In these last poems Browning appears to borrow an apt term from Whitman, as the "Answerer" of his age. In them he has unquestioningly accepted the knowledge which science has brought, and, recognizing its relative character, has yet interpreted it in such a way as to make it subserve the highest ideals in ethics, religion, and art. Far from reflecting any degeneration in Browning's philosophy of life, these poems place on a firmer basis than ever thoughts prominent in his poetry from the first, while adding to these the profounder insight into life which life's experiences had brought him. The subject matter and form are no less remarkable than their thought. The variety in both is almost bewildering. Religion and fable, romance and philosophy, art and science all commingled in rich profusion; everything in language--talk almost colloquial, dainty lyrics full of exquisite emotion, and grand passages which present in sweeping images now the processes of cosmic evolution, now those of spiritual evolution, until it seems as if we had indeed been conducted to some vast mountain height, whence we can look forth upon the century's turbulent seas of thought, into which flows many a current from the past, while suspended above between the sea and sky, like the crucifix in Simons's wonderful symbolic picture of the Middle Ages, is the mystical form of divine love and joy which Browning has made symbolic of the nineteenth century. III POLITICAL TENDENCIES In the political affairs of his own age and country Browning as a poet shows little interest. This may at first seem strange, for that he was deeply sympathetic with past historical movements indicating a growth toward democratic ideals in government is abundantly proved by his choice and treatment of historical epochs in which the democratic tendencies were peculiarly evident. Why then did he not give us dramatic pictures of the Victorian era, in which as perhaps in no other era of English history the yeast of political freedom has been steadily and quietly working? There were probably several reasons for his failure to make himself felt as an influence in the political world of his time. In the first place, he was preëminently a dramatic poet, and as such his interest was in the presentation and analysis of individual character as it might work itself out in a given historical environment. To deal with contemporaries in this analytic manner would be a difficult and delicate matter, and, as we see, in those instances where he did venture upon an analysis of English contemporaries, as in the case of Wiseman (Bishop Blougram), Carlyle in Bernard de Mandeville and in "George Bubb Dodington," the sketch of Lord Beaconsfield, he takes care to suppress every external circumstance which would lead to their identification, and to dwell only upon their intellectual or psychic aspects.