[Wmi-devel-hu] Profoundest interests of life. They read the poets for fre

[Lafield E. <mic...@it...>]

Rought back for us from this universal survey a conviction of hope."
I believe, further, that it
was in order to justify this conviction that he set out on his quest.
His interest in vice--in

malice, cruelty, ignorance, brutishness, meanness, the irrational
perversity of a corrupt disposition, and the subtleties of
philosophic and aesthetic falsehood--was no morbid

curiosity.
Browning was no "painter of dirt"; no artist can portray filth for
filth's sake, and remain
an artist. He crowds his pages with criminals, because he sees deeper
than their crimes. He describes evil without "palliation or reserve,"
and allows it to put forth all its might, in order that he may, in
the end, show it
to be subjected to God's purposes. He confronts evil in order to
force it to give up the good, which is all the reality that is in it.
He conceives it as his mission to prove that evil is "stuff for
transmuting," and that there is nought in the
world. "But, touched
aright, prompt yields each particle
its tongue Of elemental flame--no matter whence flame sprung, From
gums and spice,
or else from straw and rottenness." All we want is-- "The power to
make them burn, express What lights and warms henceforth, leaves only
ash behind, Howe'er the chance."[A]
[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_.] He had Pompilia's faith. "And
still, as the day wore, the trouble grew,
Whereby I guessed there would be b