It is our will
    That thus enchains us to permitted ill—­
    We might be otherwise—­we might be all
    We dream of happy, high, majestical. 
    Where is the love, beauty, and truth we seek
    But in our mind?

    Julian and Maddalo.

In the allegorical introduction to the Revolt of Islam, which is an interesting example of Shelley’s mystical mythology, we have an insight into the poet’s view of the good power in the world.  It is not an almighty creator standing outside mankind, but a power which suffers and rebels and evolves, and is, in fact, incarnate in humanity, so that it is unrecognised by men, and indeed confounded with evil:—­

    And the Great Spirit of Good did creep among
    The nations of mankind, and every tongue
    Cursed and blasphemed him as he passed, for none
    Knew good from evil.

There is no doubt that to Shelley the form assumed by the divine in man was love.  Mrs Shelley, in her note to Rosalind and Helen, says that, “in his eyes it was the essence of our being, and all woe and pain arose from the war made against it by selfishness or insensibility, or mistake”; and Shelley himself says, “the great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action or person, not our own.”

Shelley was always searching for love; and, although he knew well, through his study of Plato, the difference between earthly and spiritual love, that the one is but the lowest step on the ladder which leads to the other, yet in actual practice he confounded the two.  He knew that he did so; and only a month before his death, he summed up in a sentence the tragedy of his life.  He writes to Mr Gisborne about the Epipsychidion, saying that he cannot look at it now, for—­

“the person whom it celebrates was a cloud instead of a Juno,” and continues, “If you are curious, however, to hear what I am and have been, it will tell you something thereof.  It is an idealized history of my life and feelings.  I think one is always in love with something or other; the error—­and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it—­consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal.”

No poet has a more distinct philosophy of life than Browning.  Indeed he has as much a right to a place among the philosophers, as Plato has to one among the poets.  Browning is a seer, and pre-eminently a mystic; and it is especially interesting as in the case of Plato and St Paul, to encounter this latter quality as a dominating characteristic of the mind of so keen and logical a dialectician.  We see at once that the main position of Browning’s belief is identical with what we have found to be the characteristic of mysticism—­unity under diversity at the centre of all existence.  The same essence, the one life, expresses itself through every diversity of form.