THE RELIGION OF ROBERT BROWNING.

New Zealand Tablet, 21 January 1915, Page 47

THE RELIGION OF ROBERT BROWNING.

To the Editor.

Sir,— I, through the medium of your paper, acknowledge the pleasure and interest I took in the Browning discussion. I have always been meaning to read more about Browning, and was pleased to read Miss Callan’s contribution to the Newman Society. It would be very pleasant and delightful for us if the poets would give us sound doctrine, but too often one finds they don’t. So I read them and ‘ love them and leave them.’ There is no question about the nobility ■of Browning’s character, but if I read his poems aright —the ones I understand, I mean, as there are some of Browning’s poems that I am not educated enough to make out what the subject is, the object or the predicate —and if I remember aright, in ‘ Paracelsus ’ he makes a great soul of Luther; and what Catholic can suffei that without exercising great Christian patience ? But I should say from reading his poems that if Browning had known and understood the Catholic doctrine as wo ■Catholics do he would not have stayed an hour outside the Church. Apparently Browning never studied the Catholic Church, but took a merely superficial view of it. There is a book called The Vision of Browning , by Foster, I think it is. He says that Browning was a religious poet, and a great lover of human beings,

‘ who has staked his soul on the pursuit of the haunting vision" of perfection.’ . I should 'say that he had no system to hand down to his family or followers, that he believed in a Christian religion of his own, and had high ideals, but that he was prejudiced against the Catholic Church. Whether the prejudice arose ! from his antiCatholic education, or whether he had been seeing bad examples from Catholics, or whether it was at i. that period unfashionable to have an inquiring mind into those matters, I am not able to say. But I must not encroach too much on your space, and I will conclude by saying how delightful it must be for those people in Auckland to have a Newman Society, and to be able to attend the meetings, and how thankful we Catholics ought to be for ladies like Miss Callan in our. midst. I hope and trust that she was right about Browning, and that he died in the soul of the Catholic Church, if not within the visible fold.—l am, etc., Country Reader. - Nelson, January 4.

[Correspondence closed. — Ed A.Z.jT.]