They were not like the sociologists who lay
down a final rectification of things, amounting to nothing except an end
of the world, a great deal more depressing than would be the case if it
were knocked to pieces by a comet. Their ideal, like the ideal of all
sensible people, was a chaotic and confused notion of goodness made up
of English primroses and Greek statues, birds singing in April, and
regiments being cut to pieces for a flag. They were neither Radicals nor
Socialists, but Liberals, and a Liberal is a noble and indispensable
lunatic who tries to make a cosmos of his own head.
Mrs. Browning and her husband were more liberal than most Liberals.
Theirs was the hospitality of the intellect and the hospitality of the
heart, which is the best definition of the term. They never fell into
the habit of the idle revolutionists of supposing that the past was bad
because the future was good, which amounted to asserting that because
humanity had never made anything but mistakes it was now quite certain
to be right. Browning possessed in a greater degree than any other man
the power of realising that all conventions were only victorious
revolutions. He could follow the mediaeval logicians in all their sowing
of the wind and reaping of the whirlwind with all that generous ardour
which is due to abstract ideas. He could study the ancients with the
young eyes of the Renaissance and read a Greek grammar like a book of
love lyrics.
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