The "Love" which has so deep a significance for Browning is a Love steeped in the original complexion of his mind, and bearing the impress of the singular position which he occupies in the welter of nineteenth-century intellectual history.

His was one of the rare natures in which revolutionary liberalism and spiritual reaction, encountering in nearly equal strength, seem to have divided their principles and united their forces.

Psychologically, the one had its strongest root in the temper which reasons, and values ideas; the other in that which feels, and values emotions.

Sociologically, the one stood for individualism, the other for solidarity.

In their ultimate presuppositions, the one inclined to the standpoint of the senses and experience; the other to a mostly vague and implicit idealism.