of the inadequacy of those already on hand to cope with the condition in which we find ourselves. Out of the acute mental pain, of a desire to help those loved, arise concepts which give new hypotheses and new conceptional activity; new concepts arise formed by fusion of old ideas with new sudden light upon them ("Saul ").

In spiritual sloth, mental strain, or old age, concepts petrify and cease to aggregate as no new demands, no radically new demands, are made upon them: when new

concepts cease to arise and old ones are inadequate, the dogmatism of mental stagnation begins. Ixion on the wheel of life looked beyond, in his pain, and saw hope. So, says Browning, trust pain-that what seems malevolent is really benevolent in purpose.

Strive, mankind, though strife endure, through endless obstruction

Stage after stage, each rise marred by as certain a fall!"'

"Baffled forever-yet never so baffled but e'en in the baffling

Whatsoever the medium, flesh or essence-Ixion's

Made for a purpose of hate-clothing the entity Thou."

"What is the influence, high o'er Hell, that turns to a rapture,

Pain and despair's murk mist blends in a rainbow of hope? What is beyond the obstruction, stage by stage tho' it baffle

Back must I fall, confess,' Ever the weakness I fled
No, for beyond, far, far in a Purity all unobstructed,
Zeus was Zeus-not man: wrecked by his weakness I
whirl,

Out of the wreck I rise-past Zeus to the Potency above.'

Philosophy and wisdom of Browning embodied-Focussing of past faiths without dramatic disguise-Contents singingSeasoning bread of life-Symbolisms-Vision-Intuition -Light-Love-Spiritual aids-Prayer-Gratitude-God above-God on earth-Fire and flint-Man to God-Like attracts like Self-expression-Purpose of pain-Knowledge a means-Faith result of personal experienceBrowning's habit of attending Bedford Chapel, Paddington, with his sister-in-law-Contributed introduction to selection of sermons of Rev. Thomas Jones.

IN 1884 appeared "Ferishtah's Fancies."

"Ferishtah's Fancies" is a collection of short utterances embodying the soul and mind of Browning. Here the wisdom of his past work is crystallised, and he is in serious intent to focus the fruit of his feeling and thinking into an imaginative expression of his philosophy of calm and assured satisfaction, and that the way of God to man is to be accepted in a reasoned faith, founded upon the Hebrew and Persian conception of God. A prefatory note says there was no Persian poet of that name, the stories are inventions.

In a letter to a friend, Browning explained his work, disengaging it from a slavish reference to past fable or particular philosophy :

"I hope and believe that one or two careful readings of the poem will make its sense clear enough-above all, pray allow for the poet's inventiveness in any case, and do not suppose there is more than a thin disguise of a few Persian names and allusions. There was no such poet as Ferishtahthe stories are all inventions-the Hebrew quotations are put in for a purpose, as direct acknowledgment that certain

doctrines may be found in the Old Book which the concocters of novel schools of morality put forth as discoveries of their

own.

The Prologue to "Ferishtah's Fancies" describes the method of the construction of each poem it contains. Ortolan is the bird stuck on a skewer with a piece of toast and leaf of sage between, under which imagery the poem is dished up to the palate of the reader-the bird representing song, with Bread, the staff of life, and Herb, the seasoning of wisdom: so, in the twelve poems comprising the series, says the poet in explanatory Prologue, see the fancy, the word, and the song strung, which it is suggested should be taken together as the delicacy described is eaten in Italy, bird, crust, and herb seasoning in conjunction. The ortolan is a small bird forced into fatness in the dark, much prized by gourmands of the country.

The series "Ferishtah's Fancies" contained: "The Eagle"; "Melon Seller"; "Shah Abbas"; "The Family"; "The Sun"; "Mihrab Shah"; "A Camel Driver"; "Two Camels"; "Cherries"; "Plot Culture"; "A Pillar at Sebzevah"; "A Bean-Stripe "; also "Apple-Eating"; "Epilogue."

The first poem, "The Eagle," has for foundation an Eastern fable pointing the conclusion that success is effect of cause; that food does not drop fortuitously into the mouth; that the idle and lazy life, waiting for Providence to support it, is destined to disappointment; that as effects follow causes, the starvation of the individual affects the general welfare; that the starvation and disuse of soul and barren introspection, are a moral and philosophical evading of human and divine purpose-so thinks Ferishtah.

Ferishtah confesses that he is learning to be a dervish; his business is to feed hungry souls. How pursue his ideal except by going about up and down amid men, by speaking as from God to the soul, linking the Divine principle

underlying the personality, even of the squalid, hateful, and harsh?

Ferishtah justifies incidentally his poet way with man, as he would justify the God way with human life and circumstances.

The eagle as symbol is frequent in Browning's work for vision and intuitive knowledge. In this poem of "The Eagle," Browning divulges how the altruistic idea of the duty of service to the race superimposed itself upon his first egoistic dream of selfish individualism. It was in the nature of a miracle, he confesses, and though a dream-like experience, he learned the secret of the limitation of God's power on earth: how faith arose in him that God's workings in life are lost without man's co-operation, as a beam of light passes as black darkness unless intercepted and reflected by refrangible objects into prismatic parts. To be reflectors and distributors of the Divine beams is the province of the soul and necessary to its existence; and by the prime law of Love-secrecy, the soul seeks concealment; and effacing his own soul by taking the hue of another, is Nature's trick, assumed by the soul, by which it evades destruction by its enemies. So the lyric exquisite follows:

"Round us the wild creatures, overhead the trees,

Underfoot the moss-tracks,-life and love with these!"

The

"The Melon Seller" is the second confession of Ferishtah of his lessons learned by the way. It presents the picture of a beggar who, after years of the favour of fortune, fell from grace by personal default, and received a just punishment for his breaking of the law. beggar stoically accepts his punishment in set-off to the years of favour; exclaimed, in the words of Job: "Shall we receive good at the hands of God, and evil not receive?" There is so much undeserved bliss given to man, says the lyric, that a balance of apparent injustice seems needed to bring the scales true.